Course Design

Time on Task: Tackling a Vague Standard

The pandemic’s effects on higher education are giving us the chance to rethink, reexamine, and redesign our teaching efforts. From objectives to tech use to assignment choices, opportunities abound. I want to include the time factor in this process—not the time we put into course

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HyFlex Teaching: An Overview

The HyFlex teaching model has drawn considerable attention recently as an alternative to the online, face-to-face, and hybrid teaching models. A HyFlex course is offered both face-to-face and online at once. But instead of dividing course activities between the two modes, as a hybrid course

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Creating Open Educational Resources with Book Sprints

Open educational resources (OER) are gaining traction as a way to address the high cost of textbooks and students’ subsequent reluctance to purchase them. But there are still relatively few OER textbooks in many subject areas, possibly due to the lack of incentive for producing

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Building an Activity Catalog to Improve Course Design

As teachers and instructional designers, one of the biggest challenges we face is trying to come up with multiple creative and appropriately challenging activities for our courses. We have to consider the diverse needs of our learners and the goals of the course and then

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Keep Calm and Redesign with Perspective

Sometimes we are asked to step in during an emergency situation when a colleague cannot finish teaching a course. Sometimes enrollment or structural changes mean we are unexpectedly assigned to take on a new course just days before the semester starts. And sometimes, beyond our

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classroom cognition - science of learning

Classroom Cognition: The Science of Learning in Lecture

Students often put in a great deal of time and energy into learning course material, yet their efforts are often less than fruitful. Week after week, we witness students arriving to lecture—seemingly prepared—armed with planners, Post-its, highlighters, and tablets. With such obvious effort poured into

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student writing

Hidden Opportunities to Get Students Writing

Let’s never read student writing again. In fact, let’s not even talk about it.

Not because student writing is dull or unworthy of serious readers. No, let’s stop talking about student writing because it doesn’t exist—or at any rate, shouldn’t exist.

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fixed mindset - college classroom

Challenging (and Changing) Fixed Mindsets in the Classroom

Fresh from winter break, my students want to test my boundaries—and they should. But even as they challenge me, many of my students will also limit themselves by defining their intelligence and talents as fixed traits. Each semester I hear the familiar refrains: “I’m not

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accessible course design

Implementing Accessible Course Policies

Access can mean many different things in a classroom. For students with disabilities, access means having material, spaces, and coursework accessible for a variety of learning needs. Access can also mean recognizing the limits of time, money, and basic necessities when students come from a

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