Emily Barber – Page 14 – EDVICE EXCHANGE

Finding the Joy in Teaching

Stephanie Fiore, Assistant Vice Provost

I’ve been thinking a lot about joy lately and, in particular, the desire to find real joy in our teaching work. Joyful work can be energizing, inspiring, and affirming, while joyless work can be enervating, tedious, and dispiriting. I’m not talking, of course, of perfection; in teaching, as in all things, there is no such thing. What I’m thinking about here is instead a soul-satisfying sense that you are doing the work you want to do and that you are doing it well. As teachers, it means also that you see the impact you are making on your students. Perhaps they are learning new things or are discovering new passions, all because you have introduced worlds to them that pique their curiosity, answer questions, or challenge them to think deeply about important and interesting issues. Maybe they are able to pursue a successful career in the field of their choice because you mentored them along to excellence in some real way. Or perhaps you have learned new things from them, and it has re-energized your own thinking and process of discovery. All of these moments can be downright joyful, yet I have discovered in my role at the Center for the Advancement of Teaching that some faculty do not live the joyful and purposeful life of teaching, but instead live that part of their professional lives with trepidation, dread, or ambivalence. I’m here to tell you that, if you have not found that joy in teaching, it is within reach, by thinking hard about how to teach in a way that motivates students and helps them to learn.

Dean McManus, in his book Leaving the Lectern describes his journey to joy. In his earlier faculty days, he wore his lab coat to lecture to hide the sweat stains which were a natural result of the anxiety and dread he experienced in teaching. Research was natural to him; teaching was not. When he reflected on his teaching, explored new ways to think about his teaching and how students learn, and then worked at implementing new teaching practices, he found that his students learned, and were even excited at the learning that took place.

A student walked into the computer room, greeted another student, and said, “Man, that pattern looks nothing like what I got yesterday.” He apparently pulled out his map and the two students proceeded to discuss what the differences in the two patterns at different times meant. And they knew what they were talking about. To me they were expressing self-assessment of their learning. I leaned back in my desk chair with a limitless smile, punched my fists at the ceiling, and hissed to myself, “Yes-s-s-s-s!” They had learned it. I was doing something right. Oh, the joy of it! The pure joy! (McManus, 2005, p.97).

McManus points us to the steps he took on his journey of instructional transformation: accept risk, use feedback, reflect, adapt and be flexible, establish a partnership, accept that you are teaching in a different world, and welcome the joy (McManus, 2005).

At the Center for the Advancement of Teaching, we can be your partners in this journey. We have consultants who can sit with you privately and discuss your teaching challenges or your ideas for innovation. We have a multitude of workshops, trainings, and discussions about teaching where you will have the opportunity to discuss teaching with other faculty from across the university, learn what the evidence tells us about how people learn, and explore strategies to improve student learning. You will find resources at your disposal, either on our website, at our lending library of books on teaching and learning, or simply by asking us for them. Most of all, you will find an ear, support, and someone who understands your desire to feel joy at work.

We are waiting for you. Come join us at the CAT!

Stephanie Fiore serves as Assistant Vice Provost at Temple’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Image by lena dolch from Pixabay

Using Reading Prompts to Promote Students’ Academic Reading

Pete Watkins

As the semester winds down, I know that many of us (including me) are buried in grading. However, before you leave for winter break, we would like to share with you a tip for next semester about using reading prompts to help ensure that your students are getting the most out of assigned readings.

This teaching tip comes from Zeenar Salim of Aga Khan University. If you are looking for more information on how to use reading prompts in your course contact the CAT or your institution’s teaching center.

Happy Holidays!

Using Reading Prompts to Promote Students’ Academic Reading

Do you have concerns around students attending classes without pre-reading? Ever wondered how you can make them read? Students in higher education are expected to comprehend the text, connect their prior experiences with the text, evaluate the text, and consider alternative viewpoints to the text. Reading prompts are considered a way to motivate students to read. They improve students’ comprehension and critical thinking skills by engaging them actively with the reading material.

Provision of reading cues/prompts helps the learners to actively read and analyse their own thoughts during and after reading to expand, clarify or modify their existing thinking about the concepts or ideas at hand. The reading prompts can be categorized into six categories a) identification of a problem or issue b) making connections c) interpretation of evidence d) challenging assumptions e) making applications, and f) taking a different point of view. Sample questions for each category are as follows:

What is the key issue/concept explained in the article? What are the complexities of the issue? (Identification of problem or issue)
How is what you are reading different from your prior knowledge around the issue/topic? (Making connections)
What inferences can you draw from the evidence presented in the reading? (Interpretation of evidence)
If you got a chance to meet the author, what are the key questions that you would ask the author? (Challenging assumptions).
What are the lessons that you have drawn for your practice from this reading? (Application)
Write a letter to your friend who has no expertise in this subject area, explaining the theoretical concept presented in the article. (Taking a different point of view)

Generally, students are asked to complete the reading prompts before the next class by writing a paragraph-long response to each question. The instructor may choose questions depending upon the learning objectives of the session and may adapt the question(s) to gauge specific information around the text. For sample questions and detailed literature around reading prompts, please read Tomasek (2009).

Reference:

Tomasek, T. (January 01, 2009). Critical Reading: Using Reading Prompts to Promote Active Engagement with Text. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ896252.pdf

Lang and Yearwood on Teaching Excellence

Jeff Rients, Senior Teaching and Learning Specialist, CAT

The 17th Annual Faculty Conference on Teaching Excellence was held January 9th and 10th at Temple University’s Howard Gittis Student Center. In previous years, the Conference was a one-day affair, with a second event, the Teaching with Technology Symposium, occurring late in the semester. This year, the two events were combined to better reflect our evolving understanding of the inseparability of our teaching and the tools we use to make learning happen.

The first day of the conference featured a keynote by Dr. James Lang, Director of the D’Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption College in Worcester, MA, and a leader in the field of teaching and learning. Dr. Lang’s address, Small Changes, Big Impact, was based in part on his latest book, Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. He shared several easy-to-implement teaching strategies that better reflect what cognitive science tells us about how learning works. Some key takeaways included:

Don’t underestimate the power of small changes to a class — there are many things that could make a difference in how students learn and engage with courses that require minimal changes to the overall course structure and workload for the instructor.
With so many ideas on how to enhance classrooms, deciding what to do next can be overwhelming. Instead of doing an complete overhaul of your course, try to do one small thing at a time. When changes are manageable, instructors can focus on doing them well.
Practice is powerful. Before asking your students to tackle a big project, break it down into the individual skills necessary to succeed at the task. Incorporate opportunities to practice all of these skills into your lesson plans before assessing the students.

For the second day of the conference, our plenary speaker was Dr. David Yearwood, Professor in the School of Entrepreneurship and past chair of the Technology Department at the University of North Dakota. His highly interactive plenary address, Using Technology to Promote Connection, Engagement, and Empowerment, challenged us to reconsider the role of technology in our classrooms. Crucially, Dr. Yearwood warns us not to add new technologies to our classes unless they serve a specific need in the course design.

Dr. Yearwood’s CEE (Connection/Engagement/Empowerment) model gives us a framework for interrogating whether a new technology is right for our students. Does the technology allow the student to connect the new material in the course with past learning? Does it help the student engage with the instructor, the course content, and/or the other students? Does the technology empower the students, allowing them to feel confident in their new abilities and take charge of their learning? These questions can help us assess the value of new tools before we deploy them in their courses.

Thank you to both Dr. Lang and Dr. Yearwood for sharing their wisdom with us as we begin another semester!

Small Changes that Make a Big Impact

Pete Watkins

One of the great joys of working in a teaching and learning center is that I get to read books and articles by some of the leading thinkers in college teaching. One of my favorite writers is James Lang, author of several well-regarded books on college teaching including On Course: A Week-by-Week Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching, Cheating Lessons and Small Teaching, Lang gives practical advice based on both research and his own classroom experience and does it in a lively and engaging way.

Lang’s book Small Teaching arues that there are small changes we can make to our teaching that have a big impact. When his book was published in 2016, he discussed some of these small changes in a series of popular posts for the Chronicle of Higher Education.

One of his suggested small changes is to make productive use of the first five minutes of class as a time to grab students’ attention and get them prepared for the exciting journey that lies ahead. He compares the beginning of class to the opening lines of a novel that hooks the reader.

He also gives some good suggestions about how to use the last five minutes of class. Instead of trying to cram in a few more points or offering reminders about upcoming assignments, he suggests using these last few minutes in a more intentional way, for example, distributing a brief classroom assessment such as a minute paper asking what you learned today and what you still have questions about. Alternatively he suggests using the last five minutes to help students make connections between what they learned and the world around them such as current events, campus debates or personal experiences. He also suggests that we can use the last five minutes to “close the loop” and go back to our opening. I like to start class with some big questions that we are going to explore together, so I think that based on his advice I might start using the last five minutes to circle back to the question(s) with which I started class. Of course the questions that I pose are not questions with definitive answers which is why I always say we will “explore, wrestle with or investigate” (not answer) these questions.

You can read Lang’s complete series on small changes to teaching at the Chronicle’s web site. And if his ideas and writing inspire you, then save the date January 9, 2019 when Lang will be the keynote speaker at our 17th Annual Faculty Conference on Teaching Excellence at Temple University’s Howard Gittis Student Center. Registration is not open yet, but send us an email at cat@temple.edu to be added to our mailing list and to be notified when registration opens.

This Summer, Make Lemonade Out of Lemons

Stephanie Fiore, Ph.D.

It’s summertime, when children all over the country will be squeezing lemons, adding sugar and water and sitting outside on the curb selling homemade lemonade. Think for a moment about lemonade. Isn’t it remarkable how something so sour can turn into a refreshing, sweet drink, one that conjures up visions of relaxing in the sun or picnicking with family? Before you go on that picnic, take a minute to think about how you can make lemonade out of any sour moments that happened in your classes this academic year. Did you have activities that flopped, readings that students just didn’t understand (or didn’t read at all), disappointing results on exams or underwhelming papers written by your majors? Did you experience hot moments in the classroom that you didn’t handle very well, or awkward interactions with students with whom you had trouble connecting? Did you find yourself short on time so that you had to rush headlong towards the end of the semester, dragging students on the ride with you? Were your student evaluations less than encouraging, or perhaps downright painful to read?

We all have times like these in our classes; sometimes, we have whole semesters that feel like this. I remember struggling through a class one semester that I had taught many times before with great success. No matter what I did, I just couldn’t smooth out the bumps and I was exhausted from trying at the end of every class. Those sour moments can be enervating, distressing and confusing. But they can be catalysts to great teaching too. We can reflect on those moments and take action to prevent them from happening again. If we put them in our rearview mirror too soon, we lose an opportunity to make lemonade and we risk becoming perpetually stuck with recurring sour moments.

Here’s my recipe for making pedagogical lemonade:

Identify the issues that are of most concern to you. When you think back on your semester, which issues stand out?
Squeeze those sour moments for information. What went wrong? Can you pinpoint moments when things went sideways? To help you think about it, try reflective writing, reviewing your own notes, examining student work, and reading student evaluations for clues.
Do your research. On almost any teaching topic, there is a wealth of helpful resources to help you find solutions. Start reading! Check out Temple’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching’s resources or those at any number of teaching centers across the United States. Search for assistance in online faculty development sources such as Faculty Focus, or the Teaching Professor newsletter. Think about investing some time this summer in reading some foundational texts for higher ed instructors, such as How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching or Tools for Teaching. (Some of these resources may be available through your university library.) Or just Google it. And don’t forget, your teaching center has consultants available all summer long to help you think out solutions.
Take Action. After doing your research, commit to making one or two changes to your classroom in the fall semester and then do it! Don’t try to change everything at once; incremental change is the best course of action for long-term success.

Not such a tough recipe to follow, right? Before you stretch out with that hard-earned lemonade, start working on this recipe. Perhaps next semester you’ll find that the sweetness of teaching overpowers the sour.

“Take My Exam…Please!” When Humor Does (and Doesn’t) Work in the Classroom

Cliff Rouder, Assistant Director of the CAT

Believe it or not, there’s a lot of humorous research–I mean, research on humor–40 year’s worth, give or take. Everything from theories of humor to the benefits of it in an educational setting has been explored. Too bad I didn’t know about this when I was choosing my dissertation topic. “Sorry I missed your final, professor, but I was out until 4:00 a.m. at the comedy club doing my dissertation research.” Ahh, to dream.

Okay, let’s get serious about humor for a moment. A review of humor in educational settings published in 2011 and spanning 4 decades revealed that appropriately used humor can do a number of pretty great things in the classroom, including:

Creating or strengthening a bond between students and professor
Easing stress or tension
Enhancing students’ understanding of the material
Creating a sense of wonder
Making the content more relatable and helping students remember things better

I’m sure you can think of a time when humor had one or more of these positive effects in your classroom. But what kind of humor has this power? Here we can look to Instructional Humor Processing Theory (IHPT). The theory is two-fold: 1. The mere act of students recognizing the humor will increase students’ attention, and 2. Students need to perceive and then figure out some type of incongruity in the humorous message.

There are many different ways IHPT can be put into practice. Google “types of humor” and you’ll see lists ranging from seven to 20 types. I’m going to pick two that I’ve used in my own classroom that had at least one of the positive effects above (based on comments from my students each semester). Which benefits do you think my students mentioned?

Self-deprecating humor: I would tell my students the story of when I began my dietetic internship program. I was rotating in the pediatric unit and was asked to check out a child’s eyes and nose–or at least that’s what I thought the dietitian had said. I went up to the child’s bed and tried desperately to think of what nutrition-related issue may be affecting his eyes and nose. After a few minutes of not seeing anything wrong with the child’s eyes and nose, I had to confess. Bracing for the worst, the dietitian instead burst out laughing. Know why? She had actually asked me to check his “I’s and O’s” (fluid intake and fluid output), not his eyes and nose!

Physical humor: I was role-playing a less-than-professional hospital dietitian pretending to assess a patient (played by a brave student). I “plopped” the medical chart and all my notes on her bed, hitting her leg. I then asked her questions while looking in the mirror combing my hair; I made a ghastly facial expression looking at her pureed dinner, and to add insult to injury, I made sure to trip over her IV lines.

Other types of humor you can try are plays on words (one of my favorites), improvisational, and observational, to name just a few.

“But what if I’m not especially funny?” you may be asking. If you are really uncomfortable using humor when it’s not natural to you, no worries, there are other ways to engage students. But if you do want to try your hand at humor but need a little help, without too much effort, you can find online or print humor that can apply to your course content. You can also harness the humor of your students. However, before turning your classroom into a Comedy Central TV special, note that there are some types of humor that should be avoided in the classroom. Here are some handy guidelines:

When in doubt, leave it out. If there is even the slightest chance that the humor could be perceived as inappropriate or offensive, then leave it out. Think bodily humor, blue humor, and topical humor like political humor. Remember, though, if something slips out that evokes a less-than-desirable verbal or non-verbal reaction, address it on the spot. Sometimes eating a piece of humble pie is just the ticket to show that you are human and can take responsibility for your mistakes.

Too much, Jerry. Too much. This line from the sitcom “Seinfeld” highlights two potential problems: overdoing the humor to the point of distraction, and referring to outdated or obscure sources of humor. Speaking of which, what about the title of this piece? How many of you knew this was a take-off on the classic line, “Take my wife…please!” from the popular comedian Henny Youngman back in 1950’s and 60’s?

I know what you’re thinking: So what’s the big deal if they don’t get the reference?” Well, I’m sure you’ve experienced humor that went over your head. It made you feel a little alienated or even downright embarrassed, right? So let’s avoid putting our students in that situation. You may be asking, “What if I preface or follow the humorous reference with an explanation? Would that help?” It may, but having to explain it kind of kills the spontaneity.

Perhaps the best litmus test for whether to use humor (and what kind and how much) is to ask yourself, “Will the humor enhance learning?” As with many things in life, moderation and thoughtfulness are key, so when you see an opportunity for humor to enhance learning, use it judiciously and respectfully. Otherwise, your classroom “show” may get cancelled.

For more on the benefits of humor and guidelines for effective use in the classroom, check out a few resources here, here or here.

What has been your experience as a professor using humor in your classroom? Humorous minds want to know!

Using Online Student Learning Evaluations to Improve Instruction

Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian, Temple University

My first experience teaching an online course occurred in the late 1990s when Drexel University’s College of Information Studies asked me to convert my face-to-face digital research course to an online format. My primary focus was just getting things to work. Quality learning experiences were an afterthought.

Fast forward to 2017 and after a ten-year gap I agree to teach online again, this time for San Jose State University’s (SJSU) iSchool program for aspiring librarians. Despite my prior experience teaching online, I took a mandatory 25-hour mini-course in online instruction. It reinforced much of what I learned in other professional development experiences, but also introduced me to Canvas.

Less anticipated was the robust expectation to achieve continuous learning. SJSU takes online education seriously and the institution requires that all online courses adhere to the Quality Matters ™ framework. Their high-quality standards require instructors to complete continuous learning modules in any semester they teach. One of these sessions got me thinking differently about student evaluations. Instead of perceiving them as a necessary evil, I discovered they can serve as both motivator and shaper of quality instruction.

In the online session “SOTES Strategies and Lessons” I learned that student evaluations, when analyzed in aggregate, help instructors to modify their educational methods to align with student learning needs. SOTES, (Student Opinion of Teaching Effectiveness) is SJSU’s student evaluation system. No doubt every instructor reviews course evaluations seeking clues that lead to substantive learning improvement. Instead of tweaks to assignments or syllabi, SOTES can lead to fundamental pedagogical change.

The SOTES session gave twelve tips – focusing on ways to anticipate what most helps students learn and succeed – to influence how educators can design a better learning experience.

Be Practical to Demonstrate Relevance

Theory is important but these mostly adult learners, often working in the field, want concrete examples and anecdotes. Use practical assignments and explain how students will benefit later.

Create Assignments to Enhance Learning
Students want assignments directly relevant to what’s in the lecture. Their top two requests: avoid giving busy work; structure assignments into smaller blocks that build on each other.

Emphasize What’s Important
Provide a verbal or written summarization of the top takeaways from a learning module’s content. Keep reiterating key concepts. Share your observations on the best ideas from course discussions. At the start of each week, I summarize what students should know from the prior week, where they demonstrated competency, where improvement is needed, and how it will apply to new content.

Respond, Respond, Respond

We are told to quickly and comprehensively respond to students’ questions and comments, in discussions or emails. The SOTES clearly confirm that. Respond in a variety of communications formats (audio, video, email, etc.) and keep it cordial and respectful. Avoid putting students on the spot or making them feel regret over their question or comment.

Set the Atmosphere
Online learning is about more than content and assignments. Students expect a patient, positive and encouraging instructor who is present, well organized and gives students opportunities to interact and learn from each other. The right classroom culture facilitates learning.

Easy to Approach
If the atmosphere is right, students will feel they can easily contact and communicate with their instructor. My course was asynchronous, but I offered a weekly synchronous office hour (varying days/times) in order to create connection and elevate students’ comfort level in reaching out to me.

Appreciate Student Diversity
Students respond poorly to an instructor who plays favorites with respect to differences in age, gender, race or work experience. Pay attention to differing backgrounds in student’s self-introductions and commit to treating students equally.

Passion Speaks Loudly
Set the tone by being the champion for the course topic. Instructor enthusiasm is contagious. If the instructor lacks excitement for the topic, students will too.

Challenge Them Intellectually
Students want “make us think” activities that require more than answers to rote questions. Encourage creative thinking by allowing students to develop multimedia projects in which they apply course concepts to their own experience.

Fair Grading Matters
Creating clear assignment instructions and rubrics to guide students is no easy task, but taking time in advance to think through the details of assignment grading will minimize grading disputes or claims of unfairness.

Make the Complex Understandable
Students expect their instructor to make the abstract concrete through the use of realistic examples. Communicate your personal experience in lectures, assignment instructions and discussions.

Provide Meaningful Feedback
Give praise for work well done as well as constructive criticism. Be specific in pointing out what students get right and where they need to improve. Add comments to graded assignments and return them to students while they can benefit from feedback.

Whatever personal opinions online instructors hold about student evaluations, it feels much better when they reflect a uniformly successful learning experience. Learning those factors that lead students to judge a course as successful and an instructor as competent, organized and responsive, greatly shift the odds of a positive outcome in the instructor’s favor. The SOTES session changed how I think about student evaluations. I now see them as a valuable resource for course design, not simply an after-the-fact measure of “How’d I do?”. Though mostly applicable to online learning, these dozen tips could work equally well for face-to-face courses. I encourage you to put them into your practice.

Dr. Freeman Hrabowski Talks About Inclusive Excellence

Pete Watkins, Associate Director, CAT

The 16th Annual Faculty Conference on Teaching Excellence was held January 10th at Temple University, and Dr. Freeman Hrabowski delivered an energetic and inspiring keynote address combining passion and personal memoir with larger lessons about higher education and inclusive excellence.

In his compelling presentation, he wove together three stories. First, he told his personal story of growing up as a Black man in the segregated South, including his experience with Dr. Martin Luther King’s Children’s Crusade. From those beginnings, Dr. Hrabowski has gone on to become a scholar, university president and higher education leader who advised President Obama on higher education policy and who was named by TIME in 2012 as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.

But his presentation was about more than his inspiring personal story. He also described the culture of inclusive excellence at University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), the institution he has led for over 20 years. UMBC was founded in 1966 and unlike most universities in Maryland which were founded during segregation to serve students of one race, UMBC has been integrated since its inception. Today, UMBC has a strong culture of mentorship and undergraduate research which has helped make UMBC one of the nation’s leading universities for graduating Black undergraduates who then earn doctoral degrees.

Also woven throughout his presentation was reference to the generations-long struggle to make higher education accessible to people from less privileged backgrounds. He recounted how after World War II, influential college presidents fought against the GI Bill fearing that veterans attending college would tarnish higher education. Instead, the middle of the 20th Century saw educational attainment soar, not just through the GI Bill, but through the spread of financial aid and community colleges.

However, he reminded us that “change is not distributed equally.” While the overall college attainment rate in the United States has increased significantly since the 1960s, there are still wide racial and class disparities in terms of who attends college, which institutions they attend and whether or not they graduate.

Inspired by Dr. Hrabowski’s call for inclusive excellence, participants headed to breakout sessions which explored how specific practices related to Hrabowski’s four pillars of college success such as active learning, undergraduate research, formative assessment and co-curricular activities, can be used to bring inclusive excellence to their classes.

Thank you to Dr. Hrabowski and UMBC for showing us that inclusive excellence is possible!

Beyond Icebreakers: Make the Most of the First Day of Class

Johanna Inman, Director of Instructional Technology for Teaching and Learning, CAT

I have a confession to make: I used to think nothing of substance could be accomplished on the first day of class. Instead, every semester I engaged in a first-day ritual that included taking attendance, reading the syllabus, and facilitating an icebreaker to help me learn students’ names. But over the years, I’ve come to realize that the first day of class can be an essential part of setting up a successful semester. Implementing an icebreaker on the first day of class is a step in the right direction, but research suggests additional ways to use that time to engage and motivate students through activities and strategies designed to accomplish more than basic introductions. On your next first day of class, consider using these strategies to take advantage of the first-day energy and get your course and semester off to a great start!

1. Use a positive tone in your syllabus.

A common complaint among college instructors is that students don’t read the syllabus. And yet, our syllabi are sometimes more challenging to read than the fine print on credit card applications. Over the years as we experience issues or problems in a course, we tend to add a policy or a note about it in the syllabus. Then the next year we underline it, maybe bold it the following year, then the next year we make it red. We keep stressing various parts of the syllabus until students aren’t quite sure what to do with it. Although there is no denying that the syllabus is a vital tool to communicate information about the course, learning goals, assignments, grading policies, and other university policies, it is definitely underutilized as a tool to build rapport and motivate students.

The good news? Small changes to your syllabus can have a big impact. For example, simply altering terms like “instructor” and “students” to “I” or “me” and “you” or “we” can personalize the writing and help build a connection. Also, adding a few questions the course will explore can pique students’ curiosity, getting them excited about the semester to come. If you’re looking for a more dramatic change to your syllabus, you might consider writing a “Promising Syllabus,” one that revises the goals, assessments, and evaluation language into promises and discusses how the instructor and students will both fulfill the promises throughout the semester.

2. Communicate the value of your course.

In How Learning Works (2013), the authors of explain that one of the factors contributing to student motivation is value for the task at hand. Generating value for a course can be fairly easy or extraordinarily challenging depending on several variables including the course content, and whether the course is a first-year university requirement or an upper-level course within a major. Regardless, the first day of class is a perfect time to begin intentionally aligning your course with students’ personal, professional, and academic goals. To do this, implement an activity that you plan to use throughout the course such as a small group discussion about course expectations or an individual reflective writing activity about students’ hopes for the class–you might even add a few clicker questions about the way the course will be taught. Not only will these activities help students focus on the value of the course, they begin to prepare students for what is to come. In addition, explicitly outlining the relevance of course activities and assignments also helps students answer that ever-present question, “Why are we doing this?”

3. Give students a little autonomy.

Lastly, you might consider allowing students to have some say in the decision-making within the course. This could be as simple as giving students a choice in which assignments they complete or how those assignments are weighted. You might even consider using the first day of class to collaboratively write portions of the syllabus such as late assignment policies or classroom etiquette.

Let’s Exchange EDvice!

What strategies do you use on the first day of class to get the semester off to a running start?

Creating a Student-Centered User Experience in Your LMS Course

Ariel Siegelman, Sr. Instructional Technology Specialist, CAT

New websites or applications often become successful in part because their user interfaces need no explanation: A user can visit the website and use it for its intended purpose without needing much assistance. However, if that experience is difficult, it can lead to a lot of frustration, and the user might give up on what they were trying to do in the first place.

It is easy to forget that setting up a course on a learning management system (LMS) is essentially creating a website for students, and that is an important component of creating a student-centered learning experience. Research shows that student-centered teaching, in which an instructor seeks to understand the students and shape the learning experience based on their needs, leads to higher student performance. To that end, a well-structured LMS course designed with students in mind can help students stay on track of their tasks, engage with the course material, communicate with other students and the instructor, and receive timely, helpful feedback. However, an LMS course has just as much potential to hurt student performance as it does to help it. For example, if students need to spend more time trying to figure out where materials are located in the course or what their required tasks are for the week, it wastes precious time that they could otherwise be dedicating to learning. Additionally, instructors may need to devote a significant amount of time responding to frantic emails from students who do not know what to do.

Below are three strategies for creating a more student-centered LMS course:

1. Make all of your content accessible in one place and organize it sequentially.

One of the easiest ways for students to become frustrated while navigating within a course is if the location of materials is unclear. A way to make this straightforward and also mobile-friendly is to make all course content–including readings, PowerPoints, assignments, and quizzes–easily accessible from one place. A best-practice to further organize this content is to present it in a sequential order, usually by week or unit.

A first instinct might be to organize it by type, such as placing all of the readings or quizzes together, but chronological order makes it simple for students to know which materials they need and when. The Modules feature inside of Canvas, for example, makes it very easy to accomplish this. This organization method also allows students to see the progression of the course content and how each piece of material fits into the overarching themes of the course. Additionally, here at Temple University, professors who present content in this way often tell us that they receive less emails from students asking what they have to do for the week and where it’s located in the course. Ultimately, it’s a time-saver for both the instructor and the students.

2. Make all important dates, including due dates, easy to find and accurate.

Inevitably, a few due dates may change over the course of the semester because of circumstances such as inclement weather or shifting lesson plans. If due dates are listed in multiple places across a course, it can be difficult to ensure that they are all up to date, especially if they change. To prevent potentially contradictory dates in a course, it’s a good idea to limit due dates to being listed in just one or two easy-to-find places, or to use features built into the LMS that will update the due dates in multiple places automatically. For example, in Canvas there are a few features that help students stay on top of important dates: The Course Summary on the Syllabus page, which lists all due dates and events created within the course, and the Calendar feature, which can sync all events and due dates seamlessly with a student’s external calendar, such as Google Calendar, iCal, or Outlook. Additionally, after the due date of an assignment or quiz is changed within its respective settings, the due date will automatically update in both the Course Summary and the course’s calendar. This can help ensure that all listed due dates are accurate, and thus students will be able to easily stay on top of their schedule.

3. Update the gradebook regularly to provide quick and helpful feedback.

Research shows that one of the best ways instructors can help students be successful in a course is to give them helpful feedback on their performance so they can keep track of their progress in the class and work to maintain or improve their grades accordingly. Many learning management systems, including Canvas, have features that allow instructors to provide frequent, immediate, and instructive feedback, as supported by the research-based “FIDeLity” feedback model. For example, posting grades in the LMS gradebook as soon as possible allows students to confirm their performance so far and note where they need to make improvements. An LMS often has additional quick feedback features, including automatic grading for online quizzes and exams, as well as tools such as Canvas’s SpeedGrader that allow you to make comments and suggestions within students’ submitted essays and projects for students to review as soon as they’re graded. Canvas also allows you to sort graded assignments into groups, and the gradebook will show each student how they are doing in each assignment group. This allows the students to monitor their overall progress in assignment categories such as exams, homeworks, and projects. Rubric features are also useful to communicate assignment criteria to students, to quickly and effectively grade assignments, and they can assist in ensuring that the grading criteria is consistent if there are multiple graders.

Ultimately, building an LMS course that is well-organized, straightforward, and provides quality feedback is a fantastic way of creating a positive and supportive learning environment for students. It is one vital step that instructors can take in order to increase the likelihood of their students’ success.

Let’s Exchange EDVice!

What strategies do you use to create a student-centered LMS website in your course?