This is a guest post from Dr. Marcus Croom, Assistant Professor of Curriculum & Instruction, Indiana University School of Education and CITL DEIJ Faculty Fellow In my previous blog post, I mentioned that both public and curricular issues are likely to arise in our classrooms. In this 2021-2022 academic year, that consideration is especially salient… Read more »
Getting Student Feedback at Midterm
We in the CITL are big proponents of getting mid-semester feedback from students as a way of improving our teaching and their learning. While there is much we can learn from end-of-course evaluations, that information doesn’t offer us opportunities for smaller adjustments that can prove valuable to this semester’s students. And asking your students for… Read more »
Quick Tip: Chat Tools for Backchannels in Class
In our use of Zoom over the past year, many of us got used to the “backchannel” conversations that happen in the chat tool. Those chats could be students asking questions, someone providing a useful resource, or just fun asides. Even when you are teaching in-person, backchannel chats can be useful ways to let students… Read more »
What Will You Keep This Fall? Olga Kalentzidou on Reflective Portfolios
In a bonus episode of WWYK, I talk with Olga Kalentzidou from Geography about how she used reflective ePortfolios in her Geography of Foods class. During remote instruction, Olga replaced her hands-on food labs with remote cooking experiences, having students document and reflect on their cooking through a range of portfolio activities. As she returns… Read more »
What Will You Keep This Fall? Susan Siena on More Frequent Tests
In my last video in this series, Dr. Susan Siena from the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs talks with me about moving from a few higher-stakes exams to more frequent, lower-stakes ones. Susan has evidence that students see better connections between exams and the course content, due to the more immediate assessments, and… Read more »
What Will You Keep for Fall? Sapna Mehta on Alternative Assessments
In this episode of WWYK, I talk with Dr. Sapna Mehta from the Department of Biology, and she shares how she has transformed an upper-level class in two ways—by taking a hybrid approach and by replacing all her exams with weekly scaffolded exercises that lead to a final project. That final project is also one… Read more »