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| Whether this is your first time or tenth time you’ve taught a course, it is always good to run through a few checklists of things to consider:
1. Your syllabus: This comprehensive article by Kevin Gannon titled “How to Create a Syllabus” offers practical advice, innovative strategies, and thoughtful insights into making a syllabus be a tool for fostering a positive learning environment and clear communication with students. |
Teaching, Tech, and Tidbits Digest
The posts below are from a bi-weekly digest that encapsulates a range of evidence-based best practices and cutting-edge insights on innovative teaching strategies, effective use of technology, student engagement techniques, and effective assessment, to name a few. The content, diligently curated or crafted by the director Dr. Lew Ludwig, is grounded in robust research and drawn from a wide array of innovative articles, books, and online resources. The goal is to support timely, ongoing faculty development with the most current and impactful knowledge in the field.
Teaching: Library Scavenger Hunt
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| Rebecca Kennedy (Ancient Greek & Roman Studies/Environmental Studies/Women & Gender Studies) caught Megan Threlkeld (History/Women & Gender Studies) in the act of some great teaching. Megan writes:
I use a Library Scavenger Hunt with my advising circles and my W101 but you could adapt it for any class. I have refined it a lot over the years, and this version works well for me. |
Teaching: Course Evaluations
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| Getting ready for that dreaded email
My least favorite email of the semester will soon be in my inbox- “Your course evaluations are now available on myDenison” (or something like that). Yes, I’ve been teaching for over thirty years, yet this email still causes a twinge in my stomach and a slight increase in my pulse. |
Tidbit: Cultivating Growth Through Discomfort- Balancing Compassion and Challenge in Polarized Times
In the wake of a contentious election, our classrooms might reflect the polarized dynamics of our society. Should we retreat to avoid offending or creating tension? Instead our friend Mays Imad suggests adopting a pedagogy of discomfort, as she describes in her piece “Teaching and Learning through Discomfort.” This approach offers a framework for addressing classroom tensions by encouraging vulnerability, critical reflection, and engagement with opposing viewpoints.
Tech: Download Your Courses, especially the gradebook, and Why Use Canvas Chat First?
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| Spring semester is around the corner, and we have two important recommendations to help your Canvas life run smoothly:
First, we strongly recommend that you download your courses so that you have your own copy. We especially recommend that you download your entire gradebook as a .csv file (see image below). Having a folder with past gradebooks can be helpful in writing recommendation letters, especially in the case of Alumni. |
Teaching: The Challenge of Forgetting- Why Students Don’t Retain Everything We Teach
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| Imagine it’s the beginning of the second semester, and you’re teaching the next course in a series. You mention the topic covered just last fall- a topic you yourself taught these very students- and they stare at you blankly. How could they forget so soon, you wonder?!
It turns out, the brain is a very efficient machine. |
Teaching: Cultivating Trust, Honesty, and Disclosure in the Age of AI
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Missed our recent Teaching Matters discussion on “Cultivating Trust, Honesty, and Disclosure in the Age of Gen AI”? We had a great turn out of folks who came together to share their ideas and experiences. Here are just some of the highlights:
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Teaching: Experimenting with AI Disclosure
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| Thursday (11/21/24) from 11:45-1:00, I am hosting a Teaching Matters session entitled “Cultivating Trust, Honesty, and Disclosure in the Age of Gen AI.” It is an opportunity to share our experiences with student-use of AI for our writing assignments and to generate ideas around helping students make better decisions about how and when to use generative AI to complete assignments. |
Tidbit: Getting ready for course evaluations
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| Whenever colleagues invite me to observe their classes for formative feedback, I always ask them to share two or three specific aspects they’re working on and would appreciate input on. For instance, they may want to engage more students in discussion, effectively wrap up with a summary in the last five minutes, or improve how they organize board work. |
Tech: Optimize Learning Using Library Links Instead of PDF Downloads in Canvas
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| Our library subscribes to a wide range of scholarly article databases, giving you and your students access to thousands of high-quality research articles. While downloading a PDF and posting it directly to Canvas may seem convenient, linking to the article through the library’s website offers important benefits.
Why Link Instead of Uploading? |