Guide students through your course
A few well-placed visuals may help students find their path through your course. Consider providing both a course calendar and a course map to guide them.
Category Teaching Tips
Giving students choice
What happens when we put students in the director’s seat in terms of what, when, and how they learn and what might that look like in a course? There are many examples of democratizing the educational experience through a range of institutional and classroom levels and across the K-20 progression. There are likewise many opinions on this idea from steadfast proponents and those in opposition. In this Teaching Tip, we’ll take a brief look at imparting more academic power to students – the benefits, practical considerations, and potential pitfalls.
Collaborative annotation brings context and conversation
Annotating helps a reader engage with, analyze, and comprehend a text. Online, collaborative annotation tools afford these benefits plus the opportunity to interact with peers and other annotators around the world.
Interface literacy for faculty and students
You probably use hundreds, if not thousands, of gestures, keyboard commands and icons every day to navigate the web, perform various actions on a device and interact with others. Doing this in a skilled way is called interface literacy, and it’s an emerging literacy that faculty not only have to acquire themselves, but also must impart to their students.
Free online resources for professional development
Many of us don’t have the luxury of attending software training workshops or classes to learn how to use products like Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Excel. Having access to just—in—time training is really important in helping us get our jobs done. Finding reliable resources to help learn to use software and technology in your teaching and learning can sometimes be a challenge.
Caption your course videos to benefit everyone
Video captions benefit everyone and make a video more useful as well as accessible. Making your videos accessible with captions meets the needs of all students.
Bring your expertise front and center
Let go of some of the how. How will the student generate the video? How will the student submit his or her paper? Focus on the what and the why. Grab your list of learning objectives and analyze course learning experiences and assessments to determine if they support students progressing toward course outcomes.
How to use podcasts in class
Podcasting has been a pedagogical player in the education arena for a number of years. Both face-to-face and CTL-supported Instructors can use podcasts to provide students with on-demand listening materials.
Why you might want to share work in the open
If you have chosen to teach in the open, there are many tools you can use such as WordPress. There are a few reasons you may be conducting some or all of your course in a space outside of the confines of Blackboard. Read this tip for a few ‘whys’ as well as how you can learn more about Community.
Create “microlearning” for reinforced learning
Social media is full of short bursts of content pushed out to viewers to be accessed when and where the viewer has time. You can do the same thing with “microLearning:' simple, short and concise learning opportunities that reinforce learning.
Collect student viewing data in Kaltura Mediaspace
Kaltura Mediaspace, UAF’s video and media delivery platform, gives users greater control over their videos than similar platforms (like YouTube). Instructors can view analytics of videos they deploy from their media gallery inside of Blackboard.
Creating Templates with Google Apps
Similar to Microsoft Word, Google apps support the creation of templates for documents with particular pre-formatted layout and style requirements. Templates are a simple–often overlooked–tool for saving time by eliminating the repetitive processes of formatting and layout. Templates help reduce cognitive overhead by allowing users to focus on creating content.