Three Fabulous Design and Teaching Ideas that Take Work off Your Plate

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve experienced learners who can seem less engaged and more challenged. It helps to go back to the basics—to the core ideas and principles that make teaching effective, engaging, worthwhile, and, at the same time, manageable. Collectively, our goal is to build ways to interact with our students that support their continued learning, show compassion and flexibility for their varied circumstances, and fit within our existing time and prep demands. In this interactive keynote session, we’ll explore concrete practices that stem from three research-based low-effort do-them-right-now design and teaching principles, reduce anxiety and pressure for both students and faculty, and allow you to focus on the interactions that you want to have with your students. 

• access to materials, interactions, and people (in course work and beyond);
• assessment: how we design testing, grades, and feedback; and
• engagement strategies that make students want to come to the classroom.

A few promises: this session will not add to your already stretched resources. In fact, our conversation will help you to decide what you can profitably not pay attention to as you develop and hold class sessions with your students. We will also focus on things that you can do without a lot of special equipment, staff support, and development time. Finally, we’ll frame our discussion around ways to honor the various commitments in our students’ and our own lives, in order to find good balance, address systemic inequities, and interact with one another in a supportive way.