Faculty Focus

MARCH 18, 2025

While many of our conversations have focused on what generative AI means for student assignments and learning outcomes, there’s another question faculty are askingoften individually and quietly: How can we leverage AI in our own academic and administrative work? Then, share the assignment prompt.

Assignments 80

Assignments Testing Course Design Writing 80

Faculty Focus

DECEMBER 8, 2024

Instructors are encouraged to take small steps to start building HIPs in their curriculums, and there are some HIPs which are easy to incorporate into an existing course. One of the most accessible practices on this list might be collaborative assignments and projects. Emphasize the importance of each component or stage.

Assignments 108

Assignments Instructors Critical Thinking Activities 108

Faculty Focus

OCTOBER 29, 2024

The Assignment: Exploring Leadership Through Superheroes In this assignment, students are asked to compare five leadership styles—autocratic, democratic, laissez-faire (sometimes called free-rein style), transactional, and transformational—with the leadership qualities of at least three superheroes.

Assignments 102

Assignments Teaching Ethics Fairness 102

Edsurge

APRIL 26, 2018

On Tuesday, April 24 the #DLNchat community got together to discuss and debate: How Can Alternative Assignments Effectively Assess Student Learning? Where there’s an alternative there must be a standard, so we started our chat creating a list of what those standard assignment are: exams, quizzes, essays, reports, lab manuals and the like.

Assignments 96

Assignments Exams Instructors Learning 96

Faculty Focus

MARCH 18, 2025

While many of our conversations have focused on what generative AI means for student assignments and learning outcomes, there’s another question faculty are askingoften individually and quietly: How can we leverage AI in our own academic and administrative work? Then, share the assignment prompt.

Assignments 69

Assignments Testing Course Design Writing 69

Faculty Focus

MAY 15, 2025

This project started with a deceptively simple question: What arent our students telling us? I wanted to change thatnot just by asking better questions, but by building an open-access platform that would amplify student voices and inform actionable change. Tessa Wolf strengthened our commitment to inclusive course design.

Disabilities 54

Disabilities Course Design Lecturing Students 54

Faculty Focus

DECEMBER 8, 2024

Instructors are encouraged to take small steps to start building HIPs in their curriculums, and there are some HIPs which are easy to incorporate into an existing course. One of the most accessible practices on this list might be collaborative assignments and projects. Emphasize the importance of each component or stage.

Assignments 91

Assignments Instructors Critical Thinking Activities 91

Edsurge

APRIL 8, 2020

As professors and K-12 teachers adjust to the sudden move to online teaching, one question keeps coming up: How much of class time should be done live—known in education parlance as “synchronous” teaching—and how much should be done so that students can do the work at their convenience—or “asynchronous” teaching.

Teaching 218

Teaching Instructors Distance Learning Lecturing 218

Edsurge

MARCH 7, 2024

But the experiment points to interesting possibilities — and raises ethical questions — about how the latest AI tech might be used to improve teaching. The AI agents will also be fed information from the course syllabi and turn in assignments. Brott says he has experimented with ChatGPT on a few assignments for classes.

Intelligence 211

Intelligence Syllabus Feedback Assignments 211

Edsurge

MAY 6, 2020

The crucial question that has emerged is: how do we engage learners when we are not together physically? When it comes to learning, engagement is influenced by a learner's level of motivation, focus and cognitive ability as well as online course design and a teacher's decisions regarding facilitation style.

Motivation 218

Motivation Education Learning Feedback 218

Faculty Focus

JUNE 2, 2024

Most of our grade was supposed to come from a single class project, but no assignment instructions were ever posted. But what about this assignment that was worth so much of our grade? This poses the question: How can we best serve our online students? I emailed the professor and waited…and waited…and waited—silence.

Syllabus 131

Syllabus Course Design Learning Students 131

Edsurge

NOVEMBER 20, 2018

Students cheating on assignments is hardly a new or surprising problem. In research and surveys conducted by Dr. Donald McCabe and the International Center for Academic Integrity over the span of 12 years, 68 percent of undergraduates who responded admitted to cheating on tests or written assignments.

Academic Integrity 147

Academic Integrity Exams Assignments Instructors 147

Edsurge

OCTOBER 14, 2022

That’s the question tackled by a research paper published this week. But some have raised questions about those efforts, which when done crudely can discourage students so much that they drop out , and may disproportionately discourage students who are first-generation or who don’t feel as welcome in a college environment. “It

Students 172

Students Course Design Study Coaching 172

Faculty Focus

JUNE 2, 2024

Most of our grade was supposed to come from a single class project, but no assignment instructions were ever posted. But what about this assignment that was worth so much of our grade? This poses the question: How can we best serve our online students? I emailed the professor and waited…and waited…and waited—silence.

Syllabus 110

Syllabus Course Design Learning Students 110

Faculty Focus

JANUARY 9, 2025

When our students overcome obstacles in their learning due to our support and encouragement, or experience transformations from our well-constructed course design and subsequent instruction, we succeed in cultivating spaces where their success is made possible. Student success is teacher success.

Students 122

Students Motivation Feedback Communication 122

Faculty Focus

OCTOBER 13, 2024

In a recent survey, undergraduate students reported several concerns around Canvas use, including: Too much variability and lack of consistency across instructors and courses – all faculty use it differently which leads to challenges in finding information, resources, assignments, etc. So how do we begin to address these concerns?

Syllabus 122

Syllabus Instructors Assignments Faculty Development 122

Edsurge

JANUARY 2, 2019

In addition to using technology in my own biology courses, I also work with faculty across the country on how to teach with technology through an inclusive lens. Student reflection assignments have been shown to produce cathartic effects on academic performance and even health. Provide opportunities for students to reflect.

Technology 167

Technology Teaching Intellectual Development Instructors 167

Faculty Focus

JANUARY 9, 2025

When our students overcome obstacles in their learning due to our support and encouragement, or experience transformations from our well-constructed course design and subsequent instruction, we succeed in cultivating spaces where their success is made possible. Student success is teacher success.

Students 111

Students Motivation Feedback Communication 111

Faculty Focus

OCTOBER 27, 2024

Louis’ Olin Business School encourages instructors to select a few questions to create an authentic course introduction video. Be Present Being present in your online course goes beyond delivering the curriculum and providing assignment feedback. questions). Interview-style question bank. link] Wehr, K.

Instructors 116

Instructors Students Minute Papers Course Design 116

Faculty Focus

FEBRUARY 11, 2024

This faculty member may give exams and may collect student artifacts, such as projects or papers, but the faculty really doesn’t connect student performance with the course design or classroom experience. In this scenario, the faculty might be more preoccupied with the question, “Am I doing my job?”

Feedback 126

Feedback Course Design Assignments Evaluation 126

Edsurge

NOVEMBER 5, 2018

The average student gets just two of the ten questions right. University of Michigan marketing professor John Branch rebuilds the learning experience by taking a precision engineering approach to course design. Source: Course Hero. Tell me about your Armchair Anthropologist assignment. Why did it fail?

Quizzes 167

Quizzes Failure Culture Students 167

Edsurge

APRIL 30, 2020

But now that so many students are taking courses remotely, in improvised environments that may not be especially conducive to learning, it may take some extra effort to redesign instruction, assignments and assessments to address everyone’s needs. Audience question]: So I had a question about students with ADHD.

Accessibility 218

Accessibility Disabilities Universal Design Syllabus 218

Edsurge

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

You enter and on the board is your first assignment: create something—a drawing, a model of a house, a sketch of a new product, a sculpture. And tells you your next assignment is to pick up the pieces (including yourself) and make something new. How might educators, with their domain expertise, become the designers of these changes?

Education 167

Education Schools Art History 167

Faculty Focus

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

My rationale here is to not make it a mandatory assignment, but an extra credit opportunity to know more about their current learning experiences. I specify how I plan to respond once I collect their feedback; for example, adding more clarifications on assignments or identifying themes and concerns.

Student Engagement 131

Student Engagement Lecturing Students Feedback 131

Faculty Focus

SEPTEMBER 24, 2023

Easily overlooked in this process can be maintaining the use of outside experts as guest speakers, panelists, or evaluators because of condensed class formats and the reliance on asynchronous elements in online course designs.

Lecturing 126

Lecturing Feedback Evaluation Course Design 126

Faculty Focus

OCTOBER 13, 2024

In a recent survey, undergraduate students reported several concerns around Canvas use, including: Too much variability and lack of consistency across instructors and courses – all faculty use it differently which leads to challenges in finding information, resources, assignments, etc. So how do we begin to address these concerns?

Syllabus 105

Syllabus Instructors Assignments Faculty Development 105

Faculty Focus

OCTOBER 27, 2024

Louis’ Olin Business School encourages instructors to select a few questions to create an authentic course introduction video. Be Present Being present in your online course goes beyond delivering the curriculum and providing assignment feedback. questions). Interview-style question bank. link] Wehr, K.

Instructors 105

Instructors Students Minute Papers Course Design 105

Faculty Focus

MAY 11, 2025

In higher education, we see our students use AI in many ways, to provide both authorized and unauthorized aid in their completion of assignments. Why College Instructors Matter: A Student’s Perspective I had a conversation with one of my students recently about this exact question. The empathetic course design perspective.

Instructors 115

Instructors Motivation Critical Thinking Students 115

Faculty Focus

JANUARY 18, 2024

In preparing that first course, I focused on what I thought were the essentials of teaching: finalizing the syllabus, picking the readings, and writing the assignments. Similarly, if you can, stick around for a few minutes after class so that students can ask you questions they might not have felt comfortable asking in front of others.

Teaching 119

Teaching Syllabus Feedback Instructors 119

Faculty Focus

AUGUST 4, 2024

Although Lightboard videos have also been useful in traditional brick-and-mortar settings for students as just in time review after classroom sessions (Schweiker, Griggs, Levonis, 2020), online learning presents a different challenge because the instructor is not available in real-time to answer questions or elaborate on difficult concepts.

Online Learning 111

Online Learning Learning Tools Instructors Learning 111

Faculty Focus

JANUARY 21, 2024

Flexible policies such as dropping the lowest quiz/assignment score and offering one free pass for a “no-questions-asked” due-date extension can reduce anxiety and logistical rigor. This type of intellectual rigor is desirable in course design. Lastly, we map the various due dates onto a calendar.

Syllabus 132

Syllabus Exams Students Motivation 132

Faculty Focus

FEBRUARY 11, 2024

This faculty member may give exams and may collect student artifacts, such as projects or papers, but the faculty really doesn’t connect student performance with the course design or classroom experience. In this scenario, the faculty might be more preoccupied with the question, “Am I doing my job?”

Feedback 111

Feedback Course Design Assignments Evaluation 111

Faculty Focus

JANUARY 18, 2024

In preparing that first course, I focused on what I thought were the essentials of teaching: finalizing the syllabus, picking the readings, and writing the assignments. Similarly, if you can, stick around for a few minutes after class so that students can ask you questions they might not have felt comfortable asking in front of others.

Teaching 111

Teaching Syllabus Feedback Instructors 111

Faculty Focus

JANUARY 8, 2023

I’ve seen it create (in a flash) movie scripts and comic strips, sonnets and grant proposals, graduate course syllabi and lessons. Her primary research question is, “How might we re-enchant learning in order to help faculty and students flourish?’ It can execute math problems, showing all its work with written explanations.

Metacognitive Skills 138

Metacognitive Skills Ethics Writing Plagiarism 138

Edsurge

MARCH 29, 2017

Learning Design First, Production Values Second When organizations decide to produce an online course, many quickly jump into questions of video production and start lining up a film crew and maybe even hiring an animator. Yet, until we get the learning design right, these questions about production values are premature.

Instructors 144

Instructors Education Lecturing Knowledge 144

Faculty Focus

SEPTEMBER 24, 2023

Easily overlooked in this process can be maintaining the use of outside experts as guest speakers, panelists, or evaluators because of condensed class formats and the reliance on asynchronous elements in online course designs.

Lecturing 110

Lecturing Feedback Evaluation Course Design 110

Edsurge

MAY 16, 2024

She’s also director of the Center for Teaching Excellence there, which provides faculty with support for instruction, edtech, course design, classroom management and grading. I was thinking a lot about this kind of work and related to the question of how does physical absence affect other students in the classroom?

Students 196

Students Instructors Lecturing Participation 196