If you were wowed during IU’s latest football season, you probably know the power of creating a game plan. Game plans help us focus our energies on improvement, and they’re as helpful in the classroom as on the field. Creating a game plan for crafting and analyzing your end-of-semester online course questionnaires (OCQs) can help… Read more »
Entries by Sarah Pedzinski
Soliciting Student Feedback: How Did This Post Help You Develop Your Own OCQ Questions?
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the automated Online Course Questionnaire (OCQ) system asks me to write my own questions for end-of-term evaluations at the most hectic point in the semester. I sincerely want to critically reflect on my pedagogical practices and generate some meaningful questions, but I also have 25 papers to grade,… Read more »
Quick Tip: Helping Students Find Real-World Applications of Course Work
One of the largest challenges in my “Introduction to Fiction” course was showing students how skills like close reading would serve them outside the classroom. I know many of my students will enter careers where their employers would never dream of having them analyze the works of Louise Erdrich, but I also know that their… Read more »
Honoring Lisa Kurz, Principal Instructional Consultant for Non-Tenure Track Development
If you ask any faculty member who has worked with the CITL on a project, grant, or learning community, odds are they know Lisa Kurz. When I started at the CITL, Lisa mentored me; we met weekly to discuss my work and progress in instructional consulting. She invited me to observe her consultations and her… Read more »
Instructor Spotlights: How to Create Productive Group Environments in Class
Around midterms, instructors tend to see student engagement plummet. Over the past few semesters, I’ve written about encouraging peer-to-peer engagement as well as a few tricks for getting your students talking. Today, I’m going to highlight two instructors who facilitate innovative and successful group work during class time. Sarah Fischer (PhD Candidate, Associate Instructor, Lieber… Read more »
Prove Me Wrong: How One IU Professor Works Smarter with Active Learning by Enlisting Students’ Help
Put down the pool floats, fruit smoothies, and sunblock: the fall semester is beginning! As you begin to prepare your courses, you may find yourself overwhelmed with choices about course design, assignment sheets, and student engagement. Sometimes, the easiest way to incorporate innovative teaching in these busy semester moments is through simple interventions with large… Read more »