Instructional / Course Design
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Tips From Veterans of Remote / Online Teaching
As you prepare to create and teach courses remotely this spring and summer terms, we asked some U of S instructors experienced with this type of teaching to share some quick words of wisdom based on what they learned from their own experiences. Below are their tips related to design, teaching, and assessment for remote / online. Thank you to Jorden Cummings (Psychology), Allison Fairbairn (Music), Hayley Hesseln (Agriculture and Bio Resources), and Karla Panchuk (Geology) for sharing your experiences teaching remote / online courses. Design Keep it as simple as possible. Online learning difficult for many students for diverse reasons, and we cannot assume our students have access to…
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Ways To Limit Concerns About Non-permitted Collaboration
Are you worried about non-permitted collaboration? It’s true, students can seek each other out for help, examples, interpretations, translations, feedback, and peer teaching when unsupervised. In fact, we often encourage students to do so as part of the learning process. Blatant “copying” is a real problem because then the submitted work does not represent what that individual student knows or can do “without the support of resources or colleagues.” Most students want assessment to be fair and are likely to appreciate your effort to have everyone play by the same rules. Below are two options you may want to consider for addressing concerns about students collaborating. Option 1: Limit collusion…
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First, Take Inventory
You might feel like the first thing to do for creating an online course is to understand the technology. Before, you dive into that first assess what you’ve currently got going for you in your course as you have been teaching it. Remember, the expectation is not for a fully developed on line experience, our circumstances really don’t allow for that. And, our higher tech solutions may not stay reliable. Some of the advice given when we first shifted to remote teaching is helpful: 3 steps for an inventory: What is the course catalogue description of this course? The course should reflect this description. What is essential for students to…
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It’s Okay to Keep it Simple
As we all rapidly transition to remote instruction this week due to COVID-19, it is actually better to keep it simple. When a friend sent me a blog post called Please do a bad job of putting your course online, I was initially offended. As I read the post, I realized it offered some really good advice. We aren’t trying to make awesome online courses (that takes too much effort at this stage), and faculty and students are dealing with lots of complications in their lives. We are trying to protect ourselves and others with social distancing while ensuring students don’t lose the credits they are working for. With that…
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Featured instructor: Martin Gaal
Course Innovation Community CIC 2019 Martin Gaal, Lecturer Faculty Member in Political Studies Martin teaches Political Studies 112, Justice and Injustice in Politics and Law to 100 students. He participated in CIC to help address his concerns regarding how to link learning outcomes to active learning strategies that ladder-in formative and summative assessments. Martin has noticed that student support for success is much more difficult with 100+ students than it is when he has smaller classes of 30 students. He continues to look for ways to tighten the course structure with technology and teaching strategies that increase student engagement and maintain a personal connection with students while seeking to maintain…
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Featured Instructor : Colleen Bell
Course Innovation Community CIC 2019 Colleen Bell, Assistant Professor Faculty Member in Political Studies Colleen teaches International Studies 110, Global Studies, to a class of over 80 students. By participating in CIC, Colleen was able to gather new ideas on structuring student debates, improve her use of rubrics, and better able to select and sequence the content necessary to engage students (which sometimes felt like a sacrifice!). She used some of her CIC funding to support grading and coaching and another part to have a team-based competition in class. The competition motivated students to watch and evaluate videos made by their classmates. Colleen’s concerns with large class teaching were that…
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Featured Instructor: Derek Postnikoff
Course Innovation Community CIC 2019 Derek Postnikoff, Lecturer Faculty Member in Mathematics & Statistics Sessional Lecturer in Philosophy Derek teaches Math 100, Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers, to a class of 85 students. By participating in CIC, he was able to attend two math education conferences: First Year Math and Stats in Canada in May 2019 and Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group in June 2019. Both of these events provided him with many specific ideas for themes and activities to incorporate in MATH 100. He is planning to use what remains of his CIC funding to attend both of these conferences again this year. Some of his struggles were that…
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All aligned – Instruction
In higher education, we have our students do all the hardest learning by themselves. As academics, our greatest strength is expertise, but we routinely select passive instructional strategies that have our students mostly listening to lectures in our classes and doing their learning later. Choosing passive listening robs us of the opportunity to provide the nuance and clarification that learners need while they learn. This post focuses on selecting the right type of instructional approaches to have our students actively learning the most important and challenging things they will need. Relationship to our Learning Charter:There are two learning charter educator commitments related our instructional approaches to learning tasks: Be aware…
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How do I internationalize my course?
Self-reflection Step 1: Know my position and privilege. Who am I as a teacher? (This idea isn’t new, check out this article from 1958: Teacher, Know Thyself) Step 2: Does the way I design my course plan for access and diversity? Step 3: Do I want to “add-on”, “infuse”, or “transform” my course through internationalization? Some direction If you are working on step 3, there is an excellent resource of teaching tips here: Strategies for Course Internationalization. Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo. A simple way to start internationalization is to add assigned readings from international perspectives. This can be a way to start conversations and look for similarities and…
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Outcomes-based Assessment
Traditional forms of assessment, often norm-referenced, are increasingly mixed with outcomes-based assessment in campuses in Canada. Often, outcomes-based systems start in professional programs with accreditation standards, where it is important that all graduate have minimal standards of competence, and are not just rated in comparison to their peers. As the use of outcomes-based teaching and assessment is becoming more common, people are wondering what the difference between traditional and outcomes-based assessment is. What is outcomes-based assessment? It starts with faculty members articulating what they want students to be able to do when they complete the learning. This is called an outcome and it is different than thinking about what you…