I believe letting my personality shine through the way I teach “humanizes” the online learning experience. One of the ways I have tried to do this is through my office hour sessions. I have developed some ways to inject a little more of my personality and enthusiasm for vertebrate life through additional activities the students can engage with at their discretion, including: Supplementary lectures exploring certain topics in the course in more detail, such as phylogenetic reconstruction methods Software tutorials such as Mendeley citation manager and using Google Scholar to locate and browse  primary sources Livestreaming my research activities, such as preparing vertebrate natural history specimens, and talking  with students about how they could perform similar activities at home with their dissection specimens Perhaps most importantly, guided pre-exam study sessions and post-exam review sessions.      None of these activities are required of course – my ...

It might seem like a no-brainer , but creating inclusive courses requires putting in the time to examine the way we write and speak. After all, we don’t all have the same culturally influenced lexicon . This week the Teaching Innovation Center’s instructional designers Sarah Prosory and Lenora Ott , discussed ways our written and spoken language can be clarified to create a better course experience for learners.  Universal Design for Learning The presentation explored the Universal Design for Learning Principle 2: Language and Symbols, Checkpoint 1: Clarify Vocabulary and Symbols. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Guidelines are based upon scientific exploration of how humans learn and take into consideration burgeoning research from the fields of education, psychology, and neuroscience. The final goal of UDL is “to change the design of the environment rather than to change the learner”. The guidelines set forth by UDL help instructors create learning environments that accomm...