Online Workshop Opportunity |
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Dear Colleagues,
Welcome to week four of the 2021 Fall semester! We hope your semester is proceeding smoothly. At the FCTL, we are here to support you in all your instructional goals.
More of us are teaching online during the pandemic to keep the MSU campus safe, and of course online classes will still be part of our course offerings when Covid is under control. If you are interested in thinking more deeply about online pedagogy, and/or have an online instructional issue you’d like to work though, please join professors Michelle McClave (Nursing), Eric Jerde (Physics), and Bernadette Barton (Sociology and Gender Studies) for a virtual workshop on Online Pedagogy on September 28 or 29 from 3:00-4:30. The same material will be offered on two consecutive days to best accommodate campus teaching schedules.
At the workshop, Drs. McClave, Jerde, and Barton will each share an example of a specific course design, offer tips, and help you troubleshoot and enhance your classes. Please come to the workshop on Online Pedagogy with a class in mind you’d like to improve and questions you'd like the presenters to cover. To register for this and future workshops, click here.
Wishing you a productive week and an excellent semester!
FCTL
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Are you interested in attending a Teaching Conference? The FCTL can help cover the costs of attending the Original Conference on College Teaching described below. Please email Dr. Bernadette Barton at b.barton@moreheadstate.edu to discuss this opportunity.
The Original Lilly Conference on College Teaching, taking place November 18-20, 2021 on the beautiful campus of Miami University (Ohio), is one of the nation's most renowned conferences presenting the scholarship of teaching and learning. For our 40th anniversary this year we welcome James Lang, author of Small Teaching and Distracted, as our keynote speaker.
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You Get What You Give
My ten-year old son heard me 'lecturing' online to a set of students in May 2020 and said to me that he wished he was in my class because I am obviously such a great teacher. Wondering if he meant that I was knowledgeable or gave clear explanations, I asked him why he thought that. He said "because you are so kind and respectful to your students all the time and my pre-K teacher told me that you should treat others how you want to be treated." It hit me hard that at ten he already knew that when it comes to teaching, if you want to get respect and participation from your students that you have to give it to them. Setting up a classroom that is welcoming and inclusive can be a challenge so here are a few quick and easy tips:
- Learn their names! You expect them to learn yours. Whether you do a seating chart, photo board, or name tents, the number one way to communicate to students that you care about them, that they are not just a number in a seat, and that therefore they should care about you and your course and to build rapport is to learn their names.
- Show up to class on time, or better still early! 1. Let all your students know that you respect and care about them. Start a conversation with a student in your class that you do not know well. If you are able to, showing up early allows students to ask questions and chat with you in an informal way which is often a easier place to address questions than during or after class, or in an official meeting. Reach out to a student in your class who appears withdrawn or doesn’t seem to be included in classmate’s friendship groups.
- Respect their contributions to class. They may not have it right yet, but if you are respectful to them as they are working on building those new thinking-patterns with your guidance.
- Be flexible. This is the hardest for many faculty who love to have hard deadlines, but if you are flexible with when you accept work so long as students are progressing through the course, then if you do have to take a couple of
- Praise publicly, criticize privately. It is so hard when you see a student being disrespectful during class not to call them out but to do so can make everyone uncomfortable. Take the time to acknowledge students who demonstrate kindness, consideration, and support for fellow students and model positive classroom behavior for your students.
- Use positive humor, not sarcasm
- Choose your words carefully – “I don’t care” can be used by instructors in an attempt to demonstrate flexibility but could also come across like you genuinely don’t care about them.
- Developing positive and respectful classrooms relationships is an important part of a student’s emotional and social development, promotes self-esteem, and assists them in developing a sense of belonging which is known to be critical for persistence to graduation. Teaching students about positive and respectful relationships by modeling them in your classroom sets expectations and supports them as they experience the challenge of learning. Creating a positive and respectful classroom community can be a constant work in progress but implementing any one of these strategies will assist your students where they are.
Submitted by:
Marina G. Smitherman, D.Phil., MPH.
Chair, Department of Life Science
Coordinator, Committee on Academic Excellence
Professor of Biology
Dalton State College
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Providing Flexible Learning Models in Higher Education | Wednesday, September 8 at 2:00 pm ET
On this webcast Inside Higher Ed editors Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman will discuss some of the ways that colleges, instructors and students are rethinking educational delivery to provide more flexibility without compromising on quality or learning.
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Practicing the Equitable, Transformative Pedagogy We Preach
We see disparate student success rates year in and year out, yet we don't know how to change that, as most of us weren't taught better ways to teach.
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What I Love About Teaching |
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"The interaction with students is a wonderful experience. When in-person, watching the learning take place in real time is an emotional high. The challenge of making the learning experience engaging whether it is in-person or virtual." - Robert Boram
To share your response, click here.
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How to Customize the Grade Center
Instructors can customize their view of the Grade Center by hiding columns to focus on specific data and reduce scrolling. Hidden columns are not deleted from the Grade Center, and you can show and reorder them at any time. This tutorial will show you how to customize the view of the Grade Center by hiding a column, accessing the Column Organization page, showing a hidden column, and reordering columns.
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Ambassadors for Excellence in Teaching
Morehead State University
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