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What if the key to reducing student stress and improving performance wasn't about being more lenient, but about being more strategic? Post-COVID research indicates that small, evidence-based changes to deadline policies can significantly reduce anxiety without compromising academic outcomes. Even better, these changes particularly benefit first-generation students and those balancing work, family, and mental health challenges. This isn't about lowering standards; it's about designing policies that support both learning and wellbeing.

Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI) is more than a compliance checkbox, it’s a way to design courses where interaction drives learning. This teaching tip reframes RSI as a shared practice across four channels: Instructor → Student, Student → Instructor, Student ↔ Student, and Student ↔ Community. You’ll find a quick self-check for the first two weeks, simple scripts and grading nudges that turn feedback into dialogue, and low-lift structures that help students help each other. A concrete example shows how community touchpoints (interviews, artifact “bring-backs,” and a final portfolio) keep interactions purposeful and academic. The result is a course culture where presence is predictable, responses are expected, and students practice habits of asking better questions, building on evidence, and closing feedback loops, which translates to deeper engagement and higher persistence.

This teaching tip offers advice for crafting lectures that are clearly connected to course objectives, visually and cognitively accessible to students, and supportive of methods for review and retention.

In-person teaching requires attention to the classroom environment and social dynamic. To create a positive learning space, many scholars turn to the theory and practice of hospitality, arguing that it can be literally enacted in the classroom. This Teaching Tip explores pedagogical hospitality and offers practical suggestions for creating a welcoming class space.