This month's TeachT@lk webinar focused on the topic of creating effective and efficient virtual office hours. It was lead by Jennifer Mansfield and Amy Kitchens from the ASU GOEE group. We started with some tips for why you should consider doing office hours and what the benefits are to both the student and instructor. Then we discussed when to do them so they were convenient for online students work schedules. Different technologies were discussed, including: Zoom Adobe Connect Google Hangouts Skype Slack Shindig The webinar wrapped up with some strategies and tips, including Using a Google Spreadsheet for appointments Offering incentives- extra credit for best question, first login, etc. Recording sessions for an archive that students can review Bringing in a guest speaker, or focusing on a specific topic of interest   Resources : PowerPoint Slides Recording Article: Zoom:Create Your Classroom in the Cloud (handout)   Article: 7 Strategies for...

ASU currently has 13,164 international students enrolled, and is the #1 US public university to host international students. At our last TeachT@lk Webinar, Renee Klug , University International Educator, Sr. shared information with faculty on understanding and teaching international students. Click on image to view larger Intercultural Competence is a set of cognitive, effective and behavioral skills that support effective and appropriate interaction in a variety of cultural contexts. Renee helped faculty assess their own intercultural sensitivity by sharing 6 models, and having faculty evaluate common statements to understand what level was being used. Once faculty understood the models, she presented classroom strategies that could be used with common student challenges mentioned by faculty, including: reluctance to work in groups negotiating grades not willing to ask for help not speaking up in class not citing resources appropriately  Click on image to see l...

Our last webinar focused on tips and strategies that were seen at the International Forum for Active Learning at the University of Minnesota. ASU was fortunate enough to have Dale Johnson from EdPlus lead a group of faculty and instructional professionals on this great opportunity to learn more about teaching in active learning classrooms. Peter van Leusen shared research and information about what "active learning" actually is, and why we believe it works.  Characteristics of active learning include more than students engaged in activities, but also there is greater emphasis on student exploration and extending and applying student skills and ideas. He shared an article, "Does Active Learning Work? A Review of the Research" as a great resource for more information. Aaron W. Johnson, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Research Fellow University of Michigan Matthew Robinson shared his insights into typical "myths" about active learning. He showed the ...

This week's TeachT@lk Webinar focused on our summer theme of "Feedback" . This time we talked about the different ways to deliver feedback. We started by discussing the ideal situation to give both effective and convenient feedback to students. Then we looked at each of these modes of delivery and discussed the benefits and challenges.    We gave some best practices for using video, and combining it with text. Jason Neenos from UTO demonstrated three technologies that could be used for sharing feedback in both recorded and live sessions. All are free for ASU Faculty: SnagIt Video Demo - goo Adobe Connect Info Page Google Hangouts Tutorial Video As always, there was lots of lively sharing of ideas and discussions, and we ended with a great case study showing how video made a difference to one writing student. Join us again on September 19 for "Get Active!" where we'll share some innovations from the International Forum on Active Learning Class...

In Tuesday's webinar, we focused on using feedback as a teaching device. Yuna Buhrman, from the ASU College of Health Solutions, shared a survey that she did on student and faculty perceptions of feedback. This survey contained many insightful comments and tips for faculty to take back to their own classrooms. We worked to better define feedback and the difference between formal and informal feedback, as well as "how" and "when" to use them. We also shared the 3 components of good feedback: Making it relevant by connecting it to the objectives and goals of the student Making it specific by providing examples of how to improve, or validating what was done well. Making it timely by using auto feedback for quick responses, combined with opportunities for individual feedback within a few days.  The webinar ended with tips for using peer feedback, and some of the typical challenges and possible solutions. Below are the resources that were shared with part...

The end is almost here! And it's the Final Countdown! We all know it's coming quickly. The end of the semester, and the pile of grading immediately afterwards is daunting and overwhelming. In our webinar this month, Jason Neenos and Paul Stoll talked through a number of great tips to keep in mind when finishing up your grades for ASU. They covered tips for pushing content from Blackboard, importing files, and manually entering grades. They answered questions about how to drop the lowest grade for students, and shared some terrific resources at https://students.asu.edu/facultycenter. Below are the resources that were shared during the webinar: Video recording of Webinar Slides from Webinar (PDF) Here are a couple of other resources that might be helpful as you approach the end of the semester: Things to think about at the end of the semester handout   End of semester evaluations article Blackboard article: Sending your grades from Bb to ASU Roster  

Friday, April 14, 2017 from 3-5pm The ASU School of Life Sciences faculty and grad students had an opportunity to experience virtual reality and new technologies last week at the Innovative Tech Show. There were talks, demonstrations, and discussions about how these technologies could be used to increase learning in their classes. Some of the activities included: The keynote talk on "Virtual Reality in Higher Education" with Digital Bodies Experiencing zSpace and Labster online materials Learning about 3D printing at the ASU MakerSpace Creating virtual fieldtrips For more information, photos, videos and the links shared, please take a minute to browse here: http://solsstemtechday.weebly.com/

On Tuesday, March 21, we hosted a TeachT@lk Webinar on creating and managing online assessments. There were 3 main topics: Structure: Planning rigorous assessments that are aligned with objectives Tools: Effectively using Multiple choice, and tutorials for setting up Blackboard exams Integrity: Encouraging students to make good choices through pedagogical, technological and community pressures. Peter van Leusen lead the discussion on using Quality Matters standards to align content, and how RPNow can be set up to record students. Amy Pate shared "cheathouse" websites and what they do. The discussions among the participants was active and collaborative. Below are the links to resources and the recording of the session. Slides Recording Links Handout

Today's blog comes from Rene Tanner , subject matter librarian at ASU. Evaluating information in the digital age is a critical skill. In the classroom, as in life, we need to agree on basic facts to advance human knowledge and our understanding of the world. Fake news refers to sources that fabricate information, purposefully deceive, or grossly distort factual news reports (Novotny, 2017). Social media is an important source of information. A recent Pew Research Center study found that 62% of U.S. adults receive news through social media with Facebook (44%) as the lead outlet, followed by YouTube (10%) and Twitter (9%) (Pew Research Center, 2016a). Distinguishing real information from distorted information online can more difficult than we may imagine. A recent study by Stanford University found that most students, from middle school through college, had trouble identifying false or biased information online. For example, students often had difficulty distinguishing be...

The speakers for the TeachT@lk Webinar on February 21, 2017 were Matthew Robinson , Senior Instructional Designer, and Jennifer Stanley , Instructional Designer, for the ASU School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies. Tuesday's webinar focused on how to create "Instructor Presence" in an online or face-to-face course. Although we can't be everywhere at all times, there are some strategies and tips you can use to create an environment that builds connections between students and instructors. Instructor presence can take form in 3 ways: Persona - instructor personality, interests, etc. Social - instructor connections and student-to-student connections to create community Instructional - instructor guidance of students through the learning The webinar went through a number of strategies to create presence, including: introduction videos that share personality and interests different forms of contact information setting clear expectatio...

Today's guest blog is by Anna Krieg, an undergraduate researcher in Sara Brownell’s Biology Education Research Lab. She is a senior Barrett honors student who is pursuing an honors thesis that examines student academic self-concept in physiology. Learning student names is often promoted as a good teaching practice. Although learning student names has been linked to positive course evaluations and positive impacts on the students themselves, such as increased student participation and even student learning, there have been no studies specifically looking at the impact of learning student names. Researchers from Arizona State University have set out to fill this gap and explore the impact of this instructional practice. Do students even care? In short, yes. 85% of students thought that instructors using student names was important in a large class. Nine specific reasons as to why this was the case were identified that could fall into three broad categories: an instruct...

Exploring how the decisions instructors make when crafting exams impact students Last week, our Evidence-Based Teaching Seminar series welcomed Christian Wright, PhD. Christian shared his research on assessments, and how instructors should be making careful decisions when writing exams. Faculty must consider a wide variety of areas when creating exams. Depending on their choices, they may be unknowingly causing students to drop out of biology programs. There were a number of questions faculty consider when building exams: The breadth and depth of the content- Do you cover less in order to deepen student learning in a specific area? Certain collaborative activities help students learn better, but the cost is that faculty may not be able to cover as much content The level of the content- Bloom's Taxonomy is often thought to move students from lower to higher cognitive levels. However, if a professor is asking a multiple choice question that requires students to memorize s...

This week we were honored to have Chris Pagliarulo, PhD from UC Davis speak at our Evidence-Based Teaching Seminar Series. He shared his insights on how graduate TAs learn to teach, and shared a program that UC Davis uses to prepare them better. Teaching is a complex skill that requires repeated cycles of deliberate practice and feedback to master. He said teaching needed to be like "muscle memory". The program consists of deliberate practice of structured drills along with accountability and feedback through observations. They were drilled with 4-8 different teaching practices, and then assessed on whether they consistently used those techniques throughout the semester. He also discussed having grad students build "warm up" exercises based on pre-tests, to help students prepare for the activities in class. Below is a short clip of his presentation. (If you are interested in the full presentation, please send an email to amy.pate@asu.edu ) There are also some...

In Tuesday's TeachT@lk Webinar, we talked about creating questions that challenged and engaged students in discussions .We talked about starting with knowing your objectives, and then using Bloom levels to scaffold questions from "Remembering" to "Creating". We evaluated some questions, and wrote our own after learning about the Rise Model and 4 Stages of a Discussion, and how to pose questions that drove students further into content for deeper learning. To support this type of learning, we watched a video on three technologies for the ASU Community, including BlackBoard, Turning Point and Piazza (links are below). Finally, we talked about why having Student-Generated Questions was a great way to involve them in the learning, and we highlighted some activities like: Student FAQ wikis Student Generated Test Questions Using the K-W-L exercise to help students focus on questions before class Be sure to join us for the next webinar on February 21....