by Deborah Keene, Blount Scholars Program Thanks to Dean Olin, and the College of Arts and Sciences, I was able to attend the Teaching Professor Conference for the first time. There were a wide variety of sessions, but I found myself drawn to the sessions about metacognition: How to Develop Self-Directed Learners, Maria Flores-Harris Classroom […]
Read Moreabout Reflecting on Repetition for Student Success in Teaching and Learning
by Heather Pleasants, Office of Institutional Effectiveness After returning from the Digital Pedagogy Lab Summer Institute (DPL)*, writing a post about “Assessing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Digital Classrooms” seemed to make sense. However, I encountered a few challenges right away: Challenge #1: Who wants to read a blog post that starts with “assessing?” (…crickets) Challenge […]
Read Moreabout Reflections on Inclusion and Equity in Digitally Mediated Learning Spaces
by Cherelle Young, Tuscaloosa City Schools What is Critical Digital Pedagogy? Kate Molloy, a learning technologist with the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at NUI Galway and a peer from the Digital Pedagogy Lab, gave a good, easy-to-understand definition of Critical Digital Pedagogy: “CDP is the practice of reflective, critical teaching in a digital space. We must remain conscious […]
Read Moreabout Critical Digital Pedagogy in the Modern Classroom: Expectations Vs. Reality
by Connie Janiga-Perkins and Chris Coleman Spanish Conversation (SP 353) is a course that asks students to manage a broad spectrum of content, build vocabulary, work on pronunciation and fluency, and open themselves to cross-cultural communication, understanding, and self-growth. In short, Spanish Conversation is at once a collective and a very individual experience. Students find themselves learning […]
Read Moreabout Student ePortfolios in Spanish Conversation (SP 353)
“There is a lot to cover on the first day of class. You establish procedures and convey expectations. You review the syllabus and, if you’re teaching a lab, safety protocol. You also spend some time teaching some material. While you might not make an assignment on the first day, you still should use some time […]
Read Moreabout Suggestions to Make the First Day of Class Matter
by Nathan Loewen, Department of Religious Studies Learning might be the wicked problem in higher education. It’s inescapable. So when a headline like “Can Artificial Intelligence Make Grading Fairer and Faster?” is published in a leading ed-tech publication, people notice. The article was about a platform called Gradescope, whose tagline is “Grade Faster. Teach better.” […]
Read Moreabout Speed ∝ Quality ∝ Cost – Can Any Ed-Tech Idea Avoid the Iron Triangle?
by James Mixson, Department of History Ah, the multiple-choice quiz. An old stand-by for some instructors who love them not least because it can make grading so easy. For others, especially those in more narrative-intense disciplines like mine (history), they are problematic: names and dates and other “data” are only the beginning. What matters is […]
This post details the grading process described in “Scan and Deliver! Personalized Feedback in Large Classes.” We printed individual labels with each student’s name; on each label, the corresponding CWID was encoded in a Code 39 barcode. We used standard 1″ x 2 5/8″ addressing labels, 30 per page, for which MS Word has built-in templates. […]
Read Moreabout Details and Procedures: Returning Hand-Graded Exams Electronically
by Marco Bonizzoni and Diana Leung, Department of Chemistry Organic chemistry is a surprisingly visual discipline. Molecules, the fundamental entities of chemistry, exist as 3D objects whose shapes often profoundly influence their properties, so students must learn the visual language of the discipline, which attempts to convey the nature of these three-dimensional objects through two-dimensional drawings. […]
Read Moreabout Scan and Deliver! Personalized Feedback in Large Classes
by Michael J. Altman, Department of Religious Studies Games are fun. Quizzes are not. But games can make quizzes more fun. That’s what I have learned by experimenting with the Kahoot, an interactive learning game, in my REL 130: Religion, Politics, and Law course. I discovered Kahoot during the Teaching Professor Technology Conference a few […]
