Topics

The Value of Undergraduate Teaching Assistants in Synchronous Online Learning Environments: 10 Steps That Can Make a Positive Change

Mitra Asgari and Mark A. Sarvary September 14, 2020

Transforming an in-person course to an online teaching and learning environment is always challenging, especially if the course has a laboratory or studio component. As two co-instructors of a large introductory inquiry-based biology laboratory course with nearly 400 students enrolled, we faced such a challenge

Engaging with the Engagement Issue

Pete Burkholder September 8, 2020

There’s no shortage of materials pertaining to student engagement in higher ed. I’ve attended teaching conferences where anywhere between one-third and one-half of the sessions could be slotted under the engagement rubric. I’ve further found, while conducting teaching observations, reviewing course syllabi, and reading teaching

Strategies for Conducting Online Student-Teacher Writing Conferences

Randy Laist September 8, 2020

Conferences between student writers and their writing teachers are a time-honored staple of process-oriented writing instruction. Online classes, while they may incorporate many of the other elements of the writing process model, frequently omit writing conferences since the face-to-face, real-time format that is typical of

Fair Grading Policies

Maryellen Weimer September 8, 2020

Grading should be impartial and consistent. It should also be based on how competently the student handles the academic content of the course. Those are the two principles Daryl Close (2009) explores in a fine article titled “Fair Grading.” And they’re principles widely supported by

Measuring Rapport with Students

Maryellen Weimer August 31, 2020

Students connect with professors, not only as teachers or content experts but also as persons, and that causes some discomfort. Our relationships with students need to be professional. Because we evaluate their work and have a responsibility to treat them equally, we need to keep

Microsoft OneNote and Teams: Alternatives to the LMS

Valentina DeNardis August 31, 2020

Since the closure of schools and universities this spring, Microsoft has been producing a wealth of remote learning resources in support of its educational tools, most notably Microsoft OneNote Class Notebook and Teams. OneNote Class Notebook, launched in 2014 and built on Microsoft’s note-taking tool,

A Group Work Classic with New Recommendations

Maryellen Weimer August 31, 2020

“Lessons From the Best and Worst Team Experiences: How a Teacher Can Make the Difference”—that’s the title of a 1999 article by Donald R. Bacon, Kim A. Steward, and William S. Silver that was published in the Journal of Management Education. It’s a fine piece

Considering Language When Creating Inclusive Learning Environments

Rebecca Zambrano August 24, 2020

We who work in higher education are constantly using and learning academic English, often without realizing it. We may not realize that the way we speak English is quite challenging to many students who don’t speak this way at home. College students who struggle to

Tips for Facilitating Live Online Events

Sami Lange and Jessica Pardoe (with John Orlando) August 24, 2020

The global pandemic has caused emergency shifts in how we teach. Online learning is nothing new, but transitioning a once-dynamic in-person class to a screen in a synchronous format poses some challenges for “new to synchronous” teaching faculty. As two department chairs at a mid-size

Digging Deeper into End-of-Course Ratings

Maryellen Weimer August 24, 2020

I worry that we’re missing some of what we can learn from end-of-course ratings. I know I was on this topic in another recent column, but student evaluations are ubiquitous—used by virtually every institution and completed by students in pretty much every course. And what