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...

Despite the best efforts of the instructor or designer of a course, instructional efforts can often fall flat due to poor planning and implementation. Courses are often designed around learning materials rather than around what skills or knowledge students should have at the end of the course. This can potentially lead to disengagement from students, content bloat, burdened student cognitive loads, and ineffectual or sub-premium learning experiences. Backward Design, formalized and outlined by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe , aims to alleviate this issue through planning and consideration designed around student learning outcomes. In this TeachT@lk, Jeremy Hopper and Haily Tyler discuss the benefits of the Backward Design framework. Where to Begin? As the name would suggest, backward design starts at the end and works backward. In this case, the end is the learning objectives or learning goals. In other words, what the students should know or be able to do by the end of the course. ...

On Tuesday, March 21, we hosted a TeachT@lk Webinar on creating and managing online assessments. There were 3 main topics: Structure: Planning rigorous assessments that are aligned with objectives Tools: Effectively using Multiple choice, and tutorials for setting up Blackboard exams Integrity: Encouraging students to make good choices through pedagogical, technological and community pressures. Peter van Leusen lead the discussion on using Quality Matters standards to align content, and how RPNow can be set up to record students. Amy Pate shared "cheathouse" websites and what they do. The discussions among the participants was active and collaborative. Below are the links to resources and the recording of the session. Slides Recording Links Handout