blog posts

• End-of-the-Semester Reflection from the Teachers Point of View

  Nov 30, 2018 2:00 pm

  End-of-the-Semester Reflection from the Teachers Point of View. Make self-reflection a part of the end of the term teaching process. Self-reflection helps you retain the insights you’ve gained along the way as you have been teaching the current course, and it will inspire you to seek out new approaches; you’ll feel more comfortable, confident, and engaged next semester. Some areas to consider are general reflections and what to do with the information you gathered.
  

• Managing the End of the Semester: How to Avoid Hitting the Panic Button

  Nov 30, 2018 2:00 pm

  Managing the End of the Semester: How to Avoid Hitting the Panic Button. Do you ever feel like your back is up against the wall at the end of the semester? You haven’t got all the material you intended to cover covered. Your course syllabus spells out X amount but you’re not quite there yet. It’s a race against time. There are only a few class periods left. You start jamming like there’s no tomorrow. Your main objective: cover the remaining content. Rather than trying to cover that last bit of content, refocus those last few days on providing review sessions. Get with your students and go over that which you have covered, where you’ve taken them, and how far they’ve come.

• The Rhythms of the Semester: Implications for Practice, Persona

  Nov 12, 2018 3:15 pm

  The Rhythms of the Semester: Implications for Practice, Persona. We recognize that in the march of the semester we begin on a different note than we end on. The early weeks hold promise and high hopes, both often curtailed when the first assignments are graded. The final weeks find us somewhere between being reluctant or relieved to see a class move on. There is an inexplicable but evident interaction between our teaching persona and the persona a class develops throughout a semester. Some structural factors influence both: among them—the type and level of a course, the discipline, the time of day, and whether the students are a cohort or a unique collection of individuals. Here are some ways in which the semester changes over the weeks. 

• Creating Cartoons to Spark Engagement and Learning

  Nov 12, 2018 3:15 pm

  Creating Cartoons to Spark Engagement and Learning. As instructors, we are constantly looking for new ways to capture our students’ attention and increase their participation in our classes, especially in the online modalities. We spend countless hours crafting weekly announcements for classes and then inevitably receive multiple emails from our students asking the very same questions that we so carefully and completely answered in those very same announcements! The question remains, how do we get them to read our posts?

  It was precisely that problem I was trying to solve when I came across several articles touting the benefits of comics in higher education classrooms. I wondered if I could create a content-related cartoon that would not only capture students’ attention and maybe make them laugh, but also interest them enough that they would read the entire announcement or post. After a positive response, I decided to provide my online and face-to-face students the opportunity to try their hand at cartoon creation. This activity provide more ways for students to develop higher levels of assimilation and creation (Bloom’s Taxonomy, 2001).

• Using Grace and Accountability to Uphold Course Expectations

  Oct 25, 2018 6:00 pm

  Using Grace and Accountability to Uphold Course Expectations. Hello. My car caught on fire last night after leaving homecoming game. I carry my laptop everywhere I go. I’m in the process of strapping to get another one. I’m just glad I got out cause the driver door was messed up.  Carmichael and Krueger (as cited in Weimer, 2017) report the challenges of verifying student claims for why an assignment can’t be completed on time. But how is an instructor expected to respond when she receives emails like the one above and how can you minimize student excuses in the future?

• Are You Telling Stories in the Classroom?

  Oct 25, 2018 6:00 pm

  Are You Telling Stories in the Classroom? I’m not speaking of lying or delivering fake news; I’m talking about an actual story. I like to avoid phrases like “meaning-making,” but that’s what a story can do for students—it allows them to listen, learn, and remember. Consider this: A story communicates something, by definition, and can entertain, amuse, delight, divert, provoke, offend, disturb, disappoint, but in all, a story can instruct.There are five parts to a story: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. This is all fine and good, but a story delivered in the classroom, whether one of these single parts or the sum thereof, can be the spark to help students remember and recall information in a new way, and enable them to grasp the material.  We get to consume, hear a tale unravel. We get to learn something. 

• Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom

  Oct 2, 2018 5:45 pm

  Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom. I’ve been doing some presentations on classroom interaction and thinking yet again about how we could do better with our questions — the ones we ask in class or online. Good questions make students think, they encourage participation and I think they improve the caliber of the answers students give and the questions they ask. To achieve those worthwhile outcomes more regularly, I’d like to recommend three actions that have the potential to improve our questioning: prepare questions, play with questions, and preserve good questions.

• The Sound of Silence Can Be Deafening and the Questions You Ask Your Students Can Provoke It

  Oct 2, 2018 5:00 pm

  The Sound of Silence Can Be Deafening and the Questions You Ask Your Students Can Provoke It. A colleague recently told me that the students in his undergraduate class “didn’t want to talk.” I probed, “What kinds of questions have you asked your students?” He replied, “Well, the first question I asked this morning was ‘What is the main point of the article I assigned for the day?’” Nobody said anything. I pointed out that even I might be afraid to answer such a question. Such questions pose a severe challenge to the confidence of undergraduate students, because the instructor knows the answer and they don’t. When it comes to answering questions about “facts,” there are many ways to be wrong, but only one way to be right. When faced with this dilemma, students are understandably silent. I suggested that he come up with nonthreatening questions: questions that didn’t put a student’s self-confidence and reputation at risk.

• The Need for Balanced Feedback

  Sep 15, 2018 5:30 pm

  The Need for Balanced Feedback. In the online class environment, students enjoy many advantages, such as increased scheduling flexibility, ability to balance work and school, classroom portability, and convenience. But there are potential shortcomings as well, including the lack of student-instructor interaction and a student not understanding the instructor’s expectations. A key mechanism to convey expectations while increasing student-instructor communication is relevant, timely, constructive, and balanced instructor feedback.

• Informal Early Feedback (IEF)

  Sep 15, 2018 5:15 pm

  Informal Early Feedback (IEF): A Valuable Opportunity for Just-in-Time Feedback.  Student evaluations of teaching are an important part of the feedback that instructors receive. This feedback can be especially helpful when it is collected midway in the semester. Our students can tell us if we explain clearly, are well-organized, grade fairly, and more. They may also be able to tell us if the activities we give them are well aligned with the ways we evaluate their learning. Responding to students’ comments by discussing them in class, and making changes as appropriate, can lead to increased motivation, better learning, and possibly improved end-of-semester student ratings. Here is a description of the process and sample forms for you to adapt.  Also, CITL is offering two workshops this week and next to help you design your own IEF forms. Here is the information about the workshops.