Fall semester is upon us and like many folks in higher education, the Teaching Innovation Center (TIC) is preparing to return to the classroom. Uncertainty follows us as we transition into the classroom and many are feeling the anxiety of how to return to normal. In the last few weeks, I have felt the pressure of everyone trying to go back to the way things were, and what we really ought to focus on is reimagining education to what it could be. In reimagining education, students and educators are reflecting on what worked during remote learning  and what could be improved in a (sort of) post-pandemic world. As you find yourself bracing for the fall semester, here are three tips that you might not think of: 1. Edit your syllabus language.  Updating your syllabus language is crucial between each rendition of a course, and especially important as we return to the classroom. Faculty and instructors in the School of Life Sciences  (SOLS) at ASU need to edit syllabi language r...

Last week we introduced the many ways the Teaching Innovation Center  (TIC) partners with faculty, instructors, and lab coordinators in the School of Life Sciences  (SOLS) at ASU. This week, our faculty are speaking to their experiences working with the TIC team and the impact it has had on their courses. Here's what they have to say:  Carolyn Compton, MD, Ph.D. Course:  BIO 394: Medicine - Getting In, Being In, and Going Beyond Modality: Online The Project: I chose to work closely with the Teaching Innovation Center for several important reasons. First, the course with which the TIC is helping me is entirely unique among undergraduate offerings, both in goals, content, and format - a unique combination of content, variety of superb expert instructors, exercises in self-knowledge, and career preparation. There is no “standard formula” for such a course and no objective information to be tested, so evaluation (grading) is challenging. Second, the course is intended f...

The Teaching Innovation Center (TIC) is a center within Arizona State University (ASU) dedicated to the design (and more) of School of Life Sciences (SOLS) courses. Meet our core team! Top row (from left to right): Amy Pate , Sarah Prosory , Lenora Ott Bottom row (from left to right): Christy Jersin Woods , Tiffany Lewis Our Partners Although our team is small, our network is mighty, and we couldn’t bring many of the services we offer to SOLS without the help and support of our partners in  EdPlus , VisLab ,  CogBooks , the  RISE Center , JEDI initiatives , Learning Experience (LX) Design , and our incredible student-worker team. At TIC, we believe in a collaborative model to give faculty and instructors the best resources. Here are a few partners that we work with frequently: Student Workers: Tiffany Lewis, Ciarra Downing EdPlus : Taylor O’Kelley, Jill Roter, Peter Van Leusen, Dee Mullins CogBooks : John Ball VisLab : Jacob Sahertian, Megan Joyce, Jo Ramirez, Samantha ...

You may have heard Aesop’s fable of The Tortoise and the Hare . The two are pitted against each other in a race. The Hare is confident in his speed making him the clear winner, against the Tortoise’s slow and languid gate. The speedy Hare stops for a nap, and the Tortoise passes him and wins the race. The moral of the tale adds up to “slow and steady wins the race”. But what if we could learn from both the Tortoise and the Hare in our course revision and instructional design practices and win the race together? Tortoise: Managing Workload Over Time As instructors, we may be very much aware of the things we love about our courses or those that we wish we could change. Sometimes the small suggestions of an extra assignment, more active learning, updated readings, recording new lectures, updating an outdated learning technology can be…overwhelming. The Tortoise is the prime example of how to approach this process. Slow and steady. We are in our teaching for the long haul. We don’t need to...