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…
One of the many benefits of using the Canvas LMS for course delivery is the platform’s strong focus on universal design principles and accessibility. Universal design principles improve the experience for the broadest set of users. Universal design allows for…
This time of the year can be especially stressful for many students with finals quickly approaching and preparing to transition for the semester break. Through your interactions, you may become aware of your students expressing feelings of anxiety, fatigue, depression,…
The end of fall semester is rapidly approaching and soon we’ll be planning our classes for spring. Of course, part of this process is refreshing course syllabi. A syllabus is the document that serves as the key to the course…
We can never guarantee total safety or know what feels safe to all students. However, we can do our best to promote conditions of relative safety. Why is establishing relative safety in our learning environments so important? Let’s start with…
Barrier-free teaching practice involves embracing everything holistically throughout your course and activities. This Teaching Tip provides some ideas and resources for how to think about your course through a non-exclusionary lens.
Sending a welcoming message to students at the beginning of the semester is an important step in designing an effective online course. Intentional design and language choices in the announcement can create a lasting positive impression.
The Online Course Evaluation Rubric serves as a framework for making notes on and progress toward preparing your course for next semester. Several instructional designers worked together gathering important course elements into categories with evaluative statements to jumpstart your review.
Research shows that a learner-centered syllabus increases positive student perception of the course and instructor, and generally leads to better learning outcomes. Here are specific ways you can update your syllabus to be more learner-centered.
You may have plans to work on your course over the winter break, and this is the perfect time to do some focused reflection on how things went this semester. This Teaching Tip presents suggestions for questions to ask when doing a self-critique in preparation for revision.
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…
On November 19th, Jody Hassel engaged UAF faculty and other participants in dialogue around trauma-informed pedagogy. This workshop was part 2 of 2 in a series sponsored by UAF’s Faculty Learning Community on Trauma-Informed Pedagogy. View the workshop and post-workshop…