Jumpstart Your Semester with the CFC: Week Zero is Here!

by Anabel Livengood | Jul 21, 2025 | Active Learning, Assessment, Blog, Canvas, Faculty Development Workshop, Teaching and Learning

Week Zero

Looking to start the semester with confidence? The Coulter Faculty Commons (CFC) is launching a brand-new initiative this fall: Week Zero, a series of practical, faculty-focused sessions running the week before classes begin from August 11–15.

Designed to help you hit the ground running, Week Zero offers workshops on assignment design, Canvas, accessibility, and active learning. Whether you’re completely new to teaching or you’re looking to brush up on your teaching toolkit, there’s something for everyone.

With just four weeks to go until kickoff…

… now is the perfect time to:

Sign up for sessions that spark your interest

OR

Schedule a consultation with the CFC team if you’d like more tailored support

Register for Sessions

Week Zero Schedule

Schedule a consult

We hope to see you there!

2025 SoTL Design Institute Ignites Faculty Innovation

by April Tallant | Jun 5, 2025 | Blog, Faculty Development Workshop, Professional Development, Research, Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, Teaching and Learning

In May, the Coulter Faculty Commons hosted the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Design Institute at the Waynesville Inn & Golf Club, bringing together faculty from across disciplines to explore how classroom questions can become publishable research.

Led by SoTL expert Dr. Laura Cruz (Penn State) and supported by Western Carolina faculty panelists Susan Braithwaite (Health Sciences), Chip Ferguson (Engineering and Technology), and Katharine Mershon (Philosophy and Religion), the Institute offered sessions on framing meaningful research questions, research design, and Institutional Review Board (IRB) considerations, all in service to excellence in teaching and learning. The agenda focused on helping participants align their curiosity with methods that transform everyday classroom practice into evidence-based inquiry.

Many left energized by the realization that any teaching curiosity could become a SoTL project. “It is fantastic to know that there are experts in the CFC who can help with design,” one attendee noted.

Faculty are already planning classroom changes, emphasizing metacognition, involving students in research, and using SoTL to guide innovation. The Institute planted seeds that will grow into engaged classrooms and impactful scholarship. Participants will be supported by the CFC throughout the summer with personalized coaching sessions and into the fall through a Write and Learn Collaborative, designed to help them implement classroom innovations, share progress, and support one another through dedicated collaboration and focused writing time. For more information about SoTL, please contact April Tallant atallant@wcu.edu.

Registration Open: Faculty Forward Program Spring 2025

by April Tallant | Jan 14, 2025 | Blog, Collaborative Learning, Discussions, Educational Development, Faculty Development Workshop, Pedagogy

The Coulter Faculty Commons is excited to offer our expanded Faculty Forward Program again this Spring!
All faculty members in their 1st-3rd years at WCU are eligible. Faculty Forward is a learning community designed to help new faculty boost their teaching self-efficacy while connecting with their colleagues across campus. Topics for the spring include methods of instruction including dynamic lecturing, discussions, and collaborative learning.

Meetings will be held on select Thursdays from 12:45-1:30 PM. Our first meeting will be held Jan 30. If you are in your 1st-3rd years at WCU and you are interested in joining us, please register. Read more about Faculty Forward and if you have questions, contact Faculty Forward facilitators Dr. April Tallant (atallant@wcu.edu) or Dr. Alesia Jennings (acjennings@wcu.edu).

“Feeling Seen and Appreciated”: Student Feedback Preferences

by Eli Collins-Brown | Sep 8, 2022 | Be Present-Mindful, Blog, Faculty Development Workshop

Guest Bloggers: Candy Noltensmeyer and Lisa Bloom

Feedback is an integral part of the learning process. Many studies have examined feedback from the instructor’s perspective to enhance student learning. However, there is less research assessing how students perceive different types of feedback and their usefulness.

Feedback is often a struggle for professors as it can be quite time consuming. Additionally, faculty are often left not knowing whether students have reviewed the feedback. On the other hand, some of us have heard students complain about the lack of feedback from professors. This leads us to wonder what kind of feedback students actually want.

Well, we asked students the question, and they responded with only minimal reminders to complete our survey! We asked students about 3 specific types of feedback, written, audio, and video, and what they liked, disliked, and how each type made them feel. Additionally, we asked them to rate whether the feedback was engaging, easy to access, and easy to understand. Participants from courses in Education, Communication, and Integrated Health Sciences responded to Likert-type questions on a scale of 1-5 as well as open-ended questions.

What we learned

Overall, students reported a preference for video feedback. While accessibility and understanding were ranked slightly higher for written feedback, video and audio closely followed. Students struggled a bit with accessing audio files. Students mentioned that replaying audio and video files was a bit cumbersome when searching for specific feedback, while they preferred the ease of skimming written feedback. But when it came to engagement, students really preferred video feedback. Most striking is the overwhelming number of comments about feeling connection and care from the feedback, audio and video in particular.

Topic	Audio		Video		Written
The Feedback was…	Mean	Broad Agreement	Mean	Broad Agreement	Mean	Broad Agreement
Engaging	4.40	86%	4.59	91.9%	4.12	78.7%
Easy to Access	4.05	76.2%	4.65	91.9%	4.67	93.9%
Easy to Understand	4.51	90.7%	4.68	91.9%	4.52	92.9%

Here is what the students told us.

Audio feedback

“It made me feel proud of my work and happy to do such a good job on it. I enjoyed hearing the professor’s enthusiasm.”

“I liked how I was able to hear your tone and it was much easier to understand compared to reading off feedback (sometimes it’s confusing on paper).”

“I enjoyed hearing my professor’s voice- especially with this course being delivered in an asynchronous, online fashion. I enjoyed the verbal insights!”

“It felt much more personalized. Rather than a few words, or sentences that seem pretty generic, the audio feedback really gave me that feeling that my work was being read and analyzed.”

Video feedback

“The video feedback just made me feel more seen and appreciated.”

“It made me feel like I was one on one with the professor and sometimes is hard to come by in college.”

“During COVID, it has been weird to not be able to see my professors’ faces, so it was nice to be able to fully see their faces. It also felt more personal and somewhat like a conversation even though the professor was the only one talking.”

“Made me feel like a student rather than just a number with a generic response.”

Written feedback

“I understand that professors can’t write a book of feedback every time they grade something, but it just never feels like enough to go off of. It feels like I am getting the bare minimum amount of help.”

“It feels detached from my work and I feel like there is not as much effort with written feedback.”

In summary, students do appreciate feedback. They are looking for feedback not just regarding an assessment of their performance and how to improve, but feedback is also a vehicle for relationship building. As you are grading your students’ work, consider the audio and video feedback options afforded by Canvas. We found these options to take only a little extra time, and the results were definitely worth it. The benefit comes in building strong relationships with students which translates into more engaged learning and positive classroom environments. Students perceived feedback as evidence that they have been seen, heard, and regarded as individuals amongst a sea of others. So, while you might be swimming in ungraded assignments, remember, that your feedback has the potential to be the life preserver that keeps a student engaged.

Small Teaching: Predicting

by John Hawes | Apr 21, 2022 | Active Learning, Assessment, Blog, Collaborative Learning, Discussions, Faculty Development Workshop

2nd 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.

“Once more unto the breach…” (from Henry V, spoken by King Henry)

Lang references “the connected nature of knowledge” (p. 48) to clarify how prediction aids learning. The example he offers is that of a comparison between a history student and a history professor. Given the date 1865, a history student would recall that it was the year that the American Civil War ended. A professor of history would also recall the events leading up to the surrender of the Confederate Army at Appomattox, Chamberlain’s rendering honors to the defeated troops, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the ultimate failure of Reconstruction, and countless other bits of information that are connected to that date. The fact that the Civil War ended in 1865 is relatively useless in itself, but knowledge is derived through the “web of connections” surrounding that date. Lang posits (and the research supports this) that when confronted with the need to answer a question (predict a result) with insufficient information compels the brain to seek out any possible related information on the subject. This process creates and reinforces the connections in the brain and begins building knowledge.

Lang suggests the following methods to give your students the opportunity to refine their powers of prediction:

At the beginning of the class, unit, or course, give students a brief pretest on the material. For example, give an opening-week pretest that is similar in format to the ﬁnal exam.
Prior to ﬁrst content exposure, ask students to write down what they already know about that subject matter or to speculate about what they will be learning.
When presenting cases, problems, examples, or histories, stop before the conclusion and ask students to predict the outcome.
When you are teaching a new cognitive skill (e.g., writing in a new genre), let students try their hand at it (and receive feedback) before they feel ready.
Close class by asking students to make predictions about material that will be covered in the next class session (p. 60)

Of course, predicting doesn’t always result in a correct answer. Our theoretical history student might have thought that 1865 was the year the Civil War began. Lang cautions that immediate feedback (or as immediate as practical) is important to keep inaccurate facts from getting entrenched. It also has the benefit of helping students identify gaps in their knowledge or as Lang put it, vaccinate them against the illusion of fluency. In the case of a pretest, it also lets your students know what kind of information they will be assessed on in the future, so they can adjust their study practices appropriately.

Small Teaching is available in the library as an ebook and is one of this summer’s Beach Reads! Email John Hawes (jhawes@wcu.edu) if you are interested in joining a casual reading group this summer! Summer Beach Reads

As always, if you’d like to discuss these or other ideas with the Coulter Faculty Commons you can schedule an appointment at https://affiliate.wcu.edu/cfc/consultations/

Lang, J. M. (2016). Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/hunter-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4455000

Summer Institute for Teaching & Learning (SITL)

by Eli Collins-Brown | Apr 20, 2022 | Active Learning, Blog, Canvas, Classroom, Educational Development, Educational Technology, Faculty Development Workshop, Summer Institute for Teaching & Learning (SITL)

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!

SITL Registration

Summer Institute of Teaching & Learning

May 10 & 11, 2022

HHS 204

Use the QR code below or go to the Registration Form

QRQ code to register for SITL