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October 19, 2021
Volume 7, Number 5
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Dear Colleagues, 

We join the campus community grieving the loss of one of our students this week.  Under the circumstances the upcoming FCTL workshops on Supporting Student Mental Health could not be more timely, and it’s not too late to register!

We are all going through a life-changing experience with COVID. If you are like me, you are craving the opportunity to process your experiences with students, listen to and get advice from experts, and talk about how COVID is affecting us all at MSU. The session will explore how to spot mental health concerns among students, discern if the mental health issues have reached crisis level, and appropriately respond. This is an interactive workshop, so please come with your questions and stories. Here are the details:  
 
TITLE: Supporting Student Mental Health in Your Classes   
PRESENTERS: Michelle Barber (Retention & Advising) & Goldie Williams (Counseling and Health Services)   
FORMAT: Virtual  
DATE/TIME: October 19th (Tues) @ 3-4:30pm -or- October 20th (Wed) @ 3-4:30pm  
REGISTER: REGISTER HERE 

Wishing you a productive week!  

FCTL  
Teaching Tips
 
Designing discussion topics that engage all members of the class is difficult, especially with the additional challenges in creating a sense of classroom camaraderie that the digital divide may present for some. Often, we see online class discussion boards designed with a single prompt, sometimes with multiple parts to generate appropriately thorough responses from students. All students respond to the same prompt and occasionally comment on the responses of their peers. While this style gets the job done, it does not allow for diverse interests; students who do not find the prompt that week particularly interesting are likely to glean very little from the academic discourse.

Using the multiple prompt style is a clever way around this issue. In this style, we instead see the instructor post multiple prompts that focus on various subtopics in the overarching theme of that particular week or module. The prompts may present different questions or different learning tasks for students to complete and the instructor will often set a minimum number of posts for satisfactory participation. The defining feature of this approach is that students get to choose what they want to investigate based on what stands out to them the most. By utilizing this technique, we as educators hand students the reigns to their discussion-based learning by allowing them to take an exploratory approach to the task. They are free to choose the aspects of the topic that appeal most to them—perhaps some aspects are more in-line with their learning goals while others are not. Whatever the case, students may choose the educational threads they wish to follow and may therefore have an easier time with finding relevance and satisfaction in the topic.

More information about how to design and facilitate this discussion board style is presented in this video.

Submitted by:
Caity Kelly, M.S., Assistant Director
Program for Instructional Excellence (PIE)
Florida State University
MAGNA Winter Enrichment Courses
How do you evaluate online teaching? How do you get effectively design a college course? New to teaching or looking to manage your career?
Winter is a terrific time to build on your skills. 

Check out the six courses MAGNA is hosting this winter here.

WINTER SESSION DATES:

Session 1:
Begins: October 31, 2021
Ends: December 11, 2021

Session 2:
Begins: December 12, 2021
Ends: January 22, 2022
New Paradigms in Course Design with Lee Skallerup Bessette
ThinkUDL is a podcast about Universal Design for Learning where we hear from the people who are designing and implementing strategies in post-secondary settings with learner variability in mind.
Join Dr. Lee Skallerup Bessette in discussing UDL, current course design, and institutional policies here.
Getting Better Prepared for Online and Hybrid Learning
To support administrators and faculty in this effort, the Association of College and University Educators is offering free resources that can be immediately put to use to benefit both faculty and their students.

Topics for this webinar include:
  • Organizing Course Content
  • Managing Your Online Presence
  • Establishing Clear Expectations for Your Teaching Presence
  • Provide Strategic Feedback in Discussions & more

you can find more information here in the ACUE’s Back-to-School Toolkit.
What I Love About Teaching
Let's hear from you!

Share your response to the question "What I Love About Teaching". Your response can be short, long, a bulleted list, or an image to offer up a few suggestions.

To share your response, click here.
Blackboard Buzz
How To Set Test Options

Setting test options enables you to control information about the test, including instructions, availability, timer settings, feedback, and presentation. This tutorial will show you how to add a test within a Content Area and set test options.

Email msuonline@moreheadstate.edu for additional information and on-campus support.
Ambassadors for Excellence in Teaching
Morehead State University