Are you looking to make your course readings more engaging?  Are you looking for improved ways for your students to collaborate and learn together? Consider using the tool Perusall , now available for all ASU courses. Perusall is a collaborative annotation tool for readings that allows for discussion, comments, and questions as students are learning the content. It’s a great way to promote active learning through on-topic peer collaboration, to make readings more engaging (and ensure that students logged in and read the material), and address student confusion quickly and easily. For hybrid courses, consider asking your students to read, annotate, and discuss your learning materials before coming to class so you can collect everyone’s thoughts and take it a step deeper in-person. For fully-online courses, you can use Perusall to have authentic discussions around the content with the ability to ask and answer questions as students are learning the material similar to how a stu...

Videos in the online space are now more important than ever. With the move to teaching remotely, many instructors have started wondering how to implement videos in their course or revisit the ones they have created that are already there. In this TeachT@lk, Kena Ray and Sam Miquirray from The College Dean’s Office touch on using videos to maximize lecturing and learning. Why do we use videos? What makes them effective and, once we have them, how do we reach our student audience? Why we use them Videos create connection and, as social creatures, humans look for those connections. Students feel more connected to their instructor(s) when they know a real human is behind the screen looking at the work that they are submitting. They can pick up on social cues through videos and interaction and, in turn, are able to meet and enhance the learning outcomes of a course. How we make them effective When instructor-made videos are aligned with learning objectives, students learn exact...

As classrooms are becoming more diverse, teaching practices should become more inclusive toward all groups. Cultural competence, the shaping of lectures to be more inclusive toward different cultures’ beliefs, has become a more common practice in many university classrooms, yet it is routinely ignored when teaching evolution to religious students (Barnes & Brownell, 2017). This negligence can cause religious students to perceive the biology community as hostile and develop an even greater conflict between religion and evolution, but there are teaching practices that can decrease this perceived conflict (Barnes & Brownell, 2017). Hostility of Biology Professors Toward Religion Biology and religion have historically been at odds with each other, and despite their dualistic nature, continue to be perceived as incompatible by some biology professors and religious students (Rissler et al., 2014; Pew Research Center, 2009). There have been reports by religious students that biolo...

How can we act individually to promote inclusive classroom spaces? When the daily structure of classes are up to so many factors, pin-pointing a single source to propagate positive change in educational settings can seem far-fetched. This is because it is. Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire strongly believed that cultural shifts require equal efforts from both sides of the system. In other words, if marginalized students are putting in the effort for a course then it should follow that those responsible for teaching said course are putting in an effort for the marginalized students. Educators with authority in these spaces can have profound impacts by creating space for others. When creating inclusive spaces, I’ve learned that there are three important concepts that need to first be understood. The Space You Occupy In a classroom, to not only grow your own set of skills but somebody else’s is an amazing opportunity that should not be wasted.  To make sure this doesn’t happen, f...

Do you know what sources your students are using to get their information? Do you feel you're on the same page with students about factual information, whether for current world issues or simply the information shared in class?  Can you determine what is real or what is fake? Will your students be able to? This week's webinar focused on building digital media skills with your students.  Presented by Kristy Roschke , Ph.D, Managing Director of the news Co/Lab at the Cronkite School, and hosted by Joshua Caulkins , Assistant Director of Undergraduate Programs in the School of Life Sciences, this presentation is timely to our current situation, with misinformation being shared every second.  Digital Media Landscape & Media Literacy At the start of her presentation, Roschke explained that with an increase in consumers of news and the opportunity to create media, we are headed further down the path for misinformation. Yet, when everything looks the same we relax into ...