Get prepared for next semester in one hour a day
By spending an hour a day updating your course over the holiday break you’ll be ready to go. There are 26 days between when Fall Grade are due and the first day of Spring classes.
Category Teaching Tips
Get started with new and improved Google Sites
There is a new version of Google Sites and it is really easy to use! Need to make a quick website for your class materials? Want to have your students create simple websites for presentation or other activities but not get bogged down with technology? In this Teaching Tip, we check out the fancy new Google Sites, now available at UA Google Apps for Education.
How to blend the world into your classroom
When the world feels too big to shut out of your classroom, do you close the door or do you invite in what’s on the minds of so many? Integrating current events into your course is not only engaging for students, it teaches them to approach challenging conversations as learners and to defend their positions with evidence.
Shape student achievement with early contact
It is well known that rapid responsive communication with students can help eliminate the feeling of isolation in online classes. The question for instructors isn't so much how often you should communicate with students, but how early and in what form? Using one of the tools provided to all University of Alaska faculty, this teaching tip offers the idea of very early, pre-semester email communication with students. The end goal is to positively shape expectations and achievement.
Five Google app add-ons for teaching
By design, Google Applications offer bare-bones formatting and functionality, but sometimes you need additional features to support your purpose. This week's Teaching Tip introduces five add-on like the Google Doc Highlight Tool which allows you to designate a certain color of highlight with a theme. Once done, you can gather those selections, organize them by themes, and share the results with others. Explore more!
Creating significant learning experiences
Our purpose as instructors is to facilitate new student understandings. But, what are understandings? Are there different kinds? It seems they can be simple, such as remembering the elements of the periodic table, or extremely complex, such as discovering new knowledge about oneself and one’s relationship with the world.
Get to the point using animated GIF instructions
Is it possible to distill instructions to mere seconds using an animated GIF? While reading the Google product blog, I noticed they use this strategy to illustrate new functionality within their apps. These short demonstrations helped me understand new functionality without requiring me to launch the actual application and click around.
Encourage students to build professional online portfolios
On a flight from Boston to Seattle a couple years ago, I was sitting next to a young man who told me that he was in his final semester in computer engineering at M.I.T. and he was going for his first interview at a big company, which he was pretty excited about.
Help students make connections in your class
Last year I spent two days in a cold hotel conference room in Dallas practicing how to build connections between group members. Connecting individuals increases their chances of building community. Building community helps with success.
Lying, deceit and effective teaching
The subject of the lie has been pondered, defined and debated over centuries, across cultures and in various situations. Lies come in many forms, some harmless, others pernicious. Is there any place for lies in the classroom? You may wish to consider these examples before reflecting on that.
Weave meaning and media with interactive maps
Maps are a natural and efficient way to communicate spatial information. More than serving as tools to help us think about physical space, they are useful for visualizing and organizing information within the context of a particular place. Maps provide a concrete landscape on which to present a story tied to a place that can provide visually compelling interpretation of data.
You’re not alone! And your students aren’t either
The physical space of a campus blends student support into the learning environment: on the first day of school, students taking face-to-face courses walk onto campus, stroll past the library, the Writing Center, and their advisor's office on the way to your class. They greet their classmates who, a few weeks into the semester, are the ones they will ask when they’re confused about your instructions.