Podcasts & Videos
Keep on Teaching: Session 2 – Beyond the first few weeks, buoy your students and yourself – Chronicle of Higher Education [60 min]
Engaging students is the main challenge that faculty members say they’re facing right now. Beyond the first few classes now, the goal is to maintain or boost attendance, participation, and general motivation. At the same time, professors themselves are exhausted — and there’s only so much support and flexibility they can offer. What are some winning ways to set expectations and make coursework meaningful while keeping your workload manageable?
Ungrading in Practice: No Going Back with Dr. Sue Steiner – Teaching for Student Success [57 min]
Ungrading! You might already implement some form of ungrading but it is more likely that you don’t. Perhaps you heard of ungrading and dismissed it, or thought about it but decided it wasn’t the right time, or decided it wasn’t right for you or your students, or thought the whole idea was insane, or perhaps you don’t know anything about ungrading at all. Perhaps this is the first time you have even heard that term.
Whatever your prior knowledge is or isn’t about ungrading – please listen to Dr. Sue Steiner of Chico State talk about her motivations to implement and her experiences with ungrading. This conversation may convince you that now is the time to take the ungrading plunge.
Events
Artificial Intelligence in Education – Waubonsee Community College
Friday, February 24 | 1:30 – 2:30
Modality: Zoom or APC 158, Sugar Grove Campus
Artificial Intelligence has been impacting education for years, but now that technology is becoming even more accessible and user friendly, our students may already be utilizing AI to help them write papers and complete assignments. Does this mean education as we know it is doomed? Or is it just another invitation to think creatively about how new technology can blend with time-tested pedagogy techniques to help our students think critically about the future? In this hands-on workshop, we’ll be using AI to write example essays, design lesson plans, and reflect on the role of technology in higher education now and in the future.
Professional Development
ION Professional eLearning Programs – University of Illinois Springfield
ION eLearning professional certificate programs are aligned to best practices in the field of online learning, including the Master Online Leadership, Digital Accessibility Educators, and Open Educational Resources for Instruction certificates. The continuing education programs consist of courses that are to be completed for continuing education hours.
Resources
Considerations for AI Tools in the Classroom – Columbia University Center for Teaching and Learning
Given the rapid pace of technological innovation and development, higher education, like nearly all industries, is continuously called upon to consider creative approaches to teaching and learning. The following resource offers instructors a brief introduction to AI tools, specifically ChatGPT, along with several strategies they might consider for navigating or engaging with these tools in their courses.
The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching, by Isis Artze-Vega, Flower Darby, Bryan Dewsbury, and Mays Imad
Written by faculty development experts, this peer-to-peer teaching guide offers concrete steps to help any instructor striving to ensure all students—and, in particular, historically underserved students—have an equal chance for success. Distilling key principles of equity-minded pedagogy into manageable units, the Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching equips faculty with actionable tips to make improvements large and small to their teaching, whether in face-to-face, hybrid, or online courses.
[Free access to the e-book is available with registration]
Discover articles on everything from assessment practices to pedagogy. Our blog features teachers from around the world, from kindergarten through college, across all content areas.
How To: Write Good Alt Text – Supercool
Adding useful alt text to images is one of the easiest ways to make your website more accessible. But it’s not necessarily an easy thing to get the hang of – and can even harm accessibility if done poorly. No alt text is better than bad (i.e. annoying or meaningless) alt text. Here’re some tips to help you get it right.
Short(er) Reads
When it Comes to Burnout, Saying ‘No’ Matters – Teaching
You care about being a good teacher and worry about students who are struggling. But you’re also bone-tired and feel like you have too much on your plate. Is the only solution to push through your exhaustion and hope you can catch a break at the end of the semester? If you answered yes, keep reading.
The Mindful Learning Framework – Faculty Focus
Evidence from student work has demonstrated that there is a need for students to be able to think more deeply about content, and to be able to cover a wider scope of information as they complete coursework. With this in mind, I have developed the Mindful Learning Framework. It is an organized set of principles to extend thinking and expand learning in a tangible framework that can be applied to any college course.
Authentic Group Discussions with the Real Talk Strategy – Cult of Pedagogy
For many teachers, the idea of classroom discussion often pales in comparison to the reality. What we want is for our students to lean in, to listen to each other, spontaneously offer thought-provoking questions, build on each other’s ideas. We want them to go deep, to really get into it. And yet many of us find that this is not an easy thing to manufacture, especially when it comes to discussions that have anything to do with the content of our coursework.
Promoting Access to Diverse Learning Opportunities through Open Resources, Equity, and Accessibility – Faculty Focus
There is an inherent connection between equity, accessibility, and open educational resources (OER). OER have the potential to offer more equitable and accessible learning experiences because they can be tailored to meet the needs of the students, including learning outcome alignment, accessible formatting, diverse learning materials, and diverse assessments
Teaching, Learning, & Practice 