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"As summer rolls around, many of us face the challenge of condensing our traditional 15-week courses into a more accelerated 8-week (or shorter) format. With a shorter time frame, we need to be strategic about what learning activities will remain the same, and what needs to be revised to meet the accelerated timeframe. We also need to - deliberately and explicitly - define the learning experience that students will encounter, from workload expectations to peer engagement." -- Breana Bayracktar

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As summer rolls around, many of us face the challenge of condensing our traditional 15-week courses into a more accelerated 8-week (or shorter) format. With a shorter time frame, we need to be strategic about what learning activities will remain the same, and what needs to be revised to meet the accelerated timeframe. We also need to - deliberately and explicitly - define the learning experience that students will encounter, from workload expectations to peer engagement.

Fewer weeks means rethinking traditional assignments, and summer is a perfect time to experiment with offering alternative ways for students to demonstrate mastery of course learning objectives. For example, you might allow them to replace multi-stage research papers designed to be completed over 15 weeks with more concise applied projects. Think about ways to encourage students to be creative with authentic assessments that reinforce core skills and content.

A shortened semester is also a good time to incorporate multiple lower-stakes assignments rather than high-pressure midterms and final exams. Consider integrating frequent low-stakes assessments such as quizzes or short assignments to keep students on track and provide them with regular feedback.

Consider leveraging technology for asynchronous content delivery or flipping the classroom to maximize in-person or synchronous time. The accelerated pace necessitates a blended approach, but simply recording lectures for students to view asynchronously doesn't always engage students - the last thing we want is to take valuable time recording lectures students won't watch. Instead, shorter videos ( microlectures) with built-in "pause points" of interactive quizzes, written response prompts, or note-taking will encourage active watching.

In a condensed timeframe, we need to make the most of precious class meetings by incorporating active, collaborative learning strategies such as case studies, debates, think-pair-share, and other methods that require students to engage with their peers. These "hands-on" activities have two key benefits. First, collaborative activities get students to focus on the application of course concepts. This type of challenging cognitive work should happen in the classroom. when you're there to facilitate and answer questions. Second, working with peers fosters community and collaboration, which is particularly important in intensive summer courses.

Many of our students will enroll in a summer semester course expecting fewer weeks to mean less work, and it's vital that we are explicit about how compressed courses actually work by clearly communicating expectations for workload and participation, as well as the support resources available to students. As much as possible, providing a detailed schedule outlining each week's activities and learning goals will help students understand what it means to take a compressed course. I've written previously about how to approach setting expectations with students from a place of non-judgment and empathy

By approaching the transformation with creativity, flexibility, and a student-centered mindset, we can successfully transition from a 15-week course to an 8-week or shorter summer semester course.
If you teach in the summer - or another compressed semester schedule - what are the most important changes you make? Share Tips for Teaching Professors Subscribe to AI + Teaching
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© 2024 Tips for Teaching Professors

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Condensing Courses -Adapting to Accelerated Summer Semesters

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How to Use the Gallery Walk to Engage Students

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How to Use the Gallery Walk to Engage Students

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We have supplies for this at the Faculty Center! Pop in anytime to take them to your class.

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ChatGPT and artificial intelligence in higher education: quick start guide

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ChatGPT and artificial intelligence in higher education: quick start guide

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UNESCO's Quick Start Guide is a short, jargon-free downloadable guide that provides an overview of how ChatGPT works and explains how it can be used in higher education. The Quick Start Guide raises some of the main challenges and ethical implications of AI in higher education and offers practical steps that higher education institutions can take.

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Adapted from “How to Get Students Excited About Group Work” by Nirmani Wijenayake, senior lecturer at the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

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When I first introduced a team project in my undergraduate biochemistry course in 2018, I was excited to have my students work together and learn from each other. It was the middle of the term; I had already introduced the course's core concepts in lectures before putting students in teams of four and asking them to design an experiment to diagnose a metabolic condition. The students had five weeks to complete the project and present it to the rest of the class.

Everything seemed to go well based on student performance. But to my utter disappointment, when I asked students at the end of the term for feedback about the project, I learned they hated it.

Surprisingly, it wasn't the project itself they disliked. It was having to do it in teams. When I assigned the group project, my focus was solely on the content and what students would learn from it. I assumed that since students must have worked in teams since high school, they would know how to navigate the human aspect of working with others. That wasn't the case.

While we expect students to carry out high-stakes team projects in higher education, we often don't explicitly teach them how to work effectively in a team. So I researched how to make working in groups a better experience for my students and developed a short teamwork program that I incorporated into my course the following year.

Here are seven improvements I made to my course to provide a better group-project experience for students.

1. Build teams thoughtfully

Whether you allow students to pick their own teams or assign the teams yourself depends on the context of your course. Three distinct styles exist: groups in which students know nothing about each other, groups in which they are partnered based on similar interests or ability, and groups in which they know a lot about each other already. All of these are valid methods and can lead to successful teams.

Whichever method you use, make it clear to students why you chose it. Is it because you want diversity within the teams? You want to have equal distribution of skills? You think students are mature enough to select their own partners? Whatever the reason, they will value transparency in your decision-making.

"I assumed that since students must have worked in teams since high school, they would know how to navigate the human aspect of working with others. That wasn't the case."

I have tried many methods, but the one that worked best for my students and for me has been sorting students based on their previous performance in the class. Instead of mixing high, low, and middle achievers, I grouped them separately. This is not a common method, but I have found that it allows high achievers to try new things and low achievers to take on more responsibility for their own learning. Students are often surprised by how capable they are by the end, and I always make sure to provide support to all teams as needed.

2. Encourage bonding and sow trust early

Put students into their teams at the start of the term, even if they aren't starting the project for a few weeks. That way, you can provide them with time and activities to get to know each other, to bond and build relationships. Create a set of tasks that will allow everyone to participate irrespective of their abilities and knowledge in your subject. It is better if the tasks are fun or silly, so students don't feel judged.

Provide class time to do these bonding activities; this helps students get comfortable with each other and learn about each other, ensuring a certain level of trust between them by the time the project begins. See the image below for an example of a task I do with my students. I give each group 40 spaghetti sticks, tape, and marshmallows and challenge them to build the tallest structure possible.

In addition to bonding activities, I also provide teams with opportunities leading up to the project to learn from and teach each other. I give students small quizzes to complete on their own, and then again with their groups. Students can discuss the answers, debate why an answer might be incorrect, make decisions together, and get immediate feedback on their performance.

3. Prepare groups to face conflict

Conflict within teams is inevitable, but students tend to avoid it as much as possible and get stressed when it arises. Often, this is because they don't know how to deal with it. A week after teams have formed in my classes, I run a conflict-resolution workshop. Each group is given a potential conflict that could arise during the term, and they must explore how they would deal with it (see the sidebar for an example exercise). The groups share each conflict and possible solutions with the wider class. Instructors can add to their strategies if they think the students have missed important aspects. Then, if conflict does happen during the semester, students are prepped with solutions they can implement.

Once students complete the conflict resolution task, I provide them with a team contract template and have them establish rules and guidelines they want to abide by to complete the project successfully. The contract helps students plan for the project early and clarify individual expectations. This is something students can refer to if there is any future conflict as well.

Since introducing this activity, I have only had to step in to deal with one or two conflicts out of nearly 50 groups per year-and those groups tried other strategies before reaching out for help.

4. Check in with students frequently

One of the biggest struggles for students is time management, so a primary goal of this teamwork program is to teach them its importance-especially when working in groups. A practical way to do this is through regular check ins.

I check in with my students regularly throughout the term to ensure they are meeting consistently and meeting project milestones on schedule. I want to identify any problems as the project progresses, rather than after they've made a submission.

Here are a few ways you can do this:

Use interactive polls during class sessions to ask students where in the project they're at-whether they've started or completed certain steps, for example. This gives you an idea of whether any groups might be falling behind.

Talk to students directly when you see them in class; this can make them feel more accountable. Use check ins to remind students of where they should be in the project and provide them opportunities to seek help for any issues or conflicts.

Build draft submission into the project steps. This is a great way to get students started on tasks and make improvements as they go. I provide general feedback to the whole class based on these drafts. You can also have students provide feedback to each other.

5. Provide space for student reflection

Throughout the project, I want students to reflect on the value of teamwork and what they each bring to the table. Every week, I get them to write short reflections answering targeted questions. Here are some examples:

1. What is your general attitude toward teamwork?

2. Do you participate in group discussions willingly?

3. What role do you play in the team?

4. What is something you learned from your team members you wouldn't have learned otherwise?

"If student reflections indicate they are struggling with a part of the project, I provide specific guidance and support to the whole class, either during lecture or in online announcements."

I use these questions to increase students' self-awareness, which leads to strengthened relationships within teams as well. Some students find the emotional aspects of reflection challenging, and some feel frustrated when there are no immediate actions they can take to address concerns. However, as the instructor, I learn a lot about the students' experiences and can also implement changes to the course to improve them. For example, if student reflections indicate they are struggling with a part of the project, I provide specific guidance and support to the whole class, either during lecture or in online announcements.

6. Evaluate group functionality at key points

The evaluation of individual and team contributions is an important component of group projects. I evaluate students at two stages of the project timeline (the halfway point and the end) using the same anonymous, online evaluation form. The form has a reflection section accompanied by statements on communication, leadership, accountability, trust, and conflict resolution. Students are asked to rate their own contributions and those of their teammates.

The midpoint evaluation gives students a chance to see their strengths and weaknesses and have time to adjust for the remainder of the project. Constructive feedback can increase self-awareness and motivate students to grow and develop the skills needed to be good team members. It also gives me insight into which students might be struggling or not contributing so I can reach out to help.

7. Strive for improvement with each iteration

This whole program came to be because of my reflections after that first unsuccessful group project. It's important for you to reflect at the end of the term on how the project process went, too. Think about what worked well and what didn't and how you can make improvements for the following year. It is important to do this immediately after, while things are still fresh in your mind.

One of the changes I incorporated into my course after reflection was to dedicate a lecture in the first week to introducing the group project and allowing students to ask questions. Previously, I asked students to read the project instructions on their own time, but some students didn't and others were unclear about expectations.

Introducing the project during the live lecture allowed students to see the full picture of the project and ask questions to clarify things. It also gave me the opportunity to provide tips for group work, such as establishing group roles, setting actionable goals, and running meetings effectively.

Making students feel like part of a community of learners

Since the introduction of this program in 2019, over 96 percent of my students have agreed that they feel like part of a learning community in the course; 56 percent strongly agreed. Over time, more students have mentioned that they found themselves liking biochemistry more than they thought they would when signing up for the class. This course has also had the highest rating within my school for the past five years.

A good team project requires patience, dedication, and commitment by both you and your students. You don't need to incorporate all these components. Pick and choose the ones you think would have the most impact in your classroom and see the change in attitude toward working in groups.

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How to Get Students Excited About Group Work

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Educators, are your group-project assignments falling short of expectations? Elevate your students' collaborative learning experience with seven transformative strategies, ensuring team projects succeed and students remain enthusiastic about group work.

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From the author of _Small Teaching Online_ Flower Darby

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4 Steps to Help You Plan for ChatGPT in Your Classroom

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100+ crowdsourced ideas for AI in teaching

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100+ crowdsourced ideas for AI in teaching

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Contributions from 19 countries: Australia, Canada, China, Egypt, Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Italy, Ireland, Jordan, Liberia, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom and the US.

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This free course is intended for teachers who want to know more about ChatGPT, use it in their practice, looking for inspiration/examples of its power or those trying to improve their use of this AI chatbot.

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AI, Chatbots & ChatGPT for Teachers

This free course is intended for teachers who want to know more about ChatGPT, use it in their practice, looking for inspiration/examples of its power or those trying to improve their use of this AI chatbot.

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Learn ChatGPT, AI, chatbots for use by teachers in education

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Perhaps the most damaging result of people using these inaccurate and imperfect tools is the personal cost of false accusations.

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If you feed America's most important legal document-the US Constitution-into a tool designed to detect text written by AI models like ChatGPT, it will tell you that the document was almost certainly written by AI. But unless James Madison was a time traveler, that can't be the case. Why do AI writing detection tools give false positives? We spoke to several experts-and the creator of AI writing detector GPTZero-to find out.

Among news stories of overzealous professors flunking an entire class due to the suspicion of AI writing tool use and kids falsely accused of using ChatGPT, generative AI has education in a tizzy. Some think it represents an existential crisis. Teachers relying on educational methods developed over the past century have been scrambling for ways to keep the status quo-the tradition of relying on the essay as a tool to gauge student mastery of a topic.

As tempting as it is to rely on AI tools to detect AI-generated writing, evidence so far has shown that they are not reliable. Due to false positives, AI writing detectors such as GPTZero, ZeroGPT, and OpenAI's Text Classifier cannot be trusted to detect text composed by large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT.

If you feed GPTZero a section of the US Constitution, it says the text is "likely to be written entirely by AI." Several times over the past six months, screenshots of other AI detectors showing similar results have gone viral on social media, inspiring confusion and plenty of jokes about the founding fathers being robots. It turns out the same thing happens with selections from The Bible, which also show up as being AI-generated.

To explain why these tools make such obvious mistakes (and otherwise often return false positives), we first need to understand how they work.

Understanding the concepts behind AI detection

Different AI writing detectors use slightly different methods of detection but with a similar premise: There's an AI model that has been trained on a large body of text (consisting of millions of writing examples) and a set of surmised rules that determine whether the writing is more likely to be human- or AI-generated.

For example, at the heart of GPTZero is a neural network trained on "a large, diverse corpus of human-written and AI-generated text, with a focus on English prose," according to the service's FAQ. Next, the system uses properties like "perplexity" and burstiness" to evaluate the text and make its classification.

In machine learning, perplexity is a measurement of how much a piece of text deviates from what an AI model has learned during its training. As Dr. Margaret Mitchell of AI company Hugging Face told Ars, "Perplexity is a function of 'how surprising is this language based on what I've seen?'"

So the thinking behind measuring perplexity is that when they're writing text, AI models like ChatGPT will naturally reach for what they know best, which comes from their training data. The closer the output is to the training data, the lower the perplexity rating. Humans are much more chaotic writers-or at least that's the theory-but humans can write with low perplexity, too, especially when imitating a formal style used in law or certain types of academic writing. Also, many of the phrases we use are surprisingly common.

Let's say we're guessing the next word in the phrase "I'd like a cup of _____." Most people would fill in the blank with "water," "coffee," or "tea." A language model trained on a lot of English text would do the same because those phrases occur frequently in English writing. The perplexity of any of those three results would be quite low because the prediction is fairly certain.

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Why AI detectors think the US Constitution was written by AI

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Can AI writing detectors be trusted? We dig into the theory behind them.

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As a coach, as a tutor . . ? We're all figuring this out together.

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Assigning AI: Seven Ways of Using AI in Class

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Also prompts! And things to watch out for!

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Watch the interview, read the book, attend the virtual seminar at the Leadership Institute on Doing Less
Register here
This session is not about doing more with less. It‘s about doing less. We often ask ourselves, what more should I be doing? When maybe the question should be what should I stop doing?

Thursday, September 28, 2023 at 11 a.m.

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E44: Leidy Klotz - Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less

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Ideas for meaningful and innovative assessment

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Ideas for meaningful and innovative assessment

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Based on a synthesis of recently published papers and other web sources, this article offers practical suggestions on assessment methods that instructors can consider using in their courses. Jonna Lee is director for research in education innovation in the Center for 21st Century Universities at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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ChatGPT can provide step-by-step solutions to mathematical problems, write code and generate lesson plans, draft emails and produce stories, music lyrics and social media posts. Therefore, it is not surprising that many in academia are excited about the potential positive influence of ChatGPT on productivity and efficiency.

On the other hand, ChatGPT has triggered a lot of debate around integrity issues in higher education, including concerns about plagiarism and cheating in and outside the classroom. AI models designed for plagiarism detection are being developed. However, this problem naturally leads to an increase in faculty workload to deal with challenges in detecting AI usage in their students' work. Also, beyond modifying their course syllabus, instructors will need to be trained on new assessment practices in response to students' exposure to and usage of ChatGPT.

Through self-assessment or reflective writing, students could discuss their writing or thinking process. Additionally, peer evaluations or interactive assessment activities could be integrated into grading by engaging students in group discussions or other activities such as research and analysis in which students are expected to co-construct knowledge and apply certain skills. Instructors may consider placing an emphasis on assessing the process of learning rather than the outcome. Instead of grading a final writing product alone, instructors could grade multiple drafts and assess how a student's writing improved.

Lastly, instructors can use ChatGPT as a supplemental tool for designing assessment activities. Instructors may ask detailed and specific prompts of ChatGPT to generate a rubric for grading students' knowledge and skills, create multiple-choice quiz questions or come up with group discussion questions about course topics. However, when using these sources, it would be important to ensure they are accurate and to check how the information presented can be interpreted or if it contains any biased views.

Ongoing discussions about assessment methods in light of the growing influence of generative AI such as ChatGPT remind us to adopt more student-centric assessments that can create meaningful learning opportunities for individual students. Design assessments that can provide students with ample scope to apply their skills to analyse ideas and integrate concepts in order to deepen their knowledge.

assessing these cognitive skills , how to incorporate assessments of non-cognitive skills such as collaboration, communication and leadership into classroom learning needs further discussion. That is, instead of emphasising skills that are traditionally measured by standardised or psychometric tests on which AI can perform very well, we should emphasise skills that are useful and meaningful for human learning.

Tools such as ChatGPT do not necessarily generate factual information. Rather, they produce pieces based on the probability of potential relationships between words. Depending on the questions asked, the outputs generated by ChatGPT may be incorrect, outdated or illogical. It has a limited understanding of context, can potentially generate offensive or harmful content, has limited ability to fact-check or verify information, lacks empathy and has limited knowledge on certain topics (especially if the subject matter is complex). In such case, instructors must caution students about the limitations of such tools and encourage them to compare the outputs with other reliable sources to prevent the spread of misinformation and misconceptions.

Jonna Leeisdirector for research in education innovation in theCenter for 21st Century Universities at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
If you found this interesting and want advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week, sign up for the Campus newsletter.

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Effective assessment practices for a ChatGPT-enabled world

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Assessment methods that require students to produce authentic, novel and personalised responses can help educators stay ahead of the uncertainty and workload that AI writers create

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Guidance for Assignments and Policies

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Classroom Policies for AI Generative Tools

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Classroom Policies for AI Generative Tools

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This resource is created by Lance Eaton for the purposes of sharing and helping other instructors see the range of policies available by other educators to help in the development of their own for navigating AI-Generative Tools (such as ChatGPT, MidJourney, Dall-E, etc).

For a Spanish version of these policies, please check out this great resource by Tatiana Torres Zapata/Para obtener una versión en español de estas políticas, consulte este excelente recurso de Tatiana Torres Zapata.

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Syllabi Policies for AI Generative Tools

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Curricular Resources about AI for Teaching (CRAFT)

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Curricular Resources about AI for Teaching (CRAFT)

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CRAFT is an initiative in collaboration with the Graduate School of Education, Institute for Human-Centered AI, and Stanford Digital Education. We aim to provide support for teachers in high school and early college who want to teach their students about artificial intelligence, or AI. This website hosts a collection of resources to facilitate such instruction

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Resources for teaching about artificial intelligence provided by the Stanford Graduate School of Education

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List of Journals for Research on Teaching

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List of Journals for Research on Teaching

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Kennesaw State's CETL provides an extensive list of external disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) focused on undergraduate and graduate education for teachers at colleges and universities, organized alphabetically. Click on the title of a journal to visit its home page.

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CETL provides an extensive list of external disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) focused on undergraduate and graduate education for teachers at colleges and universities, organized alphabetically. Click on the title of a journal to visit its home page.

You can filter results using the "Topic in Higher Education" or "Discipline" drop-down menus. To return to the full list, set the drop-down menu options to "Any."

This directory was last updated in April, 2023. To submit a request to make a change or an addition to this list, please contact us at cetl@kennesaw.edu.

KSU faculty can find a specific journal title or access full text articles by visiting the KSU library website.

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CETL provides an extensive list of external disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) focused on undergraduate and graduate education for teachers at colleges and universities, organized alphabetically. Click on the title of a journal to visit its home page.

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Within physical classrooms, and even within smaller fully online courses, instructors can somewhat easily incorporate activities such as journaling and peer discussion intended to promote states of mind that foster deep reflection and perspective taking. As some courses grow to a massive scale, the task of promoting these qualities becomes much more difficult. One way of fostering these skills is by incorporating contemplation in your course.

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Online courses have given learners across the globe a unique opportunity to learn outside of formal educational settings and in less supervised environments. The independent nature of this form of learning heightens the need for learners to have the tools to both initiate and manage their own learning. Moreover, as individuals engage with content, instructors, and fellow students exclusively online, an explicit focus on techniques meant to deepen the learning experience becomes increasingly important. All learners in both in-person and online courses are in need of effective skills and strategies to become aware of and self-regulate their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Within physical classrooms, and even within smaller fully online courses, instructors can somewhat easily incorporate activities such as journaling and peer discussion intended to promote states of mind that foster deep reflection and perspective taking. As some courses grow to a massive scale, the task of promoting these qualities becomes much more difficult. One way of fostering these skills is by incorporating contemplation in your course.

Contemplation is the central focus of contemplative science - a growing multidisciplinary field aimed at understanding the mind-body systems through contemplative practices (Roeser & Zelazo, 2012). Mindfulness, a term quite popular among educators at the moment, is one construct that falls under the umbrella of contemplative science. Contemporary researchers define mindfulness as paying attention to the present moment, including thoughts and emotions, with acceptance, curiosity, and kindness (Brown & Ryan, 2003; Kabat-Zinn, 1994). Mindfulness is an ancient idea with roots in different philosophies and religious traditions. Over the last century, mindfulness has been adopted globally and is now a widely used contemplative exercise.

Cultivating Mindful Awareness and Reflection

Mindfulness meditation trains skills by applying restraint on ordinarily uncontrolled mental or physical activities (Mind and Life Education Research Network [MLERN], 2012), encouraging the use of voluntary control in order to focus attention on certain objects (e.g., the breath) or thoughts (e.g., kindness to others). Schools throughout the United States are incorporating mindfulness meditation into educational curricula with the goal of enhancing self-awareness and self-regulation of attention, emotions, and behavior (Greenberg & Harris, 2012; MLERN, 2012). While mindfulness is readily criticized, the science supporting it is quite persuasive. Individuals who engage in mindfulness practice demonstrate reduced anxiety and depression (Hofmann, Sawyer, Witt, & Oh, 2010; Holzel et al., 2013), lower stress (Baer, 2003; Creswell et al., 2016), improved attention skills (Becerra, Dandrade, & Harms, 2016; Jha, Krompinger, & Baime, 2007; Sedlmeier et al., 2012), increased self-regulation (Tang et al., 2007), and richer and more positive personal relationships (Carson, Carson, Gil, & Baucom, 2004; Coatsworth, Duncan, Greenberg, & Nix, 2010). Recently, researchers have shown that students who engage in mindfulness activities perform better academically, even in mathematics (Schonert-Reichl et al., 2015).

Mindfulness and contemplative science more broadly has been applied to the learning sciences in what is termed contemplative education. Roeser and Peck (2009) defined contemplative education as "a set of pedagogical practices designed to cultivate the potentials of mindful awareness and volition in an ethical-relational context in which the values of personal growth, learning, moral living, and caring for others are also nurtured" (p. 127). Contemplative education provides a specific set of practices designed to nurture mindfulness and intentional forms of being and learning. What's necessary for contemplative education is a competent teacher (either a person or a set of teachings) and pedagogical practices embedded in experiential learning aimed at cultivating relaxed and concentrated states of awareness within learners. These practices are placed in a larger context of ethics and values such as open-mindedness, curiosity, and respect for others. Learning practices that fall under contemplative education include activities such as meditation, reflecting upon existential questions, being in nature, physical activities such as yoga or tai chi, and doing art (Roeser & Peck, 2009).

Examples of Contemplative Practices

One exemplary MOOC that focuses on contemplative education through mindfulness at scale is the edX course " Transforming Business, Society, and Self with U.Lab." The lead instructor is Otto Scharmer out of MIT. Adam Yukelson is the co-instructor and lead designer for the course who has shared information and experiences of their students with me. The course began in January 2015 and ran for eight weeks, during which they had approximately 42,000 registered participants. During the first run of their course, which may or may not be due to their focus on mindfulness, they had the fourth-highest completion rate on edX. The majority of learners in their course have no previous experience with mindfulness.

The purpose of the course, as Mr. Yukelson stated, is "designed to help leaders at all levels in business, government, and civil society identify and shift the deeper patterns of thought that, when left unexamined, keep us re-enacting results in social systems that almost nobody wants." This is where mindfulness and contemplative practices become crucial. Dr. Scharmer and Mr. Yukelson view mindfulness as one helpful method for suspending and letting go of patterns of thought. This suspension of typical habits of thinking opens up new possibilities of being.

The instructors begin by introducing the principles behind mindfulness primarily by focusing on the different ways one can pay attention. This serves as the basis for what many participants referred to as the most crucial element of the course-coaching circles. Coaching circles are peer-led, and use a seven-step process "case clinic" process. They teach the process through two instructional videos, then give participants a mechanism outside of edX to self-select into groups of 5-6. The coaching circles meet one hour per week, with each meeting focusing on one of the members. In some instances, a coaching circle consists of friends and colleagues and they meet in person, but many of the circles only meet virtually. The individuals in these groups typically do not know each other prior to entering the course and will set up their weekly meetings using Google Hangouts or Skype. Mr. Yukelson shared feedback from two learners from the MOOC.

"The connection with other circle members was personally transformative. Although I missed the first coaching circle call, I felt as though I had known the others my entire life.... My skepticism around the ability to connect in such a way melted. I realized it was not the medium [through which] I communicated, but how I showed up internally that made all the difference! This paradigm shift will stick with me for the rest of my life. After endless in-person and online 'downloading' sessions that went nowhere, this was as though a portal I never knew existed was opened completely. All I had to do was walk through it with the love and support of the others. I was so struck with 'I am them' and 'they are me'."

"I've never spoken to someone I don't know on video as a first means of contact before, and after I overcame my initial shyness I found the experience empowering... Within an hour and a half our circle reached such a deep level of connectedness and trust, it was as if we knew each other since ages."

In addition to coaching circles, the course also includes live sessions, conducted in livestream with a twitter feed on the side. The live sessions include a variety of contemplative practices including guided journaling and meditation. The full live sessions are 1.5 hours. The maximum number of unique viewers the instructors have had for a session is approximately 20,000. Many learners view the live sessions together in self-organized "hubs."

In addition to the techniques utilized in the particular MOOC described above, there are various contemplative practices that can be incorporated into your course, whether it is a MOOC or a regular online course. The practices outlined below have been used in online classes which may be useful for any instructor. The activities outlined below draw from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mindful Tech by David M. Levy, and Contemplative Practices in Higher Education by Daniel Barbezat and Mirabai Bush.

Mindful Breathing (3 - 6 minutes)

This activity serves as the building blocks for establishing present moment awareness. The practice is simple, but not easy. The focus of attention turns to the feeling of the breath moving in and out of the body. The mind will wander, but the practice comes in bringing attention back to the breath again and again. By doing this simple practice daily, students are strengthening their ability to pay attention. There are many smartphone applications and resources online that offer guided breathing practices. One that is available both on your phone and online is Stop, Breathe, and Think, which has been used in research studies involving the effects of mindfulness meditation on learning.

An example of the instructions:

"Adopt a posture that is both relaxed and alert. (Example: Sit upright in a chair, feet on the ground, hands folded in your lap, eyes either closed or slightly open). Begin attending to the sensations of your breathing. Identify a place in your body (stomach, chest, tip of your nose) where you can feel the physical sensations that arise as you breathe in and out. Notice when your mind wanders away from the sensations of the breath. Bring your attention back to the breath whenever your mind wanders."

Deep Listening (10 minutes)

This activity is designed to bring in deep listening to daily life. In this activity, everyone finds a partner in the course. Then, one person speaks and the other listens in complete silence. The listener listens as carefully as possible, letting go of interpretations, judgments, and reactions, as well as irrelevant thoughts, memories, and plans. When the speaker finishes, the listener repeats as closely as possible what the speaker said. The original speaker sits in silence while the listener repeats this back to them.

Instructions: Find a partner. You are encouraged to connect with someone in your course, but you can do this with a family member or friend if you cannot find a class partner. In this exercise, you will take turns listening and speaking.

1. One partner will spend 3 minutes speaking about a course topic or an aspect of his or her life. Set a timer that will make a noise when the 3 minutes is up, avoiding looking at the time.
This 3 minutes is devoted to the speaker. The listener sits in silence. If the speaker runs out of things to say, sit in silence. Whenever you have something to say, you may continue speaking again.

2. The listener should listen in silence. When you listen, give your full attention to the speaker. Be curious, but don't ask questions while listening. You may acknowledge with facial expressions or by nodding your head. Try not to over acknowledge. You may feel an urge to coach, identify, chime in, or interrupt. This is normal. Just notice when this occurs and resist the temptation to act. Listen with kindness. When thoughts or emotions come into your mind, simply notice them and gently return your full attention to the speaker. If the speaker runs out of things to say, give him or her the space for silence, and then be available to listen when he or she speaks again.

3. After the alarm sounds, set the alarm for 1 minute.

4. Repeat what you have heard from the speaker. Simply paraphrase, don't memorize.

5. After the alarm sounds, the speaker should take 1 more minute to clarify anything she feels was misunderstood by the listener. Again, one person speaks at a time in a kind and respectful manner.

6. Switch turns. Repeat steps one through five. Now the speaker is the listener and the listener the speaker.

7. Reflect on how it feels to be listened to so closely and what it felt like to listen deeply to another person. This can be a conversation lasting however long you prefer.

8. End by thanking the other person for listening.

Mindful Check-in (3 - 6 minutes)

This activity is designed to remind students to actually experience what is happening in the moment, rather than simply achieving goals and marking off to-do lists. Often there is too much emphasis on going through the motions rather than noticing what is going on with your mind and body. The exercise asks students to explore the breath and body, emotional states, and the quality of attention.

Instructions: Take a few minutes to answer the following questions. What is the quality of your attention? Are you focused or distracted? Take time to think about how you are attending to what is happening in the current moment. What is the quality of your breathing? Take a moment to notice the current rhythm and pattern of your breathing, but don't attempt to change it. Is your breathing fast, slow? Are you holding your breath? What is going on in and with your body? Notice your heart rate and posture. How are you sitting, standing, or lying down? Are you comfortable? Notice any places of tension and any place you feel you can relax. It may be your cheeks, your shoulders, your eyebrows, or your chest. What is your current emotional state? Try to find a word to describe your current emotional state. Try to sense how you are feeling in this moment. Don't place judgment on this feeling, just notice. After you have gained familiarity with the asking yourself these questions, you can take time during your day to ask, "How am I feeling right now?".

The Multitasking Exercise (20 - 30 minutes)

Use this exercise to pay attention to what you're doing online. Notice your multitasking strategy. For example, when do you decide to switch from one task to another? Some of us respond to every interruption immediately, while others carefully limit the number of interruptions and respond selectively. By observing how you multitask, you will have the chance to see your strategy and make changes if you would like.

Log what you observe

Watch the recording immediately after the session to note any feelings from the recent experience. Take note of how you felt (breath, body, attention) during the different points. Pay attention to where you made choices to move to another activity or remain on one task.

Example: "Facebook, paying bills, twitter. Knowing I'm being recorded. Noticing how many times I touch my glasses, moving my feet around. Facebook is open and lots of folks responding to something I posted earlier but choosing to stick with what I am doing so that I can complete it. Impatient while a photo uploads so switch to emails. New class registrant so switch to Excel. Take care of that task-feels good."

Journal Writing (5 minutes)

Writing in a journal is one of the oldest methods of self-exploration and introspection. A journal can help you live in the present moment, to cultivate awareness, and to bring in gratitude. Students are instructed to write about their experiences in the first person, without thought of another reader besides themselves. Students can write with pen and paper or on computer or tablet. Journaling differs from a keeping a diary, as a diary records daily events. Journal entries foster reflection of mental and emotional activities of the individual.

Instructions: Keep a daily journal (either handwritten or electronic). Each entry should be about a paragraph. Record your feelings, thoughts, sensations, and any related experiences. This is not an exercise to record what you've done. Think of it as a conversation partner to reflect on reactions to daily life. Some questions to consider asking yourself in your reflection: What troubled you today? What made you happy today? What is one thing you are grateful for today? What are you enjoying about your work? What are you enjoying about your family?

Deep Reflection (10 - 20 minutes)

This activity aims to give students silence while they deeply reflect on their goals and how they are spending their time. Students are encouraged to freely write answers to the following questions.

How do you spend your time?

1. Make a list of how you actually spent your time, on average, each day over the past week.

2. Match the list from question one to this list.

Conclusion

The ability to sustain attention and self-regulate with qualities of openness, curiosity, and respect are important for academic success and critical for getting and maintaining employment. The techniques designed to improve these abilities are only beginning to gain momentum in the classroom and, in addition, the scientific evidence supporting these practices continues to grow through educational research. What may work effectively in the physical classroom will require thoughtful adaptation and creativity by instructors in order to be deployed at scale. Some instructors like Dr. Scharmer and Mr. Yukelson are leading the way. It is clear that to explicitly focus on these qualities of being requires courage and humility from instructors. Contemplative practices, to the extent they have positive effects on learners, may also cause reciprocal effects between learners and instructors. To whatever extent learners grow in their awareness, reflection, curiosity, and respect for others, instructors stand to benefit greatly from this approach.
References
Becerra, R., Dandrade, C., & Harms, C. (2016). Can specific attentional skills be modified with mindfulness training for novice practitioners? Current Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-016-9454-y

Carson, J. W., Carson, K. M., Gil, K. M., & Baucom, D. H. (2004). Mindfulness-based relationship enhancement. Behavior Therapy, 35(3), 471-494.

Creswell, J. D., Taren, A. A., Lindsay, E. K., Greco, C. M., Gianaros, P. J., Fairgrieve, A., ... & Ferris, J. L. (2016). Alterations in resting-state functional connectivity link mindfulness meditation with reduced interleukin-6: a randomized controlled trial. Biological Psychiatry, 80(1), 53-61.

Jha, A. P., Krompinger, J., & Baime, M. J. (2007). Mindfulness training modifies subsystems of attention. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 7(2), 109-119.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever you go, there you are: Mindfulness meditation in everyday life. New York: Hyperion.

Tang, Y.Y., Ma, Y., Wang, J., Fan, Y., Feng, S., Lu, Q., Sui, D., Rothbart, M.K., Fan M, & Posner, M.I. (2007). Short-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(43), 17152-17156.

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Chapter 12: Mindfulness in Online Courses

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Online courses have given learners across the globe a unique opportunity to learn outside of formal educational settings and in less supervised environments. The independent nature of this form of learning heightens the need for learners to have the tools to both initiate and manage their own learning.

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Like QM, but free and open for use!

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To help campuses ensure that their online courses are learner centered and well designed, a team of SUNY staff and campus stakeholders has designed the OSCQR rubric, a customizable and flexible tool for online course quality review.

The OSCQR rubric specifically targets online course design. The OSCQR rubric is unique and differs from other online course quality rubrics in several ways. It is not restricted to mature online courses. The rubric can be used formatively with new online faculty to help guide, inform, and influence the design of their new online courses, and, it is non-evaluative.

Conceptually, the rubric and the online course review and refresh process are implemented as a professional development exercise designed to guide online faculty to use research-based effective practices and standards to improve the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of their online course design, rather than as an online course evaluation, or quality assurance procedure.

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OSCQR - SUNY Online Course Quality Review Rubric

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To help campuses ensure that their online courses are learner centered and well designed, a team of SUNY staff and campus stakeholders has designed the OSCQR rubric, a customizable and flexible tool for online course quality review. The OSCQR rubric specifically targets online course design.

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Developing Teaching Philosophy Statements is a website to help write philosophy statements and discuss the best writing techniques for Philosophy.

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WORKSHEET Developing Teaching Philosophy Statements.docx | Powered by Box

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Tool to assist development of a SoTL project design

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Tool to assist development of a SoTL project design

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As defined by the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) at Kennesaw State University, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is systematic inquiry into student learning and/or one’s own teaching practices in higher education which is situated in context and involves methodologically sound application of appropriate research methods, peer review, and distribution as scholarly work

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The aim of Hopscotch 4-Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is to provide faculty with a tool to assist them in designing a thorough inquiry process to promote the development of a SoTL design.

As defined by the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) at Kennesaw State University and drawing on Felten's (2013) recommendations, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is systematic inquiry into student learning and/or one's own teaching practices in higher education which is situated in context and involves methodologically sound application of appropriate research methods, peer review, and distribution as scholarly work.

This tool has been developed in collaboration with Hillary H. Steiner, Ph.D., Associate Director for SoTL in the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning ( Kennesaw State University).

You can find below the nine steps we propose you to follow in order to generate a thorough SoTL research design:

The form below will assist you in generating a SoTL research design as well as a visual representation of the key elements of your study. After filling out this form, you will receive an email with an attached pdf version of your design, as well as a link for you to update it as many times as necessary. You can check here an example of the type of design you will receive in your email.

Note: This form will give you the possibility of saving your work after each step, so you don't have to generate the whole design at once. To do so, you will have to select "Save to keep on working later," after filling out the information requested for a given step, then click "next," and then click on "submit."

Although many researchers new to SoTL are eager to dive straight in to their research design, the first step in the process of generating a SoTL study design should involve reflection about who you are as a SoTL researcher. The basic set of beliefs that guides your action as both a teacher and a researcher (Berenson, 2018; Haigh & Withell, 2020) will inform the decisions you make about your SoTL study.

SoTL researchers bring to their studies their particular teaching perspective as well as their way of understanding how things work in our world, and the way knowledge is constructed (worldview). The worldview of the SoTL researcher as well as their adscription to a particular Interpretive Community (i.e., disability theory; critical race theory; queer theory, etc.) have a deep impact on the decisions and inquiry procedures they will put in practice.

Worldview as a SoTL researcher

Worldview as a SoTL researcher

These ontological and epistemological assumptions have a direct impact in the methodology used in a given study. Post-positivism calls for interventionist quantitative studies, while constructivism is associated with qualitative hermeneutical studies, and pragmatism matches methods to specific questions and purposes of research by using mixed methods. In the case of researchers following a transformative worldview, qualitative methods deeply grounded in critical theories, are most commonly used. For examples of how these paradigms are expressed within a SoTL context, see Your disciplinary traditions may also inform your paradigmatic positioning Guba (1990) describes a paradigm or worldview as "a basic set of beliefs that guide action." That basic set of beliefs of the researcher is based on his ontological (What is the nature of reality?) and epistemological assumptions (What is the nature of knowledge and the relationship between the knower and the would-be known?). Therefore, how one views the constructs of social reality and knowledge affects how they will go about uncovering knowledge of relationships among phenomena and social behavior. Your ontological assumptions inform your epistemological assumptions which inform your methodology and these all give rise to your methods employed to collect data.

From an ontological point of view, post-positivism understands that there is one reality which is knowable within a specific level of probability, while constructivism understands that the nature of reality is multiple and socially constructed. Pragmatism asserts that there is a single reality and that all individuals have their own unique interpretation of reality. Finally, those following a transformative worldview reject cultural relativism and recognize that various versions of reality are based on social positioning.

From an epistemological point of view, post-positivists believe that objectivity is key and the researcher manipulates and observes in a dispassionate objective manner. Constructivists, on the contrary believe that there should be an interactive link between researcher and participants, and that since knowledge is socially and historically situated, it needs to address issues of power and trust. Pragmatism, on its side understands that relationships in research are determined by what the researcher deems as appropriate to a particular given study. Finally, a transformative worldview acknowledges that since there is an interactive link between researcher and participants, and knowledge is socially and historically situated, there is a clear need to address issues of power and trust.

Haigh and Withell (2020).

(Poole, 2013). For example, SoTL practitioners in the sciences typically approach research from a post-positivist perspective, whereas perspectives from the humanities may align more with constructivism. Before thinking about your research question and design, spend some time reflecting about your own worldview and any disciplinary traditions that may influence your perspective.
Please watch the following clip to clarify the previous concepts:

References:

Haigh, N., & Withell, A. J. (2020). The Place of Research Paradigms in SoTL Practice: An Inquiry. Teaching and Learning Inquiry, 8(2), 17-31. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.8.2.3 (check)

Hutchings, P. (2000).. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.(Opening lines: approaches to the scholarship of teaching and learning check)

Maxwell, J. A. (2008). Designing a qualitative study. In L. Bickman & D. J. Rog (Eds.), (Vol. 2, pp. 214-253). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. (The SAGE handbook of applied social research methods check)

Baskerville, D., & Goldblatt, H. (2009). Learning to be a critical friend: from professional indifference through challenge to unguarded conversations. Cambridge Journal of Education, 39(2), 205-221. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057640902902260 (check)

The second step in the process of generating a design for your SoTL study has to do with reflecting on what aspect of learning or teaching you would like to study and the goals that will be driving your inquiry. We propose that you think about the following key areas:

Defining what you would like to study

Interest in studying this particular topic

Defining what you would like to study

SoTL projects often arise from our anecdotal experiences, our intuition, and our observations (Poole, 2018). As curious teacher-researchers, we can draw from these sources to select a personally relevant topic of inquiry.

Although many SoTL studies begin with a problem that requires investigation, others are motivated by the need to thoroughly describe a situation. In her Introduction to the book Opening Lines: Approaches to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (2000), Pat Hutchings, one of the early leaders in the SoTL field, describes SoTL questions that answer "What works?," for example, an investigation of a new teaching method, and questions that answer "What is?," which helps us better understand what's already happening in our classrooms.

Many of us immediately jump to a "What works" question, especially those whose disciplines emphasize hypothesis testing and a post-positivist paradigm. A "What Works" question focuses on establishing evidence of our teaching effectiveness on student learning. But sometimes we simply need to dive deeper into a particular classroom phenomenon-describing "What Is"-in order to understand it. Bill Cerbin (2018) describes a problem he had in his classroom where students were continually submitting low quality group assignments. After trying several different types of group work assignments with the same result, Cerbin realized he needed to better understand what was happening during the time students were working on their group assignments. He designed an observational, qualitative SoTL study to describe and interpret his students' group work experience. What he found surprised him-what was actually happening during group work wasn't at all what he thought was happening, and he was able to revise his assignments accordingly.

As you begin to think about your SoTL topic, the following questions might guide your reflection:

What pervasive questions about teaching continue to puzzle you?

Where are the bottlenecks in student learning in your course?

Are you curious about whether a popular technique would work in your particular classroom context?

Who is learning, and who is being left out?

Questions such as the previous can be uncomfortable to ask. They may produce even more discomforting answers. But, unless and until faculty grapple with the hard questions, we will remain powerless to do very much to improve life in classrooms.

Maxwell (2008) states that goals for a study include motives, desires, and purposes-anything that leads you to do the study or that you hope to accomplish by doing it. These goals, which can be personal, practical, or intellectual, help guide your other design decisions to ensure that your study is worth doing, and are essential to justifying your study, a key task of a funding or dissertation proposal. In a SoTL manuscript, goals are often discussed in a "Rationale" section early in the paper. Some questions that could help you better define the goals of your SoTL study are:

Why is your study worth doing?

What issues do you want it to clarify, and what practices and policies do you want it to influence?

Why do you want to conduct this study, and why should we care about the results?

Although the improvement of teaching and learning might be considered a "wicked problem" (Bass, 2020)-complex and multilayered, with no definable solution-SoTL can help address it in meaningful, small ways that lead to larger discoveries and theory-building.

Spending time to reflect on your own topic of inquiry can contribute to a well-crafted research question, which is essential to designing your SoTL study.

Interest in studying this particular topic

In order to reinforce the aspects addressed above, we recommend you reflect on the interest you have in studying your topic. As a SoTL -researcher, your personal connection to the study is an important part of the study's context, which you will thoroughly describe for your readers. Samaras (2001) provides the following examples as an illustration:

Why are you interested in studying this particular problem, issue, innovation, need? This question is important to me because of my background as a Hispanic and the fact that I was an ESOL [English as a Second Language] student for a brief period of time.

Who would benefit from addressing/studying the previous particular problem, issue, innovation, need? Many would benefit from addressing this question: ESOL [English for Speakers of Other Languages]teachers, students, parents, and other teachers. I want to work to improve ESOL students' weak performance in school.

References:

Bass, R. (2020). What's the problem now? To Improve the Academy , 38 (1). http://doi.org/10.3998/tia.17063888.0039.102 (check)

Huber, M.T., & Hutchings, P. (2005) The Advancement of Learning: Building the Teaching Commons . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Maxwell, J. A. (2008). Designing a qualitative study. In L. Bickman & D. J. Rog (Eds.), (Vol. 2, pp. 214-253). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. (The SAGE handbook of applied social research methods check)

Poole, G. (2018) Using intuition, anecdote, and observation: Rich sources of SoTL projects. In N. Chick (Ed.), SoTL in Action: Illuminating Critical Moments of Practice . Stylus

The third step in the process of generating a SoTL design has to do with reflecting on your topic of interest and its relationship with what others have already studied. It is important to explore the literature early in the process of designing your SoTL study; however, you should also expect to return to it later as your study evolves. For helpful suggestions on searching and reviewing the SoTL literature, see these excellent articles by Healey & Healey (2023a, 2023b).

Good quality SoTL is grounded in context (Felten 2013), both in the literature it references and the classroom scenario it describes. To adequately frame the situational context, a SoTL study might draw on three bodies of literature: 1) scholarship from the discipline, or from higher education in general if the study is intended for an interdisciplinary audience; 2) scholarship on specific pedagogical topics; and 3) more general teaching and learning theory (i.e., the science of learning). To illustrate these three areas, we will consider the study by Wynn, Mosholder, & Larsen (2014) that investigated the effects of problem-based learning on the thinking skills of first-year history students in a learning community.

Felten, P. (2013). Principles of good practice in SoTL. Teaching and Learning Inquiry, 1(1), 121-125. (check)

Healey, M., & Healey, R. L. (2023). Searching the Literature on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL): An Academic Literacies Perspective: Part 1.

Teaching and Learning Inquiry, 11. ( check)

Healey, M., & Healey, R. (2023). Reviewing the Literature on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL): An Academic Literacies Perspective: Part 2.

Teaching and Learning Inquiry, 11. ( check)

​​Steiner, H. H., & Hakala, C. M. (2021). What do SoTL practitioners need to know about learning?. (1), 79-85. (Teaching & Learning Inquiry , 9 check)

Wynn, C. T., Mosholder, R. S., & Larsen, C. A. (2014). Measuring the effects of problem-based learning on the development of postformal thinking skills and engagement of first-year learning community students. Learning Communities: Research & Practice, 2(2), 4. (check)

This guide to databases, indexes, electronic collections and publishers' platforms in the field of education and relevant disciplines has been generated by Olga Koz, graduate librarian in the Bagwell College of Education at Kennesaw State University. It might be a good resource to help build the literature review for your SoTL study.

This tool will help you learn how to conduct a solid review of literature. To do so, you will have to answer the questions posed in the form you will find on the lower left side, while checking the resources provided on the right side.

The fourth step in the process of generating a SoTL design has to do with deciding on the research design you will use in the study. Almost any quantitative, qualitative or mixed-methods research design could be used in a SoTL project; however, there are some special considerations that set SoTL studies apart from other research studies.

SoTL has blurry boundaries with related concepts like research on the science of learning and Disciplinary-Based Educational Research (DBER), which can cause some confusion among those new to educational research. All are focused on teaching and learning, but each can differ from the others in aims, scope, and methodology.

Faculty in fields like Psychology and Education may conduct research on teaching and learning as part of their disciplinary research agendas, with an aim toward building theory about how people learn. This large body of literature, collectively known as the "science of learning," informs and is informed by SoTL, but it is not SoTL in the way most scholars define it. Rather than being focused inward on the researcher's own context--an important attribute of SoTL--theoretical research on the science of learning is focused outward, with a goal of producing generalizable theory (Larsson, et al., 2020).

The fact that SoTL is conducted in the classroom gives the researcher less control over some aspects of the design (for example, students cannot typically be randomly placed into course sections), but it gives the research more ecological validity because the data is being collected in the authentic environment where the learning takes place. SoTL, then, can serve as the proving ground for theories built by research on the science of learning (Daniel, 2012)

Review the following research designs to decide which fits with your topic of interest, theoretical perspective, and personal paradigm. Post-positivists are often drawn to quantitative designs, constructivists to qualitative designs, and pragmatists to mixed method designs.

Qualitative Research Traditions

Quantitative Research Traditions

Mixed-methods Research Designs

Daniel, D. B. (2012). Promising principles: Translating the science of learning to educational practice. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 1 (4), 251-253.

Larsson, M., Mårtensson, K., Price, L., & Roxå, T. (2020). Constructive friction? Charting the relation between educational research and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 8 (1)

What pervasive questions about teaching continue to puzzle you? Where are the bottlenecks in student learning in your course? Do you wonder whether a popular technique would work in your particular classroom context? As discussed in earlier Hopscotch steps, SoTL studies begin with these kinds of questions-questions that arise from our intuition or experience and drive us to seek an answer (Poole, 2018).

Often our questions begin as areas of interest that may be quite broad. Therefore, your first goal in planning a SoTL study is to narrow your area of interest into a question that is testable (perhaps using quantitative methods) or can be explored further (perhaps using qualitative methods). Clearly defining your research question at the outset of your study will allow you to choose an appropriate research design.

R esources to help you develop Research Questions in Mixed-Methods Studies

Tashakkori, A., & Creswell, J. W. (2007). Exploring the Nature of Research Questions in Mixed Methods Research. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 1(3), 207-211. https://doi-org.proxy.kennesaw.edu/10.1177/1558689807302814

Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Leech, N. L. (2006). Linking Research Questions to Mixed Methods Data Analysis Procedures 1. The Qualitative Report,11(3), 474-498. Retrieved from https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol11/iss3/3

The sixth step of the process has to do with defining the data collection methods that you will be using in your SoTL study. The following two questions might be of help in doing so:

What evidence do you need to convince yourself that you've answered your question?

What tools do you use in your course everyday that would provide that evidence?

For example, if you are interested in measuring student learning, what evidence would convince you that students have learned? Their grades? Their scores on a standardized end-of-course assessment? Or might their evidence of learning come through in a term paper or other artifact? These will be the sources of your data.
Much of this data will already be available to you in your course. However, in most cases you must receive consent from your students (under the oversight of an Institutional Review Board) to use the data in research. This process will be discussed in Step 9 of the Hopscotch-SoTL model.

Below are some of the most common sources of data for SoTL projects:

Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques . Jossey Bass Wiley.

Visioli, S., Lodi, G., Carrassi, A., & Zannini, L. (2009). The role of observational research in improving faculty lecturing skills: A qualitative study in an Italian dental school. Medical teacher, 31(8), 362-369.

The seventh step of the process has to do with organizing and making sense of the data that you will be using in your SoTL study. Frances Rust and Christopher Clark's guide to action research offers the following : "Analysis is the heart of making sense of your experience with action research. Analysis is fun and messy. It always begins with your data. Data never speak for themselves. Please remember this. Data never speak for themselves. Your mind is the most important analytical tool that you have. Analysis is a process of telling a convincing story about the sense that your data led you to make. As well, you must persuade a skeptical audience that the story that you tell and the sense that you make are supported by evidence."

There are two major sources of support for your evidence:

The first is the data you have collected and the patterns that you see.

The second is equally important. It is what others have learned about this topic. If you haven't already read other research and theory on your topic, now is the time to do it. This is critical to situating your work. If, for example, you find that the action you took has results that are very similar to those of other researchers, then you know your analysis is in the ballpark. Essentially, you can borrow from the authority of others that have come before you to strengthen the claims that you will make for the action that you took. If, however, your results contradict prior research, then you are well on the way to forming a provocative new question about why your study yielded such different results. You have something interesting to talk about with colleagues and with other researchers. Either way, what you learn locally can become part of a larger conversation among educators and researchers.

Your data analysis will look very different depending on the methods you use (for an in-depth look at the diversity of methods in SoTL studies, see Divan et al. (2017)). However, as a general rule, you should prepare to:

Describe the action(s) that you took.

Reflect on the evidence you have collected.

Count. Look for patterns.

Share the evidence with colleagues.

Examine what different explanations could explain the data
(draw on prior research).

Revisit assumptions about the learning situation.

Formulate a trial explanation.

Develop an argument with evidence and claims.

Check if your evidence support your claims: Does the evidence support your claims? Do your colleagues (critical friends) find your argument credible?; How does the argument fit into ongoing debates and conversations? What is unique about your setting or context? Will others find your argument useful?

In a quantitative study, you'll be analyzing numbers. You may report some descriptive statistics, but you'll likely be using inferential statistics, with the most common for SoTL studies being t-tests, analysis of variance (ANOVA), correlation, and multiple regression. Here are some things to consider when analyzing quantitative data:

Because student data doesn't usually fit a normal curve, you may decide to use non-parametric statistics. This is a conservative choice to make, because it increases your chances of making a Type II error (not seeing an effect when an effect is actually there); however, if your analysis reveals an effect when using non-parametric statistics, your claim is stronger.

Many SoTL researchers are now choosing to report effect sizes, which give readers a better idea of the practical significance of the results.

Commonly used software for quantitative data analysis includes SPSS and SAS, as well as R, which is freely available online.

Contact your institution's research center to identify resources and support for quantitative data analysis on your campus.

The data analysis process is quite different for qualitative data, and may require several iterations of analysis before completion. Developing and assigning themes and codes to the data is one approach (for example, see Braun and Clarke (2006)). An important concept in qualitative data analysis triangulation -the inclusion of multiple sources of data in order to provide a richer, more accurate analysis.

References

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative research in psychology, 3(2), 77-101.

​​Divan, A., Ludwig, L., Matthews, K., Motley, P., & Tomljenovic-Berube, A. (2017). Survey of research approaches utilized in the scholarship of teaching and learning publications. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 5(2)

Validity in Quantitative SoTL studies

Trustworthiness in Qualitative SoTL studies

Validity in Quantitative SoTL studies

In quantitative research we usually consider two general dimensions in evaluating a measurement method: reliability and validity.

Reliability is defined as the consistency of the measurements. To what level will the instrument produce the same results under the same conditions every time it is used? Reliability adds to the trustworthiness of the results because it is a testament to the methodology if the results are reproducible. The reliability is often examined by using a test and retest method where the measurement are taken twice at two different times. The reliability is critical for being able to reproduce the results, however, the validity must be confirmed first to ensure that the measurements are accurate. Consistent measurements will only be useful if they are accurate and valid.

The term validity refers to the strength of the conclusions that are drawn from the results. In other words, how accurate are the results? Do the results actually measure what was intended to be measured? There are several types of validity that are commonly examined and they are as follows:

Conclusion validity looks at whether or not there is a relationship between the variable and the observed outcome.

Internal validity considers whether or not that relationship may be causal in nature.

Construct validity refers to whether or not the operational definition of a variable actually reflects the meaning of the concept. In other words, it is an attempt to generalize the treatment and outcomes to a broader concept.

External validity is the ability to generalize the results to another setting. There are multiple factors that can threaten the validity in a study. They can be divided into single group threats, multiple group threats, and social interaction threats.

For more information regarding the control of the validity of a quantitative study please read chapter 6 in (Price, Jhangiani, & Chiang, 2015)

Trustworthiness in Qualitative SoTL studies

In qualitative research Guba (1981) proposes four criteria that should be considered in pursuit of trustworthiness:

a) Credibility (in preference to internal validity): One of the key criteria addressed by positivist researchers is that of internal validity, in which they seek to ensure that their study measures or tests what is actually intended. According to Merriam, the qualitative investigator's equivalent concept, i.e. credibility, deals with the question,

"How congruent are the findings with reality?"

Some strategies to assure credibility are:

- Adoption of appropriate, well recognized research methods

- Triangulation via use of different methods, different informants, different sites, and moments.

- Tactics to help ensure honesty in informants

- Debriefing sessions between researchers

- Description of background, qualifications and experience of the researcher

- Member checks of data collected and interpretations/theories formed

- Thick description of phenomenon under scrutiny

- Examination of previous research to frame findings

b) Transferability (in preference to external validity/generalizability): External validity "is concerned with the extent to which the findings of one study can be applied to other situations". In positivist work, the concern often lies in demonstrating that the results of the work at hand can be applied to a wider population. Since the findings of a qualitative project are specific to a small number of particular environments and individuals, it is difficult to demonstrate that the findings and conclusions are applicable to othersituations and populations. Because of that we use "Naturalistic Generalization" (Stake, 2005). Naturalistic generalization is a process where readers gain insight by reflecting on the details and descriptions presented in case studies. As readers recognize similarities in case study details and find descriptions that resonate with their own experiences; they consider whether their situations are similar enough to warrant generalizations.

Naturalistic generalization invites readers to apply ideas from the natural and in-depth depictions presented in case studies to personal contexts.

Some strategies to assure Transferability are:

-Provision of background data to establish context of study and detailed description of phenomenon in question to allow comparisons to be made

c) Dependability (in preference to reliability): In addressing the issue of reliability, the positivist employs techniques to show that, if the work

were repeated, in the same context, with the same methods and with the same participants, similar results would be obtained.

In order to address dependability in Qualitative research, the processes within the study should be reported in detail, thereby enabling a future researcher to repeat the work, if not necessarily to gain the same results. Thus, the research design may be viewed as a detailed "prototype model".

Some strategies to assure Dependability are:

-Employment of "overlapping methods"

-In-depth methodological description to allow study to be repeated

d) Confirmability (in preference to objectivity): Objectivity in science is associated with the use of instruments that are not dependent on human skill and perception.The concept of confirmability is the qualitative investigator's comparable concern to objectivity. Here steps must be taken to help ensure as far as possible that the work's findings are the result of the experiences and ideas of the informants, rather than the characteristics and

preferences of the researcher.

Some strategies to assure Confirmability are:

-Triangulation to reduce effect of investigator bias

-Admission of researcher's beliefs and assumptions

-Recognition of defects in study's methods and their potential effects

-In-depth methodological description to allow integrity of research results to be scrutinized

-Use of diagrams to demonstrate "audit trail"

As with any research study that involves human subjects, SoTL studies are often under the purview of a university's ethics board, sometimes labeled the Institutional Review Board. We must protect the students who engage as participants in our study from unwanted breaches of privacy, coercion into participation, and potential psychological harm.
However, because SoTL studies often involve normal classroom procedures, the process for applying for ethics board approval for a SoTL study is typically less involved than it may be for other research studies. In fact, some institutions have an umbrella policy for SoTL studies that requires a very limited amount of work on part of the researcher.
For institutions without SoTL umbrella policies, you will prepare an application for ethics approval. This application will ask you to describe several aspects of your study, including those below. If this is the first time you have worked with human subjects in a research study, you may need to enroll in a training course, such as the one offered by CITI, first. Please see your institution's guidelines for more information.

The term "ethics" derives from the Greek word "ethos" which means character. To engage with the ethical dimension of your research requires asking yourself several important questions:

What moral principles guide your research?

How do ethical issues enter into your selection of a research problem?

How do ethical issues affect how you conduct your research-the design of your study, your sampling procedure, etc.?

What responsibility do you have toward your research subjects? For example, do you have their informed consent to participate in your project?

What ethical issues/dilemmas might come into play in deciding what research findings you publish?

Will your research directly benefit those who participated in the study?

The major principles associated with ethical conduct are (Litchman, 2011):

1. Do No Harm. This is the cornerstone of ethical conduct. There should be a reasonable expectation by those participating in a research study that they will not be involved in any situation in which they might be harmed. Although most SoTL studies involve typical classroom activities, participants may experience harm if the topic is psychologically triggering, or if study procedures cause public humiliation or embarrassment. f you begin a study and you find that some of your participants seem to have adverse reactions, it is best to discontinue the study, even if it means foregoing your research plan.

2. Privacy and Anonymity: Any individual participating in a research study has a reasonable expectation that privacy will be guaranteed. Consequently, no identifying information about the individual should be revealed in written or other communication. Further, any group or organization participating in a research study has a reasonable expectation that its identity will not be revealed. Our recommendation is to remove identifying information from your records. Even when using pseudoynms, use caution in publishing long verbatim quotes, especially if they are damaging to the organization or people in it. Often, these quotes can be located on the Internet and traced to the speaker or author.

3. Confidentiality:  Any individual participating in a research study has a reasonable expectation that information provided to the researcher will be treated in a confidential manner. Consequently, the participant is entitled to expect that such information will not be given to anyone else. Your ethics board will require you to keep the information you learn confidential. If you sense that an individual is in an emergency situation, you might decide, in consultation with the board, that you can waive your promise for the good of the individual or of others. Remember to be more sensitive to information that you obtain from minors and others who might be in a vulnerable position.

4. Informed Consent: Individuals participating in a research study have a reasonable expectation that they will be informed of the nature of the study and may choose whether or not to participate. They also have a reasonable expectation that they will not be coerced into participation. Our responsibility is to make sure that participants are informed, to the extent possible, about the nature of your study. Even though it is not always possible to describe the direction your study might take, it is your responsibility to do the best you can to provide complete information. If participants decide to withdraw from the study, they should not feel penalized for doing so.

5. Rapport: Once participants agree to be part of a study, the researcher develops rapport in order to get them to disclose information. Researchers should make sure that they provide an environment that is trustworthy. At the same time, they need to be sensitive to the power that they hold over participants, especially if those participants are their students.

6. Intrusiveness: Individuals participating in a research study have a reasonable expectation that the conduct of the researcher will not be excessively intrusive. Intrusiveness can mean intruding on their time, intruding on their space, and intruding on their personal lives. As you design a research study, you ought to be able to make a reasonable estimate of the amount of time participation will take.

7. Data Interpretation: A researcher is expected to analyze data in a manner that avoids misstatements, misinterpretations, or fraudulent analysis. The other principles discussed involve your interaction with individuals in your study. This principle represents something different. It guides you to use your data to fairly represent what you see and hear. Of course, your own lens will influence you. You have a responsibility to interpret your data and present evidence so that others can decide to what extent your interpretation is believable.

Obtaining ecological validity within an ethical framework means sacrificing control. We usually cannot randomly place students into sections of a course in order to test a teaching method; this would be unfair to students, as they are typically able to choose their own course sections. It would also be a breach of ethics to expose some students to new and effective teaching techniques while condemning others to ineffective and outdated approaches. Students are our partners and participants in SoTL, and therefore must be treated with respect. You may even wish to involve students as co-researchers, a practice that is popular in the SoTL field (see
Mercer-Mapstone, et al., 2017). At a minimum, you should consider your study from the student participants' perspective, be as transparent as you can without unduly influencing your results, address any concerns, and above all else, do no harm.

References

Mercer-Mapstone, L., Dvorakova, S. L., Matthews, K., Abbot, S., Cheng, B., Felten, P., Knorr, K., Marquis, E., Shammas, R., & Swaim, K. (2017). A systematic literature review of students as partners in higher education. International Journal for Students as Partners, 1 (1).

Fedoruk, L. (2017). Ethics in the scholarship of teaching and learning: Key principles and strategies for ethical practice. Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning Guide Series. Calgary, AB: Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning at the University of Calgary. www.ucalgary.ca/taylorinstitute/guides

Who is using Hopscotch 4-SoTL

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The aim of Hopscotch 4-Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is to provide faculty with a tool to assist them in designing a thorough inquiry process to promote the development of a SoTL design.

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Includes clear explanations, examples, resources.

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UBC Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology

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In the January edition of Edubytes, our guest editors are Judy Chan, Hailan Chen, John Cheng, Will Engle, Sue Hampton, Isabeau Iqbal and Bosung Kim.

Introduction

As the start of the term is now behind us, it's a good time to reflect back upon the syllabus, which can be an important tool for welcoming students and setting the tone for a course. While most universities, including UBC, have policies about what information should and must be included in a syllabus, taking an inclusive and student-centered approach in your syllabus can be an effective strategy for inviting your students into the learning process. It is likely the first point of interaction students will have with you, the instructor, and it is your first opportunity to get them excited about the course. Whether you teach a mandatory course or an elective, students want to be engaged meaningfully in their learning.

What is an inclusive syllabus?

"An inclusive syllabus emphasizes the importance of engaging with and valuing difference, and incorporates equity and inclusion into key course information, such as course policies, readings, assignments and resources." ( Inclusive Syllabus: What is it? [PDF] )

An inclusive syllabus is learner-centered, and focuses on learners by clearly communicating what students will do, and how the course and the instructor can facilitate their academic success and thrive. The tone of an inclusive syllabus is warm, supporting, and caring ( Harnish & Bridges, 2011). An inclusive syllabus signals to learners that their unique perspectives and experiences are welcomed, and helps to foster a sense of belonging, especially for students who are historically and systemically marginalized. The syllabus will clearly describe the tools and supports available to ensure all learners have equitable opportunities to succeed in the course.

An inclusive syllabus is also the result of thoughtful course design planning. Implementing strategies from Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in your course aims to create flexible learning spaces where all students can access course materials, stay motivated and engaged, and have various chances to express their learning accessibility in mind so all students can read and navigate information without difficulties, even on mobile devices (learn about the Accessible Syllabus and OER Accessibility Toolkit). It is also important to include information about how a student with a disability can request an accommodation.

How can I shift my syllabus to be more inclusive?

Quick Refinements

Moderate Changes

Emerging Trends

Recently, the idea of a " liquid syllabus" has emerged as a means of providing a humanizing introduction to the instructor and course before it begins. Taking its name from the marketing term liquid content, which refers to web content that is highly shared for the ideas contained within it, a liquid syllabus welcomes students to the course by being both inclusive and learner-centered, as well as published openly on the web in a way that is easy to share, link to, and access on mobile devices. According to Michelle Pacansky-Brock, who coined the term, a liquid syllabus is barrier-free, accessible, and friendly. Along with traditional syllabus materials, it also includes humanizing elements, such as an informal welcome video aimed at building students' sense of belongingness and "providing students with contextual cues (who is delivering this message, how is it being delivered) that text alone leaves out." Pacansky-Brock's free self-paced course on the liquid syllabus walks through the steps for creating one.

Resources for Going Further

Learner-Centered Syllabus Toolkit: This UBC toolkit provides questions for reflection, suggestions, sample syllabi language, and ideas on sub-sections to include. It is not intended to be a template, but rather provides resources to help instructors formulate inclusive syllabi that fit their own courses and contexts.

Inclusive Syllabus - What is it? (PDF): This 3-page primer was produced by the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT) and the Equity and Inclusion Office at UBC. It offers a brief introduction to the inclusive syllabus, why it's important, and some practical strategies.

Inclusive Syllabus Workshop: The CTLT offers a hands-on studio session during which instructors assess their syllabus for hidden assumptions, review exemplar syllabi, and revise their own syllabus to make it more learner-centered and inclusive. The next offering is April 19, 2023,10am-12pm (registration required).

What Does Your Syllabus Say About Your Course? A Worksheet for Reflection (PDF): This CTLT-created worksheet uses learner-centered and inclusive teaching principles to help instructors assess how well their syllabus communicates their intentions for the course to their students.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Syllabus by CAST.org: This site provides guidance, and an annotated example, that helps instructors develop a syllabus which follows the UDL principles.

Inclusive Teaching: Equity, Diversity & Inclusion in Teaching and Learning: This self-paced UBC course is for instructors in all disciplines who are interested in developing their capacity to create more inclusive classrooms and learning environments. The content is also relevant for anyone involved in teaching and learning in higher education and consists of five independent modules. Module 3 introduces inclusive teaching, including a Sample Syllabus with some commentary on inclusive practices.

Inclusive Teaching @ UBC: This UBC website is for instructors, graduate students and staff who want to learn more about inclusive teaching practices. It offers a wide range of resources, such as handouts and toolkits on various topics ranging from Indigenous initiatives, anti-racist teaching, accessibility, and classroom climate, along with opportunities for professional development and funding relevant to these topics at UBC.

Creating a syllabus that students want to read, Oregon State University: This post provides strategies for creating a syllabus that students want to read, such as making it visually appealing, the use of video and infographics, and attention to tone.

Enjoyed reading about the inclusive syllabus? Learn about other topics we covered in the January 2023 edition by reading the complete Edubytes newsletter. To view past issues, visit the Edubytes archive.

Are you interested in staying up to date on the latest trends in teaching and learning in higher education? Sign up for our newsletter and get this content delivered to your inbox once a month.

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The Inclusive Syllabus - UBC Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology

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In the January edition of Edubytes, our guest editors Judy Chan, Hailan Chen, John Cheng, Will Engle, Sue Hampton, Isabeau Iqbal and Bosung Kim discuss the inclusive syllabus.

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What is SoTL (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning)? Database of annotated SoTL literature and resources

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A place to start for the teaching section of your annual review or promotion materials. 2022 guide based on meta-analysis of research on critical teaching behaviors.

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This handout provides ideas on how to separate grades from feedback and build more student reflection, metacognition and ongoing feedback into the student learning experience.

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Separating grades (values, numbers, percentages, levels, letters) from feedback (verbal or written comments, directions on where to improve, outlining strengths, suggestions for next steps) is the first step in 'ungrading' your course.

Once you see this separation and understand how grades (putting a value on learning) doesn't aid in the learning process, ungrading practices and pedagogies will become more clear.

Ungrading: Separating Grades from Feedback - PDF Handout
This handout provides ideas on how to separate grades from feedback and build more student reflection, metacognition and ongoing feedback into the student learning experience.

An Alternative Grading Glossary - Link

Here is a collection of readings, blogs, research articles and other writings that explore what ungrading is and how it can be applied in the post-secondary classroom (and still give a letter or number for student transcripts!)

For extensive research references see the chapters in Ungrading, Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead)

Chamberlin, K., Yasué, M. & Chiang, I. A. (2018). The Impact of Grades on Student Motivation. Active Learning in Higher Education pp. 1-16. DOI: 10.1177/1469787418819728 (not freely available online, through libraries)

Guberman, Daniel. 2021. Student Perceptions of an Online Ungraded Course. Teaching and Learning Inquiry 9 (1):86-98. | PDF

Rojstaczer, S. & Healy, C. (2012). Where A is Ordinary: The Evolution of American College and University Grading, 1940-2009. Teachers College Record, 114. Available: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/016146811211400707

Schinske, J. & Tanner, K. (2014). Teaching More by Grading Less (or Differently). CBE Life Sciences Education, Vol 13, 159-166, Summer 2014 | Webpage or PDF

Williams, H. (2020). Will Students Engage If There are No Grades? A Review of the Evidence, and an Experiment in Ungrading | ResearchGate Conference Paper - Full-Text

Blog POsts, Articles and Helpful Resources

Teachers Going Gradeless - Blog, Interviews etc. | Website

ATI Open Education Webinar Series (2019-2020). Ungrading: Pedagogical Possibilities | Slidedeck PDF

BCcampus (2022) Ungrading: Unpacked - Video Recording and Summary of a BCcampus Session - Link

Buck, D. (n.d.). Crowdsourcing Ungrading produced by the #UNgrading Virtual Book Club | Open Book

Burtis, M. (2019). Ungrading: a chapbook (quotes from people about ungrading) | Website

Eyler, J. (March 7 2022). Grades are at the centre of the student mental health crisis | Inside Higher Ed Article

Flaherty, C. (2019). When Grading Less is More | Inside Higher Ed Web Article

Jarvis, C. L. (April 26, 2020). Chemistry educators try 'ungrading' techniques to help students learn. | Article on Chemical and Engineering News

Gannon, K. (2017). How to Escape Grading Jail. The Chronicle of Higher Education | Webpage

Human Restoration Project (2018). Grading =/ Assessment: A Collection of Gradeless, Scoreless, Assessment Techniques | PDF

Human Restoration Project (n.d.). Ungrading Handbook (fillable handbook to guide work on ungrading) | PDF

Kohn, A. (2011). The Case Against Grades. | Blog Post. An expanded version of article in Educational Leadership.

Oregon State University - ECampus Course Development & Training (2022). Assessment Design Considerations for Ungrading | Blog Part 1 - Blog Part 2 (Strategies)

Toor, R. (April 26, 2021). The Controversial but Useful Practice of "Ungrading" in Teaching Writing | Chronicle of Higher Education Article

Whysel, B. (December 7, 2022). Can we Improve Grading by Collaborating with Students? | Faculty Focus Article

Ungrading Slow Chat (on Twitter)
A slow chat happens on Twitter over a period of time rather than at a specific time and place. Check out the Ungrading Slow Chat questions or check out the Twitter responses via the hashtag.

Instructors Who Have Ungraded
Many instructors have completely switched to ungrading/unmarking their classes. These are just a few of the stories of those who have written about it. They come from all disciplines and most often with some length of time in the classroom (doing grading for decades) and make the switch forever. Check out their stories.
Maha is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Learning & Teaching at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. She is a full-time faculty developer and educator teaching digital literacies and intercultural learning.

Susan is a professor of anthropology at University of Notre Dame. She's been teaching college students for over 30 years and for much of that time she was a conventional grader. Since around 2106 she has given up grading except for handing in grades at the end of term.

Blum. S. (December, 2020). Ed. Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to do Instead)?| Forward by Alfie Kohn | Book from West Virginia Press

Blum story within article by Supiano, B. ( July 19, 2019). Grades Can Hinder Learning. What Should Professors Use Instead? | Web Page

Blum, S. (November 14, 2017). Ungrading: The significant learning benefits of getting rid of grades. Inside Higher Ed. | Web Page

Blum, S. (December 20, 2016). Living and Learning with Risk: Against Rubrics and Grades. How "Ungrading" Allowed my Students to Try Some New Things | Blog post

Cate Denial is the Bright Distinguished Professor of American History, Chair of the History department, and Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.

Laura is an instructor at the University of Oklahoma where she joined in 1999. She's been teaching fully online courses since 2002. She teaches general education courses in the humanities.

Since 2002, Clarissa has been a full-time chemistry instructor at Central New Mexico Community College. In her classes she uses ungrading, blogs and encourages open and engaged pedagogies. The story of all of her ungrading experiences are found on her main blog website at: https://clarissasorensenunruh.com/ungrading/

Jesse Stommel has written some seminal blog posts on this topic over the past few years and has ungraded his English, digital humanities, film and communications courses for decades. He is co-founder of Digital Pedagogy Lab and Hybrid Pedagogy. Jesse has been an educator since 1999.

Stommel, J. (May 9, 2022). Ungrading and Alternative Assessment | YouTube video of Presentation

Stommel, J. (January 3, 2022). Compassionate Grading Policies | Blog Post

Stommel, J. (June 11, 2021). Ungrading: An Introduction | Blog Post

Stommel, J. (June 2, 2021). Grades are Dehumanizing: Ungrading is no Simple Solution | Blog Post

Stommel, J. (March 3, 2020). What if We Didn't Grade? A Bibliography. | Blog Post

Stommel, J. (February 6, 2020). Ungrading: an FAQ. | Blog Post

Stommel, J. (March 11, 2018). How to Ungrade.| Blog Post

Stommel, J. (October 26, 2017). Why I Don't Grade. | Blog Post

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Separating grades (values, numbers, percentages, levels, letters) from feedback (verbal or written comments, directions on where to improve, outlining strengths, suggestions for next steps) is the ...

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Mastery-based testing: Emphasizing learning and de-emphasizing grades.

Standards-based learning: Emphasizing learning and de-emphasizing grades.

Specifications grading: Emphasizing learning and de-emphasizing grades.

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What does an A, B, C, or D really mean in terms of student learning? Grades are overly emphasized in the assessment of student learning. Instructors give agonizing attention to decisions about how many points or how much partial credit to allocate to students' work. Students stress about the points they get and oftentimes engage instructors in uncomfortable conversations about how to get more points. The fixation on grades at the expense of deep learning has generated widespread criticism of the traditional points- and letter-grade system.

Critics note that grades tend to diminish students' intrinsic interest in learning, take the focus off feedback, produce anxiety, cause learning to stop, promote cheating, and perpetuate a fixed rather a growth mindset (Kohn, 2011; Stommel, 2020). The perception that the traditional grading system is broken (Nilson, 2016) has fueled the emergence of an ungrading movement that calls for replacing the traditional points- and letter-grade system with narrative assessments and having students give themselves a grade (Blum, 2020).

To grade or not to grade? Getting rid of grades is not the immediate or only answer. Instructors teach in graded systems. Grades will continue to be the currency of the evaluation of formal student learning in most higher education settings for the foreseeable future (Schinske & Tanner, 2014). Besides, ungrading (as the movement is often called) may inadvertently contribute to equity gaps (Talbert, 2022). There is a better approach to grading.

Alternative grading is the umbrella name for criterion-referenced grading practices that engage students in striving to achieve mastery of course learning outcomes. It is an all or nothing approach with multiple feedback and revision opportunities to help students address their mistakes and correct them. It is a significant departure from traditional grading practices where students usually have a single opportunity to show proficiency (Townsley & Schmid, 2020). Variations of alternative grading include mastery-based testing, standards-based grading, and specifications grading (Elsinger & Lewis, 2020; Kelly, 2020; Nilson, 2015).

What are the benefits of alternative grading practices? Anecdotal reports indicated that most students appreciate the opportunity to redo tests and assignments as they work toward mastery of learning outcomes. The absence of letter grades, numerical scores, or partial credit on tests and assignments motivated students to pay close attention to instructors' feedback and use it to revise their work. Instructors reported that alternative grading fostered greater student engagement, reduced test anxiety, and greatly decreased complaints about grades (Blackstone & Oldmixon, 2019; Pope et al., 2020). Beyond anecdotal reports, research evidence affirmed that the application of alternative grading methods improved students' learning. Here are two examples:

One college algebra class of 140 students used a traditional points-based grading system and a second class with 50 students utilized standards-based grading (SBG). From college algebra, students went on to trigonometry or survey of calculus. The researcher tracked students in both pathways. In trigonometry, comparison of SBG students with a lower math placement score and traditionally-graded students with a similar placement score showed a significant difference. SBG students had an average final grade of 3.0 compared to traditionally-graded students who had an average final grade of 2.03. In survey of calculus, SBG students with a lower math placement score had an average final grade of 2.22 compared to their counterparts with an average final grade of 1.88 (Zimmerman, 2020).

Specifications grading was used in six sections of an undergraduate cell biology course in Spring 2019. Two sections used a traditional grading system. The end-of-semester survey indicated that the students enrolled in the specifications-graded sections demonstrated significantly higher knowledge and retention of the content being assessed than their peers in the traditionally-graded sections (Katzman et al., 2021).

Furthermore, the results indicated that SBG helped to close the achievement gap for disadvantaged students who entered the math sequence less prepared. Also, the use of specifications-grading fostered student understanding and retention of course content.

Finally, how do alternative grading methods work? Here are three preparation guides that instructors can adapt to implement these methods in their courses:

Implementing an alternative grading method requires a significant amount of work. If a comprehensive adaptation is not feasible, faculty can start small by incorporating simple ways to take the spotlight off grades (Miller 2022). Examples include grading some assignments and tests satisfactory or unsatisfactory (S/U) and giving students opportunities to use the instructor's feedback to learn from their mistakes and revise their work.

References

Blum, S. D. (2020). Just one change (just kidding): Ungrading and its necessary accompaniments. In S. D. Blum (Ed.). Ungrading: Why rating students undermines learning and what you can do (pp. 53 - 73). West Virginia University Press: Morgantown.

Miller, D. M. (2022). Ungrading light: 4 simple ways to ease the spotlight off points. Chronicle of Higher Education.

Nilson, L. B. (2015). Specifications grading: Restoring rigor, motivating students and saving faculty time. Sterling, Virginia: Stylus.

Nilson, L. B. (2016). Yes, Virginia, There is a better way to grade. Inside HigherEd.

Stommel, J. (2020). How to ungrade. In S. D. Blum (Ed.). Ungrading: Why rating students undermines learning and what you can do (pp. 25 - 41). West Virginia University Press: Morgantown.

Talbert, R. (2022). Ungrading after 11 weeks. Alternative Grading.

Townsley, M., & Schmid, D. (2020). Alternative grading practices: An entry point for faculty in competency-based education. The Journal of Competency-based Education, 5(3), 1- 5

Zimmerman, J. K. (2020). Implementing standards-based grading in large courses across multiple sections. PRIMUS, 30(8-10), 1040-1053.

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Alternative grading: A framework for emphasizing learning and de-emphasizing grades

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What does an A, B, C, or D really mean in terms of student learning? Grades are overly emphasized in the assessment of student learning. Instructors give agonizing attention to decisions about how ...

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Yes, Virginia, There's a Better Way to Grade

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Yes, Virginia, There's a Better Way to Grade

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While we in higher education keep using it, our grading system is broken, argues Linda B. Nilson, and she offers some concrete ways to fix it.

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Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs

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Pause a moment to consider the way we've been grading our students' work since time immemorial. The way we allocate points on the basis of apparent quality. The way we struggle to be fair in giving the same number of points to works of comparable quality, even though they differ a great deal -- and the time it takes us to make these hairsplitting decisions. The way students stress over the points their work does or doesn't get. The way they challenge our grading decisions in the hope of squeezing more points out of us -- despite the agonizing care and attention to detail we give to their work. For students, it's all about maximizing partial credit.

Consider, too, the value that external stakeholders attach to our grading. Most employers of our graduates give grades little heed in hiring. They want experience. At the program and university level, accreditors eschew grades and demand independent evidence of student achievement of learning outcomes.

Our grading system is broken, yet we educators keep using it. You may think you have no alternative. But you do. And you can comfortably make the change in your own classes and not confront your administration.

Imagine another grading system, one where you grade all assignments and tests satisfactory/unsatisfactory, pass/fail. Students earn all of the points associated with the work, or none of them, depending on whether their work meets the particular specifications you laid out for it. This is why I call this grading system specifications, or specs, grading. Think of the specs as a one-level, uni-dimensional rubric. But don't think of them as defining D or even C minus work. Rather, imagine that they define truly "satisfactory" as at least B work -- maybe even A minus work. This assures rigor.

The specs may be as simple as "completeness": for instance, all the questions are answered, all the problems attempted in good faith or all the directions followed (that is, the work satisfies the assignment), plus the work meets a required length. Or the specs may be more complex: for instance, the work fulfills the criteria you set out for a good literature review, research proposal or substantial reflection.

You must write the specs for a complex assignment very carefully, clearly and thoroughly. They must describe exactly what features in the work you want and will look for. This may mean specifying the organization as well as contents of each section of the work, perhaps even paragraph by paragraph.

Too formulaic? Let's be real: most of our assignments follow a formula. All you have to do is lay out that formula or whatever part of the formula is important for your students to learn and follow. If you're bothered by late work, you can include on-time submission among the specs, too.

If your objective for an assignment is creativity, simply provide loose specs of the various ways that students can demonstrate their ability to explain and apply the material -- such as a 20-minute informational video or dramatic performance, a four-minute original musical performance, a 15-page short story or an eight-minute persuasive speech. You can specify basic parameters for creative assignments and not worry about "grading" them.

In sum, complete, satisfactory work receives full credit (full value), and incomplete, unsatisfactory receives no credit/value. For students, it's all or nothing. No skipping the directions and no sliding by on partial credit for sloppy, last-minute work.

In fact, research reveals that this kind of assignment grading increases student motivation and produces higher-quality work than traditional grading systems do. And the 2015 National Survey of Student Engagement has found that only 54 percent of freshmen and 61 percent of seniors believe that they have been "highly challenged to do their best work" in college. Clearly, our students have room to meet higher and more rigorous academic standards. Maybe we've gone too far with lowering the stakes of our assignments and tests. Now, nothing students do matters much to them.

But what about second chances, redemption and flexibility? Consider this second element of specs grading: a virtual-token economy, which buffers the riskiness of no partial credit and allows the opportunity for redemption.

At the beginning of the term, you give your students one, two or three virtual tokens that give them the chance to revise an unsatisfactory assignment, hand in an assignment 24 hours late without penalty or to take a makeup exam. (It's easier to keep track of three tokens than points docked.) Of course, students who consistently submit satisfactory work on time will keep their tokens. If you choose, you can even let students earn tokens by submitting satisfactory work early, successfully completing additional assignments or doing whatever you'd like to reward. Then, at the end of the course, you can give the student(s) with the most tokens something desirable -- perhaps the chance to skip the final exam or a gift certificate for a pizza.

Actually, you can import this token economy into any grading system. Many students regard it as a game and want to hoard their tokens.
Bundles of Assignments
Specs grading has one more exotic feature: course grades are based on the bundles of assignments and tests that students complete at a pass/satisfactory level. Bundles that require more work, more challenging work or both earn students higher grades. No more points to painstakingly allocate and haggle over with students. By choosing the bundle they want to complete, students select the final grade they want to earn, taking into account their motivation, time available, grade point needs and commitment. If a student chooses a C because that's all he or she needs in your course, you can respect that. Under such conditions, students are often more motivated to learn because they have a sense of choice, volition, self-determination and responsibility for their grade, as well as less grade anxiety.

Another benefit is the option to associate each bundle with one or more student learning outcomes, so completing a given bundle indicates that the student has achieved certain of those outcomes. Why shouldn't our grades reflect the outcomes students have and have not achieved? Then our grades may actually mean something.

Let's admit that, right now, our grades have little connection to outcomes. Students earning an A may have achieved all the outcomes of a course, but what about those getting a B, a C or a D? Did they achieve some outcomes and not others? If so, which ones? Or did they achieve few or none at an acceptable level? Even so, they passed the course.

The idea of bundles can be hard to grasp without examples. Let's say you set up 10 assignments and tests. These may be papers, essays, objective items, problem sets, programs, designs or some combination of these. Each assignment and test has a companion assignment that enhances its learning value, such as a self-regulated learning exercise, a self-assessment, a paraphrase of your feedback or a plan for doing better next time. Together, they form a bundle.

Then, number each bundle according to the challenge level so that the lower numbers designate relatively easy and lower-level thinking assignments and tests and the higher numbers indicate increasingly demanding and higher-level thinking assignments and tests. Therefore, your course offers 10 bundles.

For a D, students have to complete bundles 1 through 5, which require achieving only knowledge/recall outcomes, plus the ability to write brief reflections.

For a C, they have to complete bundles 1 through 6, where bundle 6 also requires comprehension, plus the ability to correct their errors.

For a B, they have to complete bundles 1 through 8, where bundles 7 and 8 also require application, plus the ability to plan improvement strategies.

For an A, they have to complete all 10 bundles, where bundles 9 and 10 also require evaluation and creation, plus the ability to assess their work.

Here is an even simpler system with only four bundles of assignments and tests, ranging from relatively easy/basic to very challenging/advanced. The more challenging bundles will require students to achieve more learning outcomes, including higher levels of thinking about broader and more complex knowledge.

For a D, students have to complete only the easiest and most basic bundle.

For a C, they have to complete that basic bundle and a somewhat more challenging one.

For a B, they have to complete these two bundles and a third one that is even more challenging.

For an A, they have to complete all four bundles, the fourth of which is the most challenging.

Again, to complete a bundle, a student must finish all the assignments and tests within it at a satisfactory level -- which means at least a B level. That is, each piece of work within a bundle must meet all your specs for satisfactory completion.

Specs grading is flexible. You can adopt one or two of the three elements, or apply an element in some cases and not others. For instance, you can integrate pass/fail grading and tokens into a course but retain your current point system. Or you may choose to grade only some assignments and tests pass/fail. Or you may institute bundles only for grades C and D, or only for grades A and B.

Some faculty members already use specs grading in their courses, in whole or in part, and they get better results than they did grading the traditional way. Most of them claim that their students produce higher-quality work, pay more attention to feedback, feel more responsible for their grades and are less grade anxious and less likely to protest their grades.

In addition, these instructors find the grading process simpler and less stressful and time-consuming. More of their time goes more toward figuring out what they want their students to show they can do and at what level.

So take heart. If you don't like the impact that our grading system has on you and your students, you don't have to tolerate it anymore.

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New ways to grade more effectively (essay)

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While we in higher education keep using it, our grading system is broken, argues Linda B. Nilson, and she offers some concrete ways to fix it.

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A guide to inclusive syllabi design by Kevin Gannon. Workshop presented at CSU in 2019.

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This thoughtful collection of photographs and essays can spur new insights on how we are now and what we might wish to become.

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Cassandra Volpe Horii and Martin Springborg

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What Teaching Looks Like - Center for Engaged Learning

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This open access book by Cassandra Volpe Horii and Martin Springborg showcases authentic photos of teaching and learning in higher education.

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Award-winning activities from Harvard's Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. Searchable by learning objective, discipline, type and length of exercise.

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Welcome to ABLConnect, a searchable database of interactive lesson plans and assignments designed for and used in college and university classrooms. We hope this website will provide you with examples that will help you think about how to design your own activities and assignments. You can search activities by subject, activity type, and learning goal.

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A classroom, whether physical or virtual, is a reflection of the world in which we live. Research has shown that students from underrepresented groups often face additional challenges. By implementing inclusive teaching practices, faculty create learning environments where all students feel they belong and have the opportunity to achieve at high levels.

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Online Teaching Toolkit | Resources for Online Instruction

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Resources for instructors needing to make a quick transition to utilizing an online environment. Improved the online experience for teachers and students.

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Why many scholars are trying to push the envelope on what actually constitutes “academic” writing about learning and teaching.

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Writing about Learning and Teaching in Higher Education offers detailed guidance to scholars at all stages-experienced and new academics, graduate students, and undergraduates-regarding how to write about learning and teaching in higher education. It evokes established practices, recommends new ones, and challenges readers to expand notions of scholarship by describing reasons for publishing across a range of genres, from the traditional empirical research article to modes such as stories and social media that are newly recognized in scholarly arenas. The book provides practical guidance for scholars in writing each genre-and in getting them published.

To illustrate how choices about writing play out in practice, we share throughout the book our own experiences as well as reflections from a range of scholars, including both highly experienced, widely published experts and newcomers to writing about learning and teaching in higher education. The diversity of voices we include is intended to complement the variety of genres we discuss, enacting as well as arguing for an embrace of multiplicity in writing about learning and teaching in higher education.

"This book is a real gift. Books about writing can be pretty pedestrian, but the authors have truly invited readers into a conversation. . . . Most important, it's beautifully written - with a great voice - scholarly but personal."

Pat Hutchings, Senior Associate, Carnegie Foundation and Senior Scholar with the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment

Cite this Book

Healey, Mick, Kelly E. Matthews, and Alison Cook-Sather. 2020. Writing about Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Creating and Contributing to Scholarly Conversations across a Range of Genres. Elon, NC: Elon University Center for Engaged Learning. https://doi.org/10.36284/celelon.oa3.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Understanding the Book and Meeting the Authors

Chapter 1: Articulating our Goals: Origins, Audiences, and Structure

Chapter 2: Situating Our Work: Focus, Motivation, Educational Research, and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)

Part 2: Embracing the Potential of Writing about Learning and Teaching

Chapter 3: Creating and Contributing to Scholarly Conversations through Writing

Chapter 4: Fostering Identity through a Values-based Approach to Writing

Chapter 5: Conceptualizing Writing as a Learning Process

Part 3: Clarifying Your Purpose and Preparing to Draft

Chapter 6: Reflecting on Motivations

Chapter 7: Writing Alone or with Others

Chapter 8: Choosing an Outlet

Chapter 9: Selecting a Title

Chapter 10: Preparing the Abstract

Part 4: Writing in Different Genres

Chapter 11: Extending the Conventional Writing Genres

Chapter 12: Analyzing and Reporting Data: Empirical Research Articles

Chapter 13: Advancing New Perspectives: Theoretical and Conceptual Articles

Chapter 14: Synthesizing What We Already Know: Literature Reviews

Chapter 15: Focusing on Practical Experiences: Case Studies

Chapter 16: Telling a Bigger Story: Books and Edited Collections

Chapter 17: Talking About Learning and Teaching: Conference and Workshop Presentations

Chapter 18: Revealing the Process: Reflective Essays

Chapter 19: Provoking Thought: Opinion Pieces

Chapter 20: Sharing Everyday Experiences: Stories

Chapter 21: Engaging in Scholarly Conversations Online: Social Media

Chapter 22: Applying, Reflecting, and Evidencing: Teaching Awards, Fellowships, and Promotions

Part 5: Writing Efficiently, Effectively, and Energizingly

Chapter 23: Allotting Time and Choosing Space to Write

Chapter 24: Writing and Rewriting Your Draft

Chapter 25: Becoming an Engaging Writer

Chapter 26: Seeking Networks, Critical Friends, and Feedback

Part 6: Submitting, Responding to Reviewers, and Promoting Your Work

Chapter 27: Preparing for Submission

Chapter 28: Responding to Reviewers and Dealing with Rejection

Chapter 29: Promoting Your Published Work and Developing a Publication Plan

Chapter 30: Conclusion: Reflecting on the Potential of Writing about Learning and Teaching

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Writing about Learning and Teaching in Higher Education - Center for Engaged Learning

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Writing about Learning and Teaching in Higher Education offers detailed guidance to experienced and new academics, graduate students, and undergraduates regarding how to write about learning and teaching in higher education.

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Research-based guides to cultivate strengths of heart, mind, and will

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Playbooks are evidence-based resources targeting specific character strengths. They are codeveloped by educators, scientists, and designers.

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From the Center for Excellence in Learning & Teaching at Iowa State

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MomentumU: online learning for USG faculty

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MomentumU: online learning for USG faculty

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Portal for the USG Teaching & Learning Conference is now in MyCSU! Access also here to Short Courses on Inclusive Teaching, Neuroscience of Learning, and many more.

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The Faculty Center supports travel and registration to teaching-focused events through Teaching and Learning External Development Grants.

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Teaching and Learning Conferences

This listing of teaching and learning conferences is updated on a semester basis. If you know of a conference that should be added to this list, email catl@elon.edu with the conference information.

Can't find what you are looking for? Kennesaw State University maintain a listing of conferences on teaching and learning that you might also want check out.

February 20-22, 2023
Conference on Meaningful Living and Learning in a Digital World
Savannah, GA

The Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration and The University of West Georgia

May 22-24, 2023
Lilly National Conference: Evidence Based Teaching and Learning
Austin, TX (in-person)

Lilly Conferences on College and University Teaching in collaboration with the International Teaching Learning Cooperative

July 23-26, 2023
Distance Learning Administration Conference
Jekyll Island, Georgia

The Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration and The University of West Georgia

August 7 - 9, 2023
Lilly National Conference
Asheville, NC

Lilly Conferences on College and University Teaching in collaboration with the International Teaching Learning Cooperative

October 24-26, 2023
International Conference on Information Society
Dún Laoghaire, Ireland

October 23-27, 2023
Annual Mentoring Conference: Mentoring in an Interconnected World
Albuquerque, NM
The University of New Mexico (UNM) Mentoring Institute

November 6 - 7, 2023
Decoding the Disciplines Conference
Aachen, Germany

November 16-18, 2023

Original Lilly Conference

See a full list of all Lilly International & National Conferences

Miami University Campus in

Oxford, OH

Lilly Conferences on College and University Teaching in collaboration with Miami University

November 17-19, 2022

Teaching Struggling Brains:
Improving Mental Health, Focus, Motivation, and Learning in a Distressed, Digital Generation

Boston, MA or Virtual (via zoom)
Learning & the Brain

Can't find what you are looking for? Other institutions maintain a listing of conferences on teaching and learning:

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Teaching and Learning Conferences This listing of teaching and learning conferences is updated on a semester basis. If you know of a conference that should be added to this list, email...

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Brought to you by our own Bryan Banks and Aaron Gierhart: ideas to incorporate audio recording in your classroom

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Welcome to Pedagogies of Podcasting. This is a web resource for faculty and staff in higher education interested in podcasting as a teaching and learning approach. Please utilize the navigation menu to explore pedagogical challenges in podcasting, examples of podcasts that students have published, open source tools for getting started with podcasting, and much more!

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A list compiled by Online Teaching Fellow Reba Wissner, with links and descriptions of useful applications.

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The link provides you with amazing Icebreakers and warmups to help you achieve a productive zoom conference with your associates or students.

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Back in the day, my d.school friends Tania Anaissie and Taylor Cone created the " Stoke Deck "-a collection of activities to boost energy, nurture camaraderie, and encourage creativity among students in college design classes. Since then, I've religiously used these activities, and others like them, to help my students get into the right mindset for creative collaboration.

Students in Dartmouth's Senior Design Challenge class on "Silly Hat Day"

But activities like these were designed for physical, in-person interaction. Today, we teach and learn in a different world.

As my colleagues and I scrambled to shift our in-person design classes to an online format, I posed a question to the members of the Future of Design in Higher Education group:

As we aim to create engaging experiences for our students online,

What are all the Zoom-friendly warm-up/stoke activities that we can do with our students to kick off class sessions, or add moments of delight throughout?

Below is what we came up with.

Feel free to use these for your online classes, meetings, and webinars to infuse a little bit of extra joy into those experiences.

Name Tag

A very quick and simple way for everyone to acknowledge each other at the start of a meeting or class session.

Sound Ball

The premise is you're throwing around an invisible/imaginary ball.

Someone starts by forming their hands as if they're holding an invisible ball, and saying the name of the person they're about to "throw" the invisible ball to.

The thrower has to make a specific sound with their mouth when throwing (it can be anything... "whee," "boing," "poof," "blah," "shayayayaya", whatever).

The catcher must make the same sound that the thrower made. Then, the catcher names a new person they're about to throw to, and throws it to them with a new made-up sound.

Keep going until everyone has had the ball once.

Tip: have everyone put their hands up to the camera if they haven't had the ball yet, so that as the game continues, the remaining throwers know who to throw to (if the objective is to include everyone).

Classic "Sound Ball" game, except can be done on Zoom with one variation.

Shazoom*

The facilitator needs to share audio only (in Zoom's "Advanced" screen sharing options).

The facilitator plays a song (using Spotify or whatever other source you'd like)

Participants race to identify the song in the chat. The first one to guess correctly gets a point.

The points can be simply pride points, or can be redeemable for prizes of the facilitator's choosing. Someone can "win" by being the first to get, e.g. 3 points, or you can just go for a few minutes until it's time to move on.

This one is super simple and gets people in a joyful mood quickly. It can take less than a minute, or as long as 5 or even 10 minutes if you'd like to keep it going.

Variation: you can divide participants into teams (have everyone change their display name to start with the team number/name, so you can keep track), and the teams can compete against each other for added (e.g. first team to 5 points wins).

Tip: vary the genres of the songs to keep it fun (e.g. play something from a Broadway musical, followed by a current Billboard hit, followed by an oldie, etc.)

*Portmanteau of Shazam and Zoom. Credit for the name goes to Espy Thomson, the Human-Centered Design Fellow at Dartmouth College.

Pass The Love

Ask everyone to set their Zoom screen to the "Gallery view" setting which allows you to see everyone as a set of tiled video screens.

Ask everyone (with video on) to stand up, and out-stretch their arms side to side. Then back up until their arms are touching the edges of their video frame (imagining you're in a box bounded by the webcam).

Each person should think of something lovely/kind to share with another person and hold that idea in their hands like a ball.

Then everyone will "pass" that Love to a person in the frame to Left, Right, Top or Bottom of their frame...And as someone passes something to you then you will "receive" it by reaching to that side of that side of video frame, and "pass" it along to another side of the video frame.

So you are "receiving" and "passing" Love around the video group. Everyone is moving, and passing (and also reaching, stretching, etc).

The goal is to get everyone standing and moving around to re-energize and re-engage.

Remember When...

This usually results in some delightful hilarity, and is a great example of collaborative creativity.

Fun with Virtual Backgrounds

The place you wish you could be right now

Your favorite scent

A still from a movie or cartoon you love

Your favorite food/dessert

A childhood photo of yourself

Something that makes you happy

Your favorite city

Etc... you can even crowdsource ideas from the group

Have everyone set their Zoom "virtual background" to something fun, funny, or delightful, such as:

Then you can go around and have everyone talk for a few seconds about what they chose and why.

One-Word-at-a-Time Proverb

Pre-assign the order in which people will speak (typing out everyone's names in order in the chat works well).

The first person starts by saying the first word of a (non-existent) proverb.

Continue around the group with each person adding one word (e.g.: He... who... slices... radishes... loudly... must... always... etc.);

Once the group feels that the natural end of the sentence has been reached, everyone nods and says "yes, yes, yes, yes, yes."

You can go around the group several times and come up with several proverbs.

This is a classic improv game that survives the transition to Zoom very well.

Yes, Let's!

Another "oldie but a goodie" that works really well online.

Where Are We?

Set up a Google Spreadsheet like this one. (You need to have automatically-averaging formula for latitude and longitude, and you need to make sure everyone can edit this shared spreadsheet.)

Have everyone go to latlong.net and look up their latitude and longitude.

Have everyone go to the spreadsheet and enter their name and location.

Once you have the averages, facilitator does a reverse-lookup by going to latlong.net/Show-Latitude-Longitude.html and enters the averages, to see the place name.

Facilitator enters the resulting place name into the spreadsheet.

The summary is: you average out the coordinates of everyone's current location (latitude + longitude), to determine the geographical "center of mass" of the group.

Bonus points if you then look up something about the place where you landed. When I tried this, the class's average was in Shelton, CT. Turns out it's the birthplace of the original Wiffle Ball!

Story Spine

Once upon a time...

Every day...

Until one day...

And because of that...

And because of that...

And because of that... n*

Until finally...

And ever since that day...

Everyone comes up with a story together, one sentence at a time. Start by pre-assigning the order in which people will speak (typing out everyone's names in order in the chat works well), and post the text of the bullet points below on the screen. Then, have everyone go around and build the story, with these phrases starting each subsequent sentence:

* You can have as many of these as you need to, given the size of the group.

Gift-Giving

Start by "handing" one person an invisible/imaginary gift. (It's helpful if you have a TA or confederate for this first step, so they can demonstrate the proper response). Be as expressive as possible with your body language to indicate something about the size / weight / potential contents of the gift. As you hand it over, the only thing you're allowed to say is "Here, [person's name], I got you a gift."

The person to whom you handed it has to receive the gift and name it, responding to the body language. ("Wow, thanks for this... bicycle! It's such a pretty hot pink color!")

And then they give a gift to the next person, and so on, until everyone has gone.

This is another classic improv game.

This can work well in a session in which you're teaching interviewing and empathy-building because the "receiver" is like the interviewer and has to respond to what the giver/interviewee puts out there.

Jamboard Playground

Open a Jamboard and share the link with everyone that is on your video call.

Choose someone to share one thing that they are obsessed with that week or day.

When that one thing has been chosen (ex: watching Netflix, sending mail, dinosaurs), that becomes the inspiration for your communal art piece.

On Jamboard, the tools on the left hand side give everyone the markers, adding images, etc. to help create a single image inspired by that "obsession".

It helps to have a time limit (like 5 minutes) and everyone is encouraged to participate. The best part, the image at the end is a hodgepodge of interpretations that have been built off each other.

Students in Swarthmore's Center for Innovation and Leadership create collaborative art on Jamboard

Randomly assign people to breakout rooms and ask them to determine a short list of design principles or class concepts (or anything else!).

Bring the groups back and with mute on. Have one person act out the concept while the other team guesses.

Google has an extension called " Jamboard," which is basically like a shared whiteboard.

Breakout Room Charades

The facilitator asks each participant to submit the title of their favorite song, or the name of their favorite artist. This can be done ahead of time (via email or Google Forms), or in real-time via Zoom private chat. The important thing is not to let other participants know what each person said.

The facilitator plays ~30sec of each person's favorite song (looking it up on Spotify or YouTube Music, etc.), and everyone has to guess which person picked which song.

(For a fun/silly bonus, throw in 30 seconds of random/weird/strange song that no one listed, just to add a note of delightful unpredictability).

Musical Guess-Who

This works best with small groups (less than 10).

Rapid Fire Teams

Have everyone turn on "Gallery view."

Air-high-five your neighbors.

Air-high-five your diagonal neighbors.

A great way to quickly build intimacy and community, by giving pairs of people something unique to bond over.

High Five

You can share your audio and play a song for everyone (and you can choose whether to allow people to turn off their cameras to do the whole "dance like nobody's watching" thing, or leave everyone's cameras on and enjoy each other's silliness together).

You can encourage everyone to play their own song and dance to it, while keeping their microphones on mute - so you're simulating a "silent disco" situation.

30-Second Dance Party

There are two variations of this one:

Person 1 starts by doing a movement, such as shrugging their shoulders.

Person 2 jumps in and asks "Hey [insert name]! What are you doing?"

Person 1 responds "I'm krumping!"

Person 2 responds: "That's not krumping. This is krumping." Person 2 now does a new movement and Person 1 mimics.

Person 3 jumps in and asks Person 2 "Hey [insert name]! What are you doing?" etc. starting a new movement so all three people are doing a new movement.

This continues until everyone on the video call is doing one similar movement, one person at a time, with the movement changing with each person.

That's Not Krumping

A game to get everyone on a video call to do a synchronized movement from the waist up.

First, ask everyone to notice their current mood. Notice how you feel.

Second, get up and move around your space touching lots of objects in your space. Notice how they make you feel when you touch them. Pick one that feels like it matches your mood today. If it is small enough, bring it back to your Zoom.

Third, share. Depending on group size, everyone can share or can do breakout rooms in small groups.

Getting in Touch with Touch

The goal of this exercise is to get everyone out of the cognitive for a few minutes and in touch with tactile and sensory experience.

When on a video call, have everyone grab something that is within arm's reach.

Take turns telling a story about that item: Where/when did you get it? Is it meaningful?

If you're on multiple calls with similar people and choose this activity, make sure to grab something new to share each time.

Instruction and note to give to your group: "If you are an accomplished cognitive thinker, it will be easy for you to pick any random object and make up a reasonable-sounding story ( narrative) of how that object matches your mood. Try not to do this, but instead really notice how you feel and then how objects make you feel when you touch them."

Grab and Share / Show and Tell

Bonus variation: you can also have participants tell completely fantastical, made-up stories about the objects, for extra delight and creativity.

Scene Change

Everyone moves out of the frame (but keeps their cameras on). The facilitator instructs everyone to come back to the shot as though they _______ (insert mood / situation / facial expression here). You can do several of these back-to-back. Some fun prompts include:

Come back as though you...

Shape Shift

This is a quick and easy game that is sure to bring smiles to faces.

What was the last thing you had to drink?

What city are you in now?

What type of animal was your first pet?

Zoom Bingo

Ask participants a question that can be answered in one word or a short phrase. Each participant writes their response and holds it up to the camera. Anyone whose screen has a row, column, or diagonal with all the same responses wins. Simple questions work best, like...

Here's what it might look like:

Each guest takes turns telling one fact about the student who brought them, and it can be a true or false fact (e.g. "One time Ahmed ate 15 muffins in one sitting," "When she was little, Serena really wanted to be a pirate," etc.)

Everyone else tries to guess whether they think the fact was false. (You can use Zoom polls for this, and just set up a one-question poll with the options "TRUE" and "FALSE" and re-launch the poll each time.)

The person who said the fact reveals whether the group was right, and expands just a little on the backstory behind the fact.

For extra fun, cue up a sound effect for "correct" (ding) and "incorrect" (buzzer) to play after the reveal has been made.

The student who was just the subject of a true/false fact nominates the next person to go.

Keep going around until everyone has gone.

True or False (with Friends and Family)

Ask each student to bring a friend or family member to class. Go around and have each guest introduce themselves. Then, to play the "True or False?" game:

Pajama day

Ugly sweater day

Funny/favorite hat day (photo at the beginning of this article)

Superhero day

Plaid day

Bring a pet to class day

Halloween costume day

Bring a sibling to class day

Primary colors day

Dress as someone else (your prof or a famous person) day

Black tie day

Crazy hair day

Funny shirt day

Dessert/snack day

Bring a stuffed animal (or other childhood toy/memorabilia) day

Time travel day

Fun/funny socks day

Tell a joke day

Bad hair day

Bring something you made day

Etc.

Theme Days

Come up with a list of themes (like high school spirit days) - have students join you in brainstorming, or choose from the list below, and each day decide on a theme. You can use polls in Zoom to have students vote at the end of each day for the following day's theme (from, say, 5 options each time).

For each theme day, devote a few minutes at the start of class to going around and having everyone talk for a few seconds about the thing they chose/brought.

A whole bunch of great ideas from Abby Sturges:

Mural-specific warm-up games:

Interested in exploring more fun with improv and related activities? Here are some gems to check out:

This list was a team effort, and I'm immensely grateful to the members of the Future of Design in Higher Education group who worked on this together, including:

Wendy Angst (Notre Dame), Kate Burch Canales(UT-Austin), Katie Clark (Swarthmore), Gray Garmon (UT-Austin), Kim Hoffmann (Northwestern), Tony Hu (MIT), Steve Krak (Denison), Fred Leichter (Claremont Colleges), Andrea Mecquel (Princeton), Jessica Leung (Princeton), Amy O'Keefe (Northwestern), Claudia Roeschmann (Texas State), Sarah Rottenberg (UPenn), Adam Royalty (Columbia), Rafe Steinhauer (Tulane), Carl Sveen (Swarthmore), and Scott Witthoft (UT-Austin).

And agreat many thanks to my brave and wonderful students in the Senior Design Challenge course for letting me test out many of these activities with them! ...and for contributing lots of great ideas, like options for our theme days and virtual backgrounds.

And, of course, for looking so fabulous in silly hats.

Tell us in the comments!

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A list of warmup and icebreaker activities to use in remote classrooms on Zoom and beyond, when in-person interaction isn't possible.

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48 questions to guide critical thinking from The Future Focused Learning Network

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High-Impact Practices: Eight Key Elements and Examples

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High-Impact Practices: Eight Key Elements and Examples

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High Impact Practices  are proven to deepen student learning and increase persistence in college. These practices increase time on task, real life application of knowledge, socio-academic experiences, face time with the instructor, and integrated learning.

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Teaching Tools: Active Learning in 3 modalities

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Teaching Tools: Active Learning in 3 modalities

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Online synchronous, online asynchronous, and in-person

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Active Learning while Physically Distancing

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Take this self-assessment of the 8 Key Elements of High-Impact Practices. Record your results as you proceed to track future changes and improvements.

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The following self-assessment uses material from Pike Peak Community College Library's LibGuide to High Impact Practices: https://libguides.ppcc.edu/hips As you rate the presence of each of 8 key elements of a High Impact Practice in your course, keep in mind *artifact(s) you could provide as evidence for your rating.*

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20+ guides by teaching & learning experts 

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20+ guides by teaching & learning experts 

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Practical advice on topics including interactive lecturing, evidence-based instruction, and more.

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No faculty member wants to be the "sage on the stage" anymore. Few students learn much by listening to endless lecturing.

But what should faculty do?

With practical advice on topics including interactive lecturing, evidence-based instruction, and more, NEA's library of Thriving in Academe guides can help faculty to help students learn. Each is written by a faculty developer, specifically for NEA, and intended to be useful for all faculty, whether you're new to the profession or an experienced college-level educator.

Interested in writing for Thriving in Academe? Have other questions? Email Thriving editor Larissa Oliveira Pires, instructional services coordinator at Georgia Southern University, at [email protected].

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Higher Ed Professional Growth - Thriving in Academe | NEA

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Since 1999, NEA has partnered with the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network to provide teaching guides for faculty.

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Trauma Informed Teaching & Learning (for teachers)

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Trauma Informed Teaching & Learning (for teachers)

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Trauma Informed Teaching & Learning (for teachers)

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What is the Inclusive Pedagogy Framework?

The construction of the inclusive pedagogy framework began by amalgamating the findings from two resources: a) a peer-reviewed synthesis article on inclusive practices in higher education (Salazar et al., 2010) and b) a practical checklist from the Universal Design of Instruction (UID checklist) based on the work of Chickering and Gamson (Does Your Curriculum Provide an Inclusive Environment? Is it IUD Friendly). After reviewing many papers on inclusive pedagogy, we found the Salazar et al. (2010) article to be the most comprehensive account of existing literature on inclusive teaching in higher education to date. The Inclusive Pedagogy Framework includes several practices that promote inclusive teaching. This framework focuses on 3 main aspects of Inclusive Pedagogy: Inclusive Communication, Inclusive Instructional Practices, and Designing Inclusive Curriculum.

Navigating the Inclusive Pedagogy Framework

We wanted the framework to have a structure similar to the previously developed faculty advising and mentoring frameworks. The first step in developing the framework involved a comparison in the core competencies across both sources. Salazar et al. (2010) identifies 5 categories/competencies, and the UID checklist identifies 7 categories, some of which overlapped the categories from Salazar. Missing from the UID checklist was a focus on intrapersonal awareness on behalf of the instructor, which was covered by Salazar et al. (2010). Due to the overlap in the skill sets for the Core Competencies from the two papers, we organized the Inclusive Pedagogy Framework into 3 Core Competencies.

In both papers, each major category included a list of many general skills, strategies, and specific practices. The lists from both references were compared and reduced to account for overlaps in the content. These recommended practices were not further organized based specificity of general skills or specific practices. We compiled the lists of distinct general skills, strategies, and practices from both references, and then organized these inclusive practices from general skills to specific practices.

The general process for organization and assignment of content to the different levels of the framework categories was managed by reaching item-by-item agreement between framework developers. In some cases, categories obtained from the Salazar et. al. (2010) and UID Checklist were further divided to clarify their intent. Most of the Skills were obtained from Salazar et al. (2010) and includes some overlapping topics with the advising framework, e.g. interpersonal skills, intrapersonal awareness. In addition to the 3 Core Competencies, inclusive pedagogy practices are divided into the increasingly more specific areas of Skills, Strategies, and Specific Practices.

Research literature and other sources from Teaching and Learning Centers that support items in the pedagogy framework have been referenced at the end of every corresponding entry. Entries that indicate several sources highlight the overlaps between different sources. We also included a notation in the references for those Strategies and Specific Practices which corresponded to the information obtained at the INCLUDES Summit I meeting.

Does Your Curriculum Provide an Inclusive Environment? Is it IUD Friendly.pdf Available at https://www.cte.cornell.edu/documents/presentations/Universal%20Instructional%20Design%20Checklists.pdf

Salazar, M. D. C., Norton, A. S., & Tuitt, F. A. (2010). 12: WEAVING PROMISING PRACTICES FOR INCLUSIVE EXCELLENCE INTO THE HIGHER EDUCATION CLASSROOM. To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development . 28(1), 208-226.

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The construction of the inclusive pedagogy framework began by amalgamating the findings from two resources: a) a peer-reviewed synthesis article on inclusive practices in higher education (Salazar et al., 2010) and b) a practical checklist from the Universal Design of Instruction (UID checklist) based on the work of Chickering and Gamson (Does Your Curriculum Provide an Inclusive Environment?

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The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework allows us to understand the importance of utilizing web 2.0 in teaching and learning. Social annotation tools such as Hypotheses. is allowed allow teachers to fulfill the three essential UDL components: engagement, representation, and action & expression through thoughtful use of the platform.

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Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning

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The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework allows us to understand the importance of utilizing web 2.0 in teaching and learning. Social annotation tools such as Hypothes.is allow teachers to fulfil the three essential UDL components: engagement, representation, and action & expression through thoughtful use of the platform.
Social annotation tools such as Hypothesis and Voice Thread, when used well, boost student engagement, enhance critical thinking, expand reading comprehension, and increase student interaction. Of the several social annotation tools currently available, our institution uses Hypothesis. Hypothesis' motto-"Making reading active, visible and social"-sums up why we think social annotation is so valuable for our students: it engages students and invites them to read and think together as a group by sharing real-time annotations of websites or PDFs (Hypothesis, 2021). The richly multimodal, interactive nature of Hypothesis offers instructors a platform through which they can employ the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to improve engagement and accessibility for all learners.

There are three core principles of UDL outlined by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST). First, instructors should provide students with multiple means of engagement, especially by helping students understand the wider significance of the content they're learning. Second, instructors should provide students with opportunities to interact with course content in multiple ways, for example, by providing audio, video, and textual materials. Third, instructors should provide students with options for expressing their knowledge and ideas in several ways. Social annotation applications like Hypothesis provide built-in options for addressing all three of these core principles. As faculty working at an open access institution, we believe this tool is particularly suited for the diverse learners we serve.

How social annotation works

Social annotation is a way for students to engage deeply with readings and see how their classmates are engaging as well. It makes use of online tools that enable readers to highlight sections of readings and insert comments, questions, images, videos, and links in the margins. Participants can see and respond to comments synchronously.

Students come to open access institutions like ours with wildly divergent levels of preparation for college work. Some have just graduated high school, while others are returning to school after some years away. Some are avid and voracious readers, while others can struggle with comprehension. The UDL framework is helpful generally in working with students of a wide range of abilities; applying the UDL framework to reading practices in particular is, we think, especially good for creating deep learning experiences.

Implementing UDL principles with social annotation

Here, we discuss how social annotation tools can be used to implement the principles of Universal Design for Learning to create critical and engaged readers.

The first UDL principle is to provide multiple means of engagement. Social annotation centers student reading and interpretation practices, giving students options for how they approach and engage with the reading. Though there is clear evidence that explicitly teaching reading strategies to students improves their overall academic performance, such instruction is often limited to developmental reading or study skills courses (Saxby 2017, 37-38). Social annotation, on the other hand, provides an unobtrusive way for faculty to focus on student reading and interpretation in any course that requires reading. By asking students to share their annotations openly, we help students to see a wide range of annotation practices, thus demystifying what has often been a private, individual practice.

Instructors can use these apps to reinforce annotation strategies they want to teach students. For example, an instructor might first teach a particular strategy for reading, then invite students to apply it openly using Hypothesis. By making annotations and, in a sense, student thinking public, the tool can also help instructors identify student's strengths and weaknesses, a core element of UDL (Carroll, 2018). The instructor can then respond accordingly: additional class time can be spent discussing a difficult reading, reviewing a complex research strategy, or unpacking an engineering schematic.

Just as important, social annotation helps students frame reading as a dialog, not a one-sided hunt for knowledge. Instructors who do not explicitly teach reading strategies can still invite students to read socially by asking them to share annotations: as Hawes (2018) argues, "the mere requirement that students write down something in response to an assigned text implies they have something to offer." The act of assigning shared annotations can help students think about reading as a social element rather than a private practice. Using the socially annotated version of the text as the reference text-for example, by screensharing it during class-can further reinforce this.

A great way to introduce Hypothesis during class is by having students collectively annotate a short reading in class together at the beginning of the semester-the class syllabus is a good place to begin! This ensures that students learn how to use the tool in real time, and they can see how useful it is in terms of reading each other's questions and comments. At various points throughout the semester, it can be useful to ask students to take time during class to annotate a short reading or another document together. This kind of group reading can also enhance the learning experience of neurodiverse learners, who may feel left behind by traditional reading discussions.

The second UDL principle is to provide multiple means of representation: that is, to provide students with multiple ways to express their responses to the material. The use of social annotation to illustrate while teaching appeals to students in several ways. Social annotation can enable students to annotate the course readings and identify key terms using not just text, but images, videos, and links to websites (Carroll, 2018). This helps students ask each other questions, share their ideas, and collaborate in ways that meet the needs of diverse learners as they tackle the core problems of their disciplines. They may share a link to the biography of a person mentioned in the reading, or a news story related to the reading, encouraging their classmates to check it out. They may link to an image or map online that they think will help their fellow students better understand the reading. As a history instructor, for example, one of us requires students to locate archival photographs from the Library of Congress that might help illustrate the reading, link to them in appropriate places, and write a caption that explains why they've chosen the photograph. Students can also add links to video and audio that connect to the reading. Below is an image that shows how hypothesis social annotation can be used in a classroom with the aid of the UDL framework.

The third UDL principle is to provide multiple means of expression and action. We find it helpful to think of this as the principle that transcends social annotation: at this point, students use what they've learned through engagement with the material to create new knowledge. This kind of work tends to happen outside of the social annotation platform as students create videos, essays, presentations, graphics, and other products that showcase their new knowledge.

Social annotation tools provide instructors with a platform for applying the core principles of UDL in their courses to engage students, enhance understanding, and create opportunities for neurodiverse learners to truly showcase their skills.
Amanda Huron is an associate professor of interdisciplinary social sciences at the University of the District of Columbia. Her research interests are in urban geography, housing justice, and the history of Washington, D.C. In her 2018 book, Carving out the Commons: Tenant Organizing and Housing Cooperatives in Washington, D.C., she theorizes the urban commons through close examination of the experiences of limited-equity housing cooperatives in Washington. Huron is active in housing work in Washington, and is a native of the city. Fatma Elshobokshy is the director of learning technology at the University of the District of Columbia. Her work focuses on digital learning strategies and the instructional technology that supports those strategies to improve learning outcomes. Christian Aguiar is an assistant professor of English at the University of the District of Columbia Community College. His research focuses on multimodal writing, collaborative assessment, and supporting first-generation college students in composition courses. He is a 2019 Roueche Teaching Excellence Award Winner. References
Al-Azawei, Ahmed; Serenelli, Fabio; Lundqvist, Karsten. "Universal Design for Learning (UDL): A Content Analysis of Peer-Reviewed Journal Papers from 2012 to 2015." Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 16, No. 3 (2016): pp.39-56. doi: 10.14434/josotl.v16i3.19295

Carroll, J. (2018). 7 Ways to Introduce UDL into your Classroom. Texthelp. Retrieved 16 April 2021, from https://www.texthelp.com/resources/blog/7-ways-to-introduce-udl-into-your-classroom/

Hawes, Sarah. "Reading Reframed for the Community College Classroom." Faculty Focus, February 12, 2018, https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/reading-reframed-community-college-classroom/

He, Ye. Universal Design for Learning in an Online Teacher Education Course : Enhancing Learners' Confidence to Teach Online. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching 10, no. 2 (2014): 283-298.

Hypothesis. (2021). Home. Hypothesis. Retrieved 16 April 2021, from https://web.hypothes.is/#features.

Saxby, Lori Eggers. "Efficacy of a College Reading Strategy Course: Comparative Study." Journal of Developmental Education 40, no. 3 (2017): 36-38.

"The UDL Guidelines." CAST. https://udlguidelines.cast.org/

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Christian Aguiar, Fatma Elshobokshy, and Amanda Huron

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Bringing Theories to Practice: Universal Design Principles and the Use of Social Annotation to Support Neurodiverse Students

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Social annotation tools provide instructors with a platform for applying principles of UDL in their courses to support neurodiverse learners.

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Application Deadline: September 15, 2023, 11.59 PM PST

Which Award is Right for Me?

The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program offers over 400 awards in more than 135 countries for U.S. citizens to teach, conduct research and carry out professional projects around the world. College and university faculty, as well as artists and professionals from a wide range of fields can join over 400,000 Fulbrighters who have come away with enhanced skills, new connections, and greater mutual understanding.
2024-2025 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program competition is now open. Find out how to get started and view our full list of awards.
Interested faculty and professionals are encouraged to consider the following types of awards.

Fulbright Scholar Awards comprise the bulk of awards offered and include opportunities for professionals, artists, and scholars at all career levels. Location and eligibility vary across all awards, and some awards may be restricted to certain career levels or types of scholars. This information is outlined in the award description.

Please see here for opportunities within the U.S. Scholar program:

Distinguished Scholar awards are viewed as the most prestigious appointments in the Fulbright Scholar Program. Awards are open to scholars who have more than seven years of experience in their discipline or area of expertise, though some awards may further restrict eligibility. Distinguished Scholars are expected to actively engage host institutions in a spirit of promoting mutual understanding and sharing knowledge.

Postdoctoral Awards provide recently graduated scholars an opportunity to conduct research and receive professional training abroad. Awards may involve limited teaching. Postdoctoral Awards are open to scholars who will have received a doctoral degree (Ph.D., J.D., M.D., Ed.D., etc.) within five to seven years of the fellowship start date, as noted in the award description. Degree conferment before the start of the award is mandatory. Institutional affiliation in the United States is not required.

This award provides international education professionals and senior higher education officials an opportunity to engage in a two-week intensive seminar to learn about the host country's education system and establish networks of U.S. and international colleagues.

How long are Fulbright opportunities?

Fulbright opportunities range from a few months to a full year and many of our awards offer flexible durations. Each award outlines the duration and potential start dates. Many awards offer a Flex option which is designed for Scholars who require multiple visits to the host country. This option allows grants to be conducted over short segments, preferably during the fall and/or spring semesters. Applicants should clearly indicate plans for Flex in their project statement and include a project timeline.
View list of awards that allow for a Flex option.
Career Profile

Distinguished Scholar (Mid-Career/Senior Academics)

Distinguished Scholar applicants have more than seven years of experience in their discipline or area of expertise, though some awards may further restrict eligibility. Although Distinguished Scholars are eligible and can apply for most of the Scholar Awards, we encourage mid-career and senior academics to view the Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Awards.

Postdoctoral Scholars

Postdoctoral scholars will have received a doctoral degree (Ph.D., J.D., M.D., Ed.D., etc.) within five to seven years of the fellowship start date, as noted in the award description. Degree conferment before the start of the award is mandatory. Early Career Academics are those who have been working in the capacity of a teacher or scholar for no more than seven years. Check out the Postdoctoral Awards in our catalog of awards.

For more information, watch the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Awards for Postdoctoral and Early Career Applicants Webinar

Professionals

Professionals are defined as those who have more than seven years of experience in a particular profession. Be sure to read the award parameters closely to determine that you meet the degree requirements. We encourage you to visit the Professional opportunities in our catalog of awards.

For more information, watch the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Opportunities for Artists and Professionals webinar.

Artists

The Fulbright Scholar program welcomes artists who have more than seven years of experience in any artistic profession to apply for our awards. Be sure to read the award parameters closely to determine that you meet the degree requirements. For awards specific to artists, visit the Artists opportunities in our award search.

For more information, watch the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Opportunities for Artists and Professionals webinar.

Community College Educators and Administrators

Community College faculty and administrators are encouraged to apply for the Fulbright U.S. Scholar program. Although these awards specifically welcome Community College faculty, be sure to visit the U.S. Scholar Award Search to find the right opportunity you.

For more information, watch the Opportunities for CCID, FACCC, and Community College Faculty webinar.

Higher Education Administrators and Executives

Those who have been working in the capacity of administrators or executives with a focus on the international dimensions of U.S. campuses are welcome to apply for the Fulbright Scholar Program. Opportunities to note include the Fulbright International Education Administrators Awards which are fully- funded two-week seminars abroad to learn about other countries' higher education systems. Be sure to visit the Higher Education Administrators and Executives opportunities as well as the U.S. Scholar Awards for which you may be eligible.

For more information, watch the Fulbright International Education Administrator (IEA) Awards webinar.

Independent Scholar

No U.S. institutional affiliation is required to apply for a Fulbright Scholar Award unless otherwise noted. We encourage Independent Scholars to search for awards that match their level of academic degree and scholarly discipline. As long as a Scholar has the requisite degree and experience to match the Award Requirements, an Independent Scholar's application will be competitive!

Retired and Emeriti Applicants

The Fulbright Scholar Program encourages retired faculty and Emeriti to apply for awards. In fact, Scholar Awards are an excellent post-retirement opportunity for Scholars to use their considerable years of teaching and research experience to fulfill Fulbright's mission of citizen diplomacy.

General

When does the competition open?
The competition opens in early February and closes in mid-September, with the exception of some of the International Education Administrator (IEA) awards. For Scholar and Postdoctoral awards, please see the detailed timeline. For IEA awards, please see the country-specific timelines. Applications are submitted for opportunities in the following academic year.

How can I start an application?
Applications are submitted online, and the application portal opens with the start of the new competition in early February. Please read the application guidelines (for the IEA awards, please consult the IEA application guidelines) before beginning your application. Begin or return to your application here.

Can I apply to more than one country or award?
Applicants may apply only for one award per application cycle.

Can I apply to the Fulbright Scholar Program if I am on the Fulbright Specialist Roster?
You are eligible to apply to the Fulbright Scholar Program while on the Fulbright Specialist roster. Recipients of a Fulbright Specialist Program grant are not required to adhere to the two-year waiting period before applying for a Fulbright Scholar grant. Likewise, recipients of a Fulbright Scholar grant are not required to adhere to the two-year waiting period before applying for or receiving a Fulbright Specialist Program grant.

What are the financial benefits of Fulbright awards?
Benefits vary by country and type of award. Generally speaking, Fulbright awards are budgeted to cover travel and living costs in-country for the grantee and their accompanying dependents. Check the award description in the Catalog of Awards and/or consult program staff responsible for the particular award you are interested in. For IEA awards, benefits vary by country but generally include round-trip travel, lodging, and a per diem that includes meals. Each award description details these benefits.

What health benefits do Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program grantees receive while on their grant?
As a U.S. government funded exchange participant, Fulbright grantees qualify to receive Accident and Sickness Program for Exchanges (ASPE), a limited health care benefit plan designed by the U.S. Department of State and administered by Seven Corners, Inc. It is not intended to cover long-term healthcare and has limitations in coverage. We encourage grantees to maintain their own private insurance.

If I am selected, can I take my family with me on my grant?
This depends on the award and host country. Most Scholar and Postdoctoral awards have no restrictions on accompanying dependents; however, some awards do have restrictions. Check the award description and/or consult the program staff responsible for that award. Many grantees bring their families and report that the time abroad benefited all family members. No additional financial benefits for dependents are awarded for the Fulbright Global Scholar Award of the Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship. For International Education Administrator seminars, no financial benefits for dependents are provided. Dependents may join before or after the seminar at the grantee's own expense. A dependent is either (1) a spouse, or (2) a relative (child, grandchild, parent, sibling) who is financially dependent on the grantee. Accompanying dependents are those who spend at least 80% of the grant period with the grantee abroad.

For International Education Administrator awards, the best person to provide a recommendation is someone who knows your work and character extensively. In addition, they should be able to address the impact your participation would have on your institution and its commitment to internationalization. You may wish to mix internal and external referees. One letter must be written by your supervisor or someone to whom you report; the other one must be from a colleague and speak to your skills and successes, interest in international education, and personal qualities. Please see the IEA application guidelines for more information.

Review and Selection

Who reviews applications?
Peer review committees are organized by discipline and are comprised of U.S. academics and professionals with relevant expertise.

For IEA applications: U.S. international education administrators with experience in the selected country review applications.

How is my application reviewed?
All submitted applications are reviewed initially for program eligibility and technical completeness.

All complete, eligible applications are then reviewed by a peer review committee to determine whether they are recommended for further consideration by the host country ( review criteria). Peer review committees are organized by discipline and are comprised of U.S. academics and professionals with relevant expertise. For IEA applications: committees are comprised of U.S. international education administrators with relevant country experience ( review criteria).

Applications recommended for further consideration in peer review are then forwarded to Fulbright Commissions and U.S. Embassies abroad, as well as to the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board and the Department of State (Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs) for final decisions and confirmation.

How will I be notified?
All notifications are sent via email. If your email address has changed since you submitted your application, please update your application with your new address.

When will I be notified?
Following the conclusion of the peer review, applicants are notified of the status of their application, recommended or not recommended.

For recommended applications: Each host country has their own in-country review timeline. At the same time, the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board (FFSB) and the Department of State also review the applications. Approvals are needed from all three (host country/countries, FFSB, Department of State) before candidates can be notified. Most U.S. Scholar applicants are informed of the decisions in the spring.

While IIE cannot predict when a country's outcomes will be available, applicants will be notified of the final outcome as soon as possible.

Please see the notification timeline for more details. For IEA applications: please consult the individual country timeline.

I've submitted my application. When should I be in touch with my proposed host institution?
The Program appreciates the enthusiasm shared by applicants and host institutions to engage and collaborate on your proposed project. Please note that applications must first go through the peer review process. Those that are recommended for further consideration are then forwarded to the host country, U.S. Department of State, and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board for review and selection. Some host countries work with host institutions in this process (typically awards where the host institution is specified in the award title). You are welcome to let your proposed host know if your application was recommended following peer review. But, to help maintain the integrity of the review process, if your application was recommended for further consideration after peer review, you are advised to not contact the host country or proposed host for updates on the status of your application.

Can I receive feedback from the review process?
IIE, which administers the program, operates in conformity with the policies of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board (FFSB). According to FFSB policy, IIE cannot give applicants the specific reasons for selection or non-selection. If you are interested in reapplying, you are encouraged to contact the relevant Fulbright regional program officer, who can provide general guidance on reapplying.

How can I make my application more successful?
There is no single "formula" for a successful proposal. An application should be about the candidate, how the award period will be spent, and what outcomes can be reasonably expected. What is successful for one applicant may not be effective for another applicant. The responsible program officer is a good point of contact for discussions of how to shape a competitive application. Also, see our application guidelines for tips on making your application more competitive.

For IEA awards, desired professional profiles and specific qualifications vary across the awards, so you are encouraged to apply to the award that best fits your background and experience. Please see our application guidelines for information on the application components. Also, you can discuss your application and fit for the program with the staff contact listed in the award description.

Please see the Application Requirements for instructions on how to reapply.

Teaching/Research/Professional Project

What type of teaching and/or research can I propose?
Award descriptions indicate which type of project is acceptable. Some awards accept only teaching only research, a combination of teaching and/or research. Each activity has unique submission requirements.

Do I need Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval to apply to an award?
IRB approval is not required at the time of application; however, applicants must abide by all ethical requirements before commencing their research on human and/or animal subjects through a Fulbright award.

Are there opportunities to conduct a project during the summer?
The timeframe is indicated in each award description, and while most awards follow the academic calendar in the host country, some awards may allow projects in the summer months, especially if no teaching is involved.

Can I apply to the Fulbright Scholar Program to fund MA/PhD research?
The Fulbright Scholar Program does not support research activities for obtaining an MA/PhD, however you may wish to review the opportunities provided by the Fulbright Student Program.

I am a retired academic or professional. Can I still receive a Fulbright award?
Yes, the Fulbright Scholar Program welcomes scholars and professionals at all stages of their careers. As is required of all applicants, the project statement should address the expected benefits of the Fulbright award to you (professionally and personally), to the United States (how will you share your experience when you return?), and to your host institution.

Do I have to know a foreign language?
Most award recipients teach in English in the host country, with some exceptions in Latin America and Africa. If you are applying for a research award, your foreign language ability must meet the needs of the project. Be certain to indicate in your methodology discussion how you will need to use the language, since activities vary, and reviewers should not have to make assumptions.

Do I need to have an invitation letter?
This depends on the award. Some countries require an invitation letter, especially for "All Disciplines" awards. Other countries encourage but do not require a letter of invitation, while others still specifically request that you do not contact potential host institutions. The preference is clearly spelled out in the award description. If you have questions, please contact the program officer responsible for that country.

Professional Project

What is the Professional Project activity?
The Professional Project activity type provides professionals and artists in various fields the opportunity to interact with relevant organizations abroad to explore a topic related to their field without answering a defined research question. Professional Projects may include: professional consultations; artist residencies; visits to organizations in the applicant's field; practical experience in day-to-day operations; public lectures; mentoring; arranging exhibitions, performances or musical compilations; preparation of print materials (books, articles, or reviews); exchange of expertise with other professionals; participation in public events; or other appropriate professional activities.

What kinds of activities are considered Professional Projects?
Permissible activities may include visits to organizations in the applicant's professional field, practical experience in day-to-day operations, public lectures, artist residencies, or other appropriate professional experiences. However, details vary according to the specific award. If you are uncertain whether your project falls under the Professional Project activity type, please contact the IIE staff member listed in the award description.

How does the Professional Project activity type differ from the Research activity type?
The Research activity type comprises traditional academic research, such as laboratory observation, field interviews, or statistical models. The Professional Project activity type, however, encompasses undertakings that fall outside traditional academic research.

Can for-profit organizations serve as hosts for Professional Projects?
For-profit organizations may not serve as hosts for Professional Projects. Appropriate hosts might include a non-profit organization, artist residency, studio collective, governmental agency, museum, professional association, cultural organization, K-12 institution, university, college, language institute, research institute, laboratory, think tank or foundation. If you are uncertain whether your host is appropriate, please contact IIE staff listed in the award description.

Can workshops/conferences/trainings serve as a host for Professional Projects?
Generally, no, though details about acceptable host institutions vary according to each country or award. Projects must be original and designed by the applicant, with the exception of artist residencies. If you are uncertain whether your host is appropriate, please check the award description in the Catalog of Awards or contact IIE staff.

Does a host institution need to be local, or can we partner with American organizations that work overseas?
Local organizations operated by citizens of the host country are preferred. However, in some cases, international organizations have been approved as hosts. Please check the award description in the Catalog of Awards or contact IIE staff to inquire whether your host is permissible.

Can medical professionals apply for a grant under the Professional Project activity type?
The grant is meant for professionals in all fields. However, proposals for medical research involving clinical training, patient care or patient contact are not eligible. Medical professionals should propose projects that do not involve these kinds of activities. Fulbright policies do not authorize activity for which a license to practice medicine or nursing is required.

International Education Administrator Awards

Do I have to know a foreign language?
No. The awards are conducted in English.

Can I propose a project of my own design for the award? Can separate briefings be arranged for me?
No. Each country arranges an itinerary of meetings, briefings, and campus visits. There is little time available for individual projects or appointments.

Where do I upload the institutional statement, and do I need a bibliography or syllabi?
Please upload the institutional statement to the online application form. A bibliography and syllabus should not be submitted.

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US Scholar Awards - Fellowships Abroad for Scholars & Professionals | Fulbright Scholars

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The Fulbright US Scholar Program is the largest fellowship program for US Scholars. Explore over 800 awards for US scholars & professionals to go abroad.

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Calm the Mind, Calm the Class with the DeStress Monday at School Program

Start the school year right with our DeStress Monday at School program! Join the thousands of teachers around the world who've used our free 10-week email series to introduce stress management practices into their personal routine and their classroom.

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Calm the Mind, Calm the Class with the DeStress Monday at School Program Start the school year right with our DeStress Monday at School program! Join the thousands of teachers around the world who've used our free 10-week email series to introduce stress management practices into their personal routine and their classroom.

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This link provides you with a great outline to create a syllabus for your students.

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The Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) is dedicated to building collegial community, enhancing teaching and learning, and fostering teaching innovation at all levels and in all academic disciplines.

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The Transparency in Learning and Teaching project aims to advance equitable teaching and learning practices that reduce systemic inequities in higher education

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Thank you for registering with TILT Higher Ed. Your registration request has been forwarded to TILT's program administrator for verification and access authorization. Once your account has been approved, you will be granted access to TILT Higher Ed using your email address as your username and the password you selected.

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Quick guide to Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

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Quick guide to Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

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New to Columbus? This is for you.

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Whether you've moved 5 miles or 5,000, settling into a new house, neighborhood, and city requires rebuilding your life from scratch-and the process can feel overwhelming.

How do you organize your home and establish new routines? How do you make new friends?

How do you put down roots and fall in love with where you live now?

Bounce back from the messiness of moving and take charge of your new life by signing up today for Relocation Recovery. By working through the course and its challenges at your own pace, you'll end up feeling more joyful, peaceful, and in control wherever you happen to live now.

Find out how Relocation Recovery can help you feel more at home.

Your Instructor

Melody Warnick & Marni Cummings

Melody Warnick is a speaker, freelance writer, and the author of This Is Where You Belong: Finding Home Wherever You Are (Viking, 2016), a practical guide to improving, investing in, and coming to love the place where you live. She lives with her family in Blacksburg, Virginia. You can find her online at melodywarnick.com.

Marni Cummings is a Relocation Coach and Encourager, helping people relocate with less stress and connect much more easily to their new place. She works one-on-one with clients to address their challenges and create a thriving, joyful relocation. Marni and her family live north of Charlotte, North Carolina. To connect, go to ThriveUnscripted.com or email: [email protected]

Course Curriculum

Frequently Asked Questions

When does the course start and finish?

The course starts now and never ends! It is a completely self-paced online course - you decide when you start and when you finish.

How long do I have access to the course?

How does lifetime access sound? After enrolling, you have unlimited access to this course for as long as you like - across any and all devices you own.

What if I am unhappy with the course?

We would never want you to be unhappy! If you are unsatisfied with your purchase, contact us in the first 30 days and we will give you a full refund.

We really hope you'll join us for our Relocation Recovery course and take charge of feeling good wherever you live.

For information regarding purchasing this course as a gift or in bulk, please email Marni at [email protected]

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Neurobics: ideas for helping students recover bandwidth (Cia Verschelden)

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Neurobics: ideas for helping students recover bandwidth (Cia Verschelden)

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Neurobics (neuron + aerobics) are stretching exercises to increase oxygen and give our brain's neurons more life by experiencing or participating in some new activity, situation, or event.

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Science Exams Don't Have to Be Demoralizing

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Science Exams Don't Have to Be Demoralizing

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Awe Video: a way to lift yourself out of the mundane

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Awe Video: a way to lift yourself out of the mundane

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It’s easy to feel bogged down by daily routines and mundane concerns, stifling our sense of creativity and wonder. Feeling awe can reawaken those feelings of inspiration.

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Time Required

Four minutes

How to Do It

Set aside four minutes to watch the video below. Put the video in full screen mode and try to give it your full attention.

Note that this video is just one example of a visual experience that can elicit awe; there are countless others, and being exposed to them can have similar effects. The videos and other stimuli that inspire awe tend to share two key features:

1. They involve a sense of vastness that puts into perspective your own relatively small place in the world. This vastness could be either physical (e.g., a panoramic view from a mountaintop) or psychological (e.g., an exceptionally courageous or heroic act of conscience).

2. They alter the way you understand the world. For instance, they might make your everyday concerns seem less important, or they might expand your beliefs about the reaches of human potential.

Why You Should Try It

It's easy to feel bogged down by daily routines and mundane concerns, stifling our sense of creativity and wonder. Feeling awe can reawaken those feelings of inspiration.

Awe is induced by experiences that challenge and expand our typical way of seeing the world, often because we sense that we're in the presence of something greater than ourselves. Research suggests that experiencing awe improves people's satisfaction with life, makes them feel like they have more time, makes them feel less self-conscious, and reduces their focus on trivial concerns.

But in our everyday lives, we might not regularly encounter things that fill us with awe. That's where this practice comes in. It's a way to infuse your day with a dose of wonder even if you can't make it to an inspiring vista or museum.

Why It Works

Taking time out to experience awe can help people break up their routine and challenge themselves to think in new ways. Evoking feelings of awe may be especially helpful when people are feeling bogged down by day-to-day concerns. Research suggests that awe has a way of lifting people outside of their usual, more narrow sense of self and connecting them with something larger and more significant. This sense of broader connectedness and purpose can help relieve negative moods and improve happiness.

Evidence That It Works

Rudd, M., Vohs, K.D., and Aaker, J. (2012). Awe expands people's perception of time, alters decision making, and enhances well-being. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1130-1136.

In three experiments, American university students were induced to feel awe-such as by watching an awe-inspiring video-as well as other emotions. People who experienced awe felt that they had more time available to themselves, were less impatient, were more willing to volunteer their time to help others, preferred having positive experiences over material products, and reported greater life satisfaction.
Who Has Tried the Practice?
While there is no demographic information in the study above, additional studies explore how the Awe Video benefits various groups:

European university students became more generous after watching an Awe Video, regardless of whether they were Catholic, Muslim, or non-religious.

Ethnically diverse college students in the U.S. spent five minutes watching an Awe Video, funny video, or emotionally neutral video before playing a partner-based game. Students who watched the Awe Video were the most generous toward their game partner.

American college students (mostly Latino or Asian) took an intelligence test and waited 10 minutes for their results. During that waiting period, students who watched an Awe Video experienced greater positive emotions and less anxiety than students who watched a neutral video on padlocks.

American and Chinese undergraduates who spent five minutes watching a nature Awe Video felt a stronger sense of vastness in the world and reported positive changes in their social connectedness. American students saw their social network as more expansive, while Chinese students felt more closely connected with others.

Chinese undergraduates became more tolerant of unpredictable situations and more likely to engage in thrilling, mentally beneficial activities (such as extreme skiing or waterfall kayaking) after watching an Awe Video.

Japanese university students who completed this practice felt more awe, became more generous while playing games, and increased in tolerance toward people who violated social norms. A brain imaging study showed that Japanese individuals experienced the two key features of awe (a small sense of self and a change in worldview) when watching an Awe Video.

More research is needed to explore whether, and how, the impact of this practice extends to other groups and cultures.

Keep in Mind

Awe Videos do not necessarily have to depict earthly landscapes. Art-related videos increased awe in Americans and Italians. Videos about space, human cells, and pregnancy strengthened the spiritual beliefs and feelings of social connectedness in Christian Americans and Catholic Belgians.

However, Awe Videos of natural landscapes may be more effective than videos of man-made landscapes. Spanish adults felt more positive emotion after watching an awe-evoking slideshow of nature scenes, but not after an awe-evoking slideshow of man-made structures and cities.

When seeking out awe-inspiring videos, avoid depictions of threatening occurrences, even if they incite feelings of awe. Videos of natural disasters (such as tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, or lightning storms) have been shown to cause fear and anxiety in American, Chinese, and Japanese adults. These "negative awe" videos tend to decrease well-being and not increase happiness or generosity.

Virtual reality (VR) technology may enhance your Awe Video experience. Italian university students who watched an Awe Video through a VR headset showed stronger awe-related bodily reactions compared to those who watched on a flat screen.

The benefits of this exercise may depend on your personality. Awe Videos have been shown to be particularly effective in increasing the generosity of people who are lower on agreeableness, possibly because they are more likely to require emotional stimulation for selfless acts.

Although this exercise can improve our sense of social connection, it does not seem to make us immune to bias. American undergraduates who watched an Awe Video before a racist video reported more anti-Black attitudes than those who watched a neutral video before a racist video. Future research should examine why this interaction may occur.

References

Bai, Y., Maruskin, L. A., Chen, S., Gordon, A. M., Stellar, J. E., McNeil, G. D., Peng, K., & Keltner, D. (2017). Awe, the diminished self, and collective engagement: Universals and cultural variations in the small self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(2), 185.

Chirico, A., Cipresso, P., Yaden, D. B., Biassoni, F., Riva, G., & Gaggioli, A. (2017). Effectiveness of immersive videos in inducing awe: An experimental study. Scientific Reports (Nature Publisher Group), 7, 1-11.

Chirico, A., Clewis, R. R., Yaden, D. B., & Gaggioli, A. (2021). Nature versus art as elicitors of the sublime: A virtual reality study. PLoS ONE, 16(3), 10.

Collado, S., & Manrique, H. (2020). Exposure to awe-evoking natural and built scenes has positive effects on cognitive performance and affect. Environment and Behavior, 52(10), 1105-1132.

Dale, K. R., Janicke-Bowles, S., Raney, A. A., Oliver, M. B., Huse, L., Lopez, J., Reed, A., Seibert, J., & Zhao, D. (2020). Awe and stereotypes: Examining awe as an intervention against stereotypical media portrayals of African Americans. Communication Studies, 71(4), 699-707.

Gordon, A. M., Stellar, J. E., Anderson, C. L., McNeil, G. D., Loew, D., & Keltner, D. (2017). The dark side of the sublime: Distinguishing a threat-based variant of awe. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(2), 310-328.

Guan, F., Chen, J., Chen, O., Liu, L., & Zha, Y. (2019). Awe and prosocial tendency. Current Psychology: A Journal for Diverse Perspectives on Diverse Psychological Issues, 38(4), 1033-1041.

Guan, F., Zhao, S., Chen, S., Lu, S., Chen, J., & Xiang, Y. (2019). The neural correlate difference between positive and negative awe. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 13, 9.

Johnson, K. A., Moon, J. W., Okun, M. A., Scott, M. J., O'Rourke, H. P., Hook, J. N., & Cohen, A. B. (2019). Science, God, and the cosmos: Science both erodes (via logic) and promotes (via awe) belief in God. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 84, 13.

Lv, Y., Shi, J., Yu, F., & Zhang, C. (2021). The effect of awe on natural risk-taking preferences: The role of need for closure. Current Psychology: A Journal for Diverse Perspectives on Diverse Psychological Issues.

Piff, P. K., Dietze, P., Feinberg, M., Stancato, D. M., & Keltner, D. (2015). Awe, the small self, and prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108, 883-899.

Prade, C., & Saroglou, V. (2016). Awe's effects on generosity and helping. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 11(5), 522-530.

Rankin, K., Andrews, S. E., & Sweeny, K. (2020). Awe-full uncertainty: Easing discomfort during waiting periods. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 15(3), 338-347.

Rivera, G. N., Vess, M., Hicks, J. A., & Routledge, C. (2020). Awe and meaning: Elucidating complex effects of awe experiences on meaning in life. European Journal of Social Psychology, 50(2), 392-405.

Sawada, K., & Nomura, M. (2020). Influence of two types of awe on attitude toward norm violation. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 148.

Takano, R., & Nomura, M. (2022). Neural representations of awe: Distinguishing common and distinct neural mechanisms. Emotion, 22(4), 669-677.

Van Cappellen, P., & Saroglou, V. (2012). Awe activates religious and spiritual feelings and behavioral intentions. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 4(3), 223-236.

Could your life be more awesome? Take our Awe Quiz to find out:

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A way to lift yourself out of the mundane.

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Includes "Who are my students?" "What do I need to know for course planning?" and "Where can I go for assistance?"

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Welcome to the University System of Georgia Faculty and Staff Resource Web Site. This site is designed to be a centralized location identifying resources available to all USG faculty and staff. Within this site, you will find resources provided by various offices from within the System Office and from the 26 institutions across the USG.

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Welcome to the University System of Georgia Faculty and Staff Resource Web Site. This site is designed to be a centralized location identifying resources available to all USG faculty and staff. Within this site, you will find resources provided by various offices from within the System Office and from the 26 institutions across the USG.

Important Information

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Welcome to the University System of Georgia Faculty and Staff Resource Web Site. This site is designed to be a centralized location identifying resources available to all USG faculty and staff. Within this site, you will find resources provided by various offices from within the System Office and from the 26 institutions across the USG.

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Health-Promoting Strategies & Resources Toolkit

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Health-Promoting Strategies & Resources Toolkit

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A toolkit with evidence-based health-promoting pedagogies and practices that encourage social connectedness, alleviate stress and anxiety, foster resilience, and empower students to take ownership over their learning and well-being. Use the search function at the top of the page to help discover resources.

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Health-promoting pedagogies and practices are those that encourage social connectedness, alleviate stress and anxiety, foster resilience, and empower students to take ownership over their learning and well-being. The following strategies might help students to achieve these aims. STRATEGY: Utilize health-promoting pedagogies that foster well-being Design a flexible syllabus Allowing for flexibility and mistakes can help...

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Decibel Analysis for Research in Teaching (DART)

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Decibel Analysis for Research in Teaching (DART)

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DART is a great tool that helps with sound levels in the classroom.

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Decibel Analysis for Research in Teaching (DART) is a software tool that analyzes classroom sound to predict with ~90% accuracy the quantity of time spent on Single Voice (e.g. lecture), Multiple Voice (e.g. pair discussion), and No Voice (e.g. clicker, question thinking) activities.

What can DART do?

DART uses sound levels in classrooms (shown above with a dark blue line) to estimate the extent of active learning by classifying class time into the following three categories:

Single voice: medium average decibel level and high variance (e.g. lecture with question/answer) Highlighted in green.

Multiple voice: high average decibel level and low variance (e.g. pair or group discussions with many voices overlapping) Highlighted in orange.

No voice: low average decibel level and low variance (e.g. minute paper, clicker response) Highlighted in blue.

Below are two examples of classroom audio recordings where you can compare DART predictions with human annotations. DART predictions match human annotations with high fidelity:

Want to learn more?

Try it for yourself!

For more information on the development and validation of DART, please see: Owens, Seidel, Wong et al. 2017. Classroom Sound Can Be Used to Classify Teaching Practices in College Science Courses. PNAS. vol. 114 no. 12, p. 3085-3090

PLEASE NOTE: Even if an instructor is attempting active learning, if there is no change in the sound level of the classroom, then DART will not be able to predict the presence of active learning. For more details, see " What kinds of errors does DART make?"

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Decibel Analysis for Research in Teaching (DART) is a software tool that analyzes classroom sound to predict with ~90% accuracy the quantity of time spent on Single Voice (e.g. lecture), Multiple Voice (e.g. pair discussion), and No Voice (e.g. clicker, question thinking) activities.

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From Cynthia Alby & others: Learn more about how to implement specific concepts from the book along with other complementary strategies we recommend. 

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Targeted learning mindset: Growth Mindset

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For use with students or colleagues

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Partnerning with school systems to support educators in fostering the development of the whole child.

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Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Review before teaching class

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Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Review before teaching class

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Open Textbooks are accessible on day one for students with zero cost, and open licenses permit customization to fit your students’ exact needs in the classroom.

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I Hate Zoom, but It's Still Good to See You

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I Hate Zoom, but It's Still Good to See You

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Ideas for creating an inclusive online classroom (40 min.)

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"I Hate Zoom, but It's Still Good to See You" with Kevin Gannon and Cindy Kernahan