The number of best practices for technology implementation, the scaffolding of skills, practice opportunities, inclusivity, and collaboration can be overwhelming when considering adjustments to a course design. The list is long, but as always these ideas are meant to be part of a large interwoven tapestry rather than isolated practices. There are methods for integrating efforts across these best practices to get as much use out of a single course interaction as possible, thereby reducing the burden on you and your students (and bloating your assignment list or syllabus). One of my favorite areas of the course to apply this concept to is in the first week of school during course introductions. Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels Why Introductions? I’ve spoken about course introductions and first day of school activities before in the blog posts ““ Ice Breakers” and Community Makers: The Importance of the Introduction in Online and Face-to-Face Classrooms ” and “ More than “Syllabu...

One of the beautiful things about a semester is that we are banded together in a learning experience for a specified period of time. Every class we teach has a unique makeup of students from all across the university. Many will be from different majors and all of them will have different backgrounds, cultures, and ways of seeing the world. It, therefore, becomes important to establish a community where students know their peers and are comfortable speaking to them. We also want them to see the instructors as part of this community, not just as wizened sage, but as a guide for their learning and experiences. This poses the question “How DO we establish a supportive community of learning in our courses?”. This can be largely based upon our introduction activities that pave the way for all other interactions in a course. We need to “ break the ice ”. In both online and face-to-face teaching modalities establishing community is important for creating space for discussions, as well as effec...