Tech Tip from ETS: Show your students some love through Canvas

Students appreciate accessible and well-designed Canvas courses. ETS is here to help you amp up your Canvas course through: 
  • Department sessions: Invite us to attend a department meeting to explore new Canvas features, discuss strategies for connecting with majors/minors, and address other areas of interest.
  • Self-Review: Use our guide to evaluate your Canvas course and implement best practices for student engagement and comprehension.

Continue Reading

Teaching: Student Mental Health

In a previous post, I shared insights from Bonni Stachowiak, host of the “Teaching in Higher Ed” podcast. As featured in the Chronicle, she highlighted a mental health crisis as one of the three significant changes in higher education. This week, I’d like to dive deeper into her concerns.

The Chronicle article, ‘Why Students Can’t Work on Their Own,’ addresses what many faculty members are likely already experiencing: a significant decline in students’ ability to complete substantial independent work since the pandemic.

Continue Reading

Teaching: What Does It Really Mean to Learn

Typically, we publish one TTT (Teaching, Tech, and Tidbit) every two weeks, featuring articles, resources, and more. During alternate weeks, we issue ‘In the Center,’ which highlights upcoming events.

I am breaking the cycle this week because Catherine Stuer shared such a fantastic New Yorker article that I wanted to get it in your hands as soon as possible.

Continue Reading

Teaching: Three big shifts in education

I’ve been beating the AI drum pretty hard, so I will let our friends in ETS share an AI resource I found last week. It’s a fantastic guide—be sure to check it out!

This week, I’m circling back to a piece, Simple ways to support student mental health in class, that Becky Supiano featured in her Chronicle newsletter at the beginning of August.

Continue Reading

I’m familiar with AI. Now what?

Are you already pretty familiar with generative AI? Ready to try more advanced prompting? Our friends at the UCF’s Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning, led by Kevin Yee, have created a terrific resource: AI Hacks for Educators. Kevin and his group offer more than 50+ AI uses with detailed prompts that you can copy and edit for your purposes.

Continue Reading

From fear to familiarity

In May, I had a conversation with Adam Weinberg about the use of generative AI and its implications for higher education. During that conversation, I recommended two things:
  1. Read Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick, of the Wharton School of Business
  2. “Play” with some form of generative AI for at least 10 hours

When we met last week, Adam shared his enthusiasm for Mollick’s book—he even purchased copies for the entire senior staff!

Continue Reading

Restoring Trust in the Age of AI

Trust is a peculiar thing. It is not unique to humans—I think my dog trusts me—but it is clearly something that chatbots do not possess. In his recent piece in The Chronicle, ‘Why We Should Normalize Open Disclosure of AI Use‘  Marc Watkins aptly notes that “Teaching is all about trust, which is difficult to restore once it has been lost.”

Continue Reading