blog posts

• Fourteen Simple Strategies to Reduce Cheating in Online Examinations

  Nov 18, 2020 9:00 am109 views

  (from Faculty Focus). Fourteen Simple Strategies to Reduce Cheating in Online Examinations. The end of the academic term often brings final examinations and cumulative assessments to test students’ knowledge of course materials. With 30% of college students taking online courses (Allen & Segman, 2017), and that number expeditiously increasing, so will the need for administering exams within the online learning environment. Many instructors are hesitant to include exams within their online courses because of the potential of compromising academic integrity. Virtual live proctoring technologies but may be too expensive and not part of the instructor’s institution’s distance education infrastructure. Additionally, having students take exams under the eye of an online proctor may negatively impact student success on the exam (Lieberman, 2018). Even without expensive virtual proctoring tools, there are many ways that instructors can leverage the inherent features within their institution’s Learning Management System (LMS) to decrease cheating during online examinations. Here are 14 ways to do so: from writing questions based on higher-order thinking skills to having students sign an academic integrity contract. 

• Four Ways to Spark Engaging Classroom Discussions

  Sep 30, 2019 4:45 pm42 views

  Four Ways to Spark Engaging Classroom Discussions. How can you creatively and engagingly start a classroom discussion and when should one close? When you are in the middle of a discussion, how do you know when to turn it in a different direction? Students are most engaged in learning when they’re verbally interacting with course material, the professor, and their classmates, research shows. Yet pulling off a great classroom discussion that involves all students is such a complex and challenging topic that we’ve broken it down into two course modules: one focused on planning effective classroom discussions and another focused on facilitating them. Fortunately, there are research-based techniques that are known to work. Dr. Brookfield and ACUE Director of Content Development Laurie Pendleton provide four tips to keep students focused and engaged in meaningful classroom discussions.

• Getting Students to Act on Our Feedback

  Oct 9, 2014 8:00 am10 views

  Getting Students to Act on Our Feedback. “I’m still pondering why students don’t make better use of the feedback we provide on papers, projects, presentations, even the whole class feedback we offer after we’ve graded a set of exams. Yes, we do see improvement as we look back across a course, but we also see a lot of the same errors repeated throughout the course.”  Learn how to improve your comments to help your students develop an action plan based on your feedback for the next assignment.

• Getting Students to Read: Fourteen Tips

  Feb 12, 2015 8:00 am58 views

  Getting Students to Read: Fourteen Tips. “Whenever faculty get together to talk about student writing or critical thinking, they inevitably turn also to problems of student reading.” (Bean, 1996, p. 133). The first question is “Is a textbook necessary for this course?”  If so, there are strategies you can use to enhance the value of reading the text and assignments and activities to enhance the reading.

   

• Getting Students to Read: Important Considerations

  Sep 11, 2014 8:00 am5 views

  Getting Students to Read: Important Considerations. “Whenever faculty get together to talk about student writing or critical thinking, they inevitably turn also to problems of student reading.” (Bean, 1996, p. 133).  Think carefully about why and how you assign required readings. You can reduce your own and your students’ frustrations by thinking about these important ways to incorporate readings into your course. Click here to read the IDEA article.

• Getting the Most from Student Peer Review

  Oct 20, 2011 8:00 am2 views

  Getting the Most from Student Peer Review. Peer review has the potential to give your students feedback from multiple points of view.To ensure that this feedback is high quality, consider using this form from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard. Click here for the form.

• Getting the Most out of Guest Experts Who Speak to Your Class

  Sep 29, 2015 8:00 am7 views

  Getting the Most out of Guest Experts Who Speak to Your Class. Inviting guest speakers into your classroom is a classic teaching strategy. Welcoming other voices into the classroom provides students with access to other perspectives, adds variety to the classroom routine, and demonstrates that learning is a collaborative enterprise. At the same time, however, presentations by guest experts are often plagued by a variety of design flaws that hinder their educational effectiveness. Here are five things you can do to prepare for an optimal experience.

• Getting the Most out of Guest Experts Who Speak to Your Class

  Oct 25, 2022 5:15 pm17 views

  (from Faculty Focus). Getting the Most out of Guest Experts Who Speak to Your Class. Inviting guest speakers into your classroom is a classic teaching strategy. Welcoming other voices into the classroom provides students with access to other perspectives, adds variety to the classroom routine, and demonstrates that learning is a collaborative enterprise. At the same time, however, presentations by guest experts are often plagued by a variety of design flaws that hinder their educational effectiveness. Guest experts, being unfamiliar with the mastery level of the students in the class, may speak over the heads of the students, or they may present their material at a level that is inappropriately introductory. Because they are generally unfamiliar with the class curriculum, they may repeat information that the students have already learned, or their comments may not connect in any clear way with what the students already know and what they are currently learning. 

  Miscommunication between the guest expert and the host professor, furthermore, may result in the guest’s presentation running either too short or, more commonly, too long. Despite these hurdles, the increasingly collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of higher education makes the kind of partnerships represented by guest-expert arrangements more important than ever. With a little extra preparation, professors can increase the likelihood of a productive guest expert experience. 

• Getting Timely Feedback

  Sep 25, 2013 8:00 am1 views

  Getting Timely Feedback. Getting feedback from your students in the weeks between late September and mid-October provides valuable information on how your course is going. One strategy to get pertinent information about you and your students is through the Informal Early Feedback (IEF). Visit our website for directions and sample forms.  

• Global Learning Through Short-Term Study Abroad

  Apr 13, 2016 8:00 am0 views

  Global Learning Through Short-Term Study Abroad. Faculty members and program directors agree that when working with a short time frame for study abroad, preparation is tantamount to success, both for the students and for the faculty member leading the group. Nearly all short-term programs are faculty-led, rather than exchanges with foreign institutions, and this setup provides many built-in benefits. Faculty, administrators, and program directors tend to agree that students get the most out of short-term programs that are highly structured, require ongoing reflection, and include in-depth experience working or studying with host country participants. Here are five best practices for short-term study abroad projects.

• Going Multimodal: 5 Tips for Making the Switch to Multimodal Assignments

  Apr 8, 2020 2:00 pm11 views

  (From Faculty Focus) Going Multimodal: 5 Tips for Making the Switch to Multimodal Assignments. With written communication becoming increasingly multimodal—from newspaper websites to your social media feed to your learning management system’s announcements page—researchers and practitioners alike have made the case for the value of multimodal assignments. While much of this work focuses on the theoretical changes, this article offers practical suggestions for faculty members with limited experience designing multimodal assignments who’d like to convert some of their traditional assignments to multimodal ones. An assignment is multimodal if it invites students to engage in more than one medium of communication, or if it gives students the opportunity to select from several potential media.

• Grading and Performance Rubrics

  Feb 19, 2020 9:00 am10 views

  Grading and Performance Rubrics. A rubric is a scoring tool that explicitly represents the performance expectations for an assignment or piece of work. A rubric divides the assigned work into component parts and provides clear descriptions of the characteristics of the work associated with each component, at varying levels of mastery. Rubrics can be used for a wide array of assignments: papers, projects, oral presentations, artistic performances, group projects, etc. Rubrics can be used as scoring or grading guides, to provide formative feedback to support and guide ongoing learning efforts, or both.

• Grading and Performance Rubrics

  May 2, 2022 5:30 pm6 views

  (from Carnegie Mellon University Eberly Center). Grading and Performance Rubrics. What are rubrics? A rubric is a scoring tool that explicitly represents the performance expectations for an assignment or piece of work. A rubric divides the assigned work into component parts and provides clear descriptions of the characteristics of the work associated with each component, at varying levels of mastery. Rubrics can be used for a wide array of assignments: papers, projects, oral presentations, artistic performances, group projects, etc. Rubrics can be used as scoring or grading guides, to provide formative feedback to support and guide ongoing learning efforts, or both. In the following paragraphs, we share some advantages of using rubrics and sample rubrics across different assignment types and disciplines.

• Hang In There! Dealing with Student Resistance to Learner-Centered Teaching.

  Nov 2, 2017 8:45 am23 views

  Student-centered teaching methods like active and cooperative and problem-based learning make students take more responsibility for their learning than traditional teacher-centered methods do, and the students are not necessarily thrilled about it. All college instructors who have tried the former methods have experienced student resistance-and if they were getting high evaluations when they taught traditionally, their ratings may have dropped when they made the switch. Click here to learn more.

• Harness the Power of Emotions to Help Your Students Learn

  Feb 15, 2018 9:30 am5 views

  Have you thought about emotional presence in our online and face-to-face classes? There seems to be an enduring sense that emotions have no place in the lofty halls of academia. Our pursuit of knowledge should be rational, detached, unaffected by such trivialities as our emotions. But I don’t think that’s right. Our emotions are a central part of our humanity. To deny them is to deny the essence of who we are. In fact, not only should we not try to separate emotional responses from learning, but we can’t, according to recent neuroscience research.  Here are some ideas drawn from this article and the book “The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion” by S. Cavanagh.

• Have a Paper Slam.

  Mar 7, 2009 8:00 am76 views

  Have a Paper Slam. Student often write research papers, but may not have an opportunity to learn about other students’ research. A paper slam is an innovative way to facilitate this learning without devoting many class sessions to student presentations. Check out page 4 of the April 2008 issue of The Teaching Professor.

• Have you done your Informal Early Feedback (IEF)?

  Sep 25, 2014 8:00 am0 views

  Have you done your Informal Early Feedback (IEF)? Using informal early feedback (IEF) can help you learn about what is working and what is not working in your class at a time when you can make mid-course corrections. Late-September to mid-October is a great time to collect this feedback from your students.  Additional information and samples are on our website.

• Helping Students Discover the Value of a Good Set of Notes

  Oct 24, 2013 8:00 am5 views

  Helping Students Discover the Value of a Good Set of Notes. Students benefit from taking and having a good set of notes, even though many of them don’t see the value, don’t take good notes, and like it best when they can copy word-for-word what the teacher says or has on the PowerPoint slides. This article by Weimer offers a range of activities teachers can use to help students discover what a good set of notes enables them to do.

• Helping Students Memorize: Tips from Cognitive Science

  Feb 4, 2020 5:15 pm16 views

  Helping Students Memorize: Tips from Cognitive Science. I was wrapping up a presentation on memory and learning when a colleague asked, “How do we help students learn in courses where there’s a lot of memorization?” He explained that he taught introductory-level human anatomy, and although the course wasn’t all memorization, it did challenge students’ capacity to retain dozens of new terms and concepts. The question itself is tricky because most teaching professionals are heavily invested in the idea that learning isn’t about being able to regurgitate facts on an exam. We also worry, and with good reason, that emphasizing rote learning steals time and effort away from the deeper thinking that we want students to do.  Here are some techniques that target this specific teaching and learning challenge.  

• Helping Students Memorize: Tips from Cognitive Science

  Sep 5, 2019 2:00 pm10 views

  Helping Students Memorize: Tips from Cognitive Science. I was wrapping up a presentation on memory and learning when a colleague asked, “How do we help students learn in courses where there’s a lot of memorization?” He explained that he taught introductory-level human anatomy, and although the course wasn’t all memorization, it did challenge students’ capacity to retain dozens of new terms and concepts. The question itself is tricky because most teaching professionals are heavily invested in the idea that learning isn’t about being able to regurgitate facts on an exam. We also worry, and with good reason, that emphasizing rote learning steals time and effort away from the deeper thinking that we want students to do.  Here are some techniques that target this specific teaching and learning challenge.  

• Helping Students Read Difficult Texts

  Feb 22, 2012 8:00 am21 views

  Helping Students Read Difficult Texts. When students have problems understanding a difficult text, simply rereading the text won't help them to understand it any better. This article, from the Tomorrow's Professor mailing list, will provide reasons for your students' difficulties and strategies to assist them in comprehending these texts more easily.

   

   

• Helping Student Study for Final Exams

  Apr 25, 2013 8:00 am2 views

  Helping Students Study for Final Exams. Students often return to inefficient and ineffective study habits as they feel the time crush to prepare for their final exams. GAMES, a mnemonic device developed by Marilla Svinicki, is a useful approach for students to use as they prepare for final exams. The five strategies are based on theories of learning.  Click here to learn more about these strategies to share with your students. 

• Helping Students Understand Difficult Text

  Mar 6, 2013 8:00 am6 views

  Helping Students Understand Difficult Text.  A frequent comment by instructors is about their students’ inability to read critically the assigned texts. Bean suggests that students need to become "deep readers," who focus on meaning, as opposed to "surface readers." In this article, he provides 11 causes for our students’ difficulty.

• Hitting Pause – 65 Lecture Breaks to Refresh and Reinforce Learning

  Feb 12, 2019 4:45 pm91 views

  Hitting Pause – 65 Lecture Breaks to Refresh and Reinforce Learning. If we slip into a colleague’s classroom, we see a lot of what Jensen (2008) calls “nonstop learning” (p. 220), which is when teachers talk and there are no pauses for students to interact with what they are hearing. This is what we observe: The teacher is in the front of the room at the podium, PowerPoint slides are up on the screen, and the only break occurs when the instructor momentarily stops explaining and asks a question. If anyone responds, usually a student near the front of the room answers before anyone else has a chance to think of an answer. If instructors who think that their students are actively engaged because one person has come up with an answer to a question could observe their classrooms from the back of the room, they might notice that many of their students are looking at e-mail, texting on their mobile phones, and not paying attention. Students might wish that there was a pause button connected to their college professors. How helpful it would be if their instructors recognized the need to stop talking occasionally so that learners could rewind, take a moment to check for understanding, and prepare to continue.

• How Diversity Makes Us Smarter

  Feb 26, 2015 8:00 am7 views

  How Diversity Makes Us Smarter. The first thing to acknowledge about diversity is that it can be difficult. Yet, the first thing to acknowledge is that good diversity, such as expertise, is beneficial, but even more so is social diversity, such as ethnicity, race, gender.  This article states that it is social diversity that promotes creativity, innovation, and higher cognitive action in our work environments and team projects. 

• How Good Are Your Discussion Facilitation Skills?

  Feb 12, 2019 4:30 pm22 views

  How Good Are Your Discussion Facilitation Skills? Successfully leading and guiding student discussions requires a range of fairly sophisticated communication skills. At the same time teachers are monitoring what’s being said about the content, they must keep track of the discussion itself. Is it on topic? How many students want to speak? Who’s already spoken and wants to speak again? How many aren’t listening? Is it time to move to a different topic? What’s the thinking behind that student question? How might the discussion be wrapped up?  Most of us are not trained discussion facilitators.  Here is an empirically developed instrument that can be used to more clearly identify the various skills involved in effective discussion facilitation and to gather student feedback that can help you assess yours. 

• How Good Are Your Discussion Facilitation Skills?

  Sep 26, 2017 5:00 pm7 views

  Successfully leading and guiding student discussions requires a range of fairly sophisticated communication skills. At the same time teachers are monitoring what’s being said about the content, they must keep track of the discussion itself. Is it on topic? How many students want to speak? Who’s already spoken and wants to speak again? How many aren’t listening? Is it time to move to a different topic? What’s the thinking behind that student question? How might the discussion be wrapped up?  Most of us are not trained discussion facilitators. Here is an empirically developed instrument that can be used to more clearly identify the various skills involved in effective discussion facilitation and to gather student feedback that can help you assess yours.

• How Should I Study for the Exam?

  Sep 26, 2017 9:45 am1 views

  When an exam approaches, virtually all students agree they need to study and most will, albeit with varying intensity. Most will study the same way they always have—using the strategies they think work. The question students won’t ask is: How should I study for this exam? They don’t recognize that what they need to learn can and should be studied in different ways. 

  When they get a good grade on an exam, students regularly attribute the success to luck. Students’ success as learners would advance if they had a larger repertoire of study strategies, if they could match study strategies with learning tasks, and if they constructively confronted how they studied with how they performed. Students need help on all three fronts, but courses are already packed with content. Most teachers have time to do little more than admonish students to study hard, avoid cramming and memorizing minutia, and abstain from any sort of cheating. Here is a short survey to administer to your students and how to start a short discussion on “How to study for this exam."

• How to Align Your LMS System with The Science of Learning

  Aug 14, 2020 10:15 am27 views

  (from edutopia.org) How to Align Your LMS System with The Science of Learning. The demands of distance learning will make your Learning Management System (LMS) more important than ever this year. Have you thought about how to align your tech with the best research on how students learn? Distance learning has brought many changes to our daily practice and made many of us feel like rookie teachers all over again. One foundational tech tool that’s been a lifeline—a pillar of certainty in an ever-changing school landscape—is my trusty Learning Management System (LMS).  Like any tool we use in the profession, an LMS requires that we match rich, meaningful learning objectives with the appropriate teaching strategy—and that means we should ask ourselves if we’re grounding our choices in the best research on how students learn. So how do we leverage these research insights to use LMSs in the most effective way possible? 

• How to Create Memorable Lectures

  Feb 20, 2014 8:00 am42 views

  How to Create Memorable Lectures. In general, students capture only 20–40 percent of a lecture’s main ideas in their notes and retain only 10% after three weeks if they do not review their notes.  All instructors hope that their lectures will be the memorable, but these numbers present a clear challenge.  Stanford’s teaching center provides some considerations on how students attend to, make sense of, and absorb new information. Click here to read the article.
  

• How to Make Your Virtual Discussions Engaging, Effective, and Equitable in Eight Steps

  Oct 6, 2020 11:00 pm34 views

  (From Faculty Focus) How to Make Your Virtual Discussions Engaging, Effective, and Equitable in Eight Steps. The perfect class discussion can feel like something of an alchemy. From the instructor’s preparation to the students’ personalities, many ingredients can enable or challenge the social construction of knowledge in a class community. As Jay Howard suggests, quality discussions require a great deal of planning and an understanding of social, emotional, and intellectual dynamics (Howard 2019). In times like this, it’s urgent to consider how we can facilitate meaningful discussions in virtual environments. Challenges are understandable, but with practice there are some ways to reduce silence and uncertainty while bolstering engagement and equity in virtual discussions. If we’re open about trying new strategies, reflecting on them, and trying again, we can transform this moment into an opportunity to motivate and connect with our students. 

• How to Teach What You Don't Actually Know

  Jun 7, 2011 8:00 am2 views

  How to Teach What You Don't Actually Know.  Are you preparing to teach a course that's outside your area of expertise? Therese Huston, plenary speaker at last year's Annual Faculty Retreat, can help you face next semester with confidence.  Read the Chronicle article here.

• Ideas to Create a Welcoming, Engaging and Inclusive Classroom

  Jan 7, 2019 11:15 am21 views

  Ideas to Create a Welcoming, Engaging and Inclusive Classroom. The teaching-learning process is an inherently social act. Throughout the learning process students interact with the instructor, their peers and the course content, often simultaneously in a classroom setting. All of these interactions help shape their success in the course. Instructors can support student success by being mindful of the social and emotional dynamics in their course and ensuring the learning environment is one that is welcoming, engaging, and inclusive. In preparing to teach a course, consider specific actions you might take to create a positive learning experience. It can be small simple things, or more involved and mindful actions you take throughout the semester.

• Identifying Pearls of Wisdom from End-of-Semester Course Evaluations

  May 9, 2018 10:30 am13 views

  At the end of the semester it can be valuable to take a few moments and reflect on what went well in your courses, and what you might want to change the next time you teach them. One source of information is the student evaluations of teaching, available to you after you submit your final grades.

• If At First you Don’t Fail, Try, Try Again

  Sep 28, 2022 1:45 pm3 views

  (from The Scholarly Teacher). If At First you Don’t Fail, Try, Try Again. Video game players understand that failure is both informative and a fundamental part of learning. As a means to master skills in a video game, it is common practice for a novice player to take high-risk actions to discover how the game works. Exploring options and consequences is one way to learn about the complexities of a game as a strategy to advance within the game. Newbies may run an avatar off a cliff, jump to a high point, run into a dark cave, or intentionally engage in behavior that knowingly would result in an undesired outcome, in the short run. The gamer understands the risk of failure is high but yields valuable information that will contribute to future success, as the game advances. I have heard it often: "students need to learn that failure is an important part of education." I am not sure it is the students who need to learn this. No, students know that failure is an essential part of learning. Instead, I argue that to expand education, it is we, as faculty, need to make the learning environment safe for student failure. 

• If Your Syllabus Were Graded, Would It Pass? Using a Learning-Centered Approach to Design a Course Syllabus

  Dec 22, 2015 8:00 am15 views

  If Your Syllabus Were Graded, Would It Pass? Using a Learning-Centered Approach to Design a Course Syllabus. A well-designed and thoughtful syllabus will inform the students about expectations, values, and ways to be successful. It focuses on the needs of the students and their learning processes. Read this article to learn more about how to create a learner-centered syllabus.

• Improving Your Test Question

  Mar 10, 2022 8:15 am4 views

  (from University of Illinois Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning). Improving Your Test Questions. Constructing exams is one of our most difficult responsibilities as reported by faculty. And it is at the same time one of our most important responsibilities. Some of the considerations when writing test items are: whether to use subjective vs. objective items, what types of objective and subjective items to use, and how to write effective, valid items. Visit CITL’s resources here to learn more about constructing test questions and to see sample test items. 

• Improving Your Test Questions

  Sep 26, 2017 9:45 am2 views

  An effective test can accurately measure what students know but also the kind of knowledge and the depth of that knowledge.  It can also provide you with key information regarding alignment of the learning objectives stated at the beginning of the course with what is being assessed in your exam. Implementing key testing principles and making good decisions regarding exam types, test items, and grading are ways to ensure that student learning is accurately measured. Here are some tips from our Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. You can also register for our CITL workshop on Oct. 4th (Improving Our Testing and Grading of Student Achievement) to learn more.

• Increase Student Learning in Only 3 Seconds.

  Sep 8, 2021 11:00 am12 views

  (from Faculty Focus). Increase Student Learning in Only 3 Seconds. There is a lot of research on teacher’s use of waiting in the classroom and the positive effects it can have for student engagement and learning. The best news of all? Improving student learning only takes 3 seconds. In 1972, Mary Budd Rowe coined the phrase “wait time” to describe the period of time between a teacher’s question and a student’s response. Rowe found that teachers typically wait between .7 seconds and 1.5 seconds before speaking after they have asked a question. However, when teachers utilize wait times of 3 seconds or more, Rowe found that there were demonstrated increases in student creativity and learning. Read more here. 

• Increase Student Learning in Only 3 Seconds.

  Nov 4, 2019 3:15 pm20 views

  Increase Student Learning in Only 3 Seconds. I credit my husband as the inspiration for this article. He is a writing professor who is exceptionally good at waiting. He has a unique ability (and probably disturbing to some) to ask his students a question and then wait…wait through the awkward silence, wait through the students’ sideways glances and shifting in desk chairs until a brave student decides to volunteer and answer his question. His willingness to wait inspires me and has challenged me to use this technique with my own students. Interestingly, there is a lot of research on teacher’s use of waiting in the classroom and the positive effects it can have for student engagement and learning. The best news of all? Improving student learning only takes 3 seconds.

• Increasing Inclusivity in the Classroom

  Feb 9, 2022 10:15 pm16 views

  (from Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching Excellence). Increasing Inclusivity in the Classroom. Drawing from the literature on inclusive teaching in higher education, the first section in this teaching guide considers the importance of increasing inclusivity and is framed by two overarching issues. The first issue is that of student belonging in their classrooms and in the broader campus culture. Most students struggle to transition into college, but students of less privileged and more marginal backgrounds face even greater challenges as they enter what they can perceive to be an unwelcoming or even hostile environment (Carter, Locks, Winkle-Wagner, & Pineda, 2006; Kalsner & Pistole, 2003). To help students overcome challenges integrating into college life, teachers can work to cultivate a sense of belonging among their students. Section Two of this teaching guide provides resources for teachers to increase the sense of belonging in their classrooms.

  The goals of this teaching guide are threefold: 1) to discuss the importance of inclusivity in the classroom, 2) to present examples of teaching more inclusively, and 3) to provide additional resources for further guidance.

   

• Informal Early Feedback

  Sep 14, 2010 8:00 am1 views

  Using informal early feedback (IEF) can help you learn about what is working and what is not working in your class at a time when you can make mid-course corrections. Late-September to mid-October is a great time to collect this feedback from your students.  To learn more about this helpful form, you can attend this workshop (Sept. 17th or 22nd) or find information and samples on our website.

• Informal Early Feedback (IEF)

  Sep 15, 2018 5:15 pm16 views

  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.

• Informal Early Feedback (IEF): A Valuable Opportunity for Just-in-Time Feedback

  Sep 8, 2021 11:15 am15 views

  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 Informal Early Process (IEF) process and sample forms for you to adapt.  Also, CITL is offering a workshop on Sept. 22nd to help you design your own IEF forms. For more assistance, contact CITL. 

• Informal Early Feedback (IEF): A Valuable Opportunity for Just-in-Time Feedback

  Sep 9, 2020 5:30 pm16 views

  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 Informal Early Process (IEF) 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.  For more assistance, contact CITL.

• Informal Early Feedback (IEF): A Valuable Opportunity for Just-in-Time Feedback (Now is the time)

  Jan 29, 2019 1:30 pm6 views

  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 next week (Feb. 4th and 6th) to help you design your own IEF form.

• Informal Early Feedback (IEF): A Valuable Opportunity for Just-in-Time Student Feedback

  Sep 13, 2022 3:45 pm12 views

  Informal Early Feedback (IEF): A Valuable Opportunity for Just-in-Time Student 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 Informal Early Process (IEF) process and sample forms for you to adapt. If you would like assistance about the IEF from creation to implementation to interpretation, contact CITL through this form. 

• Interpret Feedback and Interpreting Your Student Reports.

  Jun 6, 2022 11:30 am3 views

  (from Stanford University: Evaluation & Research, Student Affairs). Interpret Feedback and Interpreting Your Student Reports. (Note: This article may be of value as you have just received your end-of-semester ICES Online results).  As you read through your reports, bear in mind that Stanford’s student course feedback forms are designed to direct students’ attention towards their own learning. The responses should reflect how much and how well students learned in your course. The teaching feedback form, however, directs attention to individual section instructors.

  Look for patterns: are the distributions consistent and in the ranges you expect? Are there unusual clusters, such as a “spike,” or a very high and very low grouping? A single mean score can be a few decimal points higher or lower simply due to the random sample of students in a particular course from term to term. An increase or decrease of a few decimal points should not necessarily be interpreted as a significant change. For more information, read our discussion paper on the reliability of evaluation statistics (PDF). Finally, it is common to concentrate on outliers or unique responses, but it is more useful to look for patterns and trends than speculate about an isolated score. Let’s begin with general questions. 

• In the next few weeks, administer an Informal Early Feedback (IEF)

  Feb 9, 2017 8:00 am0 views

  In the next few weeks, administer an Informal Early Feedback (IEF). Student evaluations of teaching are an important part of the feedback that instructors receive. This feedback can be especially helpful when it is collected during the semester. Our students can tell us if we are clear, accessible, respectful or timely. 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. Check this site for directions and sample IEF forms.
  

• Is My Teaching Learner-Centered?

  Jun 6, 2022 11:30 am8 views

  (from Faculty Focus). Is My Teaching Learner-Centered? It’s hard to say—we have no definitive measures of learner-centeredness or even mutually agreed upon definitions. And yet, when we talk about it, there’s an assumption that we all understand the reference.

  My friend Linda recently gave me a beautifully illustrated children’s book that contains nothing but questions. It reminded me how good questions, like beams of light, cut through the fog and illuminate what was once obscured. And so, to help us further explore and understand what it means to be learner-centered, I’ve generated a set of questions. For the record, these questions were not empirically developed, and they haven’t been validated in any systematic way. However, they do reflect the characteristics regularly associated with learner-centered teaching.  Questions like these can be useful in helping us to confront how we teach. They produce the most insights when asked sincerely and answered honestly. For most of us, there’s a gap between how we aspire to teach and how we actually teach. Given the less-than-objective view we have of ourselves as teachers, it’s easy to conflate aspirations with actualities.