Quick ideas to implement in your classes tomorrow to improve teaching and learning.
One of our UMPI Academic Commitments is “A clear and fair grading system”. Do your students know how their final grade is determined and can they keep track of their own progress? If you have set up your gradebook in Brightspace, there are some important settings to make your grading process transparent for your learners.
Teacher Confirmation Theory (Ellis, 2000) explains how instructor behaviors communicate to students that they are valued, respected, and capable of learning. These confirming behaviors reduce psychological distance, increase motivation, and improve affective and cognitive learning outcomes. The theory identifies four core dimensions: willingness to engage, recognition, acknowledgment, and endorsement.
Faculty feedback is an essential component of the learning process. Research suggests that the modality of the feedback is most effective when aligned to the task type and learner needs.
When students are provided with practice or application assignments after learning new content, they often use incorrect strategies because they do not fully understand the underlying concepts. You can prevent this ineffective struggle by providing students with worked examples when introducing a new skill or process.
It’s important to identify missing students as soon as possible in the beginning of the semester and to encourage those who have not yet engaged. A simple way to do this is to create a small assignment in Brightspace that all students should submit to by the end of the first or second week of class. After the due date, click on the name of the assignment in Brightspace, and then click Email Users Without Submissions. This will open a new email draft window with the students who have not submitted the assignment in the BCC field. Send a quick message to remind them about the assignment and to let you know if they are having issues with the course.
While there are mixed feelings about generative AI among faculty and students, it’s undeniable that AI is not going away and will continue to become embedded in all aspects of life. Even if students choose not to use it, they still need to understand how it works and ethical implications of its use. Who is going to teach them this?
You may or may not be ready to use generative AI for teaching and learning, but there are so many other uses. These large language models are really good with language, so if you need something well-written in a short amount of itme, try out one of the AI tools we have access to, like Gemini, Copilot, or Perplexity.
One of the challenges of teaching is reaching every student. This can be especially difficult in distance courses where you don’t have a chance to grab a student after class to check in on them.
Rubrics are handy tools for providing clear expectations and consistent feedback to learners, but students also welcome authentic feedback that sounds like it came from you. You can add your own “voice” through the commenting tool on the rubric in Brightspace or by adding multimedia feedback.
I had the pleasure of attending a session on the Science of Meaning with Dr. Todd Kashan from the Well-Being Lab at George Mason University. According to his research, the three primary drivers of meaning in life are: (1) coherence, (2) significance, and (3) purpose. How can you use this in your teaching?