How do you know if your instruction is effective? What evidence do you look for? Are you looking to see if your students are engaged? Are you looking for performance on assessment?
Determining instructional effectiveness requires measures of a variety of data points, both formal and informal. Before your next class, choose your ruler: this could be degree of eye contact, correct-ish answers when cold calling on students, quality of posts on the discussion board, fewer questions about what to do on the next assignment, number of questions correct on a quiz, etc. The data points are endless. But, if you want to improve your effectiveness, you need to know what you’re looking for.
Need help coming up with ideas for data and measures? Reach out to CTL at umpi-ctl@maine.edu. Let us know if you are interested in piloting the iClicker platform in use at UMaine for synchronous and asynchronous courses to collect more data and improve learner engagement. Their enterprise agreement includes access for about $3 per student.