Today's rather short post is brought to you by an instructor with 100 student projects to review! lol But seriously, I wanted to take a moment because it is officially the season of course evaluations, and I saw some interesting chatter in my program's slack about this topic. There was the very familiar back-and-forth about … Continue reading Negativity Bias
pedagogy
Digital Inclusion Week Campaign
I'm replacing this Tuesday's tip post with an update on my community-engaged students' second major project: the Digital Inclusion Week Campaign (hosted by NDIA). If you read my "So You Want to Teach a Service Learning Course?" post, you know I've been teaching two CE sections this semester. I also wrote briefly about what my … Continue reading Digital Inclusion Week Campaign
Teaching Tip Tuesday: Changing Course Mid-Semester
While most of us aren't quite mid-semester yet, I'm already facing a decision to backtrack on a key component of my course design. I mentioned teaching CE courses in a pandemic was hard, right? We've all likely experienced some version of pivoting in the past 1.5 years thanks to said pandemic, but have you ever … Continue reading Teaching Tip Tuesday: Changing Course Mid-Semester
Asynchronous Online Teaching
I recently had a conversation with a parent of a college student who was "disappointed" that her daughter *still* had some of her classes online this semester in spite of our institution's decision to "come back to campus" this fall. First, I informed her that at our specific institution, even before the pandemic, it is … Continue reading Asynchronous Online Teaching
Teaching Tip Tuesday: Get Into the Weeds
I can't tell you the number of times I've had students send me unsolicited emails thanking me for explaining what a scholarly article actually is. For years, they tell me, their instructors have demanded scholarly sources, but never explained to them what makes a source scholarly or not. I not only explain what a scholarly … Continue reading Teaching Tip Tuesday: Get Into the Weeds
Teaching Tip Tuesday: Tell the Students WHAT You’re Doing
This blog is dropping later than normal because I'm wrapping up two 5 week summer WIT courses which can be...intense. This post is also Part 1 of a three part series designed to help you have a better relationship with your students. I find that a lot of issues in the classroom are rooted in … Continue reading Teaching Tip Tuesday: Tell the Students WHAT You’re Doing
Teaching Tip Tuesday: Save the Praise
I keep a folder titled "Student Praise" in which I save emails from students praising their experience in my class. This might seem like an obvious thing to do for "demonstrating teaching excellence," but I only just started doing it a couple years ago. I figured if no one has ever told me I should … Continue reading Teaching Tip Tuesday: Save the Praise
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
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
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
Tawnya Azar 