You spent tons of time on it, now how to get your students to read your syllabus? In this video I share five easy-to-enact tips that I use for my syllabi. The five step are based on this short Chronicle piece. These tips are based on the more detailed article, How to create a syllabus.
Teaching Tip – TTT
Articles and resources to empower your teaching experience.
Teaching – Giving Students a Why
Showing compassion for our students but maintaining expectations is a tricky balancing act. This short Chronicle article, The Power of Telling Students Why, argues that we should explain to students why we have specific policies, rules, or deadlines. If we can’t, then maybe those things should be reconsidered. As noted in the article by one respondent:
“I think it’s a form of respect for our students,” she continued, “to be able to have a why, and where we don’t have a good one, really then thinking about whether that’s a policy we can do without.”
Teaching – Want to Bolster Creative Confidence, Improve Team Performance, or Try Something New?
The Red Frame Lab is here to amplify your learning outcomes with tools from design thinking and professional development modules used by RED Corps, Red Frame Consulting, and several of your fellow faculty. Last semester we teamed with Global Commerce, Psychology, Anthropology/Sociology, Data Analytics, and Environmental Studies classes as well as 18 Advising Circles. Ask your colleagues about their experiences.
Teaching – Six Steps for a Successful Group Project
While there is a wealth of evidence to support collaborative learning, I often shy away from assigning group projects. As a student, when given a group project, I often felt like I was carrying more than my weight. If goals and expectations are not well laid out, students can find group work frustrating.
To make your group projects more successful, consider the six tips in this short Focus article.
Teaching – A Tongue in Cheek look at RateMyProfessor.com
When the review site RateMyProfessor began in the early aughts, a colleague at a larger state school obsessed over their score. Teaching large lecture courses of 150 students, my friend used the rating system to determine what their students really thought. Clearly, not the most healthy approach to course feedback.
In her Humurous advice for students’ negative reviews of professors (opinion), Susan Muaddi Darraj notes that nobody in academe will admit to checking RateMyProfessors, but we all do, secretly, at night, on our smartphones.
Teaching – Answering Student Questions
Classes have started! Students are curious. They will have lots of questions for us. This short piece from Faculty Focus gives us Five Strategies for Mastering the Art of Answering Questions When Teaching and Presenting.
Teaching II – Speaking of Your Syllabus…
Do your students know where to look for help? As we are laying out that new class or revising a familiar one, consider the tips in this Chronicle article, How Your Syllabus Can Encourage Students to Ask for Help.
Students don’t read your syllabus? Recall this TTT deeper dive video where I give tips on getting your students to engage with your syllabus, based on a short Chronicle article.
Teaching – Considering Language when Creating an Inclusive Learning Environment
As we look at the semester ahead, now is an excellent time to reflect on our syllabus and other materials – do they set an inclusive tone? This article from the Teaching Professor provides an easy-to-read list of suggestions to make your materials do just that.
It is also a good time to revisit this TTT piece from Kaly Thayer, our Coordinator for Multilingual Learning, with tips on ensuring our grading and expectations do not privilege one group of students over another.
Teaching – Be good to your future self: The importance of self-reflection assignments between essays
As we sit down to grade that last stack of papers, did our students learn from subsequent assignments? That is, did students look at the graded work you returned and take the comments and suggestions to heart? In my experience, they more often look at the grade at the top, then move on.
In this concise piece from Faculty Focus, Julia Colella provides a self-reflection rubric she requires of her students after an essay assignment is returned.
Teaching – Be good to your future self: What Is the Purpose of Final Exams, Anyway?
As we head into final exams, several recent articles have reflected on the nature and need for the traditional final. In this Chronicle piece, Kevin Gannon – the tattooed professor – reflects on the nature of final exams and whether they serve the purpose we intend. In Exams Reimagined by Beckie Supiano, she shares examples of how professors are reimaging their exams.