As final exams and final essays begin to peak out from their lurking places, I wanted to provide some strategies for efficient grading to assuage some of our anxieties surrounding late exam days this semester. (My students and I were unlucky enough to book a December 20th final exam day.) Here are some quick ideas… Read more »
Entries by Ren Maloney
Reflective Teaching Practices
So often, as we teach and reteach the same courses, we accidentally fall into a pattern of repetition. Certainly, for those of us who have taught the same courses with the same student learning outcomes, we have found the activities that work, dismissed the ones that don’t, and only overhaul a course when it becomes… Read more »
Quick Tip: Fun Activity Ideas
As we get started with the semester, I wanted to encourage us all to begin thinking of ways to engage our students from the get-go with some fun activities! Group Scavenger Hunt If you put your students in groups at the beginning of the semester, have them get to know each other with a group… Read more »
Quick Tip: Using Summer Planning for Fall Semester
The summer, while great for decompressing from the spring semester, is also an amazing opportunity to begin planning for the fall semester! Our responsibilities during peak times can often feel overwhelming, so what better way to relieve pressure from ourselves than to use the summer to complete some of the items on our to-do lists?… Read more »
The Graduate Grapevine| It’s OK to Use Duct Tape
Hi everyone! My name is Ren Maloney and I am a graduate assistant at the IU Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL), as well as a current PhD student in the rhetoric program in the IUB English department. I’ve been teaching first-year composition for the past four years, and starting next semester, I will… Read more »
Quick Tip: Field Trip! Taking a Page from the Ms. Frizzle Handbook
There’s nothing quite like a field trip to pull you and your students out of the dreaded end-of-semester lull! Changing up your classroom space is a great way to implement the core Universal Design for Learning objectives of engagement, representation, and action & expression. Connecting the “why,” “how,” and “what” of learning in a new… Read more »