Have you made building your awareness about Generative AI, in particular how students are using it and how you can design your courses with that usage in mind, a goal for summer? If so, our office has two great options for you! The first is newly updated content in our course, Getting Started with Generative […]
A Hybrid Approach to Alternative Grading
As Generative AI continues to present a challenge for traditional teaching and learning practices, many faculty are expressing curiosity about alternative grading, a term that includes several forms of assessment (such as contract grading or standards-based grading) where course grades are determined by students’ effort over time rather than by their performance on individual assessments. […]
Brightspace Course Reports: Content Reports
We’ve discussed Learning Analytics and the valuable ways they can inform our pedagogical decisions in this October 2024 blog post. As we hit the midpoint of the semester, it is a good time to remember some of the Learning Analytics available in Brightspace. Content Reports are particularly helpful for a quick understanding of how much […]
What is VoiceThread?
VoiceThread is a piece of educational technology fully integrated with Brightspace. Instructors can use the tool to create interactive media/lectures and students can use the tool to create multi-layered presentations or complete assignments. You can see some examples of the tool in action on the VoiceThread website. Some use cases include: Interactive Lectures: Rather than […]
New Publication: How Contract Grading Impacts Student Writing
A new article co-authored by Nate Mickelson (Expository Writing Program) and Timothy Schaffer (A&S Office of Teaching Excellence and Innovation) has just been published in College Teaching! The study, titled “How Does the Use of Contract Grading Affect the Quality of Student Writing?: A Comparative Study of Essays from First-Year Writing Courses,” examines the effects […]
What is Interleaving?
Originally coined by cognitive psychologists Robert A. Bjork and Nate Kornell, interleaving is an instructional approach of that involves mixing different concepts. This is in comparison to a more traditional instructional approach (referred to as, “blocking”) that may require students master one concept before moving onto the next. Research on interleaving suggests that using this […]
Hands-On Gen AI Workshops For Faculty Feb. 28, March 3 & 4
Do you want to see for yourself the most common ways your students are using generative AI—to summarize assigned texts, to edit or translate their written work, and to generate ideas for assignments? Do you want to test out generative AI’s capabilities and think critically about its potential uses and shortcomings with colleagues? Our office […]
Small Ways to Get to Know Your Students
The spring semester quickly approaches, as it always seems to do. Here is a quick reminder about some small ways you can get to know your students and begin creating a welcoming learning environment. Learn your students’ names and pronouns – and use them! It may seem obvious, but learning the name pronunciation and pronouns […]
What are Learning Analytics?
Terms like “learning analytics” and “data-informed teaching” have been thrown around quite a bit in last several years. But what do they mean? The Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR) define learning analytics as, “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and […]
Exploring Pedagogy: Authentic Assessment
What is authentic assessment? All assessments inherently do just that: assess. Authentic assessments, however, require students to apply what they’ve learned to a new situation. This is in comparison to a traditional exam that might ask students a multiple choice question. Identifying the correct answer can indicate learning, but doing so does not require students […]