Learning outcomes are statements that reflect what your students should accomplish at the end of your course. Learning outcomes are measurable and can be used to direct the course timeline. For example, “by the end of the course, students should be able to…” explain, compare, create, or recall. These active verbs allow instructors to create… Read more »
If you’re applying for an academic job, you’ll need a teaching portfolio to provide evidence of your teaching effectiveness. What goes into a teaching portfolio? There are usually three realms of documents: ones the teacher produces; ones from peers, students, and institutions; and ones showing student achievement. Feedback on your teaching portfolio is extremely important,… Read more »
Specifications Grading (“Specs” Grading) is a form of contract grading based on the amount of work students choose to complete in a course. Allowing students to make this decision up front can increase motivation and self-direction in a course, and it can also focus and reduce grading for the instructor. Specs Grading motivates students like… Read more »
The CITL Blog Year in Review: 45 blog posts to date have been read over 6800 times this past year by more than 2400 unique readers from across the world. We are beyond pleased the CITL Blog has become a part of your professional reading and hope you will continue to read and grow with us. When we started this… Read more »
Good feedback creates dialogue between the instructor and student. In order to foster this dialogue, it’s important to give students feedback both early and frequently throughout the semester. Timely feedback allows students to act on the information to improve their learning while still in your course. This requires providing students with frequent opportunities to demonstrate… Read more »
We can best support all of our students’ writing development by integrating the writing process into our courses. The writing process consists of several carefully staged steps including brainstorming, drafting, peer review, revision, and editing. Students should be taught multiple strategies for accomplishing each of these steps. The writing process provides lots of opportunities for… Read more »