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The events of the past few months have been challenging in a number of ways. We have to understand that our students, just like us, are carrying these experiences with them into the classroom. As we start a new semester that holds uncertainty, it is important that we take a fresh look at how we can approach our teaching from a trauma-informed perspective.
The experiences vary: Each one of us experienced and is experiencing events in different ways. We come with a broad range of positionalities. Take a moment as the semester begins to consider how different positionalities have experienced everything in the past 10 months from the pandemic to racial injustice to the recent events in the Capitol. Consider how the emotions of these experiences will take up space in the learning environment.
There will be unexpected responses (Minahan, 2019): Trauma manifests in a number of ways – but specifically, this can mean that students do not respond to your teaching, prompts, or even their peers in ways we have come to expect. Take a breath and do not take any of it personally, but do acknowledge it and address these responses.
Be Consistent: Students have grown to expect the unexpected (Imad, 2020; Minahan, 2019). Therefore, consistency and predictability will be paramount for students to feel comfortable and supported. You must be clear with students about decisions you make (upfront) to help them prepare for major changes to the course and the learning experience. Explaining why you are making a change can help a student process and respond in a calm manner.
To learn more about how to address teaching from a trauma-informed perspective, visit the Trauma-Informed Teaching and Learning Resource from the TIO.
Note to self. You may have been taking notes all semester about what was working well and what was not, but now is a good time to aggregate and summarize any notes that you have for the benefit of your future self. It may be helpful to divide these into general notes for teaching any course under the current circumstances and specific notes for leading that specific course. You know best what method of note-taking works best for you, but here is one idea in case you’re looking to adopt a new approach: consider using the screen capture tool in Canvas Studio to review your own course briefly, making a video with your fresh reflections that you can return to when you are ready.
Focused change. Regardless of how well you feel that the semester went, you may, like the teaching tips guy, have the temptation to tinker with various aspects of your course design. As part of your note-taking process, try to limit your focus to one or two changes that will make the biggest impact on student learning. Review the instructions for an assignment type for which students seemed to have the most trouble, or target times in your presentations where you could engage your students more in discussions or other forms of interaction. We are all learning a lot about what works and what does not for teaching and learning under these circumstances, so it is helpful to remind ourselves that we cannot do it all right now, nor should we try to do so. The best way to implement and measure the effectiveness of changes we make to our courses is to do so in a focused manner.
Rest and recuperation. Not so much a tip as a reminder, but your ability to meet the challenges and possibilities of the next semester will depend on allowing yourself to recover from this one. It has been a difficult time for so many reasons, and we at the Teaching Innovations Office hope that you find time for self-care and enjoy the upcoming holidays.
As you make any notes or plans as the semester ends, you can also visit the On-Demand Teaching Support on the Teaching Innovations Office website or reach out for a virtual consultation. We are always happy to help with reflection on your semester experiences and briefly generate ideas for the future.
Setting an approved synchronous communication channel. Under past face-to-face, synchronous exam circumstances, at least one person would be available to respond to a raised hand and questions in the classroom, and we need to think about how to replicate that experience virtually. One option is to use a function that is built-in to Canvas, such as Discussions, as the go-to channel for asking exam-related questions. Zoom might work here as well, but may be more prone to access issues than simply using Canvas Discussions. As with all of our advice, the main advice is that you clearly communicate in advance that this is the channel for questions during the exam period. One important note is that this strategy will not work if you’ve chosen to use Respondus LockDown as part of your exam integrity efforts, as students will not be able to navigate away from the browser window.
Exam integrity options. Speaking of exam integrity, knowing about Respondus LockDown Browser and Monitor is an important consideration, but knowing about other less invasive alternatives is also important. This recent guide from Learning Technology covers ways in which you can randomize questions using a question bank and groups, randomize answers, set time limits, and hide answers until a certain date and time. Different forms of assessment have different costs and merits relative to student learning and academic integrity, but consider these options if you need to have multiple choice and other automatically-graded questions as part of a summative assessment.
Testing the test. Whether or not you are trying out new settings as a part of administering summative assessment online, it is always a good practice to test the different functionality. Fortunately, this can be done fairly easily using Student View and Preview in Canvas. Using these tools allows you to catch any potential issues well in advance, which means you can reach out to any of the available technical support with plenty of time to spare.
Backup plans. Most of these tips are Canvas-centric, but it is important to have plans in place for potential issues for you and your students if you are using Canvas. Last week, we talked about staggering start times to help avoid overloading servers, but we also want to encourage you to think about having copies of exams that can be shared using something like Google Docs, or a good old-fashioned Word document, as a backup. Hopefully, the need for this is limited or non-existent, but being prepared for the corner cases will help the exam period proceed more smoothly.
The inspiration for these tips comes from the recently-published knowledge base article from ITS Learning Technology on Best Practices for Online Assessment, which was recently published. This resource includes tips for both setting up and administering final exams online, including resources for accommodations. Learning Technology will also have drop-in final exam preparation support coming up on Friday (11/20), which you can check out here.
Practice makes possible. If your type of assessment invites it, try to set up a practice assessment under real-life conditions. This advice particularly holds for timed exams, and that counts exponentially if you decide to use some technology like Respondus LockDown Browser for proctoring. There are a lot of moving pieces and technical challenges for students, and it will help them with both content and process to have practice. It can be easy to forget the amount of anxiety that summative assessment can cause, and we want to limit as many of the additional stressors as we can in preparing our students during these exceptional circumstances. Think about how you could add the opportunity to take a practice exam online, and incentivize it, in the coming weeks.
Establish clear expectations, and limit the need for restrictions. Another advantage of practice is that you can address any and all expectations that you have as an instructor for how students will conduct themselves during the assessment. Articulating clear, specific expectations helps to guard against all but the most flagrant of academic integrity issues. Furthermore, consider alternatives to using technology to try to address the problem of academic integrity by building your assessments such that some of the most common restrictions — closed book, no collaboration, etc. — are reduced in importance. More on constructing assignments in the Teaching Tips next week.
Staggered and flexible timing. For synchronous assessment, like exams, you and your students may also be worried about unreliable internet connections and server load. One element of preparing for these potential issues, especially for larger enrollment courses, can be setting up staggered exam start times to spread out the demand. An additional benefit here is that, in the event that you get a panicked email from a student or two, there is some built-in flexibility to when the exam can begin for a student. Multiple versions of an assessment opens up different challenges, but we will return next week with some suggestions related to constructing exams online.
As a reminder, there are still many helpful resources available on UNCG’s Keep Teaching website that apply to wrapping up the Fall 2020 semester on a positive note, so make sure you look at strategies and resources available there. As always, you can also reach out to the Teaching Innovations Office for a virtual consultation. We are here for you as we all continue to meet the challenges of this work at this time.
Ground rules and community agreements. We have talked about this idea in the tips before, but setting ground rules before engaging with difficult topics is a good first step. It is important that these rules are at least somewhat collectively determined as well, and the more direct student input, the better. In larger courses, you may need to start with some established parameters, but the goal is that the ground rules reflect a shared commitment, which requires a focus on student voices. A few potential starting suggestions to get students talking include: “Address the statement, not the person making it” and “Avoid saying ‘all’ when you mean ‘some’ or ‘some’ when you mean ‘one.’” We have some tips about building these sorts of community agreements, as well as more examples of these starting points, here.
Focus on specific behaviors. One essential tip for establishing meaningful ground rules for discussion is to be wary of vague language and platitudes as part of defining desirable and undesirable behavior. Students will often, with good intentions, repeat general ideas like “show everyone respect” or “treat others as you’d like to be treated,” but it is important that you guide them to identify specific behaviors that matter for having those respectful discussions. A quick way to encourage this is to follow-up with a simple “and what would that look like in our class?” This practice encourages them to reflect on their behavior while also making it easier for individuals to intervene and speak up when problematic acts occur.
Check-in procedures. Even with well-defined behaviors within the ground rules, it will take effort to make sure that all students feel more comfortable with identifying positive and negative behavior during difficult dialogues. You can take the lead on opening up the space for that to happen: “Is everyone comfortable with how we have been addressing this issue with respect to our ground rules?” Regular check-ins can also be a part of continuing to frame discussions in the context of the learning outcomes for the course. Of course, check-ins are also an important way to revisit the ground rules if they are not meeting the goals of the class. You may find, however, that simply devoting some time to talking about ground rules will do some heavy lifting when it comes to establishing a more inclusive environment for your students.
If you are looking for more support related to this topic, you can check out the rest of the 2020 Election faculty resources on our website here. As always, you can also reach out to the Teaching Innovations Office for a virtual consultation. Take care of yourselves, and let us know if we can help.
Unplugging and self-care. While it is nearly impossible to unplug completely right now, make a plan for how to balance civic engagement with self-compassion. Whether it is making time for meditation, a cup of tea and a book, or the Great British Bake Off, remember to give yourself permission to recharge as part of your plan for the upcoming weeks. If you’re looking for support on how to do that, check out resources like this Election Stress Kit from UNCG’s Counseling Center. There is lots to do, no matter the election outcome, but that work will not all be done next week. Plan ahead based on your current capacity in order to attempt to maintain a balance during the amplified stress of the election.
Consider your preferred framework for approaching difficult topics. When approaching difficult topics, especially those related to questions of equity, most of us have a preferred framework through which we try to engage those topics. Academic detachment is a comfortable framework for many, with a focus on treating issues as a matter of inquiry and a focus on what we know from the scholarship, but there are other options that might more readily describe your preferred framework, such as civic humanism or liberation pedagogy. Of course, you can move between these as well, but knowing which frameworks are comfortable for you will help you better manage your energy, and the energy of your class sessions, in the coming weeks. Check out this resource for more common strategies that may be helpful as you prepare. You may even want to use your preferred framework as a starting point for a community agreement on how you and your students address election issues.
Address the whole student. Regardless of your preferred framework, it is important that you avoid being dismissive of any pain or trauma that comes out of the next few weeks for any of our students. We all know that these times are challenging at a baseline, and the psychological, emotional, and physical investments in political outcomes and the impacts on our wellbeing will only exacerbate those challenges. You may not be comfortable with your course as a place for addressing any resulting trauma, but you want to recognize – whether it is during a synchronous class session or through a Canvas message – that you know this will be a difficult week and remind students of the resources that are out there (again, referring to the Campus Weekly article is a good way to share resources). Consider ways in which you can be flexible about the demands on students this week, as it will be hard to know who may be affected and what that looks like.
If you are looking for more support related to this topic, you can check out the rest of the 2020 Election faculty resources on our website here. There are tools and skills there that faculty develop over years of thinking critically about inclusive classrooms, but they can also be thoughtfully deployed in times like these even if you have not used similar strategies in your classroom in the past. As always, you can also reach out to the Teaching Innovations Office for a virtual consultation.
Use names. We start off with a simple one, but using student names accomplishes multiple related goals at the same time. When students feel like a random face in the crowd, then their motivation to stay engaged and attentive decreases. A 2017 study of a high-enrollment biology course found that 85% of students surveyed said that the instructor knowing their name mattered to them. In that study, a 25% increase in students feeling recognized by their instructor was achieved simply using name tents in a lecture hall, but one of the actual advantages of our current circumstances is that using names is actually easier to achieve in a digital space. Names call attention and help students feel recognized, so consider how you can use them more regularly in any size class (although ideally not just via cold-calling quizzing strategies).
Emphasize proficiency over deficiency. In addition to using names, there are other ways to bring out the individuality of learners that help to keep them engaged in the course. One such way is to promote a lens of proficiency and experience over one of deficiency. So many students feel that the learning process is one of making up for a lack of knowledge, but the way that you frame lectures, activities, and assignments matters for how students perceive themselves as proficient learners. Consider adding prompts throughout the rest of the semester that, in addition to telling students what to do, also invites students to reflect on related experiences and skills they already have from other aspects of their lives that can inform the types of questions or problems that they are encountering in this course.
Help refresh commitments to students’ purpose for their learning. Now is a great time to engage your students in an activity that returns their focus to the question of why learning is important for them right now. Students are making a huge commitment to continue learning with the challenges of doing so right now, and it can be helpful for you to give them some time to remind themselves of that, while also helping them put that commitment into the context of your course. Some questions for a brief in-class activity might be: How does this course fit into your plan for using your UNCG degree? What is one thing you have learned so far this semester that you hope to continue to value after this semester (which could be about the course content, yourself as a learner, or something else)? What are you willing to (re)commit to doing in order to meet your goals for this course and this semester? These types of questions pair particularly well with the process of mid-term feedback, but there are plenty of other contexts for getting your students to think about the purpose of their learning.
You can check out the full article on student attention from James Lang in the Chronicle here, and you can check out more from this great resource made available by University Libraries while you are there. Of course, check out the rest of the UTLC newsletter for more resources right here at UNCG, including, as always, the opportunity to reach out to the Teaching Innovations Office for a virtual consultation.
Ask and you shall receive. The core advice for mid-semester feedback is that you should only be asking questions for which you are interested in acting on the feedback that you receive. For example, you should not ask about assignments unless you are willing to make some changes to them based on the student feedback. In practice, this means that careful consideration of your questions in advance is important. Specific questions lead to more focused feedback, which makes the task of following up on the feedback more manageable.
Stay balanced. Make sure that you are not just focusing on making changes based on negative feedback, both for your own well-being and for your students’ learning. Often soliciting feedback is treated as a source of concern, but it is also a time for students to tell you what is working for them and what they would like to see emphasized going forward. It is important to ask questions that allow for this type of positive feedback as well. Additionally, we always encourage mid-semester feedback to include at least one question about what students think they’ve done well and what they could improve upon in their own approach to the course for the remainder of the semester. This practice opens up a more balanced conversation about improving student learning going forward.
Quick, visible follow-up. The most important part of showing students that their feedback matters is picking some actionable feedback to address as quickly as is reasonable. If students are saying that they need more structure in their breakout room conversations via Zoom, then consider making changes to how you set up those conversations – perhaps with one clear goal/product per breakout session – and then be clear that this change is addressing student feedback when you introduce the change. Not all changes are conducive to quick changes, but showing your students that you are being critically reflective about their feedback lets them know that their voices are heard and their suggestions are being considered as you work to support their learning.
If you have more questions about soliciting or implementing mid-semester feedback, then you should feel free to reach out to the Teaching Innovations Office for a brief, virtual consultation, which could even include a virtual classroom visit. For more ideas on this topic, consider these resources from Inside Higher Ed and University of Texas for more on effective mid-semester feedback.
Limited capacity and the need for active processing. Human brains have limited capacity in their working memory, and overwhelming that capacity leads to cognitive overload. Inputs like sounds and images demand a portion of that capacity, and need to be resolved in the working memory for more space to be made. As a result of these human limits, we need to be thoughtful in our educational videos that we focus the content directly on the learning outcomes and construct time for active processing of new learning. Short videos (6 minutes or less) help avoid cognitive overload, while also opening up the space for active processing. Of course, it is important to remember, especially right now, that it is never just our courses that are taking up space in our students’ working memory, so we have to be even more cognizant of the stressors on that limited capacity.
Extraneous load, weeding, and learning goals. With these limits in mind, and as we think about the role of educational videos in our courses going forward, it may be helpful to consider our videos from the perspective of weeding. Now, none of us wants to think of any of our course content as weeds, but the point of the metaphor is that each educational video should minimize the amount of extraneous load, elements of the video that are not germane to the learning goals. By weeding out extraneous load, we provide the space for the budding new learning to occur. When reviewing your course video content, consider what might be removed so that targeted learning makes space for active processing.
How will learning be reinforced? More targeted, shorter videos do not mean less learning, because they also require that we design space for rewarding students for doing the work of learning, processing and applying new understanding. In a face-to-face setting, many of us have favorite ways to integrate active learning into class sessions, whether that be group discussions, clicker quizzes, or any number of creative activities. The same need to work with new material continues in online spaces, but they need to be emphasized and rewarded for students to see them as important pairings with the video content.
We have shared this resource in the past, but if you are looking for distanced ways to reinforce learning, then consider browsing this curated list of active learning options from LSU – separated into online asynchronous, online synchronous, and distanced face-to-face columns – as you think of ways to help students continue to work towards the learning outcomes for this semester. For more on cognitive load and educational videos, check out these resources from Columbia and Vanderbilt.
Find your space. It is important to find ways to set aside space, both physically and mentally, for doing your work, although we want to recognize that this is harder than ever for students, instructors, and everyone else. For one person, this might mean the ritual of easing in with a cup of coffee and emails, while someone else might go to a separate room and use an app to limit distractions. Different strategies will work for different people, but encourage your students to find what works for them when it comes to dedicated work-time. (Also, feel free to share your own strategies and be open with your own struggles with giving dedicated time to work right now!)
Ask for help. We have talked in the past about encouraging students to use the resources available to them, from the Counseling Center to the Libraries to ITS and more. Many students may not see these as part of their regular portfolio of skills, especially if they don’t know people who have used them, so you can be a powerful ally in demonstrating the ways that these resources matter and sharing with students how other students have profitably used those resources in the past (when appropriate). As we said last week, students need modelling of these skills more than ever due to a relative lack of connection with their learning peers.
Check in with me. We all likely have experienced the challenges of individual students seeming to disappear from a course since March, for any number of reasons. It is important to share with students the importance of regularly checking in, which is a place where leading by example can go a long way. The more present an instructor is in a course with things like announcements, brief check-in videos, and/or posts on the course discussion boards, the more that type of engagement will be normalized for students. However, it also helps to remind students that it is even more important to be engaged when things are not going well for you, which is the harder thing to do. We are here to help them through their learning challenges and, as we said above, there are many campus resources to help them address other challenges as well, but remind your students that you can only help if they reach out.
Thanks to our colleague for sending out this helpful resource. If you’re like me, you may have found yourself reading the teaching tips and thinking that the advice included helpful reminders to yourself as well. If you have helpful tips and resources to share with your colleagues, then please feel free to reach out to us (utlc@uncg.edu). We know how important our colleagues are as a resource, especially as we all adapt to these new circumstances, and we value all of your contributions to making UNCG a great place for student learning. If you want to chat about things that have been helpful to you, or if you want to chat about recent issues that have come up, consider joining us this morning for our Coffeehouse with your colleagues (more below).
Absence of familiar models for gaining student learning skills. Most new college students have to adjust to a different approach to learning than the one that they grew accustomed to in the K-12 setting, but now all students are having to adjust to learning in new contexts without reliable learning models from their peers. One of those essential learning skills is time management, and students often rely on observing other students’ behaviors in order to shape their own strategies for time management. In the context of the pandemic, many of our newer students lack those models from their peers, while many of our experienced students may be struggling with new pressures related to learning from home or learning online, which may leave them feeling stuck and powerless. Consider how you might alter activities, assignments, and assessments in your courses in order to give students opportunities to reflect on, and compare, their approaches to preparation and practice for learning in your course.
Use guiding questions on effort and agency. One essential element of these student learning skills is an awareness and embracing of control over one’s own learning. Students can be prone to adopting a perspective that class performance and grades are something that happen to them, and the world around them is exacerbating this lack of agency right now. One strategy is to debrief activities, assignments, or assessments by asking specific guiding questions that focus on time and effort. How long did you spend working on this assignment? How did you spend your time dedicated to this activity? What were things that you could change in your preparation for similar assessments in the future? The middle of the term is a good time to invite students to reflect on these issues of effort that reflect student agency in learning.
Imposter syndrome and the need to frame normal learning challenges. Of course, alongside asking students about their own effort, it is also important that you give them the tools they need to set those expectations appropriately for various tasks in your course. How long should they be taking on an assignment? What resources will be the best use of their practice time? In this new context of a lack of learning models and diminished sense of agency, students may be particularly vulnerable to imposter syndrome and a general feeling that they don’t belong in higher ed. It is important that both the structure of your course and the language that you use reflects that learning is a process – a difficult, lifelong process – and that struggles are an essential part of that process, especially as we all adjust to these new conditions. Words of reminder and encouragement from the authority in the classroom can go a long way to affirm the challenges of learning and help students to feel empowered to meet those challenges.
Thanks to the members of the Advising Council who took the time to talk with new faculty and share their insights gained from working with students on their learning challenges. If you want help thinking through changes that you might make to empower your students and advance their learning skills, you can always reach out to us in the Teaching Innovations Office for a consultation that addresses your specific ideas and needs.
Emphasize Low-stakes Testing Preparation. One of the best ways to help reduce anxiety related to assessment is to give students low-to-no-stakes testing options in advance of the larger assessment. Whether this takes the form of Canvas multiple choice quizzes, synchronous in-class polling responses, or self-graded practice resources, it is important to give students ways to try, potentially fail, and reflect on what they need to do differently. The more that you can help shape that opportunity for reflection, the better, so build in time for reflection after one of these practice assessments. It is also important to emphasize that confusion, clarification, and revision are central parts of the learning process for everyone.
Facilitate Study Groups. Students may be feeling more isolated than ever – both in their learning and in general – but there are things that we can do to facilitate their coming together to practice for an upcoming assessment. Even if you don’t already use them for your course, consider assigning groups through Canvas for the explicit purpose of studying for an upcoming assessment. These groups can be directly tied to discussion boards, or they might just be ways for the group to schedule Zoom sessions for themselves outside of class. Some students may be ready to make this effort on their own, but the structure and impetus coming from the instructor will help more students to take the opportunity to learn with their peers.
Incorporate Peer Review. If your course is more focused on students developing a product or artifact of their learning, such as papers or presentations, then you might consider how you can add peer review opportunities to your course. Certain types of assignments in Canvas can facilitate peer review directly, but you can also use the same types of groups from the above tip to facilitate exchange of drafts that are not tied to a specific assignment in Canvas, using tools like those found in Google Drive. Peer review opportunities will both improve student learning and increase the likelihood of a better end-product if students are given more opportunities to show their work and explain the decisions that they made. Peer review can also help students to break larger assignments down into more manageable chunks, which will help them practice time management and other student skills.
All of these options for helping your students to work with their peers can be facilitated synchronously and asynchronously, so you should be able to find an option that fits in with your current modes of engaging with your students. If you need help thinking through the logistics of collaborative review and learning in your course, you can always reach out to us in the Teaching Innovations Office for a consultation that addresses your specific ideas and needs. Also, this is the last week that we will ask that you consider filling out our Fall 2020 Teaching and Learning COVID Response Check-in Survey (more below), so that we can continue to provide the resources that you need most right now through our newsletter and other opportunities. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to give us feedback so far.
Prerecord tutorials, not lectures. When prerecording narrated slides, or any other recording for your classroom, try to keep each individual video as short as possible for your learning goals. (The data from e-learning platforms recommends no more than 6 minutes.) Of course, you can produce several videos that might stand in for lecture time, but you do not want your videos to replicate lectures. Recorded lectures might work as a solution to some hybrid learning models, but if you choose to prerecord, try to think in terms of tutorial videos. Consider how you might organize your existing course material into discrete chunks that focus on a particular learning goal. These chunks can be the foundation for tutorial videos. Also remember that, when describing any elements of your tutorial that are visually represented on your slides, you should try to describe what is one the slide and why it is important to your learning goals. This practice helps with accessibility of your digital content, and it helps all of your students develop the skills for effectively using your tutorials as a resource.
Use available technology resources. It might be tempting to record audio directly onto the slide software that you already used to make your slides, but there are too many technical issues that make using a program like Powerpoint for narration undesirable. ITS Learning Technology recommends that you record using Canvas Studio or Panopto, both of which integrate directly with Canvas and facilitate narration in ways that are more flexible, less hassle, and, most importantly, less prone to technical issues. There are several resources from ITS already, like these Panopto videos, but you can also reach out to them for specific training if you find that you need help getting started.
Build to ongoing engagement. Since tutorial videos are more targeted in their content delivery, they open up the space to ask students to do more with what they just learned, which is the foundation of active learning. Another benefit of options like Canvas Studio is that the software includes built-in options for simple engagement in the form of quizzes and in-video commenting, but you may have your own favorites for getting students to engage with your disciplinary material. Zoom sessions facilitate classics like Think-Pair-Share, while Canvas Groups and Discussions allow for peer feedback and more enduring discussions of course materials. Check out this list from Louisiana State University for more ideas about distanced active learning. It won’t be identical to face-to-face active learning, but there are still synchronous and asynchronous models for getting students to work with course material, rather than just being passive recipients of the course material.
Syllabus as a Contract. Some schools of thought treat the syllabus as a contract, and there is merit to this approach. We communicate our expectations of students through the syllabus, and they can expect us to hold to those expectations in turn. However, especially in these unprecedented circumstances, it is important for us to all recognize that we are working with new approaches to learning – some of which may not work out the way that we intended. Instead of adhering to the idea of a contract unyieldingly, then, we may consider adjusting things in the interest of student learning.
Early-Semester Feedback. One approach to making adjustments when you feel that something isn’t working is to open it up to the students through requesting their feedback. This is an exceptional semester, so in addition to our usual recommendation for collecting mid-semester feedback, it may be valuable to use the start of September to request some early-semester feedback about what is working and not working with your hybrid, distanced, or otherwise-adapted elements of your course. For ideas on how to do this, check out past teaching tips about collecting mid-semester feedback, or these examples from Brown University.
Use All Channels of Communication. If you decide that you need to make a change to the course syllabus, it is important that you over-communicate these changes. Use your synchronous sessions, Canvas announcements, message board posts, and other alerts in big, bold font, even more so than seems necessary. Redundancy here may seem tedious, but a change to the syllabus cannot be overstated. In terms of what to say, make sure that you are explicit about the change, the rationale behind it, and how it impacts the students. You should also open up fora for student feedback, which brings us to…
Be Generous, Open to Feedback, and Keep Student Learning Front and Center. If you do choose to modify the syllabus mid-semester, then it is essential that you find ways to do so that only help students and their learning. If you need to change a group assignment to an individual assignment because the technology is not going to facilitate what you had in mind, then it is imperative that you listen to students and are thoughtful about how such a change impacts their plans. Any and all changes should benefit students and enhance student learning, and you should be able to communicate that in dialogue with your students.
Accessible Text, Images, and Headings. As more and more of our content becomes shared digitally, it is important to remember the basics of creating accessible digital content. Size, spacing, color, font, and document type for text, as well as alternative text for images are all fundamental considerations for course slides, readings, handouts, etc. You will find that most commonly-used software – whether it is Microsoft, Google, or Canvas – come with pre-formatted tools with built-in order and hierarchy systems through Headings, which make it easier to navigate content. As with all accessibility tools, these decisions help everyone to navigate your content more easily, and it is particularly helpful for screen readers and other assistive technology. Check out the page on accessible online content from accessibility.uncg.edu.
Captioning and Note-taking. It can be important to provide synchronized text of spoken words and sounds for both pre-recorded and live content. Please note that, while live captioning may be a capability of software like Zoom, it is not automated and the feature requires that someone is adding those captions in real-time. Even if you do not have a student in your class requesting accommodations related to captioning or note-taking, it can be a helpful practice, especially for this semester, to set up a rotating set of note-takers for your course, in order to help account for unexpected changes and absences. If you have a need to support specific accommodations, then we encourage you to reach out to OARS.
Testing Changes. Social distancing demands have necessitated changes in how OARS facilitates exams, including limited time slots and room capacity. If you have any students who will need exam accommodations, take the time to review the new guidelines on their website and make sure that your students are aware of these changes as well.
We have robust resources available through accessibility.uncg.edu and the OARS office, so make sure that you take advantage of those, especially as circumstances continue to evolve in responses to COVID. We all are jugglers right now, as we try to keep all of the balls in the air for adapting to these circumstances, but there are also plenty of helping hands. Let us know if we can help point you in the right direction for available resources. We also ask that you consider filling out our Fall 2020 Teaching and Learning COVID Response Check-in Survey (more below), so that we can continue to provide the resources that you need most right now.
Virtual Discussions in Canvas. Some of your colleagues have opted to use a virtual, asynchronous approach to discussion using the in-video comments in Canvas Studio, inserting comments in Google documents, or using Canvas discussion boards. Several of your colleagues have sung the praises of these modes from the past, and we have reports of early success this semester already. However, it is important to note that, when it comes to Canvas Studio comment discussions, the comments do not transfer across courses, even if you make your own comments outside of the course itself. Unfortunately, this means that you cannot use the comment feature to annotate videos for use in future semesters. Nevertheless, this can be a powerful tool for engagement, and instructors are finding solutions like creating a master Word document for easy copy-and-pasting of reusable comments.
Breakout Rooms. Breakout rooms in Zoom may be the most commonly-used feature for interaction in this new environment, and most everyone has positive things to say about what they enable students to do at a distance (including making small group conversation easier than in face-to-face contexts!) However, especially in large classes, you may find that a handful of students miss the invitation to join breakout rooms or struggle with their connection to Zoom. One difficulty for faculty is that there are so many different devices that students may be using to access Zoom, which means that they may have different Zoom interfaces than you do. This can make it hard to help your students troubleshoot, but, helpfully, Zoom’s own support documents provide instructions specific to each type of device. Here are two documents for joining breakout rooms and updating Zoom software with all types of devices.
Attendance through Zoom Reports. Synchronous Zoom sessions can be a good way of approximating the immediacy of the classroom environment, and many faculty are using them in this way. Another helpful feature that you may have missed is the Usage Reports feature that is enabled for meetings that you host via Zoom. These reports can show you all of the unique participants and how long they were present in the session, and that document can be exported as an Excel document for easier record-keeping. Note that presence in a Zoom room is not the equivalent of participation, so you may want to hold students accountable in other ways, but this feature can be a great start. Check out this video from the Adapt 2020 conference for the steps needed to use this feature.
Thanks to our colleagues for these helpful insights into these challenges and successes.
The Basics. The basics may seem obvious to us, but they need to be clearly articulated for our students. These include: (1) Be aware of your surroundings, including potential for interruptions, backgrounds, and other privacy concerns. We know that not everyone can find a private space right now, but students need to minimize distractions for themselves and others when possible. (2) Mute your microphone when you are not actively participating, and follow class protocols for participation, such as raising a hand or waiting for breakout rooms. Finally, as this reminder from DePaul’s College of Education puts so bluntly, (3) Clothing is NOT optional. Be clear about the simple guidelines that you expect students to follow.
The Specifics. Along with the basics, you can also establish other rules of engagement for your course along with guidance. For example, if you want to insist that students have video for class participation, then you might also consider sharing tips for video conferencing, like this fun video from UNCG Online. Remember to plan for flexibility when setting up ground rules for any class interactions, as we discussed in last week’s Teaching Tips, as reliable access and other circumstances will differ across our student population. There is room for setting high expectations and being understanding of particular situations, but early and frequent communication is key.
The Emergency Options. We can make plans and share expectations, but we also need to be prepared for those times when things go awry. Familiarize yourself with the available emergency options for hosts with whatever technology you use. These include mute all buttons, removing participants directly, and locking the meeting in Zoom. Knowing these features in advance will pay off if the situation arises and you can use them reflexively. Feeling prepared for major disruptions can help us to be more patient as we deal with the minor issues.
Projection. As one of my colleagues has said, teaching with a mask is much more difficult than saying thank you through your mask at the grocery store. It is more akin to exercising with a mask on, and we need to prepare for the challenges that come along with it. It will be more important than ever that you communicate this reality to your students from the beginning and agree upon class community guidelines that will allow for people to hear and be heard. This can be done just like you would if you were framing discussions around difficult topics in your class, with plans for how to identify and address the violating behavior if/when it happens. Additionally, if you find that you usually need water during a class session, then it is important to consider how you will handle needing to take breaks for that with a mask and using containers with straws.
Backchannels. If your plan for hybrid or online teaching allows for it, consider how you can keep backchannels open for communication that permits student questions to be answered in ways that do not rely on them calling them out. As we’ve said, it will be more important than ever that any synchronous environment is kept free of chatter, but that does not mean that you want students to stop asking with questions. You have many tools at your disposal, from Canvas tools like Discussions to Zoom chat, but you will need a plan for noting and addressing those backchannels. This task might be the role of a GA, or it could be something that you check at regular intervals during a class session, but the goal is that you and your students have clear alternatives to conventional in-class communication.
Framing student expectations. On the point of communication, it is important for us to recognize that this situation will be as uncomfortable for students as it will be for us as instructors. Fortunately, we already have resources at UNCG for helping students adjust to the differences and challenges of online learning, which will be pertinent to these new circumstances. Consider sharing resources like Ready to Learn and Online Student Orientation with your students, in addition to any specific guidelines to help students succeed in your specific approach to teaching and learning during the response to COVID.
For more on setting up ground rules, consider joining us for the 6th Annual Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Institute, which covers the topic of Community Agreements and more, or you can check other resources like this one from Cornell University. You can get more ideas about masks from this resource from University of South Florida. Remember the resources from Ready to Learn and Online Student Orientation for helping to prepare your students as well.
Do you know how hard it is to lead? Novices and experts view their learning differently. Unlike expert learners, novice learners often fail to set proper goals for monitoring their learning. As a result, they rely on external indicators of comparative performance and feedback. Self-regulated learning attempts to structure learning experiences to help students develop the skills involved in the learning process. Plan. Practice. Evaluate. The important point here is that novice learners struggle with this learning loop, and so our course design decisions are important sources of aid for self-directed learning in this way.
What comes next? As you think about the fall semester, think about your assignments and assessments that students often struggle the most to complete in an effective manner. Consider how you can structure those aspects of your course differently to help students to structure, practice, and reflect on their own learning. You might stagger deadlines to help students with planning for a major assessment, scaffold learning with smaller, low-stakes assignments to give students more practice, and/or build in more required reflections that build on feedback that you give to students. All of these things can be done as part of reworking a course in a transition to online or hybrid learning environments. Once you’ve made these changes, be explicit about how these decisions are made to help students take control of their own learning and become more autonomous, self-regulated learners.
You’ll be back. The goal of self-regulated learning is to enhance student motivation, which will help students persist through challenges with their learning in your course and beyond. It is not a quick fix, and there are innumerable competing forces for students’ attention and motivation, but there are clear steps that can be taken to help students with the struggles that all novice learners face. Self-regulated learning is essentially tied to learner beliefs about their ability to learn and overcome challenges, similar to Dweck’s work on fixed and growth mindsets. The decisions we make to promote proactive planning, intentional practice, and regular reflection will help our students to continue to face learning challenges in their lives.
You’re my favorite subject. Student motivation and self-regulated learning just happens to be the favorite subject of the teaching tips guy, and it is a topic that has been pushed to the forefront, alongside many others, by the necessities of our current condition. As you continue to think about the work involved with planning for, and working through, the fall semester, I encourage you to also reconnect with the things about teaching and learning that bring you joy. Also, take time to sprinkle in some musical joy to your life as well, and we will work together to get through these taxing times.
For more on self-regulated learning, we encourage you to check out this brief literature review from VCU or this overview from Faculty Focus, which is also a great resource for sharing with your students. If you haven’t already, you might consider self-enrolling in our Hybrid Experience Workshop for help with thinking about how to implement strategies that promote self-regulated learning by taking advantage of the hybrid environment that many of us are adopting by necessity. If your focus is more on online courses, you might also check out the second cohort of the workshop facilitated by the UNC System, Designing Effective Online Courses. Check out those opportunities and more below, and be well.
Variety in Presentation. For universal design approaches, thinking about the presentation of content is about how different students approach the “what” of learning (and how we, as instructors, can help account for those differences). Familiar modes of sharing content – lectures, discussions, textbooks, etc. – are being disrupted more than ever by the necessity for social distancing, which can also be an opportunity to think about how we can introduce new variety to our course content. Variety, in this case, is not about so-called “learning styles,” because we do not want to think about some things as being for some students and other things for others. Variety in the ways that our students approach our course content is valuable for each and every student, especially with the constraints of COVID. Consider pairing course readings with audio-based alternatives, or link an article with an infographic. As our lives and familiar modes of learning get disrupted, it is more important than ever that we intentionally seek out multiple ways that students can approach learning course content.
Choice in Demonstration. Just as variety in approaches to content matters in doing the work of learning, so too does variety in ways of demonstrating learning matter. In the context of universal design for learning, we often refer to this as providing students different ways to show the “how” of learning. The conditions of COVID limit some of the options that rely on direct contact to demonstrate learning, so it is even more incumbent upon us to reflect on the various ways that our students can demonstrate the learning that we ask of them in our student learning outcomes. Are there any assessments for your course that could be approached by a research paper, an op-ed piece, or a short documentary? This approach may not work for all learning outcomes, but the more flexibility that you can open up for your students, the better it will be for their learning.
Frequency of Communication and Clarification. Both variety and choice, as goals that emerge from the principles of universal design for learning, can help our students as we all adapt to these new circumstances. However, all of the choices that we make for design and delivery of course content are not useful to our students unless their presence and purpose are clear. We encourage you to be more vigilant than ever about building redundancy into the ways that you communicate with your students. Take extra pains early in the semester to identify your communication channels, and then be consistent in using those channels. The structures that we provide for supporting our students’ learning are more important than ever.
For more on Universal Design for Learning, you can check out resources on the accessibility.uncg.edu website. You can also search the core materials of the UDL framework, developed by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST), on their website. You may also get more ideas from this recent article in the Chronicle (h/t Mika Davis, ITS Learning Technology). If you have questions about how to make this work in your particular courses, we invite you to reach out to us for a consultation.
“Being There.” Social presence involves the ability for learners to engage and communicate as part of the learning process, a sense of “being there” (Lehman and Conceição 2010). When we place an importance on establishing social presence in any learning environment, we recognize that all learning takes place in a context. In a face-to-face environment, we might experience social presence differently depending on whether students are raising their hands to ask questions or if heads are buried in laptops. For a hybrid course, that learning environment will have hurdles for establishing social presence that we may not have to think about in a face-to-face setting, so we have to think about the tools we have for maintaining that sense of “being there.”
Ground rules and “netiquette.” Before class begins, it is important that you establish the specific ground rules for communicating across the many tools at your disposal, which is important in any learning environment. Our students often need help understanding how to appropriately engage in new contexts – professional email etiquette, for example – and these new hybrid contexts are no different. If you are using technology, it may very well be unfamiliar to your students, which means it may be uncomfortable for them to use effectively. As you learn to use these tools yourself, think about how you can simultaneously build a resource to introduce effective and proper use to your students. You want to tell students, and ideally show them as well, how you would like for them to engage with you and their peers.
Show how virtual contributions matter. It is one thing to set up discussion boards and streaming video options, but it will take intentional effort to make sure the students see that these new modes of engagement matter for their learning. Try starting class by bringing up posts that students make in the virtual environment when you have a chance to see the students face-to-face, or summarize key issues that emerge from a Canvas Studio quiz that students had to take before showing up to class. Connecting their virtual and in-class learning early and often will set the tone that their presence both physically and virtual continue to matter for their learning in these challenging circumstances.
Today’s tips build on Katie Linder’s work about hybrid learning, The Blended Course Design Workbook. If you are interested in learning more about hybrid instruction, including more tips from Dr. Linder’s work, then keep reading below about our upcoming workshop on The Hybrid Experience, as well as more virtual opportunities for the remainder of the summer and fall.
As with most things with online learning, it is much more difficult to change elements of online discussions on the fly. Since forums become increasingly chaotic as enrollment grows, it is important to keep two things about the structure of online discussions in mind: (1) stated pedagogical purpose and (2) clear expectations for civil discussions.
Structure with Purpose. You are more likely to get productive discussions if you articulate and emphasize the importance of discussions for student learning. It helps to promote genuine engagement if you relate discussions directly to the overall assessment of course learning outcomes, rather than simply stating that discussions are a required part of the course. Spending time on clarity of purpose can be as important for productive online discussions as clear technical instructions for things like deadlines or how to respond to a post.
Structure with Expectations. Another important aspect of structure is setting expectations for the interpersonal dimensions of participating in class discussion forums. The internet does not provide us many positive models for digital discourse. It should not be assumed that your students will know how to engage with fellow students in the online environment, so it is important to detail appropriate etiquette and best practices for participation. Also – as much as we may wish we didn’t have to – it is important to include the consequences for uncivil or antisocial behavior.
Visibility. If participation and engagement continue to be an issue, as they often are, then consider how frequently you are visible as an instructor in discussion forums. Instructors both demonstrate that the activity is meaningful and model high-quality participation, reflecting both purpose and expectations. Regular check-ins are preferable to intermittent flurries of responses, in terms of improving student participation through instructor visibility, so try to squeeze in a post or two as regularly you can.
(Re)articulating purpose. The circumstances of COVID-19 have required most of our actions in the past months to be reactionary for the most part. The daily tasks of our collective response can feel like they are driven by forces outside of our control. This lack of agency can be counteracted by reminding ourselves about the things that bring joy, meaning, and purpose to the work that we do in academia. As we move into the summer, take some time to reflect on these things. What do you value most about your teaching and research? Why do you find that meaningful, and how might you continue to embody those values?
Striving for balance. What fills your cup? What energizes you, and what can you do from home that can recreate the energizing moments from your prior daily activity? The drastic changes in the current conditions of our living and working necessitate a shift in the way that we structure our lives as we look for balance in the demands on our time and energy. One suggestion is to be deliberate in identifying the specific rituals that help ease into the day and then wind down, as the conditions of any given day allow. The core of all of the advice on burnout is doing the best you can in each moment and being okay with what that is.
These prompts come from a recent piece from InsideHigherEd, Beating Pandemic Burnout. Check out the article if you are looking for further ideas and prompts for these challenging times. Remember, as always, that you have a multitude of resources all across the UNCG community. One such resource is the upcoming Adapt 2020 Virtual Conference, if you find yourself ready to start thinking about the possibility of more online teaching and learning in the future. See below for more details on Adapt 2020.
There are many online resources about reflection, whether it is Stephen Brookfield’s work or guides for teaching portfolios (like this one from Stanford University).
You can check out this brief article from Kennesaw State for more about concluding classes in a meaningful way. As always, remember to be kind to yourself and draw on the abundant support resources that we have in place at UNCG. Best of luck to you as we enter this final stretch. Be well.
For today’s tips, we draw from the keepteaching.uncg.edu site to help focus your efforts as you are getting started with moving to remote teaching:
Remember, be kind to yourself and draw on the abundant support resources that we have in place at UNCG already. See below for some important resources to keep in mind as we work together this week. Be well.
We will conclude our exploration of competency-based learning next week with some tips related to using rubrics to assess competency. In the meantime, we encourage you to reach out for a consultation or classroom observation if you want feedback related to competency-based learning (or for any other reasons). You can also stop by our offices at 1100 W Market to browse our Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Library for ideas from works like Proficiency-Based Instruction. Otherwise, please check out some of the opportunities for March, including a new student-led workshop on Indigenous Pedagogy, facilitated by students from our own Native American Student Association (NASA) on March 28th.
Next time, our series continues with a series of tips related to the barriers to self-reflection that students experience as they work towards competency. We hope you have a productive and/or restful break, and please take a chance to check out some of the opportunities on the other side of the break, including a new student-led workshop on Indigenous Pedagogy, facilitated by students from our own Native American Student Association (NASA) on March 28th (see below for more details).
We hope you find the framework of these patterns useful as you think about how to help the different learners in your courses. Next week, we will build on these patterns of thinking as part of tips for how to design learning activities and assessments in a way that helps students to develop across different levels of competency. In the meantime, you can check out more from Walcott and Lynch in their College Faculty Handbook resources on their website.
Hopefully you can use these small assignments – or others like them, such as those on this list of Classroom Assessment Techniques from the University of Kentucky – to get feedback that helps you assess student learning in-class.
You don’t have to be an expert on all of the resources available to students, but even offering a few general suggestions at the beginning of the semester can help your students know that you are attentive to the variety of potential challenges that they may have throughout the semester, which can help to establish an inclusive learning environment. For example, you might want to share with students about the new caregiver study space in Jackson Library for students, staff, and faculty who need to work or study with small children. For questions about the new space, you can visit the reference desk on the main floor of the library.
If you are interested in more tips for an inclusive classroom, you can read principles and tips from this recent post in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Also, consider checking out the helpful Communication in the Classroom podcast series below, produced right here at UNCG!
As you think about your courses for the spring semester, try to keep in mind Purpose. Task. Criteria.
If you are interested in online course design specifically, then consider some of the opportunities below in our Online Learning series, including our Level Three session on December 16th, which focuses on using guided peer review for formative feedback on online course design.
In addition to next week’s workshop on adaptive learning and VOISES panel, you also have the opportunity to get feedback on how to continue to promote inclusive learning environments with our Teaching Squares on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion or practice fresh strategies in our second Face-to-Face Feedback session on Friday the 13th – come with a new lesson or activity, and we will do our best to make sure that it won’t be an unlucky day!
If you’re interested in learning more about metacognition, check out this resource from Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching. If you’re interested in thinking more about questions related to assessment, especially as a new faculty member, consider joining Jodi Pettazzoni tomorrow morning for a session on Course-level Assessment.
If you enjoy these types of tips, consider joining us for one of our literary circles, where we explore a whole range of pedagogical topics, including these evidence-based best practices for learning. More literary circles will be starting again in the spring, so check out the list of books on our 2019-2020 schedule and look out for sign-ups in the near future! Or, if you are already implementing some of these practices but have questions about how well it is working, consider some of the options below for facilitating an observation session.
We hope that you all had a refreshing Fall Break, and we look forward to seeing you at some of the programs and events that we have coming up as part of this busy time in the semester!
You can check out the full article to review all seven of their principles.
Speaking of feedback… if you are looking for feedback on some of your own practices, whether related to midterm assignments or otherwise, then consider joining us next Friday for another session of Face-to-Face Feedback in the Faculty Center. If you are more interested in broader design changes to address your learning outcomes, consider signing up for the Fall Break Course Design Incubator. Perhaps you have a clear idea, but need help with the technical aspects of implementing your approach, in which case there is an upcoming Learning Technology Drop-In session on the 18th as well.
Green Screen with the TIO Team
In this new series, the TIO talks with a faculty member about their experiences and insights related to a particular pedagogical topic – the catch is that we do so with carefully-worded questions that hint at a series of chaotic scenes that are happening on the green screen behind them!
It’s Whose Line Is It Anyway? meets pedagogy on Green Screen with the TIO Team!
Join us in this episode as we chat with Dr. Bonnie Yarbrough (Department of English) about her strategies for successful learning in an online environment, including how to foster a community of learning and setting up successful groupwork.
If you want to learn more about the series – or are interested in joining us for an episode! – you can reach us at tio@uncg.edu.
Fostering Intrinsic Motivation through Questions. The primary focal point for reducing cheating in Cheating Lessons – fostering intrinsic motivation – is also the one that Lang recognizes is most difficult to achieve, as it also presents a goal that most of us already hold as paramount. How do we get our students interested in learning in and of itself? Lang gives us one helpful lens for this challenge, however, in his focus on thinking about how we approach asking questions with our students. He presents two options: (1) combine course content with the questions that your students bring to the course on their own, and/or (2) pose the authentic, messy questions that will intrigue and inspire them. You very well may be working towards this already, so know that this strategy is a great way to pursue multiple learning goals at the same time.
Immediate Questions. One way to structure the questions that we pose to our students to foster intrinsic is to focus on immediacy using time, place, and personal experiences. When it makes sense to do so, try to relate course content to events and issues that your students are experiencing real-time in that semester, in the local community of UNCG and Greensboro, or other aspects of students’ experiences that they bring to your course.
Interdisciplinary Questions. The more that we ask our students to draw connections across their own learning as students at UNCG, the more we help their long-term memory and learning. Luckily, this strategy also helps foster intrinsic motivation and reduce the opportunities to cheat. If it is possible in your course, open up the space in assignments or assessments for students to link their learning to other experiences on campus. This approach may be easiest in departments and programs with built-in interdisciplinarity, but you might also draw on Gen Ed categories in more advanced courses or co-curricular experiences in other courses. You will know what options might work for you to start posing the types of questions that foster intrinsic motivation.
If you want to talk more about fostering intrinsic motivation in your courses, consider reaching out for a consultation with us. If you want to hear more on academic integrity at UNCG, consider checking out this episode of the Teach’n Tips Podcast with Robert Barker and Mitch Croatt. If you are interested in exploring new technology for Canvas can help with cheating issues in online courses, then check out the Respondus Monitor Pilot opportunity below.
Again, if badges sound like an intriguing option, I encourage you to stop by this morning’s session on badges in the Faculty Center. Otherwise, check out the other great programs, social gatherings, and funding opportunities on the horizon!
If you are experiencing resistance to active learning, then you can always reach out to us here at the UTLC for a consultation or classroom observation. You can also join us this Friday to practice and get direct feedback at the Face-to-Face Feedback session in the Faculty Center.
In addition to next week’s workshop on adaptive learning and VOISES panel, you also have the opportunity to get feedback on how to continue to promote inclusive learning environments with our Teaching Squares on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion or practice fresh strategies in our second Face-to-Face Feedback session on Friday the 13th – come with a new lesson or activity, and we will do our best to make sure that it won’t be an unlucky day!
It has been a couple of years since Dr. Brookfield visited our campus, but you can still find a recording of his session on discussions on our website here. For some sample guidelines that you might use to open up the conversation in your classroom, check out this resource from the University of Michigan. If you are thinking about trying out a new way of introducing discussions, there are plenty of ways to get practice and feedback on your pedagogical approaches, either before you bring them into your classrooms or as you implement them.
Confidence and Optimism. Cavanagh cites the work of social psychologist Nalini Ambady, who found that affective characteristics of faculty teaching highly correlated with student evaluations. It may sound trite, but the two best predictors of positive evaluations were perceptions of confidence and optimism by the instructor. If confidence and optimism seem a bit amorphous as goals for your teaching, one of the strategies for doing so is simple: bring things that interest you, topics that you care about, to your teaching. The enthusiasm generated by communicating course content through lenses that matter to you can often translate as confidence and optimism about content and the learning process to students.
Verbal and Non-verbal Immediacy. If you’re wondering what it actually looks like in practice, then consider two types of “immediacy,” or actions that convey interest in your students. Verbal immediacy involves taking care to recognize good contributions directly and celebrating collective progress of the group – using “we” and “us” – towards learning outcomes. Non-verbal immediacy focuses on embodied interest – such as eye contact, leaning forward, moving around, smiling, or vocal inflection – which may be more difficult to practice (even more so in an online environment!). Consider videotaping a session, or reaching out to us for a classroom observation for feedback on non-verbal immediacy.
Practice self-care. Finally, as I was reminded in a recent workshop with faculty, we often spend a lot of time talking about how important caring for the whole student is as part of higher education, but we could also do with remembering to extend ourselves the same care. Whether that means being more deliberate about rest, nutrition, exercise, and/or regular downtime to decompress, we are able to bring more of ourselves to our courses when we first check in with the things that make us happier and healthier. (And it is easier to begin those practices now!)
Dr. Kristen Betts, the keynote for this year’s TOPPS, is an expert on online discussions and feedback, and everyone at our office is looking forward to learning from her next week. We hope that you’ll join us by signing up for TOPPS here before registration closes tomorrow. Some sessions are full, but most of them still have spots open! If you cannot make it next week, then consider signing up for our Course Design Incubator for an institute that focuses on course design more generally.
We encourage you to check out the recent T’n T Podcast episode for the full conversation about academic integrity with Mitch and Robert Barker from the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities. You can check out the OSRR site if you have lingering questions about academic integrity at UNCG. If you want to start thinking about authentic assessment for future semesters, then consider signing up for the summer institutes – listed below – that support online, hybrid, and face-to-face course (re)development.
The new UNCG Accessibility website has more information about these formatting considerations alongside a host of other best practices, policies, and further resources. You can read more about the new site below. We encourage you to check out the site for any questions related to accessibility and bookmark the page for when questions come up in the future.
All of these strategies come out of one of our Faculty Literary Circle books, Small Teaching by James Lang. You can review past literary circle books here – thanks to the helpful suggestion of one of the faculty from this semester! Keep an eye out for Fall 2019 Literary Circle sign-ups soon!
Below, you’ll find a Tech Tidbit on how Canvas can help get you started thinking about adaptive and mastery learning with Canvas MasteryPaths. And, in the normal Teaching Tips slot, we highlight the Teach’n Tips Podcast and its newest episode on emphasizing diversity and a growth mindset in STEM courses:
T’n T, the Teach’n Tips Podcast, returns with a conversation with Dr. Iglika Pavlova from Biology on a recent course design change that she made to address diversity and a growth mindset at the outset of her large-enrollment introductory course in Biology. Join the teaching tips guy as he talks with Iglika about what went into making such a significant change, what resources helped the most, and some initial insights for the impact that the changes are having on student learning.
Click here for Episode Eight of the Teach’n Tips Podcast!
If you’re interested in more from the Teach’n Tips Podcast, you can check out old episodes here and subscribe to the podcast for new episodes! If you have ideas for podcast episodes, or if you’d like to record an episode with us, let us know at tntips@uncg.edu.
If you’re interested in more about the conversation that sparked this week’s “teaching tip,” a colleague wrote a blog post about the discussion, which you can find here. For more on authority and identity in the classroom, consider this paper from the University of Michigan. It is too late in the semester for this to make a difference, but hopefully it helps start the process for future semesters. It certainly helped me to reflect on my own practices. If you like this kind of “teaching tip,” let us know at tntips@uncg.edu (and if you don’t like it, then let us know that as well!)
If you are interested in learning more about how games help address the goal of autonomy and agency in student learning, then we hope you can stop by one of our sessions in the Faculty Center. If you cannot make it, or if you have a specific idea in mind that you want to explore in depth, consider reaching out to us for a consultation here. We would love to work with you on your ideas for promoting learning in fun and meaningful ways!
If you want to see more on creative problem solving, I encourage you to check out the entire AAC&U VALUE rubric on creative thinking. While you likely won’t want to copy the rubric entirely, it can be good for idea generation, especially as you are thinking about new assignments to fit your learning outcomes. As always, the UTLC is excited to help you with any ideas that you have for assignment (re)design, whether it emphasizes creative problem solving or something else. Visit our website today to sign up for a consultation!
If you want some examples of questions for an exam wrapper, you can check this resource from Duquesne or this one from Carnegie Mellon. As always, feel free to request a consultation with the Teaching Innovations Office if you would like help with constructing an exam wrapper, or for any number of other things. All the best for a pleasant Spring Break from the Teaching Tips!
Since mid-term student feedback is such a favorite of the teaching tips guy, you can find plenty of additional tips related to getting the most out of this practice in our Past Teaching Tips on our website. If you’re looking for even more, then there are tons of resources online related to mid-term student feedback, like this one from Texas. If you’re looking for more ways that online content can help transform your teaching, then check out all of the online-related opportunities in the newsletter below!
There are more opportunities this week for developing our skills for supporting our students in a variety of ways. In addition to the Counseling Center’s Ask. Listen. Refer. online program, you might consider the UNCG Still Cares or Supporting LGBTQ+ Survivors of Violence workshops going on later this week. Check out the Teaching and Learning Across Campus section below for more details.
We hope that you’re able to join us for more on the exciting possibilities for adaptive, differentiated, and personalized learning at UNCG.
If you want to learn more about the types of actions that can upset an inclusive classroom environment, and what you can do in response, consider signing up for one of our DiversityEdu modules. Many of today’s tips come from a well-known resource on inclusive teaching from Harvard’s Derek Bok Center, but there are a number of great resources to help you be prepared in case these types of issues emerge in your classroom.
If you have specific policies that you’ve found work well for you, then we’d love to hear about them, and would like to include them as resources for other faculty in our On-Demand Teaching Support, if you’d be willing to share them! Today’s teaching tips were inspired, once again, by the CST Communication in the Classroom series of tips, in collaboration with developing instructors enrolled in CST599. Marianna Levithan assembled a resource that thoughtfully engages with the debates surrounding technology in the classroom, which you can access (along with the rest of the series) on our website.
There are plenty of options out there for specific activities that will help students to do the assigned reading. Consider this resource from Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching. As always, the Teaching Innovations Office is happy to consult on particular strategies that can work for your specific course as well.
There are lots of options for learning more about online engagement and course design. Online Learning Levels One and Two will return in the spring semester. You can also check out the link and description on our site for upcoming session on peer reviews for online courses if you are interested in delving deeper into online course design with the help of colleagues.
Consider joining the High-Impact Practices Committee in the Faculty Center if you are interested in learning more about e-portfolios and similar ways of capturing experiential learning and capstone experiences. You can also read much more about e-portfolios on the AAC&U website.
These tips come out of James Lang’s recent work, Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning, which is one of the books for our Spring Faculty Literary Circles. As you’ll see below in the newsletter, our Fall Literary Circles just concluded, but you can already sign up for this book and more in the Spring semester!
For more on helpful tips for new faculty (or for some new ideas for any faculty), check out the On-demand Teaching Support section of our website, which has some new resources in a new tip series provided by instructors from CST 105. We will be offering a literary circle for James Lang’s On Course in the spring, but you can check out a copy from our SoTL library at 1100 W Market St in the meantime.
Thanks to Sarah Britt for the research and inspiration for today’s topic. Check out more tips in Sarah’s resource, or others like these, in the CST Communication in the Classroom Series in our On-Demand Teaching Support section of our website. Some of the contributors to that series will also be at the EDI Dialogue Panel on diverse classrooms this Friday, the 26th, so consider joining us then as well!
For more on helpful tips for new faculty (or for some new ideas for any faculty), check out the On-demand Teaching Support section of our website, which has some new resources in a new tip series provided by instructors from CST 105. We will be offering a literary circle for James Lang’s On Course in the spring, but you can check out a copy from our SoTL library at 1100 W Market St in the meantime.
For more on this, or for a longer list of ideas, you can visit this resource from Vanderbilt University. For more on the nuts and bolts of implementing a classroom response polling system, consider joining us on Monday, Oct 22 at 11 am for a demo session with ITS Learning Technology on Polling & Response Systems.
For more on helpful tips for new faculty (or for some new ideas for any faculty), check out the On-demand Teaching Support section of our website, which has some new resources in a new tip series provided by instructors from CST 105. We will be offering a literary circle for James Lang’s On Course in the spring, but you can check out a copy from our SoTL library at 1100 W Market St in the meantime.
For more on this, you might check out a copy of Dynamic Lecturing, which you can find alongside many other great options in our SoTL library at 1100 W Market St. If discussions are more your style, then we have great options for that instead with the most recent episode of our “__ On College” video series on dealing with unexpected moments in the classroom!
Check out the newest episode of the Teach’n Tips podcast for more reflections on these issues, or read about more possible issues and solutions like these on Carnegie Mellon’s Solve a Teaching Problem page on how students respond to course content.
As you think ahead to your fall semester syllabi, here is a quick tip on using your syllabus to help students practice retrieval of key concepts.
As you think ahead to your fall semester syllabi, here is a quick tip on using your syllabus to help students practice retrieval of key concepts.
Be sure to check out her book here for more information.
As you think ahead to your fall semester syllabi, here is a quick tip on using your syllabus to help students practice retrieval of key concepts.
For more, you might look at this detailed guide from Vanderbilt for thinking about the role of metacognition in student learning. It contains references to several resources and studies about the value of metacognition.
As you think ahead to your fall semester syllabi, here is a quick tip on using your syllabus to help students practice retrieval of key concepts.
If you want to review more tips for retrieval practice, you might check out James Lang’s Small Teaching in our SoTL Library at our 1100 W Market St office.
Communicate value day one and beyond. Don’t let the benefits of this reflective exercise end with the first week of class. You may start communicating that value on day one through your syllabus, but also find ways to return to it throughout the semester. You may see your students’ motivation increase as they make clear connections in their learning.
For more, you might look at this guide from Carnegie Mellon to help you with some key strategies for approaching student motivation and engagement.
You can read more about the dimensions of learner-centered design in Developing Learner-Centered Teaching by Phyllis Blumberg, which can be found in our SoTL Library at 1100 W Market St. Best of luck for a happy and productive summer!
The mnemonic is RAISE:
Reason. – Have a good reason for them to prepare, which means class time cannot just review the prepared material. If students think that you will give them what they need in class, then they will not prepare.
Accountability. – One way to emphasize the “reason” is to hold them accountable for their preparation, whether ungraded or graded. Accountability could mean ungraded pre-testing to get a sense of how well students are understanding the material, in-class quizzing for a grade, or more specific in-class activities that make use of prepared material.
Interaction. – Many of the best in-class activities take student preparation and encourage students to engage with the material together during class time. One good example would be to have students prepare to work through case studies during your class sessions.
Student-facing. – It can be helpful to remind ourselves occasionally that our favorite material is often targeted at experts. As much as possible, we should try to choose readings and other preparatory material that limits jargon (or spend some time to clarify the jargon in advance).
Efficient. – Given competing demands on time, students are more likely to prepare if they feel like their efforts will be efficient. Sometimes inefficiencies are unavoidable or desirable, but then you need to focus more on emphasizing the Reason or the Interaction to increase preparation.
Students are more likely to come prepared if you attend to these five conditions. It is not a panacea, but RAISE can be a good heuristic for putting ourselves in the position of the learners in order to reflect on their motivation to prepare for class.
You can read more in depth ideas from this article at The Chronicle of Higher Education, or consider scheduling a consultation with us.
You can read more about strategic studying through metacognition in this story about a study out of Stanford. There are a few more specific strategies in this article from Faculty Focus, or consider scheduling a consultation with someone at the UTLC for a more personalized approach to your goals!
There are a variety of strategies for collecting mid-term student feedback, depending on what your goals are. If you want specific strategies, you might try some of the ideas on this page from Northeastern University, or consider scheduling a consultation with someone at the UTLC for a more personalized approach to your goals!
You may not have the issue of an overenthusiastic student at all, so the Teaching Tips will look other types of classroom issues in the future. In the meantime, you can learn strategies for a different type of classroom management issue this Friday at the UNCG Cares Training on students in distress. (See below for more info.)
If you are interested in resources for self-care, the University of Buffalo has a comprehensive site on strategies for assessing, planning for, and tending to self-care needs. You might also enjoy this article from Inside Higher Ed about the need for self-care in today’s political climate, which provided some of the ideas for today’s tips.
Not saying this happened to me recently, but sometimes you just cannot seem to get students engaged with a discussion in the way that you thought they would. We know that some form of discussion can have a significant impact on helping learners process new information, so how can we better facilitate that in our classes? Sometimes it can be an issue of how well students read and prepare for class, but sometimes it is about asking the right questions for an active discussion.
If you are interested in reading more, especially about the literature on the neuroscience around these issues, make sure to check out this article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
For more tips like this, you might check out McKeachie’s Teaching Tips in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning library in our new office space at 1100 W Market St, Suite 100F! There is plenty of “A” Lot parking, space for meeting or quiet working, and all the snacks and coffee you could want!
This week we tackle the daunting task of learning students’ names. We know that it can have a significant impact on classroom climate and student success, as it reinforces the critically important faculty-student interactions, but it also can be difficult to achieve alongside the other demands at the start of the semester. Here are a few strategies that might help:
Consider more strategies out of these resources from Carnegie Mellon, University of Nebraska, and University of Virginia in order to find something that works best for your classroom.
There is no shortage of resources online about how we can foster an inclusive classroom, such as this article from Wash U or this blog post from Saint Louis University. But not all good advice for inclusive classrooms comes out of St. Louis, so let us know if you have any favorite resources that you want to share with your colleagues, or if you have concrete strategies that you employ in your classrooms. The UTLC is overhauling its website, including space to recognize some of the exceptional teaching that our faculty are doing right now!
There are many great resources online for developing a teaching portfolio, like this one from the University of Texas. If you have questions about iterative course design or teaching portfolios, as always, you can make an appointment with the UTLC in order to discuss what options might work best for you and your situation.
Articles like this one from The Chronicle of Higher Education have sample activities for promoting reflective activity at the end of class. As always, you can make an appointment with the UTLC in order to discuss what options might work best for you and your classrooms.
Please consider the course opportunity below, Online Learning Level One, if you are considering teaching online for the first time, or if you are looking to rework an existing online course. For more ideas, you might consider this resource from Elon.
Here is a guided list of similar activities from DePaul. For more on the relationship between our brains, engagement, and learning, consider joining us for today’s workshop with visiting facilitator, Todd Zakrajsek. For recent research on the positive effects of active learning in STEM courses, we recommend this meta-analysis in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Please consider joining us as at this morning’s Coffeehouse if you want to talk about the General Education Review or general education more broadly. Also, consider signing up for a session or three on Reading Day with Stephen Brookfield as a way of thinking about how to make small additions to your courses to meet the above goals and more!
If there are other classroom creepies that go bump in the night for you, the UTLC is happy to help you find the silver bullet or clove of garlic to help keep those monsters away. Let us know what we can do to help!
There are many resources for CATs online, like this one from Carnegie Mellon, and this one from George Washington, which have many more strategies and detailed descriptions. You can also schedule a consultation with the UTLC to get focused feedback on ideas you have for your particular courses.
For more on small changes that can have a big effect on attendance, motivation, and engagement, check out the “Small Changes in Teaching” series from The Chronicle of Higher Education.
If you want to learn more about mid-term student feedback, Michigan State University has compiled an extensive list of resources for implementation. Of course, if you are interested in more in-depth strategies for implementation, we also encourage you to reach out to the UTLC if you are interested in exploring these or similar strategies.
If you want to learn more about group quizzes, check out this resource site from University of Iowa and studies such as this one in Advances in Physiology Education. If you are interested in more in-depth strategies for implementation, we also encourage you to reach out to the UTLC if you are interested in exploring these or similar strategies, or join us at an upcoming workshop.
If you want to learn more about interleaving, see this site from University of Arizona and this article from Scientific American.
We have shared this resource from the University of Waterloo in the Newsletter before, but there is so much great stuff there for thinking about how to use group work more effectively!
You can read more tips in this article from Faculty Focus.
You can read more tips in this blog post from the Teaching Professor at Faculty Focus.
You can read more in this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education.
For more strategies, check out Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching and their list of teaching strategies (click here). And join us for a day with Dr. Todd Zakrajsek as he presents forward and accessible approaches to course design and assessment (May 3, see description below).
For more strategies, check out IDEA Paper #16 from IDEA (Click Here)
For more strategies, check out this blog from the Chronicle of Higher Education (Click Here) or Inside HigherEd’s article on Crunch Time! (Click Here)
For more strategies, check out Faculty Focus. (Click Here)
For more strategies, check out Cornell University’s Center for Teaching Excellence. (Click Here)
For more strategies, check out Carleton College’s site on Student Feedback.(Click Here)
For more strategies, check out Duquesne University’s Center for Teaching Excellence. (Click Here)
For more strategies, check out The IDEA Center’s – IDEA Paper #49 (Click Here).
For more strategies, check out Carleton College’s SAGE 2YC Program (Click Here)
For more strategies, check out IDEA’s Idea Paper #40 – Getting Students to Read: Fourteen Tips (Click Here)
For more strategies, check out UNC-C’s Survival Handbook for Teaching Large Classes (Click Here)
For more teaching tips, visit the Walker Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Tennessee- Chattanooga (click here).
Find more information on how to incorporate a common read into your course by visiting the University of North Carolina at Wilmington’s site (click here).
Find more information on why general education is important at the AAC&U LEAP (Liberal Education & America’s Promise) Project site. Find literature, employer surveys, and high-impact practice information by clicking here.
Find more tips on inclusive teaching from the University of Western Washington’s Center for Instructional Innovation and Assessment. Download their Inclusive Teaching Toolkit (click here).
Find more tips on “after the exam” in this week’s Faculty Focus Blog from the Teaching Professor (click here).
Find more tips on effective group work at the Washington University in St. Louis’ The Teaching Center (click here).
Find more tips on effective group work at the University of Waterloo’s Centre for Teaching Excellence (click here).
Find more tips on active learning at Standford University’s Teaching Commons (click here).
For more tips on motivation – check out Vanderbilt University, Center for Teaching’s Guide on Motivating Students (click here).
Looking for more? The Walker Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Tennessee: Chattanooga has 25 more teaching tips. Click here to read.
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