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 ...

Why are some courses a dynamic, meaningful, and lasting experience, while others inspire lukewarm engagement and results despite the instructor’s best efforts? In his excellent new book, Super Courses: The Future of Teaching and Learning , higher-education and pedagogy expert, Ken Bain, goes beyond typical course checklists and explores how teachers foster a natural critical learning environment, where activities and collaborations are designed around questions and challenges that students are intrinsically curious about and find deep and emotional value in solving. The book is filled with stories and syllabi of real-life examples of these super courses and begins with a concise analysis of 18 characteristics that were consistently observed in Bain’s research. Here are the 18 characteristics, paraphrased for brevity, and supplemented with examples that could be used in face-to-face, hybrid, or fully online courses: Core course design and policy: The course is centered around big, inte...

Students are more tired than ever before and it’s impacting their well-being . In 2020, we suffered through a pandemic, social unrest, and a lot of uncertainty. We are now four months into 2021 and there is no clear end in sight. Although the prospect of vaccines and social justice accountability gives us hope, we can not discredit that students are still struggling and may continue to struggle for months to come. Not to mention it is the end of the academic semester, where motivation and energy are lacking for students and instructors alike. Students are hard at work studying for finals and putting the finishing touches on culminating projects. Many students respond to these increasing demands in classes by putting in longer hours (i.e, all-nighters), which in turn takes a toll on students’ overall wellbeing. What we know from Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab’s Hope Center and the #RealCollege movement is that basic needs have a significant impact on student success. When students aren’t doing w...