Drop by the Coulter Faculty Commons Course Design Studio (HL 166) or join us on Zoom during one of our Open Swim Sessions. The Zoom link is https://wcu.zoom.us/j/8282273276.
Even though we have themes for each day, anyone is welcome to drop in with any question or need on any day!
How many days do you log into Canvas and interact with the students? How quickly do you give helpful feedback on activities and assessments? Do you set your students’ expectations by including an email/discussion response statement in your syllabus?
Why do we pose these questions? Frequent interaction and purposeful engagement with students are a hallmark of excellence in teaching and learning. It looks different depending on whether you are teaching in-person, hybrid/blended, or online. We ask students in our in-person courses to log into Canvas every day to see announcements, their grades and feedback, and content. This provides opportunities to increase engagement with students outside of the scheduled classroom time. For hybrid and online faculty, we can use best practices to increase engagement with students who may be residential or remote.
Faculty who teach online regularly or occasionally should be aware of Regular & Substantive Interaction (RSI), a regulation from the Department of Education that went into effect July 2021. RSI is a determination of whether an online course is a correspondence course (which doesn’t qualify for Federal financial aid) or a distance education course. These recommendations also apply to in-person teaching.
Fortunately, we have resources like the Quality Scorecard from the Online Learning Consortium to help us identify how we are meeting RSI and areas where we may need to improve our efforts. Over the next few months, we will share the criteria with suggestions on how to put them into practice.
The scorecard is divided into 6 sections: Course Overview and Information, Course Technology and Tools, Design and Layout, Content and Activities, Interaction, and Assessment and Feedback.
Let’s look at the first two sections.
Remember, these RSI standards are useful in increasing student engagement in any modality!
Next up in this series:
Designing for Student Engagement using RSI
The CFC would love to partner with you to design, redesign, or make improvements to your Canvas course. Let us know what you need through our Consultations Scheduling Page.
Source: Regular and Substantive Interaction, SUNYOnline – https://www.sunyempire.edu/dlis/design-your-course/regular-and-substantive-interaction/
Learning outcomes help us identify and clarify the end point or destination of a learning experience. If we don’t know where we are going, we can get lost or wander all over the place. A course then becomes a bloated unorganized mess.
We use Fink’s Taxonomy for Significant Learning to create observable and measurable course learning outcomes.
This resource from the teaching center at the University of Buffalo provides a discussion of the taxonomy and how to use it to write your course outcomes.
https://www.buffalo.edu/catt/develop/design/learning-outcomes/finks.html
Click on the image on the right to download a PDF version of the graphic
3rd post of 9 in the Small Teaching Series
Small Teaching by J.M. Lang presents methods for making small changes in your teaching practices (hence the name) that can significantly improve your students’ learning. Each chapter provides the research-based evidence behind the practices Lang proposes so you can have confidence that Lang’s ideas work. The Coulter Faculty Commons will be boiling the Small Teaching chapters down into blog posts to provide instructors with concepts they can apply to a lesson, a class, or a course.
“A rose by any other name…” (from Romeo & Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2)
Lang had to call it something, so interleaving it is. I must admit that I was a bit disappointed that interleaving didn’t involve some sort of quantum-level warped space-time learning technique. The truth is a bit more mundane as Lang explained interleaving as, “… the practice of spending some time learning one thing and then pausing to concentrate on learning a second thing before having quite mastered that first thing, and then returning to the first thing, and then moving onto a third thing, and then returning to the second thing, and so forth. In short, it involves the process of both spacing and mixing learning activities— the spacing happening by virtue of the mixing” (Lang, 2016, p. 68). That’s not as cool as a tachyon generator powered by a bucket of dilithium, but infinitely more practical.
Lang noted the combination of interleaving and retrieval (covered in an earlier blog linked below) implies that all major exams should be cumulative (cue the student groans). This does not mean that the third major exam should be evenly divided between the material from the first two exams and the material from the third unit, but that each exam should harken back to what has previously been learned and assessed. The revisiting of material shouldn’t be limited to major exams either. Lang proposed three ways to work this concept into your classroom instruction:
In the section on Principles, Lang discusses last the value of explaining to your students the benefits of interleaving, how it is incorporated into the course assessments, and the nature of short- and long-term learning, but I think it is vital your students understand the reasoning behind your course design. If you don’t, interleaving may appear as a serious case of “this instructor doesn’t know what they are doing.”
To recap, here are the interleaving quick tips that Lang proposes:
Small Teaching Blog Series
1: Retrieving 2: Predicting
It’s BACK!!
The Summer Institute of Teaching & Learning is back after a two year COVID hiatus. We will gather together in person on May 10 & 11th in HHS 204 for sharing and conversation.
We are keeping it low key this year. Come to relax, learn something new, and enjoy good food and conversation with your peers.
The keynote speaker will be Dr. Sudhir Kaul, Professor, School of Engineering and Technology, and the 2022 UNC Board of Governor’s Teaching Award winner from WCU.
Lunch is provided on both days – registration is required.
Agenda:
Tuesday May 10:
9:00-9:15 am – Welcome
9:15-10:00 – Student Engagement in the Times of a Pandemic Keynote: Dr. Sudhir Kaul, Professor, School of Engineering and Technology, BOG Teaching Award Winner, 2022
10:15 am-Noon – Workshop 1 – How to Engage with Students in any Modality
Noon-1:00pm – Lunch
1:00-3:00pm – Workshop 2 – The First Steps: Instructional Design or Redesign
Do you want to design or redesign an assignment, assessment, content, part of a course, or an entire course? This interactive session will get you started with brainstorming and an action plan to get you through the summer
3 – 3:15 – Summer Beach Read
3:15 – 3:30 – Sharing and Next Steps
Wednesday May 11:
9:00-11:30am – Workshop 3 – Student Engagement through Assessment and Grading in Canvas
11:30am-12:30pm – Lunch
12:30-3:00 pm – Workshop 4 – Undergraduate Students as Research Partners
3:00 – 3:30 pm – Sharing, Next Steps, and Closing
Registration
Use the QR code to access the registration form or https://wcu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1FX4RGQqj1AjF54
Looking forward to seeing you!
Summer Institute of Teaching & Learning
May 10 & 11, 2022
HHS 204
Use the QR code below or go to the Registration Form
We are excited to announce that the Coulter Faculty Commons is seeking applications and nominations for three Faculty Fellow positions for the 2022-23 Academic Year. We invite all full-time Tenure, Tenure-Track, and full-time Non-Tenure Track faculty members to join us in making an impact on teaching & learning at WCU.
For the upcoming year, the CFC is particularly interested in fellows who can develop and expand programming in the following areas:
In support of the university’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, this fellow will work to develop a course design and teaching seminar in Canvas focusing on inclusive pedagogy and facilitate the seminar in the spring 2023 semester. The seminar will be in collaboration with the WCU DEI Community of Practice Training and Professional Development group.
This faculty member will work with members of the Faculty Partners team in the CFC in mentoring/supporting new faculty during New Faculty Orientation and Faculty Forward, our yearlong symposium. The Fellow will also be trained to facilitate the mid-semester Teaching Assessment Protocols as part of supporting new faculty. The fellow will also have input on content, resources, and opportunities for engaging new faculty, either new to teaching or new to WCU, and facilitate at least one of the monthly conversations.
Depending on the faculty member’s interest, this fellow will work on developing a mentoring program at WCU or take a lead in refining and co-facilitating the Online Course Design Institute and the Teaching Online with Impact Institute. The mentoring program will start from the ground up and the Online Course Design and Pedagogy program will expand on the existing offerings the CFC has in place.
The fellows will be working collaboratively with the Director, current members of the Coulter Faculty Commons, and various other constituents across campus. The fellow will have a dedicated working space in the CFC but can also work remotely, and will attend the Faculty Partners meetings each week. The estimated time commitment is 2-4 hours per week. The faculty selected for these positions will be provided with a $1000 stipend in each academic semester (Fall 2022 and Spring 2023) and a $500 stipend for one summer session.
Applications for the 2022-2023 year will be accepted from all full-time Tenure, Tenure-Track, and full-time Non-Tenure Track faculty members. The application deadline is April 15, 2022.
Completed applications should include a current vita, a brief letter of interest that clearly addresses the candidate’s qualifications and interest for the position, and a letter of support from the applicant’s chair or director. Applications should also clearly communicate the candidate’s intended area(s) of focus in at least one of the areas described above.
Completed applications should include a current vita, a brief letter of interest that clearly addresses the candidate’s qualifications and interest for the position, and a letter of support from the applicant’s chair or director. Applications should also clearly communicate the candidate’s intended area(s) of focus in at least one of the areas described above.
Applications are open through April 15, 2022
Contact Dr. Eli Collins-Brown, Director, if you have any questions. ecollins-brown@wcu.edu, or x7196.
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