Trying Something New In Your Course

Here are a few ideas to consider when trying something new adapted from Tips for Teachers.

Can I improve something I am already doing? 

Before looking to make wholesale changes to your teaching, based on your reflections, identify practices you already do and look for ways to improve them. This should take less time and effort and give you a platform of success upon which to make further changes in the future. For example:

Instead of several worked examples that you have to whiz through, choose one or two that you have thought carefully about. Spend time going through them. Consider modelling them in silence first, and then using carefully considered self-explanation prompts/questions to give students a better opportunity to understand the process.

How will I know if the idea works? 

How are you going to know if the idea has been a success or not? The more objective the measure, the better. For example:

If you are looking to boost your participation ratio by using tools like (Top Hat or PlayPosit), track the number of times you see responses from all students.

What will I have to stop doing? 

This is the question that gets asked the least, and yet is so important. Trying something new may mean you have to no longer do something else. This plays out in two ways: A new idea in the classroom may mean you have less lesson time to do something else. Is that a sacrifice worth making? Planning a new idea may mean you have less planning time to work on something else. Is that a sacrifice worth making?

Quick Tip: End of Semester Planning

The following are a few ideas adapted from the SUNY Teaching and Learning center, that may help you prepare for the Spring semester, and/or update your teaching portfolio:

Keep a copy of your syllabus and each assignment you design

Your teaching portfolio may include a range of syllabi and assignments you’ve designed. Make sure you keep a copy of syllabi, assignments, and assessments so that you have as many options as possible to choose from for your teaching portfolio. As the semester ends, you might make small notes about the genesis of a certain syllabus theme or assessment. These brief notes may prove useful later when you are asked to talk about your approach to teaching or ways you have developed as an instructor.

Is there an article?

Think about the larger impact of practices from your courses this semester. Did you try something new: a new assignment? A new classroom design? Reflect on your pedagogical practices and what new learning experiences they opened up. Is there something you want to write about and share with other instructors?

There are several journals geared toward articles about pedagogical practices, including the International Journal of Designs for Learning https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/ijdl/index

Think about revision

It’s possible that you might teach this course again or a course in which you’ll use similar activities or assignments. Even if you don’t think you’ll teach this course in the next semester, take a few minutes to think about what you want to keep, what you want to revise and keep, and what you want to toss totally when you teach the course again.

If you annotated your syllabus throughout the semester, then read through those notes and make a ‘to do’ list or a quick summary of them so that, when you return to planning, you have some guidelines for how to jump back in.

If you didn’t annotate your syllabus, take a few minutes to jot down a few notes about what readings, assignments, and so forth that you absolutely want to keep, or what new ideas you have that you want to try next time. Think about the feedback you received from students through both formal and informal evaluations. How can you incorporate this feedback into your next class?

A small pocket of time at the end of the semester can help you get ahead for the next semester.

Record of grades & attendance

Students may come to you a semester, a year, or even a couple of years after you’ve had them in your class. You’ll likely have engaged with dozens or hundreds of students since then, and the records you keep will be helpful in refreshing your memory.

Consider keeping any of the following that are not stored in Canvas:

• any unreturned papers (such as final exams, final papers, etc)

• your attendance records

• course syllabus, grading policy documents, and all rubrics and assignments

• student emails (you don’t need to print them, but perhaps keep them in a mailbox folder)

Sample Papers and Standout Examples

You might want to keep a few papers on hand as examples to share with a class or models that you can work through, critique or peer review with future students. Make sure you get each student’s permission and preference for name/no name on the paper. You might consider sending out an announcement or including on your syllabus that all work that is submitted can be used anonymously for “future educational purposes,” and asking that students who wish to be excluded from this policy email you. Additionally, if there are standout examples you might want to keep them for your teaching portfolio.

As always, please let me know if I can support you in any of the efforts mentioned above.

Teach AI

TeachAI is an educational resource designed to help education leaders and their communities realize the potential benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) while addressing the potential risks. While the site is primarily aimed at K-12 educators, it integrates resources specific to higher education, such as Strategies for Teaching Well When Students Have Access to Artificial Intelligence (AI) Generation Tools from George Mason University. The site features a toolkit which aims to:

• Create a vision statement or set of principles and beliefs.

• Integrate AI guidance into academic integrity, privacy, and responsible use policies.

• Inform classroom practice, school policies, and professional development.

The toolkit addresses seven principles for using AI in education:

1. Purpose: Use AI to help all students achieve educational goals.

2. Compliance: Reaffirm adherence to existing policies.

3. Knowledge: Promote AI literacy.

4. Balance: Realize the benefits of AI and address the risks.

5. Integrity: Advance academic integrity.

6. Agency: Maintain human decision-making when using AI.

7. Evaluation: Regularly assess the impacts of AI.

With the goals of emphasizing the following:

• Guidance Leads to Transformation: Guidance and policies coupled with organizational learning can set the stage for improvement and transformation across the system.

• Don’t Ban AI, #TeachAI: The AI Guidance for Schools Toolkit aids education systems in a thoughtful transition to guiding the safe, effective, and responsible use of AI.

• Realize the Benefits and Address the Risks: Rather than just acknowledge the opportunities and risks of AI in education, the toolkit provides suggestions for mitigating risks so potential benefits can also be realized.

The Steering Committee that sets the vision and strategy for TeachAI is staffed and operated by Code.org, in collaboration with the Educational Testing Service, the International Society for Technology in Education, Khan Academy, and the World Economic Forum.  While the Advisory Committee consists of individual, organizational partners, and supporters from academia,

Teaching Workload Planner

This customizable Teaching Workload Planner was designed by Loleen Berdahl, the executive director of the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy (Universities of Saskatchewan and Regina) to help faculty work through a personal plan for navigating their teaching load.

This document provides a list of considerations for planning out your teaching workload by dividing task amongst two categories; “Things within my personal control” and “Opportunities to streamline my workload”. Embedded within the document are resources such as a:

• Syllabus Design Bootcamp 

• Strategies for developing assignments

• Suggestions for minimizing academic misconduct,

Interactive Lecturing

In the book,  Instructional Moves for Powerful Teaching in Higher Education, there is a chapter on the advantages of interactive lectures. The writers note, “a traditional lecture may feel like an effective, efficient means of communicating information, but when instructors use class time to only profess what they know without interruption, this deprives students of opportunities to think critically about that information and meaningfully apply it”.

Interactive lecturing is defined by Elizabeth Barkley and Claire Major in their book of the same name as  “the process of combining engaging presentations with carefully selected active learning methods to achieve intended learning goals.”

The chapter focuses on ways to dedicate class time to repeated practice with skills. For example

• Providing students with a “Preview of Class” slide, which offers students a snapshot of what to expect during course. (This is an advance organizer)

• A reflective question that allows students to think about the items mentioned in the preview slide and time to write down what they know about the topic based on their own experiences (Activating prior knowledge).
  

• The instructor allows a few students to share their reflections, and where possible, makes connections between their reflections and the required reading. As the lecture continues (over 3 hours) she continues to highlight connections. “Over time, students’ comments become increasingly stitched into the lesson’s tapestry”.

Other considerations shared in the chapter are:

• Keep lectures brief. Resist the urge to lecture expansively. Few students can sustain interest and attention during them. Opting for shorter lectures—or brief bursts of lecture throughout lessons—can maintain student engagement and help students better access your expertise. You might also consider the benefits of an “unpolished lecture” for the lesson or your discipline.

• Guide students into lectures. Give students time to arrive at a place of focus. Activate students’ prior knowledge. Center their experiences. Invite students to position themselves within a lecture’s key questions, problems, and concepts. Steps like these can provide helpful scaffolding before a lecture, allowing students to better access new information.

• Offer students multiple ways to engage…from quiet reflection and small group discussion to a metacognitive exercise. Consider interspersing lectures with a similar level of variety to keep students on their toes and welcome all types of learners into lessons.

• Exercise transparency with students. Demystify your field—and your teaching practice—by exposing your thought processes and rationales to students. Use lectures to model how experts think through problems in their disciplines. In addition, making clear why a particular assignment holds value for one’s intellectual development can improve student motivation.

• Try metacognition. Successful students self-regulate and are highly attuned to their thought processes. This helps them to focus during class and persist through challenging content and tasks. Kimberly Tanner recommends explicitly teaching students metacognitive strategies like keeping reflective journals or having students track confusion in their thinking. You might also try modeling metacognitive processes yourself during your lectures.

• Tell stories that stick. The stories we tell our students can mean the difference in their understanding and retaining a given concept. Humor, when deployed appropriately, can have the same effect Make your stories conversational but concise, as too many details may distract from key points and keep students from seeing their conceptual relevance.

The book is one of many resources connected to the Instructional Moves (IM) website based at Harvard University’s School of Education. The goal of IM is to help you incorporate and refine high-leverage teaching practices tailored to the higher education context. Other features include:

• A searchable and sortable library of “raw clips” that faculty developers and others leading professional learning can use as text for rich conversations about effective teaching practices.

• A new module on Educating for Equity and Inclusion, featuring four pathways which instructors can utilize individually or as part of a learning community.

• Three new professionally-edited “IM Live” videos, each of which showcases a demonstration of teaching followed by a facilitated debrief with the featured faculty member.

• An updated and expanded facilitator’s guide detailing ways to leverage site content, including all three of the new types of resources described above.