The National Institute on Scientific Teaching recently started a conversation on how to consider feedback from end of course student evaluations of teaching in this turbulent and traumatic year of Covid-19. Most faculty find it difficult to consolidate the diverse perspectives received through evaluations and would like to gather more constructive and actionable feedback that they… Read more »
Entries by akesha
Distracted Students
One book I have put on my summer reading list for a re-read is Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It. e-book (On Order for IU Library), physical copies are available. The book is written by James M. Lang, a Professor of English and the Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at… Read more »
PowerPoint Sections
What Are PowerPoint Sections? While PowerPoint Sections is a feature introduced in 2010, it is a hidden feature to many. Much like you use folders to organize your files, you can use sections to organize your slides into meaningful groups, categories, chunks, buckets, or chapters of a presentation for easier management. For instance, if you have… Read more »
Trends in Higher Education
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that IU has an institutional membership to EDUCAUSE that you can also benefit from. EDUCAUSE’s mission is to advance higher education using information technology. They recently released a couple of Horizon reports. These reports are compiled by “…an expert panels and [feature a] compendium of institutional exemplar projects from around the… Read more »
Preparing for Final Exams
At this point in the semester you can help students by distributing sample questions to give them an idea of the types of questions that you will use. Review the thought processes behind the types of questions so that students understand how best to reason and solve the questions. The reason behind reviewing such information… Read more »
Free PD Resources
Due to the pandemic and travel restrictions in 2020, many conferences on online learning shifted to a virtual format.At the same time, online learning saw a huge surge both in numbers of courses and enrollments. Virtual events accepted more participants, reduced or dropped (expensive) participant fees, and made post-conference resources available online. As a result,… Read more »
(Re)Designing your course
I know the Spring has not ended, but many of you have started thinking about designing (or redesigning) courses for the Summer and Fall. As you start thinking about design and redesign, it may be helpful to watch this interview from a lecturer in the CS department at Purdue University, as he discusses how and… Read more »
Inclusive Pedagogy
The Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship at Georgetown University recently launched an Inclusive Pedagogy Toolkit. The kit looks at different aspects of teaching (pedagogy, content, assessments, climate, and power) and provides several key strategies for making classrooms inclusive, equitable, and meaningful. Each aspect has 3-4 key takeaways. For example, in the content section,… Read more »
Supporting Online Discussions
One of the greatest challenges for faculty is that students often come to class not having completed assigned readings. This makes it difficult for them to participate in discussion, and it may also make it difficult for them to follow the material you have planned for the day/week. Synchronous or Face-to-face: Spend 5 minutes at… Read more »
Teaching with Microsoft Teams
Last week, I had the opportunity to work with a class that used Microsoft Teams to manage a group project. Students were divided into 14 groups or (channels) of 5. After establishing group norms, students are given the freedom to complete the group assignment synchronously or asynchronously, depending on their schedules. When they used the… Read more »