klnewman4

Kendell is a writer, teacher, and designer with 9 years of experience in project management and instructional design. With her B.A. in Political Economy, she worked in social science research in Cambridge, MA before coming to UAF for an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, which she completed in 2015. She is a listener, a problem-solver, and a creative collaborator. She values innovation and inclusion in education and works hard to make higher education accessible and responsive to all. She is the Manager of Faculty Development, an Instructional Designer, and LION Liaison

Inclusive Practice, Teaching Tips

Recentering relationships for learning

Visualization of three-dimensional emotional space

Students thrive in our classrooms when they connect with each other, with the subject matter, with themselves and with us (Quinlan, 2016). Positive connections motivate student engagement and improve academic performance. This was true before the pandemic, when we could…

klnewman4
January 12, 2022

Emerging ideas, Teaching Tips

Building student engagement with Zoom

A 3x3 grid of illustrated people who look as if they are tuned into a web meeting.

We’ve all become Zoom experts in the last 10 months. But we’ve also gotten used to the platform and how we use it. Could we be more creative? What could we change about how we use this tool to create more meaningful synchronous experiences for our students?

klnewman4
February 9, 2021
1 Comment

Emerging ideas, Inclusive Practice, Pedagogy, Teaching Tips, Trauma-Informed Pedagogy

Trauma-informed practices for finals

For some of us, the COVID-19 pandemic is one of the deepest experiences of trauma we’ve had. Trauma can be defined as “any experience in which a person’s internal resources are not adequate to cope with external stressors” (Hoch et…

klnewman4
November 24, 2020
2 Comments

Best practices, Teaching Tips

Reflecting on 30 years of distance and online education

Heidi Olson managed paper-based correspondence courses in the ’80s, supported UAF’s first online offerings in the late ’90s, and has handled thousands of online courses since. She retired last week. Read her reflections on these changes over time and advice on giving students the best possible learning experience.

klnewman4
July 14, 2020

Best practices, Teaching Tips

Use student conferences to develop positive rapport

Two people meeting with books and a laptop

Research shows that the relationships between students and their instructors in a university-level course is “one of the most important factors' contributing to student success. Use student conferences to give and receive feedback and build relationships that will improve everyone’s engagement in the course.

klnewman4
February 10, 2020

Emerging ideas, Teaching Tips

Cancel your final

Colorful seats in an empty lecture hall.

Give everyone a break from the stress of traditional finals and infuse a new sense of purpose in your final assessment with these suggestions for alternative final assessments.

klnewman4
November 4, 2019

Best practices, Teaching Tips

Practicing project management

As the semester settles into a rhythm, the more daunting but less urgent projects that we’ve put off are beginning to demand attention. But where to start? Make a plan, commit to a practice and voila, the only work you’ll have to do is the work, not the managing of the anxiety about the work.

klnewman4
September 29, 2019

Best practices, Inclusive Practice, Teaching Tips

Support students’ basic needs

Human hand placing cubes etched with symbols of food, clothing, housing, and medicine on a table.

If we learned anything this summer, it’s that working under conditions of uncertainty and crisis makes it hard to get the work done. This is equally true for students, and it is true at the macro-level of statewide budgeting as…

klnewman4
September 8, 2019
1 Comment

Pedagogy, Teaching Tips

Facilitate active learning online

We learn better when we are involved in constructing our own knowledge. Some of us know this from experience — it’s why we do research, why we collaborate, why we ask our kids questions when we read to them. But…

klnewman4
June 17, 2019

Best practices, Teaching Tips

Reflecting on your teaching

With all the logistics that go into wrapping up the semester, it’s hard to think about almost anything else — painful to think about the whole semester that you’re just trying to move beyond. But of course, as teachers we…

klnewman4
April 29, 2019

Emerging ideas, Inclusive Practice, Teaching Tips

Try inclusive class agendas

An agenda creates transparency and welcomes inclusion in the classroom. If these are qualities you strive for in your teaching, consider these principles for creating open, inclusive class agendas.

klnewman4
March 31, 2019

Pedagogy, Teaching Tips

Journaling for reflection and critical thinking

Reflective writing can help us carry ourselves through processes of change. Learning is a process of change and research shows that journal writing can support students across disciplines in connecting with and making meaning of their learning.

klnewman4
July 24, 2018