Get to Know Your Students – Mid-Semester Surveys

It’s that time of the semester when faculty, students, all of us are feeling the pressure of our workloads. We look at our syllabi, wondering if we still have time to cover everything, we look at the stacks of ungraded student assignments and wonder how we’re going to make the sprint to Thanksgiving break. Certainly, […]

Summer 2024 FORC Camp Success

From August 28th to August 30th, eighty-two graduate students participated in the second Foundations of Research Computing (FORC) Camp. Through the collaboration of the Graduate School of Arts & Science Master’s College, NYU Data Services (NYU Libraries and IT), and the Office of Teaching Excellence and Innovation, the free training program focused on the development […]

Empowering Students to Succeed – Release Conditions in Brightspace

To facilitate student learning, instructors must consider many factors during their course design process. In addition to discipline specific pedagogy, the modality of the learning environment, the makeup of the student cohort, and their institutional context, instructors must design their learning materials with the student experience in mind. Whether teaching online or in-person, the quality […]

Spring 2024 Teaching to Engage Cohort Shoutouts

A total of 64 current and aspiring instructors have completed the Teaching to Engage Seminar, one of the Office of Teaching Excellence and Innovation’s faculty development offerings, since its first cohort of graduate students participated in the fall of 2022.This three-week intensive course provides a fully asynchronous experience, allowing instructors to discuss research-based pedagogy, experiment […]

Brightspace Course Management – How to Use Template Sites

Thoughtful course design in the Learning Management System, in our case Brightspace, can ensure a smooth student experience and empower student learning. While we may be tempted to think that this is key to student success only for online courses, as per the guidance in the OLC’s Online Scorecard Quality Checklist, the design and management […]

Generative AI Updates – Live Syllabus and Faculty Development Resources

As we begin another semester and set expectations with our students, it’s important to include our expectations for generative AI use in our syllabi and initial course discussions. Your approach is dependent upon your context, including your discipline, course, student cohort, or the learning outcomes you have set for a particular assignment. For some, generative […]

Faculty Development Opportunity – Getting Started with Generative AI Course

Generative AI continues to fill headlines and occupy conference agendas and, although the landscape of education continuously evolves, the impact of generative AI seems to be causing a particular shock for institutions.  In an effort to provide faculty with the foundational knowledge they need to begin exploring the limitations and possibilities of such tools in […]

Empowering Students to Succeed – Clear Communication in Brightspace

You may have seen our post about using Due Dates in Brightspace to support student learning. Another effective strategy is to use the student communication tools in your Brightspace course. It can be difficult to provide regular outreach to your students, especially for large format courses. However, through targeted bulk emails and scheduled announcements in […]

Empowering Students to Succeed – Due Dates in Brightspace

We all have our preferences when it comes to communicating our expectations to students. At a minimum, designing a clear and detailed syllabus that includes weekly topics, assignments, and key due dates provides students with a roadmap for the course. However, Brightspace enables multiple communication strategies and with a few minor adjustments to learning materials, […]