Instructional Strategies
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Three Ways of Delivering Remote Learning
Making some preliminary decisions about the direction of your remote course can help you focus in face of a sometimes overwhelming number of technological options and educational jargon. Here are three ways of delivering remote learning to contemplate before you go too far down any one path. Prior to locking yourself into a method, you should keep in mind that your students may face some constraints or limitations for synchronous learning (e.g., bandwidth, webcams, a suitable space to participate in the call). Check in with your students about any such restrictions. Will you meet virtually with your students at a scheduled time for teaching and learning? “Synchronous” means you and…
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Lecture Videos: Keep Them Short
You can use Panopto to record your lectures with slides, and incorporate an audiovisual experience to the learning so that students can see and hear you. Note the links at the bottom of this article access detailed training resources. To get started, you should break your previously prepared lectures into smaller sections (5-7 minutes) to record them that way. Here is why: Most important when you are getting started: if you have to, it’s quicker to re-record a 5-7 minute video than a 60-90 minute video. In the future, you are more likely to make use of these shorter videos in your teaching. When people talk about the “flipped” teaching…
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How to get students to hand in quality work by planning for choice
In my course, at this level, at this place of progress in their learning, what do students need to demonstrate to me? Handout version for USask Instructors What do I expect of my students? Offering choice in how students meet course objectives is rooted in inclusive education and that by providing choice we acknowledge and respect that there are many ways to demonstrate learning and students have the agency, when appropriate, to pick the one that motivates them. These checklists might help you think about “shifting the ‘locus of control’ from the teacher to the student” (Jopp & Cohen, 2020) There are three methods described: when students pick the medium…
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Inclusive Teaching Strategies: Reflecting on Your Practice
Summary: How do you engage with students? How do students see themselves in the content of your course? How are students expected to engage with each other? Date: August 30, 2024 Here are some strategies compiled from the University of Michigan with permission. Which ones do you do already? Which ones might you try? Instructor-Student Interactions Learn and use students’ names they choose to be called. Clarify how you want students to address you, especially if you teach students from a range of educational and cultural backgrounds. Distribute a student background questionnaire early in the term to learn about students’ experience with the course topics, educational background, professional ambitions,…
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Leveraging Peer Feedback in an Online Environment
When students take courses in-person, they often find at least one friend in the course with which they discuss the course, the assignments, give feedback to one another, and so on. With the shift to remote delivery, students might have more trouble finding someone to connect with on their own. This post explores how you can introduce peer feedback into your course to ensure that your students have a chance to share their work and receive feedback from peers. In the best cases, they might even form friendships, but another benefit of using peer feedback is that the quality of student work usually increases, which can make your marking much…
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Virtual Poster Presentations – Recommended Tools
Note: This list assumes student work is already coming in the likely poster formats (PDF, image as JPG or PNG, PPT, DOC) as opposed to being presented using some unique platform (e.g., Prezi, Sway). Please investigate the help pages linked below first. If you require additional help with one of these tools, email itsupport@usask.ca. Tool Strengths and Challenges Canvas Discussions · Asynchronous (students can access at any time ahead of a given deadline) · Students attach their poster to a thread which classmates can view · Classmates can add comments / feedback to the thread · Simplest tool that enables student interaction! Panopto assignment · Asynchronous · Students produce…
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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…