One of my favorite habits I've adopted this past year is doing a monthly review at the end of every month. Most paper planners have a dedicated page for this, but I like the one developed by Jo VanEvery in her newsletter (you should subscribe!) which is customized somewhat for academics. The reason I like … Continue reading Congrats! You Do a Sh*t Ton of Stuff: Monthly Review
Author: tawnyaazar
Teaching Tip Tuesday
I've decided to start a new short post series here to focus on teaching tips every Tuesday. I mentor quite a few graduate student teachers, and their brilliant questions always make me realize I've amassed a good number of teaching tips over the past decade. These tips are based on my experience teaching in higher … Continue reading Teaching Tip Tuesday
Making Your Career 90% Awesome
Recently I was listening to this podcast by Cathy Mazak about designing your academic career to be 90% awesome. I found myself nodding along as she described how she wasn't willing to just muddle through an academic job that wasn't, for the most part, satisfying. I didn't realize this has been my M. O. since … Continue reading Making Your Career 90% Awesome
Is Your Teaching Energy Jar Filled with Sand or Rocks?
The other day a student privately messaged me on Zoom and said "You look tired. Thanks so much for all that you do for this course. It must be difficult." If you're a teacher you might balk at the observation about my looks, but to be fair to the student, I did look tired! My … Continue reading Is Your Teaching Energy Jar Filled with Sand or Rocks?
10 Tips for Virtual, Synchronous Participation
I was actually going to write about a different topic this week, but in a recent meeting a colleague mentioned how fatigued she was because her virtual synchronous sessions were basically all black boxes with the same four students participating each time. This particular colleague is up for a pretty rad teaching award this year, … Continue reading 10 Tips for Virtual, Synchronous Participation
NeMLA Roundup: All Things Digital
I attended my first large virtual conference recently at Northeast MLA where I chaired a panel and presented a paper. Even though I didn't get to attend all the sessions and meetups that I had ambitiously added to my conference agenda, I was able to make it to a good number of excellent panels. The … Continue reading NeMLA Roundup: All Things Digital
A “Less is More” Feedback Model for Online Writing Intensive Classes
Last semester I was asked to help facilitate a short workshop on strategies for providing feedback on low-stakes work in online writing-intensive (WIT) classes. It seems the pivot to online instruction has left faculty overwhelmed with the amount of written feedback they think is necessary in an online class. I should mention that *most* of … Continue reading A “Less is More” Feedback Model for Online Writing Intensive Classes
Multimodal Assignment Design
During the week of September 21st - 25th, I will be presenting a 15 minute pre-recorded session titled "Designing, Scaffolding, and Evaluating Multimodal Assignments" at the 2020 Innovations in Teaching and Learning Conference hosted by the Stearns Center at George Mason University. In connection with the video presentation, I have also created a PDF designed … Continue reading Multimodal Assignment Design
Digital Literacy
This week was the first week of fall classes at my institution. While it has been fraught with technology issues like a massive Zoom outage, Blackboard lockout, and Kaltura/MyMedia crash, it has also been exciting to meet my new students and begin some of the conversations central to our courses. In particular, I am excited … Continue reading Digital Literacy
NeMLA 2021 – Digital Pedagogy in the Composition Classroom
I am pleased to announce that my panel proposal for Northeast MLA 2021 has been accepted. Little did I know when I wrote the proposal how pervasive digital approaches to teaching composition would become now that we find ourselves in the middle (?) of a global pandemic. As I write this, it is not yet … Continue reading NeMLA 2021 – Digital Pedagogy in the Composition Classroom
Tawnya Azar 