A faculty client of mine recently asked me for some general all-purpose discussion prompts for her class. She was having difficulty coming up with prompts for in-class discussion that were focused on the readings she had assigned, yet were also broad enough to generate many different answers and spur discussion. And ideally, they would also… Read more »
CITL
Course Design for Graduate Students: You’ve Got This!
Midway through the 2022 spring semester, I walked into my classroom and was greeted by one of my students giving her classmates an impromptu presentation on educational best practices, punctuated with examples of work I’d been doing in her classroom. Despite the student’s praise and the fact that she was connecting claims and evidence (a… Read more »
Why should you care about DEI?
While attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is becoming more common across campus, we still hear the occasional reaction that addressing issues of race, privilege, and social justice tend to belong in some disciplines—typically the social sciences—and not so much in others. In some ways that reaction makes sense, since some disciplines are overtly… Read more »
How many points is this class worth?
As the fall semester begins, instructors are finalizing syllabi, including the grading scale. On the first day of class (i.e. syllabus day) students will eagerly flip through (or scroll the LMS) to locate the grading scale. What will they need to do to earn enough points to get the grade they want? We spend hours… Read more »
Write a Syllabus that Supports Student and Instructor Mental Health
According to one national survey of 31,048 students conducted in 2020 by the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU), “35% of undergraduates screened positive for major depressive disorder and 39% screened positive for generalized anxiety disorder” (Soria, Horgu, and Luu, 2020). The profound effects of Covid-19 on student mental health will likely continue during… Read more »
Graduate Students — Prepare to Teach at IUB
Is there a specific aspect of your teaching you would like to work on? Do you have a plan of action for achieving your goal? Wherever you are in your development as a teacher, it is important to have goals and a plan for how you might accomplish them and the CITL is here to… Read more »