On November 4, 2021, The Teaching Innovation Center hosted a workshop titled “Scale Up: Successful High Enrollment Courses”. The “Scale UP” series focuses on expanding access in undergraduate programs (UP= undergraduate programs). The workshop featured explorations of online and immersion coursework “to scale”, the direction of the growth in the School of Life Sciences, and insights from an EdPlus instructional design team specializing in high enrollment courses. Speakers included: Kate MacCord , PhD, Instructor, SOLS Zachary Shaffer , PhD, Lecturer, SOLS Jill Roter , Principle Instructional Designer, EdPlus Dee Mullins , Instructional Designer, EdPlus Scot Schoenborn , Director of Academic Services SOLS Lenora Ott , Instructional Designer, Teaching Innovation Center What is “scale”? and what is High Enrollment? You may hear the term high enrollment often at ASU and it can mean different things to different people. It might be some magic number at which an instructor is given TA supp...

Everyone is on Slack right now. Including me, as I write this blog! Oh, you aren’t? I’ll do my best to help you make the leap! What is Slack anyway, and what makes it different from, say, the AOL Chatrooms of yore? And even if it is special, how can you effectively use it in classrooms? It’s time to Level Up Immersive Conversation Using Slack! In Part 1 of this series, we talked about Yellowdig as an online social media platform that lives in your Canvas course fully equipped for online asynchronous discussion and immersion synchronous discussion. It has auto-grading capabilities and can help learners organize thoughts about the course around major themes. Its gamification features ensure learners stay on topic and contribute consistent and quality posts and replies. Slack is different from Yellowdig, but can also be used to enhance your classes. Here are some of the major features of Slack. Independent workspace , Slack is not a Canvas embedded tool. It’s an independent workspace for...

When I work with faculty that teach immersion (students in the classroom) many of them are worried that if they teach online or hybrid they will lose what they feel is the cornerstone of the classroom experience: collaborative discussion. And it’s true, for many years we’ve been constrained by a model created in old-style internet forums using threads and responses. At first, they were exciting (maybe), but for many of us they’ve grown stale and the conversations contrived….or non-existent. But we shouldn’t abandon hope that online asynchronous discussion is possible and important. If anything, the rise of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Discord have shown us that not only are many of our students capable of meaningful asynchronous interaction, but a large part of their social existence depends on it. So why don’t we have meaningful conversations in our own asynchronous classroom discussions? Why do students “go behind our backs” to create a Discord? (Will they please let...

Do you often feel frustrated with the way discussions in your online course end up? Is everyone repeating the same thing? Are you reading essays in discussion forums, rather than genuine conversations about the topic? Consider changing your mindset and approach to course discussions through a new discussion pedagogy, that leads to authentic course conversations! Three ASU instructional designers, Abigail Smith , Steven Maierson , and Sarah Prosory , teamed up for a recent webinar to review where we are at with current online course discussion boards, the typical pedagogy that goes along with them, and why it is inadequate. Then they shared a new approach and tool to make discussions become authentic conversations that lead to better student engagement. Where We Are With Course Discussions Let's face it, online discussions are not the same as face-to-face discussions in a classroom. We hear often that "the magic is gone" in online discussions, and they are not interesting ...

Imagine sitting in the audience at a large conference and you had a question. You think to yourself, “should I ask it?” but then overthinking, nervousness, and anxiety come to play, forcing a larger part of your consciousness to rely on someone else to ask that question for you. This is a decision that students in your classes are experiencing, and not all students experience this to the same extent. Student participation as a way to engage students: what you should know A common way for instructors to maintain an active and engaged classroom is by allowing their students to participate in front of the class; this teaching practice is sometimes known as the “Socratic Method” and can serve as a way to help students stay engaged and to critically think ( Garside 1996 ). Instructors will often use this method because they think it can benefit everyone in their classrooms, but little research has been done in large-enrollment science courses. Is whole-class student participation equally be...

Today more than ever we are competing for our students' attention within the world of unfolding events. We are instructing across a variety of platforms both asynchronous fully online, and synchronous, hybrid, virtual face-to-face. It can be difficult to establish our course as paramount in our students minds. However, with a little planning we can help students see the intersection of their studies within the world around them, rather than just in an academic silo disconnected from their daily life. We’ve all heard students whisper that the first day of school in any course is “syllabus day”, a day in which an instructor reads over their syllabus document and points out any pertinent information and answers students questions about the workload for the term. It’s no secret that some students admit to skipping what they believe will be a “syllabus day”, because after all, they can read the syllabus at home. Although fully online students will not have this synchronous meeting to di...

Most scientists agree that the theory of evolution is a foundational concept in understanding biology, yet it remains rejected by nearly half of the college student population ( Barnes & Brownell, 2018 ). With religious students making up a large percentage of the student body on college campuses across the United States, it is important to consider how the way we teach evolution may impact religious students as they integrate the scientific view of evolution with their religious beliefs. One influential factor in religious student acceptance lies in the debate of whether you can believe in God and still accept evolution. A new study has shown that the ability of religious students to perceive evolution as agnostic – not being able to say whether there is or isn’t a God- rather than atheistic – saying there is no God- increased their comfort in learning and understanding evolution and also increased their acceptance of evolution. Bridges and barriers to being both religious and ...