Top Hat is an online student response system with many features that can boost both face-to-face and virtual interactions between students and the instructor. Student response systems (SRS) can promote active learning, allowing the physical classroom to become a collaborative space. Instructors ask questions via the Top Hat software platform and students respond using their personal… Read more »
Tag: assessments
Book – Assessing Student Learning by Design
If you have taken a course design course at the university level, you have most likely been introduced to the concept of Backwards Design: https://citl.indiana.edu/teaching-resources/course-design/index.html. The backward design process asks instructors to structure student learning around assessments that are intentionally designed to provide evidence that students have achieved the course goals. This concept comes from the classic… Read more »
Canvas Grading Tips
The following tips are intended to help answer some of the most popular grading questions that come up at the end of the year. These tips may be new to some and serve as reminders to others. (approx. 3-minute read) If you are dropping the lowest score from an assignment group, for it to correctly… Read more »
Mastery Grading
Robert Talbert, Ph.D., Department of Mathematics, Grand Valley State University recently gave a talk (2021) on mastery grading. He explained that mastery grading aims to make grading a positive, useful, even enjoyable (?!) process by refocusing on grading for eventual mastery of well-defined learning targets rather than one-and-done assessments and points and focusing on instructive feedback rather than auditive point allocations. Campbell,… Read more »
Quick Tips – Final Thought on First Day Preparations
I realize two weeks ago, I said I would provide a two-part series of tips to help with the first day of the course. We discussed faculty-student engagement, student-to-student engagement, and how to get to know your students. However, we have not discussed ideas on what to actually do on the first day of the… Read more »
Evidence Based Teaching in STEM and activating prior knowledge
Reading time: Approximately 5 minutes The Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) offers a Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) designed to provide STEM educators with evidence-based strategies they can employ to improve their teaching as well as effectively conduct teaching as research projects. The course, An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching, is offered… Read more »
Flippity
Flippity https://www.flippity.net/ is a free resource that allows for the quick creation of quizzes, flash cards, presentations, memory games, word searches, and more. Flippity allows users to customize premade Google Sheet templates with their own content. Instructors can use Flippity as a presentation tool, or to create low- or no-stakes assignments through Google Sheets. Further, students can use… Read more »
Student Evaluations Part 2
Last week I sent out a quick tip about student evaluations. I was asked a couple of questions about how to collect feedback from students BEFORE the semester ends. One way is to add quick exit ticket at the end of your class. As the Harvard Graduate School notes, these temperature checks can be anything from a “…quick assessments of student… Read more »
Student Evaluations
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 »
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 »