Technology can extend access to content and enrich an educational experience, no doubt. But the flipside is that it can also, unwittingly, create barriers. All learners’ abilities and disabilities affect how they consume information, apply concepts, and achieve mastery. This, in turn, requires everyone involved in course design, development, and delivery to consider and evolve instructional practices. That said, trying to account for all the elements of accessible course design can be dizzying, leaving you with more questions than answers. It can make you wonder how you’ll be able to identify every element, how you’ll ever manage to learn all the skills necessary, and whether you’re getting it “right” when you finally do. (For the record, there are certainly best practices , but the only wrong thing to do is nothing!) In any given situation, having too many priorities often translates into having zero priorities. To avoid this pitfall and begin formulating a plan, simply ask yourself, ...

Active learning has been recommended as a more effective way to teach when compared to traditional lecturing, yet active learning can be implemented in many different ways. One common approach in active learning is to ask students to share out their thoughts either with other students or in front of the whole class. These social interactions can be fruitful for hearing different perspectives and building classroom community, but they also can present challenges because they create a larger number of opportunities for a student to feel judged based on their answers. This worry of being judged, or fear of negative evaluation, has been shown to be a problem in active learning, particularly for students with anxiety . Implementation of Active Learning In two interview studies, one with students from a research institution and a second with community college students , students reported that how active learning is implemented matters. Answering a question that is timed based on accuracy...

Summer is here (feeling the heat!), and hopefully, you can set aside a bit of time to spend on developing yourself professionally! In the School of Life Sciences Teaching Innovation Center (TIC), we’re reading evidence-based articles this summer and meeting to discuss them to grow in our teaching practice. We did this last summer and found it to be successful! We invite you to join us in reading one article each month for June and July. We will meet virtually to discuss the key takeaways and how we can implement the strategies provided in the articles for our courses. Bonus: in June, the first author of the article, Student Perceptions of Instructor Supportiveness: What Characteristics Make a Difference , will be joining us to share their research and answer questions we have.  TIC Summer Reading Group Sign-up to receive invitations to the conversations! We plan to meet via Zoom on Fridays, June 25 and July 23, from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Arizona/PST time. June 25 Schussler, E. E., Wea...

In summer 2020, I attended a Grading Alternatives webinar put on by the Teaching Innovation Center (TIC) . Josh Caulkins (previous Assistant Director) and Sarah Prosory (Instructional Designer) shared a number of intriguing ideas that, for better or for worse, I decided to try to implement in my spring “boutique” course Parasites and Their Relatives. The big one is specifications grading. This idea has been featured in this Inside Higher Ed article, this Robert Talbert, Ph.D . article, and more fully in the book Specifications Grading: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, and Saving Faculty Time  by Linda B. Nilson. (No, I did not read the book.) The essential philosophy is to make grades more like badges, like indications of a completed contract, and less like value judgments. All assessments are considered either “complete” or “incomplete” according to a detailed rubric. The final letter grade is based on a predefined basket of completes, with the number and/or level of asse...