Category Teaching Tips

Transformative Learning in Your Class

Climbers at the top of an outcropping, overlooking a boreal forest.
In the summer of 2012 the University of Alaska Board of Regents approved revisions to Policy 01.01.030 — University of Alaska Fairbanks Mission Statement and University of Alaska Fairbanks Core Themes. Contained therein was this vision statement: "Excellence through transformative experiences." How can we aspire to such a lofty goal? What is the intersection with teaching and learning? And, how might you go about fostering such things in your courses?

Learning in Context: How Place-Based Learning Fosters Deeper Connections

A stylized illustration of diverse-looking students sitting cross-legged in front of a world map.
What if the key to deeper, more meaningful learning lies right in front of us—in the places we live, work, and play? In Learning in Context: How Place-Based Learning Fosters Deeper Connections explores how connecting students to their local environments and communities can transform the learning experience. Drawing on both research and my own teaching experience, this article offers practical strategies for integrating place-based learning into your courses, whether you teach in person or online. From local data collection to virtual tours, place-based learning taps into students’ lived experiences, making course content more relevant, engaging, and impactful. Ready to explore how this approach can be incorporated into your teaching? Dive in to discover the profound effects of learning in context.

From Campus to Career: Adapting Higher Education to Modern Hiring Trends

Illustrated people moving multi-color puzzle pieces around a stylized environment.
In recent years, hiring practices have undergone significant transformations, accelerated by the impact of COVID-19. In response, higher education institutions are re-evaluating their roles in preparing students for the evolving job market. Microcredentials have emerged as a valuable tool to bridge the gap between academic learning and practical job skills. These credentials provide a verifiable way for students to showcase their competencies and align with employer demands for problem-solving, communication, and teamwork skills. Despite the shift away from traditional degree requirements, a college degree combined with relevant microcredentials is increasingly preferred by employers. This article explores how higher education can adapt to these changes by integrating microcredentials into their programs, enhancing students' employability, and aligning educational outcomes with market needs.

Using Social Annotation to Support a Classroom Community of Practice

A close-cropped image in an analog film style showing more hands writing on colorful sticky notes and sticking them to a wall in a brightly lit office. The sticky notes are messily arranged, overlapping and scattered in a chaotic way on the wall. The notes are vibrant and feature the letter 'D' handwritten on them in various sizes and styles. The image retains a nostalgic, grainy texture, typical of film photography, with diverse hands actively writing and placing notes on the wall.
Communities of practice in the classroom create opportunities for transformative learning experiences, ones in which students take ownership of their own learning experiences and actively foster a collective learning environment. Social annotation is a tool that leverages collaborative learning to support communities of practice, and can increase student engagement and performance.

Unlocking the Potential of Students as Partners

A graduate shaking the hand of faculty at graduation
Meaningful and equal collaboration between students and instructors can be a transformative experience for both parties, but achieving that goal often seems elusive. This teaching tip explores the possibilities of pedagogical partnership programs as one tool to build successful partnerships in the context of the UAF Center for Teaching and Learning's LEAP program.

Enhancing Connection and Flexibility: Integrating Optional Synchronous Sessions into Asynchronous Online Courses

Young adult students sitting outside and working on a project. One student holds a laptop.
While many courses at UAF are offered and listed as asynchronous, nothing prevents the inclusion of optional synchronous sessions. This teaching tip offers advice on a variety of different kinds of synchronous activities that you might consider as adding to your course as supplemental ways for students to connect with each other, you, and the content.

Q&A on AI Text Detection

A student working on a laptop in a cabin while a humanoid robot leans over his shoulder.
Are there any tools that can reliably detect if writing was created with artificial intelligence? No. No, There are no tools which can reliably detect AI-generated writing. This teaching tip covers the current state of automatic AI detection and where it falls short of being reliable, and illustrates why this trend will continue. More importantly, this teaching tip presents some methods in which faculty content experts can determine if writing has been created with AI.

Slow Pedagogy

Caption: A Possible Framework for Slow Teaching with Technological Enhancements from Shaw, P. A., & Russell, J. L. (2013). 19 Determining Our Own Tempos. To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development, 32. http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/tia.17063888.0032.023
Slowing down the teaching and learning process can be a challenging endeavor amongst the business of modern academic life. Slow pedagogy is a teaching movement that offers a lens and practices for reducing the pace and pressure of education. Slow pedagogy suggests that taking one’s time can offer opportunities for deeper learning and connections.