# data[].attributes.body
FlipGrid Example Exercise

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

# data[].attributes.body
Importance of learning VR / AR

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How doctors used virtual reality to save a 2-year-old with a brain tumor

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Doctors took a high-tech approach to helping two-year-old Ari Ellman, who needed surgery to remove a rare, life-threatening brain tumor. Before the procedure, which had never been done on a patient so young, they used virtual reality and a 3D printed skull to ensure the high-stakes operation went smoothly.

# data[].attributes.body
Things to consider

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Students need to feel that what they are being taught has a purpose in their lives. Therefore, it is the job of teachers to make lessons relevant to their students. What follows are ten ways to accomplish this while increasing motivation and interest in your lessons.

Make Real World Connections

This seems simple, but often requires extra investigative work on the part of the teacher. Instead of simply teaching about a topic, find examples of how people use this information in the real world.

Start With a Real World Problem In Mind

When you sit down to write a lesson, try and think of a real-world question that individuals from your field had to answer to discover the information you are teaching. Say you are teaching about the methods for amending the Constitution. Instead of simply pointing out the different ways it can be done, start with a question that you pose to the students such as, "Should a country's Constitution be easy or hard to amend?" Once the students have discussed this for a bit, ask them to come up with ways that the US government could institute to make it difficult but not impossible to amend the Constitution. Lead the students through the process of ensuring that it is fair for everyone. In this way, a simple bit of information that is easily learned and then quickly forgotten gains much more relevance for the students.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Simple Ways to Make Education Relevant

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Students need to feel that what they are being taught has a purpose in their lives. Therefore, it is the job of teachers to make lessons relevant to their students. What follows are ten ways to accomplish this while increasing motivation and interest in your lessons.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The following post was written by Kayla Engle, your Flipgrid Summer Experience Protege!
FlipgridAR is LIVE: transform family nights, homework, school events, book reviews, Science Fairs, student art galleries, language classrooms, the entire school, ANYWHERE by "sticking" student voice everywhere with FlipgridAR codes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The following post was written by Kayla Engle , your Flipgrid Summer Experience Protege! FlipgridAR is LIVE: transform family nights, homework, school events, book reviews, Science Fairs, student art galleries, language classrooms, the entire school, ANYWHERE by "sticking" student voice everywhere with FlipgridAR codes.

# data[].attributes.body
Video Assignments That Assess More than Knowledge

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Agile Escape room - A game surrounding the agile manifesto

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Today I had the pleasure of trialling an entirely new game I had created that I call "The Agile Escape room". This was very much a raw version 1.

# data[].attributes.body
10 ways to improve student engagement in virtual classrooms

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
These days, not every student rolls out of bed and trudges to the bus stop to head to school. Instead, more and more students are simply flipping open a laptop, turning on a tablet, or unlocking their phones. According to the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), almost 300,000 students were enrolled across 501 full-time virtual schools in the 2017 - 2018 school year. That number may seem big, but it is dwarfed by the six million students who participated in at least one online higher education course in 2017, according to the Online Learning Consortium.

Virtual classrooms offer numerous benefits to students, instructors, and schools. They allow students to learn from anywhere in the world, including in rural and disadvantaged communities where schools and universities may be lacking. Virtual learning can also be a solution for students who may otherwise struggle to fit in with a normal class, and they can save school districts serious money. However, for all the upshots they offer, virtual classrooms also present significant challenges. The virtual nature of the class can leave students feeling disconnected and disengaged from the material.

How can teachers engage and excite their virtual students when they may live a world away? Here are 10 great tips for improving student engagement in your virtual classroom.

1. Break the ice

Start your course or semester on the right note by creating a fun, engaging atmosphere. Help students feel connected to each other and to you by offering up simple ice breakers that will force the students to learn about each other. One option is to ask students to pair up and interview each other. Another fun game is to ask the class to answer trivia questions or non-controversial personal questions using Poll Everywhere. For example, ask students to choose their favorite color or see how many are the oldest, youngest, middle, or an only child in their family.

2. Foster a community

Students will feel more engaged in your class if they feel they are part of the larger group. This can be one of the trickiest things to accomplish in a virtual classroom, but there are still plenty of ways to build a strong community. Create a community structure, such as message boards, or even a Twitter hashtag that students can use to communicate and connect during and outside the class.

3. Create individual learning plans

Use the unique benefits that a virtual classroom offers to help build individual learning plans for your students. That includes incorporating technology that will allow you to actively track each student's performance. By assessing a student's performance, you can discover holes in their knowledge, adjust the pace of the lessons, and determine what type of learning they respond to most.

4. Develop curriculum around shorter content

Not only are attention spans shorter than ever, but virtual students can easily skip out on long lectures or skim complicated readings. With so many distractions available to them, you've got to work extra hard to grab and keep their attention. One way to do this is to focus on creating short, captivating lessons. Consider recording 5- to 10-minute lectures or having students engage with interactive media, such as YouTube videos, music, or even live performances as part of your curriculum. Encourage student interaction during your lessons. That means less lecturing and more open discussions.

5. Integrate face-to-face virtual interactions

Isolation is a big downside of virtual classrooms, which can quickly lead to disengagement. You can combat isolation by encouraging or even requiring virtual face-to-face interactions. Start by recording a video of your lectures, so your students can see your face. Next, encourage or require students to meet in small groups via video conference. ( Google Hangouts is a free video conferencing software.)

6. Learn by doing

It can be hard for students to feel engaged in class (virtual or otherwise) if they only listen to lectures and fill out multiple-choice tests. Depending on the topic of the class, encourage them to find creative ways to solve problems or express a lesson. For example, for history class, ask students to design a period costume. For math class, challenge students to find the square footage of a room in their home and document how they did it.

7. Add flexibility into the curriculum

Engage your students by letting them use their existing talents and interests to complete assignments. Not everyone wants to write an essay or do a book report. If you want the class to dive into the novel Dracula, let them show you what they got out of the book in a way that most appeals to them. Maybe a student will perform a one-man show from Dracula's point of view, while another discusses the changing mythology of vampires in history. Be flexible in assignments, and your students will likely surprise you with their ingenuity.

8. Provide opportunities to collaborate

Another great way to fight feelings of isolation among your virtual students is to assign partner, group, and class projects. When students collaborate, they can combine their creativity, share unique perspectives, and create relationships that will help them feel more comfortable participating in class. It will also keep them honest. No one wants to let their partner or their team down.

9. Communicate, communicate, communicate

You'll never know if a student is falling behind or feeling bored unless you ask. Virtual classrooms make it easy for shy or disinterested students to fade into the background unless a teacher makes a concerted effort to reach out. This may go beyond just handing out your email. Offer virtual office hours, create a social media group for the class, and consider scheduling one-on-one consultations with each student during the course.

10. Solicit feedback

If you want to know if your students feel engaged and are grasping the material, why not just ask? Not every student will want to be honest if you question them directly, so consider creating anonymous polls that allow students to let you know what they really think. This is a great way to assess how much they know about the topic at the beginning of class, what types of assignments they want, if a topic needs more discussion, and what they would recommend changing at the end of class.

Poll Everywhere gives you the software you need to seamlessly create and administer polls. Your students can answer quickly and easily from their computers or phones. Write multiple-choice questions or let students write out their own answers. You'll get valuable feedback that will let you make your next virtual classroom even better.

Want even more great student engagement ideas? Check out our 5 Summer School Secrets to Improve Student Engagement.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to Keep Students Engaged in Virtual Classrooms | Poll Everywhere Blog

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Virtual classrooms offer many great benefits, like bringing students together from all around the world. But they also have some drawbacks. It's easy for students to feel isolated or disengaged unless teachers make a concerted effort to keep them interested. Poll Everywhere offers 10 great ways to engage your virtual students.

# data[].attributes.body
An overview of tools including FlipGrid, Padlet, Remind & Screencastify and applying them to heighten engagement and build community.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
FLCon19: Connect, Engage, Build: Tools to Build Strong Relationships in an Online Class

# data[].attributes.body
Skills Practice: A Home Visit / Arts of Europe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Submitted by H5P Group on Mon, 02/25/2019 - 16:15

Would you like to create content like this on your own?

Get started

Register on H5P.com to start creating H5P Interactive content. Your content can be accessed via direct link, embeded, or inserted into any learning management system that supports LTI integration.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
H5P empowers everyone to create, share and reuse interactive content - all you need is a web browser and a web site that supports H5P.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Note: You may be prompted to enter your VCU eID and password.
Login to VoiceThread
VoiceThread is a tool that allows multisensory collaboration between faculty and students. Instructors can deliver their content using rich multimedia to enhance the engagement of their students. It allows audio, video, and text comments on uploaded documents, presentations, images, and video. There are no new usernames or passwords to learn, and rosters are synced automatically.

Note: The limitation is 1.5 GB per upload. Users can have multiple uploads of that size in a single VoiceThread but any one file cannot exceed this size. Comments recorded on the slides of a VoiceThread (each audio and video/webcam) comment is limited to 60 minutes in duration and can be used without limitation.
Student Preview mode DOES NOT work with VoiceThread. There is currently no way to view a VoiceThread from a student perspective unless you are a student. Using VoiceThread within a Blackboard Course

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Note: You may be prompted to enter your VCU eID and password. Login to VoiceThread VoiceThread is a tool that allows multisensory collaboration between faculty and students. Instructors can deliver their content using rich multimedia to enhance the engagement of their students. It allows audio, video, and text comments on uploaded documents, presentations, images, and video.

# data[].attributes.body
“Telling faculty to drop everything and use active learning all the time just doesn’t work.” But if they can augment lectures with some of these active-learning strategies, she says, “they’re going to be more comfortable with the results.”

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
You're reading the latest issue of Teaching, a weekly newsletter from a team of Chronicle journalists. Sign up here to get it in your inbox on Thursdays.

This week:

I describe how one professor has torn down the wall between lecturing and active learning.

I ask how you deal with the risks of cheating through digital tools.

I point you to some recent books about teaching.

Can the Lecture Be Saved?
Do you feel guilty when you lecture? Perhaps you're afraid that you're shortchanging students. That, instead, you should be flipping your classroom and getting "active" through group exercises. But really, aren't there times when you just want to tell your students what they need to know?

Fear no more. Claire Major is here to tell you that lecturing is fine. In fact, it's often crucial to a successful class. The key, says Major, a professor of higher education administration at the University of Alabama, is to make it interactive.

In the "pedagogical cage match" between lecturing and active learning, says Major, who speaks and writes frequently about teaching, the traditional lecture loses out because it is often misunderstood. Most professors don't pontificate from the moment class starts to the minute it ends, but lecturing is often portrayed that way.

"I think people are tired of lecture being slammed so hard," she says. "The way articles are positioned: 'Active learning wins.' 'Lectures are unfair or unethical.' Well, what kind of lecture are you talking about?"

In reality, she says, instructors often break up their lectures with other activities. The key to successful lecturing, says Major, is to design activities that reinforce what students learn through the lecture, and encourage them to apply it. Hence the term she likes to use: interactive lecturing.

I first heard Major speak at the Teaching Professor annual conference earlier this year, where she described how to structure an interactive lecture. The room was packed: Clearly her message has touched a nerve among instructors. I followed up by phone last month to ask her to elaborate on some of her ideas.

Major describes her own teaching style as one she developed through trial, error, and a lot of reading. Like many academics when they first start out, she didn't know a whole lot about teaching. But as a "windshield warrior" whose early days were spent at a range of institutions - two- and four-year, public and private - Major started to assemble strategies that kept students engaged and learning. You can find some of her techniques in this chart.

While there's no one-size-fits-all strategy, Major finds it helpful to group her techniques into three categories, and makes sure she gets to all three during each class.

Bookends are used to begin and end class. At the start, for example, you might ask students to write a note to an imaginary classmate who missed the last class, summarizing what was covered.This helps them recall and synthesize information and primes them to learn.

Overlays encourage students to pay attention during the lecture portion of class. You might hand out a worksheet with a series of questions they can answer by listening to your talk.

Interleaves are used to help students apply what they just learned. The common think-pair-share exercise, in which students gather in small groups to answer a question individually and share their answers, encourages them to use and reframe information, which they are then more likely to remember.

Major, who teaches graduate students these days, gives examples from her own work. In one three-hour class, she says, she may do the following in this order:

1. Give students a partial sentence that prompts them to predict part of her upcoming lecture.

2. Lecture with guided notes. Students are given a handout summarizing key points in the lecture, but with blank spaces that they need to fill in as they go along.

3. Ask students to write a one-sentence summary of what they just heard.

4. Provide or ask for a real-world application of a point made during the lecture.

5. Lecture with guided notes.

6. Use a lecture wrapper. Ask students to summarize the most important points of the lecture, then review those summaries together. (You can also ask students what they found most confusing and review that as well.)

Major also advises faculty members to avoid packing in too many activities. A class should not feel like a forced march. "You need some quiet time and some thought," she says. "Even silence, which I know can be uncomfortable at times but can be pretty powerful."

Also, not all activities are created equal. The dreaded icebreaker is not really active learning. Nor is a free-for-all discussion. Some structure and clear goals are necessary. "I think, What do I want them to walk away with?" Major says, about how she plans out each class. "Then I figure out the best way to get there."

Major hopes her strategies will help reduce the anxiety faculty members often feel around active learning, while also acknowledging the value of the lecture.

"Telling faculty to drop everything and use active learning all the time just doesn't work." But if they can augment lectures with some of these active-learning strategies, she says, "they're going to be more comfortable with the results."

For more tips on active lecturing, Major and her frequent collaborator, Elizabeth F. Barkley, a professor of music history at Foothill College, have put together short videos at their K. Patricia Cross Academy.

Do you use active lecturing in your class? Drop me a line, at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com, and tell me your story. It may appear in a future newsletter.
Educational Technology and Cheating
Last week The Chronicle ran a story about a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who threatened to fail about half of his online anthropology students. The reason? They participated in a GroupMe chat that had been used to share lab and exam answers.

The story touched on a range of concerns, from the fairness of the punishment to frustrations around the proliferation of digital tools that could be used for cheating. Some observers wondered whether students today fully understand where the line is between sharing course information and cheating. Other shared their tips to minimize such risks, such as using "learning integrity" software or switching up assignments so that people can't simply purchases papers or exam answers online.

I'm curious how Teaching newsletter readers handle these kinds of challenges. What are your policies on student use of digital tools such as GroupMe and Quizlet? Have you redesigned assignments to minimize the risk of cheating? What sparked the change? And what kinds of ethics policies have you found your students most responsive to? Tell me your story at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com, and your response may be featured in a future newsletter.
New Books on Teaching
Our colleagues Ki-Jana Deadwyler and Ruth Hammond have been busy compiling their latest list of books about higher education. Here are three focused on teaching and learning:

Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers, by Jessamyn Neuhaus. Describes the steps college instructors can take to translate what is in their "bookish, dorky hearts" to inspire student learning.

Generally Speaking: The Impact of General Education on Student Learning in the 21st Century, edited by Madeline J. Smith and Kristen L. Tarantino. Describes how changes in general education have affected student learning at two-year and four-year colleges, and offers case studies of strategies to improve delivery and outcomes.

What's the Point of College? Seeking Purpose in an Age of Reform, by Johann N. Neem. Contrasts proposed reforms with the historic purpose of higher education, and argues, for instance, that online programs are premised on ideas from the Industrial Revolution.

Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us, at dan.berrett@chronicle.com, beckie.supiano@chronicle.com, or beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.

-Beth

Love the Teaching newsletter? Recommend it to a friend. Want to learn more about The Chronicle' s coverage of teaching and learning? Read this. Have questions about the newsletter? Read this FAQ. Past issues are available here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
You're reading the latest issue of Teaching, a weekly newsletter from a team of Chronicle journalists. Sign up here to get it in your inbox on Thursdays. This week: I describe how one professor has torn down the wall between lecturing and active learning.

# data[].attributes.body
Try a #FlipHunt!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I first learned about Fliphunts from Natasha Rachell ( read her blog here!). It seemed like such a cool idea that I bookmarked it and made a mental note to try it soon. Soon came along just after spring break, and I couldn't wait to jump in with my students.

A Fliphunt is a scavenger hunt using Flipgrid! Students work in teams to record videos for as many challenges as they can in the alloted time period. At the end, watch the videos and tally up each team's points to determine a winner.

Setting up a Fliphunt

The setup was super easy - I created this Slide with three levels of challenges (one star, two star, three star) based on difficulty level. A quick Google search or scroll through #Fliphunt on Twitter will lead you to lots of examples and fun ideas. I also created a student handout they could take with them when they went outside to record and check off challenges as they go. At the bottom of the student handout is the class scorecard; I printed one per period, then recorded scores as we watched the Flipgrid videos together as a class.

I created one grid on Flipgrid for the assignment, and separate topics for each class period. This is where "duplicate topic" comes in very handy!

Running the FlipHunt in class

I used this Fliphunt as an introduction to a new unit, so each topic was something new they needed to search up and explore.

Students worked in teams of 3-4 to complete as many challenges as they could in about 30 minutes. I released them for 10 minutes to record at least one video, then had them come back in to watch what had been submitted, record scores, and quickly debrief the recording process. They went back out for the remaining 20 minutes, then came back in to watch and record final scores.

Some groups weren't as into the Fliphunt as others, and other groups struggled with effective teamwork; breaking up the work time helped keep these groups on track. Next time, I'll add our lab group roles as an additional teamwork scaffold. Even with all the progress we've made with Mastery-Based Grading, some still struggle with motivation if they know there isn't a grade attached-we're working on it.

On the bright side, the groups that were participating and excited made this a lot of fun for all of us! Some groups were extremely competitive and worked super hard. Many students let their personalities and sense of humor shine in the videos. It will be helpful to look back on these videos as learning tools as we learn more about the Earth.

Additionally, my teacher next-door neighbor is interested in trying a Fliphunt at some point, so we may create another one for an end of the semester review!

I'll definitely do another Fliphunt with my class. We had a great time, and it was fun to watch students explore a new topic, navigate effective teamwork, and share their creativity with the class.

What are your tips for running Fliphunts with your students or staff?
Comment below so we can all learn from you!

@msventurino View all posts by Mari Venturino

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I first learned about Fliphunts from Natasha Rachell (read her blog here!). It seemed like such a cool idea that I bookmarked it and made a mental note to try it soon. Soon came along just after spring break, and I couldn't wait to jump in with my students.

# data[].attributes.body
Facilitating small group activities?

# data[].attributes.body
Are there virtual experiences that can bring concepts to life & make connections?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Maps

Director of Encyclopedia Virginia

Published Jun 19, 2019

Editor's note: In honor of Juneteenth, we're sharing this story about a Google Earth Outreach project that highlights African American history. In today's post, Justin Reid, Director of African American programs, and Peter Hedlund, Director of Encyclopedia Virginia-both of the state humanities council Virginia Humanities-talk about documenting slave dwellings using Google Street View.

On Virginia's rural farms, in city townhouses, and beneath grand plantations are spaces where enslaved African-Americans lived from the 1600s until sometimes long after Emancipation. Every day, people pass by these slave dwellings, which are often in disrepair, with no idea who lived there. These dwellings and other African-American historic sites are an important part of Virginia's history-yet out of the nearly 250,000 cultural and historic resources documented by the state, only one percent are officially identified as reflecting African-American history.

It's easy to forget about the painful yet important parts of American history when we can't see them. By immersing ourselves in the places where enslaved communities once lived, we are confronted with a history that cannot be ignored. So to virtually preserve these living spaces and give people access to them, we created custom Street View imagery for tours of a dozen slave dwellings throughout Virginia, which date from the late 1700s to the mid 1800s.

How virtual preservation opens doors to slave dwellings
Several years ago, when Google Street View began to include views of interiors, we saw an opportunity to document slave dwellings for Encyclopedia Virginia, where we collect resources about the state's history and culture. Most of the former housing sites for enslaved people are on private property, and therefore not open to visitors. Our virtual tours give access to places that people can't visit in person.

The Street View tours also play a role in virtual preservation. Many of the dwellings are in poor condition-even in worse shape than when we started photographing them a few years ago. By creating the virtual tours, we preserve the dwellings for future generations.

For the tours, we consciously chose a range of dwelling types and locations to highlight how ubiquitous slavery was throughout Virginia-from the Eastern Shore to Mecklenburg County. People tend to think that enslaved people only lived on rural plantations. But we have tours of slave dwellings in urban cities like Alexandria and Richmond, which challenge the stereotypes of how enslaved people lived.

Ensuring enslaved people's place in history
Justin has a personal connection to the Street View tour of a slave dwelling at Ampthill, a former plantation in Cumberland County. His great-great grandfather, Reverend Jacob Randolph Sr., was born into slavery at Ampthill in 1859. The dwelling in the tour, a brick two-story structure, is beside the main plantation house; the kitchen quarters building, where enslaved people also lived, still stands.

The Ampthill slave quarters, where Justin's great-grandfather may have lived as a child, illustrate the challenges of documenting dwellings. Previous owners of Ampthill thought one of the structures was a post-Civil War weaver's cottage. When we brought Jobie Hill, a preservation architect and founder of Saving Slave Houses, to Ampthill, she immediately identified the building as a pre-Civil War slave dwelling. So many slave houses are misidentified, which hurts efforts to document them.

We hope that if more people are aware of slave dwellings and view our Street View tours, more sites can be documented and perhaps preserved-and more of us recall the enslaved people who are too often left out of our historical narratives. The people and the places they lived in deserve to be part of the American story.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bringing slave dwellings out of the shadows with Google Street View

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Editor's note: In honor of Juneteenth, we're sharing this story about a Google Earth Outreach project that highlights African American history. In today's post, Justin Reid, Director of African American programs, and Peter Hedlund, Director of Encyclopedia Virginia-both of the state humanities council Virginia Humanities-talk about documenting slave dwellings using Google Street View.

# data[].attributes.body
"Choosing the right tech tools for your teaching means making strategic choices, weighing costs against payoffs, and staying laser-focused on your course goals."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
August 23, 2019

By MICHELLE D. MILLER

Maybe you have colleagues who are the first to leap onto technology trends. No doubt you've heard them reminiscing about all the stuff they started using before anyone else - class Facebook pages, Twitter hashtags, in-class polling. Or maybe you're a member of Club Early Adopter yourself?

I am, or at least I've aspired to be. (Have I told you about the web pages I put up for my class back in '95?) Back in the day, those of us in the club had to kludge together solutions using tech that wasn't made for teaching. Today, however, you have your pick of hundreds of products, custom-built for education or even for specific disciplines. Furthermore, many of the earliest technologies - think: web pages and blogs - are now something truly anyone can use, no matter your level of technical expertise.

And therein lies the problem: With such a wealth of options, how do you choose what will work best in your classroom?

In technology, as in so many things, just because you can doesn't mean you should. It takes college students one hot minute to figure out when technology is just a useless embellishment, and they're unforgiving when you have no good answer for why you chose to go with digital materials when pencil and paper would have sufficed.

Using technology well means being selective. Choosing the right tech tools for your teaching means making strategic choices, weighing costs against payoffs, and staying laser-focused on your course goals - and that is what this guide aims to help you do. It's for anyone who is in the process of creating a new course or redesigning an old one and needs advice on which technologies to use, how to use them, and why.

Jump to a Section:

What You Need to Get Started

There was a time when advocates naïvely believed that technology would turbocharge learning by its mere presence in class and that "digital natives" craved it in every corner of their lives. Today even the most hard-core technology enthusiasts have moved on from those simplistic ideas, and advocate much more mindful decision-making about how to use technology in teaching. Even if your decision about what to use winds up being "nothing," you can make the choice knowing that you've done right by your students.

I'll go further and suggest that these choices are worth considering every time you update a syllabus. Given that ed-tech companies and products today seem to proliferate, mature, and die at roughly the same pace as fruit flies, chances are good that things have changed since the last time you sat down to plan the course.

So where do you begin? To make good tech choices for your teaching, you first need to know:

What is the technology for? Is it for a course or a set of courses? A module? A particular activity? Thoughtful technology choices aren't generic - they're wedded to a specific discipline and course, and even to specific areas within a course.

What are your learning objectives and outcomes? Successful tech choices are, above all, goal-focused. You'll need to have your course goals and priorities at hand as you consider your technology options.

What are the hardest, or most failure-prone, aspects of what you're teaching? Make a list of the pinch points - material that students repeatedly stumble over or just find boring; concepts that you find yourself having to reteach, time and again. Think about all of those moments when you get a bad feeling that students are leaving your course underprepared for the next one.

That last question might surprise you, especially because it has no obvious connection to technology per se. But it belongs here because, ultimately, you will be weighing the value of dealing with those persistent problems against the costs of technology. And make no mistake, the costs are real. Later in this guide we'll look at exactly what those costs are and how to keep them down. But it follows that technology needs to earn its place in your classroom by providing tangible benefits, and it has the best chance of doing that when it targets the hardest or most time-consuming aspects of a course.

Get a Sense of the Possibilities

The first step is to survey the landscape of educational technology. Because you're an academic, you always risk getting sidetracked by theoretical debates - on things like how to define the meaning of "educational technology," and what does or does not qualify as such. Don't get bogged down by such formalities as you explore the field of options.

I don't mean to disparage that line of scholarly inquiry - it's an important one for specialists in the field, and it has produced some elegant ed-tech taxonomies and other organizational schemes. If definitions, theories, and systems are your cup of tea, you can explore them to your heart's content. There's everything from a John Dewey-inspired framework for classifying forms of technology-aided teaching and learning, to a theoretical discussion of what it means to learn with rather than from technology, to a periodic table of educational technology.

But for the purely practical purpose of course planning, examples are a lot more useful than theory, and a sense of the possibilities is more useful than attempting to delineate the boundaries.

After all, at a basic level, anything students use to enhance their learning - chalk, paper airplanes, protractors, Play-Doh - can count as educational technology. None of those things are what most of us mean when we think about technology for teaching. Our focus here is on digital devices and platforms: apps that run on smartphones, audio and video media, social media, web-based systems for reviewing and practicing course concepts. You get the picture.

For every one of those technologies, there are nearly limitless ways to weave them into your courses. You could, for example:

Set up a fast-paced, low-stakes quiz game that students play in class using their own mobile devices.

Have students use their own smartphones to take a virtual-reality tour of a cultural or historic site.

Ask students to tweet photos of something they see, while going about their day, that illustrates topics they're learning about in your class.

Organize a blog for students to post accounts of their travel experiences during a study-abroad program.

Ask students to make their course assignments public through YouTube or Medium.

Replace a traditional textbook with courseware that presents content in a personalized way and also tests students on the material as they work their way through it.

Use interactive multimedia that students can explore as an illustration of course content.

Produce your own narrated videos that students can watch online on their own time.

Feeling creative yet? Ed tech really does span everything from email to virtual reality, and new ways of using it are being invented all the time. Your institution's e-learning or faculty-development center can probably point you to up-to-date collections of technology ideas - either a web page the center has created itself or similar sites out there on the web. (For a great example, check out Jane Hart's online Directory of Learning & Performance Tools.)

Here are other sources you might tap for inspiration:

Take a look back through scholarly articles you read and saved related to teaching. Do any of them use technology in a way that appeals to you?

Try perusing teaching-oriented journals for ed-tech ideas. A good journal to start with is College Teaching, but there are many others linked to specific disciplines such as psychology, chemistry, science teaching, and engineering education.

Tap your local colleagues for their expertise. If you hear faculty members enthusing about a new tool or technique they are trying, corner them. Talk with academics who are familiar faces at teaching conferences or who haunt e-learning centers. Take them to coffee and be sure to bring your notebook, because they will have reams of advice and suggestions to share.

After surveying the field, you may be feeling overwhelmed by all the options you've discovered. So it's time to narrow your list.

One way to do that: Decide whether you want to use a general ed-tech tool that is discipline-independent (for example, putting your content into a quizzing application), or one that is discipline-specific (such as interactive laboratory simulations, modules that present content online, or quizzes with premade content).

Making that choice, in turn, might lead you back to the big picture of what you want technology to achieve for you as the instructor and for your students. And that segues neatly to the next step in this process.

Figure Out Your Tech Goals

You need a crystal-clear picture of what you want to accomplish with technology. The task of identifying and refining your desired outcomes can be approached using a couple of different frameworks. Such a framework can: (a) uncover which aspects of your course would be best served by bringing in technology, and (b) steer you away from superfluous, why-are-we-using-this tech choices. I'll outline three frameworks I've found helpful in my own teaching.

Focus on those pinch points. Under this approach, your tech goals seek to resolve the most difficult, challenging, or problematic parts of the course. In choosing technology, people naturally gravitate toward tools that seem fun or easy, even if they're not the most useful. You can counter that tendency by setting tech goals that focus on your biggest teaching problems. This also helps ensure that the payoff from these new tools you've chosen will be worth the costs.

Ask yourself the "magic-wand" question. In a course-redesign program I direct at Northern Arizona University, I sometimes ask faculty members: If you could wave a wand and change one thing - a skill students lack, a misconception that stubbornly persists, a task students opt not to do but should - what would that one thing be?

Try asking yourself that question, too, and you may find an area of your teaching that's ripe for the kind of transformation that the right technology can bring. For example, when I teach my introductory course in cognitive psychology, I find that students are pretty good at picking up terminology and identifying course concepts in real-world situations. But they often struggle to understand how major principles of psychology are derived from patterns of data obtained in laboratory experiments.

Getting students to make that mental leap is my magic-wand issue. To deal with the problem, I turn to technology: I assign an online laboratory application that simulates classic experimental paradigms in abbreviated form. This online lab lets students see and experience - from the perspective of a research subject - the procedures they've read about in the textbook. Most important, as they complete the lab, they can see whether the quantitative results they've generated align with the theories they're learning about in class.

The pinch-points approach is similar to the Decoding the Disciplines framework created by David Pace and Joan Middendorf of Indiana University at Bloomington. Their system encourages faculty members to identify and focus their teaching on the "bottlenecks" - like analyzing primary sources or interpreting data - where students consistently run into difficulty. (This approach also has roots in the Universal Design for Learning movement, which we'll return to later in this guide.)

Use backward design. This is a powerful strategy for figuring out tech goals. Like the name implies, the idea is to start your planning with an end in mind. In the case of teaching, the end goal essentially corresponds to all the things that you hope students will know and be able to do by the end of the course. Once you've defined your end goals, use them to plan the semester - making sure that everything students do (i.e., learning activities) and everything they turn in (i.e., assessments) are tightly aligned to those objectives.

I find that the backward-design concept accommodates technology choices particularly well. Especially toward the end of the design process, when you are figuring out the details of how you'll arrive at the end goals you've laid out, you can dive back into the larger pool of technology options that caught your eye and choose the ones that map onto the goals.

Take as an example some of the features my colleagues and I have added over the years in redesigning our "Introduction to Psychology" course. We started with our big-picture goals, one of which was for students to build a knowledge base of major findings and theories. No surprise there, but we also wanted students to be able to identify connections between the course and the real world.

Our goals drove the kinds of tech-based learning activities we created for the course:

To push development of knowledge, we had students take weekly online reading quizzes and answer factual questions using in-class response devices - not so much to measure their knowledge as get them actively recalling it (a strategy that, as you'll see in the next section, is particularly effective for memory).

For enhancing their understanding of how psychology plays out in interesting real-world contexts, we assigned students to: (a) complete selected interactive activities we found on the web, such as this one that tests how well you can tell fake smiles from real ones, and (b) send in a brief reflection on the experience via the course's learning-management system (LMS).

Make tech choices through the lens of the learning sciences. I use this framework most often to make goal-focused technology choices for my own courses. In my book, Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology, and elsewhere, I've argued that one of the best reasons to use technology in teaching is that it offers ways to put into practice the extensive body of research in cognitive psychology and related sciences on how human beings learn.

The research on attention, memory, reasoning, problem-solving, and other learning principles is incredibly powerful. But it can be difficult to put those principles to use in your classroom without some kind of technological aid.

Take the concept of retrieval practice, a cognitive principle you can dig into in more depth at this web site, in this article by The Chronicle's teaching columnist James M. Lang, or in this episode of the Tea for Teaching podcast. Retrieval practice is what you do any time you pull information out of your memory. It kicks in when you're taking a test, a practice quiz, or any other kind of assessment. But it can also operate when you are using flashcards or writing in a journal to induce recall.

Multiple studies (for example, here and here) have established the effectiveness of retrieval practice for promoting memory - allowing students to remember more information per minute invested than just about anything else they can do with their time. This is exciting news for teachers because, although building a base of knowledge isn't the be-all and end-all of learning, it is an important part. And it's something that has to be managed if students are going to have time and energy left over to handle other, higher-level learning goals in your course.

Myriad ed-tech tools allow you to take advantage of the research on retrieval practice. For example, you can use your institution's LMS to set up low-stakes quizzes on the assigned readings. There are also quite a few great choices for in-class short quizzes that run on students' mobile devices (see, for example, Kahoot!, Top Hat, and Poll Everywhere) and offer rapid feedback and options to create friendly competition.

These activities can also have the useful side benefit of keeping students attentive during a face-to-face class. That's important because - despite folk beliefs about learning through osmosis - attention is a requirement for forming new memories. When we focus on the fact that memory is one part of learning, and that we can use retrieval practice to promote memory, it sharpens and gives shape to our technology search. Knowing, for example, that you want students to be doing more active retrieval in your course considerably narrows the field of tech options.

Other cognitive principles can produce a similar winnowing effect. One research-proven memory booster is called spacing or distributed practice. It holds that study time yields more - memory-wise - when it's divided across frequent, short sessions rather than concentrated in marathon sessions. Deciding that you want to tap into the benefits of spacing can narrow your tech choices. You might, for instance, decide to offer brief quizzes that students can take outside of scheduled class times. Or send out text reminders of upcoming assignments and class news to get students thinking about course material more frequently than they otherwise would.

Likewise, if your goal is to emphasize reasoning or problem-solving skills, that can point you in the direction of certain technologies. Word of warning, however: Reinforcing thinking skills is a notoriously difficult goal for instructors, and finding the right tech tools to do it is not much easier.

Just having students view certain content won't achieve much. They must be interacting with it repeatedly across varied problems for real learning to occur. So you will want to choose tools that allow students direct, repeated practice and complex, high-level interactions with an extensive base of problem sets, examples, case studies, and other content. Ideally, their practice will also feature feedback and some level of personalization of the sequence, amount, or type of content.

Tech tools with all of those features aren't a dime a dozen. Nor are you likely to find technology that reinforces thinking skills across the board, in a discipline-independent way. Human cognitive processes tend to be wedded to the specific context in which we use them.

Your best bet, therefore, is to start searching within your discipline or even within a specific course topic. See if there's a commercial product you can buy unbundled. If you're lucky, you may even find a good-quality open resource. You can also come at it from a slightly different angle: Start with the type of activity you want - e.g., problem-based learning - and then search for a tool within your discipline that emphasizes that activity (the University of Delaware's online PBL Clearinghouse is a great example).

Turn to the research on multimedia learning. Finally, if you would like some concrete dos and don'ts about the best ways to combine audio, diagrams, and interactive elements in a course, check out the research on multimedia learning - most notably the work of Richard Mayer and colleagues.

Multimedia materials can be highly useful, especially in fully online courses where you don't want to inundate students with page after page of text. It makes sense to use the basic principles from multimedia theory - such as combining audio narration with visual depictions of concepts and processes, and avoiding graphics that are decorative rather than substantive - as a selection guide.

For a full rundown of the theory, it's certainly worthwhile to check out one of Mayer's excellent books on the subject. But even having just the main highlights in mind can help you choose digital resources that let multimedia do what it does best: Combine sight, sound, and language to illustrate complex processes and principles.

Consider the Costs

In choosing technology, you need to balance the benefits against the price tag - especially if you're requiring students to use a tool they have to pay for upfront. There's no standard formula for doing a cost-benefit analysis of ed tech. But in addition to a clear picture of the cash you're asking students to spend, you also need to consider your own costs in terms of time and effort (more on that in a bit).

Then you weigh the costs against the things you hope the technology will deliver, keeping in mind that some of the benefits will be intangible and others concrete. For example, if some technology you've adopted results in more students passing your class, that's a tangible benefit - because every failure means someone has to bear the cost of a retake.

It may be difficult to tease out all of the benefits of a specific technology, especially if it's part of a larger package of improvements you've made to a course, but this is one way to get a ballpark estimate of what students are getting for their money. They won't see the cost-benefit trade-offs that accrue from improved pass rates, but they will see how well (and how often) a technology is used in a course, and that will form a big part of their perception that it's worthwhile.

For example, in the redesign of our intro psychology course, we incorporated student-response systems (allowing students to answer questions and participate in polls via clickers and mobile phones) as a crucial component. Surveys of our students showed they specifically wanted faculty members to use clickers either frequently or not at all: Their perceived value went up markedly once we started using them to administer substantive questions multiple times in a class meeting, and stopped using them as expensive substitutes for paper sign-in sheets.

In your own cost-benefit analysis of a particular tool, be sure to take into account how often students would use it, and what percentage of their final grade would be earned via the technology.

The cost of any piece of technology is a lot easier to justify if it replaces something else that students would have to pay for. Textbooks are the most obvious example - replaced with, say, an interactive courseware system (like this one) or a set of readings drawn from free online content. I've done that myself, for example, by assigning Noba Project modules in lieu of a traditional textbook.

There are other possible substitutions. Instead of clickers that cost money, try free polling apps that run on mobile phones. Professors feeling adventurous could replace an in-person laboratory experience - and its corresponding lab fee - with an online simulation. That last suggestion is somewhat controversial, but there's at least some precedent for it being done effectively under certain circumstances.

Don't think that choosing free products automatically exempts you from weighing costs. Especially if students are registering to use the free version of a tool, what kind of personal data must they provide to gain access? Are there going to be ads involved, and are you OK with exposing students to the number and type of ads they'll see over the course of the semester? In rare cases there may even be questions about what happens to the content that students post on those "free" sites - most prominently, the appropriation of student intellectual property that some critics say is happening with plagiarism checker tools.

I am not a data privacy expert, and I don't think you should have to become one just to take advantage of educational technology resources that are available free of charge. But, particularly if you're designing a lot of the course around one tool, read the fine print first.

Now to turn briefly to the issue of time costs. Before you get too far into a technology project, do the best you can to estimate how many hours it's going to take you to get it up and running. Then estimate how much time you will spend on maintenance, troubleshooting, and answering all the extra email generated by students' questions about the technology.

Your estimate won't be perfect. Just give it your best guess, and ask around to see if someone (like one of your Club Early Adopter colleagues) could let you know what to expect. Remember, however, only you can answer whether the benefit to students and to your teaching seems worth the investment of your time.

Think About Who Has Access, and Who Doesn't

Cost is an access issue for some students, but there are also broader questions of access and inclusivity that are getting some well-deserved, and overdue, attention right now in higher education. As a general principle, all course materials - including technology and digital media - should be usable for people with a wide range of sensory abilities and requirements.

At a bare minimum, putting that principle into practice involves meeting accommodation requirements. But there's more to access than mere compliance, as advocates of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) argue.

The UDL framework is related to, but distinct from, the idea of disability accommodations. An official accessibility policy requires faculty members to accommodate individual students with documented disabilities who need alternative ways to do the coursework. UDL steers instructors away from the idea of singling out a student for individual accommodations on an as-needed basis, and instead encourages them to offer all students alternative ways to complete their coursework. Those multiple pathways are built into the course design. The idea is that these options - such as participating in an online discussion via voice recording instead of text, or reading a transcript of a video instead of listening to it - can benefit all students who use them.

It's worth exploring UDL (here's one excellent resource) in more depth for its own sake. For our purposes, it's useful to look at technology choices through the lens of UDL and find tools that offer multiple routes to the same end rather than standardization. UDL can also reveal unwanted barriers within our technology choices - videos without appropriate captioning, multimedia that is difficult or impossible for students with sensory limitations to access, and other problems.

This played out in my own work a few years ago when a team of designers and I built the Attention Matters! module, an online resource for teaching students about the perils of distraction. Part of the module is an online simulation of a classic research paradigm in cognitive psychology that involves reading words printed in a range of specific colors. But not everyone can see color. So my UDL-savvy design team searched for, and found, an alternative simulation that produces the same kind of results using black-and-white line drawings rather than colored text.

Students are required to complete one of the two versions, although a fair number do both. We are still looking for an alternative activity for low-vision users. But by considering UDL from the beginning, we expanded the number of students who can access the module, and by doing so, we added depth and substance to the exercise as a whole.

Evaluating access is a mandatory step in choosing technology, for reasons both educational and ethical. But don't let that put you off the whole idea of bringing in technology. For one thing, it's often technology that lets you expand the range of options in your course - such as allowing students to participate in an online discussion using microphones or webcams as an alternative to typing in text - in ways that fit with the UDL philosophy.

The more academics demand accessibility when shopping around for course materials, the more pressure will be brought to bear on tech producers to make this a priority.

When Shopping for Technology, Look for These Features

Throughout this guide, I've sought to emphasize the importance of looking at technology choices from both practical and pedagogical angles, and staying focused on your end goals while setting high standards for what you'll adopt. Condensed into a shopping list of sorts, here is what to look for selecting an ed-tech tool for your teaching.

1: Does it align with my toughest course goals? Use one of the frameworks I mentioned above to uncover where technology will deliver the biggest payoff in the course. Look for tools that directly support the course goals that are hardest for students to reach.

Example: Students often struggle the most in mastering high-level thinking skills in a discipline. Developing those skills to a sophisticated level takes a substantial amount of practice. So look for technologies that directly engage students in those thinking skills - through simulations, problem sets with feedback, or opportunities to create and share their own original content with peers.

2: Does it align with what we know about how people learn? In the research on learning, we are at a point where we can safely say that some approaches to teaching are simply more effective than others. Take advantage of this knowledge by fast-tracking technology options that clearly tie in to established principles of learning.

Example: We know from research that quizzes, self-tests, and other tasks that get students retrieving information from memory are all highly effective for building knowledge. Look for technologies that emphasize retrieval practice.

3: Is it high quality? That issue isn't as ineffable as it might seem. With educational technologies, quality breaks down into several concrete aspects, all of which are possible to evaluate ahead of time. They include:

Content. Is it accurate and free of errors and misinformation? Is it clear and engaging? If there are instructions, are they also clear, accurate, and easy to understand? Is the content at the right level for your students? Does it duplicate content from elsewhere in the course? Duplication is not always a bad thing, as it could be a way to reinforce concepts that you want students to know. But if the overlap is significant, consider whether the technology could replace something like a costly textbook.

Capabilities. How well is the product put together, from a technical standpoint? Does it work smoothly and reasonably bug-free? Does it work consistently across a variety of devices and browsers? Does it talk to your campus LMS, or will you have to manually enter course points or other performance data into your gradebook?

Support. Will your institution handle troubleshooting and questions? If not, what is the company or creator offering as far as support? Is there just one or multiple forms of tech support (phone, email, chat, online FAQ)? What kind of turnaround time can students expect, and is it reasonable in light of the timeline students will have for meeting deadlines?

4: Is it a good value? Technology's value is all about trade-offs - between the cost to students, the information they will have to provide to gain access, the amount of instructor time you will have to commit, and the benefits that you think the technology will deliver. Enhancing and deepening learning is the chief benefit. But there could be others, such as more efficient use of study time, replacement of other costly materials, or opportunities to do something fresh and different in class.

Start by making sure you know the full costs. Then consider the question of value from these additional angles:

Are there free alternatives for the type of technology you want to use, and to what extent are they truly free? Will students have to agree to be on a mailing list, give up personal data, or see endless ads? Does the free one really do everything you need it to, or will students likely end up having to spend money on the premium version?

Are there low-tech or no-tech options that would achieve the same thing and cost less? Remember that students are super-sensitive to technology that seems like it doesn't add value. And it's entirely possible that pen and paper, whiteboards, or verbal discussion could be perfectly sufficient, especially within small groups or when you don't need to track student performance in a precise way.

Is there a wow factor? No instructor would advocate for educational technology purely for novelty value, but we can't deny that sometimes it can bring something new and fun into class. It's OK to add that kind of appeal into the value equation as another benefit that can balance out costs.

One more thing: Once you answer these questions for your own teaching, won't you please share what you've learned?

When faculty members swap experiences - be they good, bad, or just interesting - that helps move the whole field forward. It's also a way to counterbalance the inevitable hype, gee-whiz futurism, and salesmanship that tend to come with the ed-tech territory. When you help colleagues sort through the ed-tech options that are best for them, you put the focus of our joint enterprise back on students and learning. Who knows, you might even score a free cup of coffee in the process.

Troubleshooting Common Problems

You've settled on your choices. Now it's time to put into place some safeguards that will keep you and your students out of technology purgatory once the course is underway.

Keep in mind that students are likely to need more coaching than you anticipate on how to use the technology you assign. Especially if you're working with first- and second-year students, even basic things like navigating your institution's learning-management system or setting up a login and password for a publisher's website are going to stump some students. You want to avoid a situation in which the first you learn of their confusion is when you notice they are missing assignments.

As a preventive measure, you can offer one-on-one help on request, orient everyone to the technology in class, set up icebreaker or orientation assignments to introduce the technology, or some combination of those. The point is: You'll need to do something to be sure everyone is conversant with the technology before they start using it for serious work.

If your technology is the type that includes content, you'll also need to check it for consistency and accuracy. Sadly, there continues to be a wide range of quality in courseware and other content-intensive resources. Problems wrought by bad information are not something you want to be dealing with in the middle of the term. Depending on the nature and severity of the content errors, you might be able to excise the problematic material ahead of time, warn students about it, or reinforce concepts in class.

Also be thinking ahead about how you'll manage the grades generated by the technology. Some tools, such as certain online homework systems, can drop grades right into your institution's learning-management system. But that kind of smooth integration with LMS gradebooks is the exception, not the rule. So especially if you intend students to use the tech frequently (and I hope you do), you're going to need to figure out how you will track all of the data points.

Lastly, there's everyone's favorite tech issue: making sure the tools you've chosen are accessible on multiple devices and browsers. This is another area where you don't need to worry about becoming a deep technical expert. However, part of your planning should include reading up on what the product's company or creator says about this issue. Ideally, do some Googling or even run some tests of your own to ensure that the tool will work across at least the major alternatives: Mac versus PC, Android versus iPhone, that kind of thing.

This brings us to the question of tech support. Specifically: Whose responsibility is it going to be? Unless you say otherwise, you as the instructor will, by default, become the 24-hour technical support line.

No technology is reliable enough for you to just set it and forget it. Students deserve to know how to get help - and to have that help delivered to them on a reasonable time frame. That goes double for any software you ask students to install or gain access to via codes, because so much can (and does) go wrong when passwords, credit cards, multiple platforms, and operating systems are all thrown into the mix.

If you want to take on this IT role, fine. But given that you probably don't, you need to find out where students can turn for help. It might be the technology company (in the case of a commercial product) or the help desk of your own institution or some other entity. Post the help-desk contact information (email, phone, social media account or website) not just on your syllabus, but also prominently throughout the assignment materials and on the course website. Be ready to repeat that information regularly in class.

Many institutions, mine included, have specific guidelines about what forms of course-related tech support they will, and won't, provide to students. Colleges do that with the entirely reasonable goal of preventing a crush of student calls to the campus tech-support center about software it's never heard of. When in doubt, get in touch with the campus help desk, e-learning center, or IT staff ahead of time. Explain what you want to do in class, and see if they can provide some or all of the needed support.

Recommendations to Get You Started

Here is a list of apps and other tools that I've either used myself and liked, or heard good things about from faculty colleagues:

Screencast-O-Matic: a video and screen-capture application with captioning capability.

Flipgrid: a platform for disseminating materials and facilitating discussion, in multiple ways (video, text, voice recording).

VoiceThread: an application for presenting media (e.g., slideshows) on which students can comment via video, text, or voice recording.

Padlet: an application for creating customizable, Pinterest-type boards that can be shared publicly or with select people.

Kahoot!: a quizzing and survey tool optimized for fast-paced competitive games played on individual mobile devices.

Poll Everywhere: a general-purpose tool for real-time surveying in class using individual mobile devices.

iClicker: a quizzing and survey system that uses dedicated hardware - much like a handheld remote control device.

Smart Sparrow: a platform for creating interactive digital content.

Plenty of tech tools you may already use in your department or at home are ripe for educational uses. Standouts include YouTube for ready-made video content and student-created video assignments, Slack for facilitating student-to-student collaboration, Canva and Piktochart for creating visual illustrations, Google Forms for creating interactive assessments, and Google Sites for easy-to-design web pages. Twitter can be a place for students to post reflections about course material. Even Wikipedia can be the basis for interesting assignments in which students collaborate to edit content.

Textbook publishers are another source of useful online content. Test banks, especially ones you can upload directly into your LMS, make it easy to create low-stakes quizzes. You may also find websites, games, and media listed in the textbook or the accompanying instructor guide that you can use as a base for tech-enhanced assignments.

Resources

What follows isn't a definitive list but includes some of the most useful sources of information about choosing technology for your teaching.

Websites

Merlot: Part of the California State University system, the acronym stands for Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching. It offers thousands of online learning materials for educators around the world.

Top Tools for Learning: This is an annual list of the best ed-tech tools as compiled by the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies in Britain.

Directory of Learning & Performance Tools: Another useful resource from the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies in Britain.

Backward Design: Choosing Technology Tools for Teaching: A program to help you develop learning goals and choose the tech to support them, created via the Northwest Academic Computing Consortium.

Which Technology Tool Do I Choose?: This is Edutopia.org's version of how to choose ed tech.

PBL (Problem-Based Learning) Clearinghouse: Here is a wealth of realistic problem scenarios that you can use in assignments across a wide variety of disciplines, curated via the University of Delaware.

Organizations and Conferences

OLC stands for the Online Learning Consortium; this Massachusetts-based organization offers conferences, online workshops, and publications.

Pod Network stands for the Professional and Organizational Development Network; this group offers conferences and publications.

DT&L Conference: The annual Distance Teaching & Learning Conference is in its 35th year at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Books

Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology Out of Your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning, by José Antonio Bowen.

Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creating Active Learning Environments, by Derek Bruff.

Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching, forthcoming in November 2019, also by Derek Bruff.

Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes, published this year by Flower Darby and James M. Lang.

Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses, by L. Dee Fink.

Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education, by Thomas J. Tobin and Kirsten T. Behling.

Podcasts

Leading Lines focuses exclusively on instructional technology in higher education.

Teaching in Higher Ed covers myriad topics relevant to higher education, with an excellent collection of episodes specifically about technology.

Tea for Teaching frequently focuses on teaching with technology, including episodes about augmented reality, VoiceThread, the culture of ed tech, intentional technology choices, and social presence in online courses.

Choosing technology isn't simple, but it is important. Do all of the things I've listed in this guide, and you'll become not merely an early adopter of technology, but also a thoughtful one.

Michelle D. Miller is a professor of psychological sciences at Northern Arizona University and director and co-creator of its First Year Learning Initiative. Her latest book is Minds Online: Teaching Effectively With Technology, published by Harvard University Press.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to Make Smart Choices About Tech for Your Course

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
August 23, 2019 By MICHELLE D. MILLER Maybe you have colleagues who are the first to leap onto technology trends. No doubt you've heard them reminiscing about all the stuff they started using before anyone else - class Facebook pages, Twitter hashtags, in-class polling. Or maybe you're a member of Club Early Adopter yourself?

# data[].attributes.body
Use PollEverywhere?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
You're reading the latest issue of Teaching, a weekly newsletter from a team of Chronicle journalists. Sign up here to get it in your inbox on Thursdays.

Welcome to Teaching, a free weekly newsletter from The Chronicle of Higher Education.

This week:

The "hotwash" - a form of immediate debriefing - is usually associated with disaster-relief assessment. I explain why one professor has incorporated it into nearly every class period.

I point you toward a good resource for learning more about different ways professors can minimize their reliance on grades - the subject of my latest story.

I pass along a reader-recommended tool that estimates who's doing the talking during your class.

Students as Active Participants
Art Jipson sets a timer on his Apple Watch to chime 10 minutes before the end of each class. It's quiet enough that not all of his students will hear it, said Jipson, an associate professor of criminal justice and sociology at the University of Dayton. But those who notice know what comes next: A few minutes later, Jipson will usually pause and say something like "Ok, let's reflect on what we just did."

At that point, it's time for students - not the professor - to distill what was covered in the class period. Jipson carries a list of his own takeaways, but mostly listens and writes down what students say. Then he asks them to describe strengths and weaknesses of the class period. A student might say, for instance, that it covered too much material. The goal is for students to give succinct responses, and Jipson emphasizes that there are no right or wrong answers.

In case students want to say something but are uncomfortable bringing it up in front of their peers or professor, Jipson also provides a way for them to comment anonymously online.

This type of immediate debriefing is called a "hotwash," a term that appears to have origins in the military and that is now used to describe the way first responders evaluate their efforts in the wake of a disaster. Jipson picked up the technique at a campus center now known as the Institute of Applied Creativity for Transformation, which helps faculty members adopt new approaches in their teaching.

In the classroom, Jipson said, a hotwash serves several purposes, like enhancing student engagement and building community.

Jipson uses students' feedback on what they thought went well or not so well in a number of ways. For one thing, it allows him to make adjustments in the rest of the course, say, by providing more real-world applications.

The summaries matter, too. When the next class period begins, Jipson refers back to the hotwash, and opens the floor in case students have further reflections to add. Even if students have nothing to add, he said, asking the question helps them form connections, illustrating that "thinking like a researcher, like a scholar, like a writer is always an ongoing process" and that a course is more than the sum of its individual sessions.

Jipson tried a variety of approaches for helping students "feel like they're active participants in the class" before settling on this one a few years ago, he said. Since adopting the hotwash, Jipson finds himself using it more and more frequently, now ending nearly every class period this way.

While Jipson generally teaches classes of 25 to 40 students - a class size that might particularly lend itself to this kind of technique - it can be adapted for a larger class, he said. He's done that himself using clickers.

Have you applied a technique from a context outside of education to your classroom? If so, where did you get the idea, how did you translate it, and what benefits does it bring? Tell me about it, at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com, and I may include it in a future newsletter.
**A Paid Message From: JAMS:
Case Study: Fairness in Title IX Hearings. Hear from several institutions and Title IX experts on how they ensure cases are handled with impartiality.**
Getting Rid of Grades
Susan D. Blum, a professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, started out as a conventional grader. But then her experiences in the classroom and beyond, her reading of the literature, and - perhaps most of all - her own scholarship on higher education, persuaded her that grades were a barrier to learning. I describe Blum's intellectual journey and the practice she now uses, a form of "ungrading," in a new story you can read here.

There are many ways to minimize the focus on grades in a course. Interested in learning more? Check out the helpful rundown of approaches in this blog post from Jesse Stommel, a longtime practitioner of ungrading who's quoted in my story.

Have you tried ungrading? Do you have questions or concerns about the practice? I'm interested in your thoughts: beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.

Who's Talking in Your Classroom?

Recently, we asked for your suggestions of online teaching tools that newsletter readers might want to try. Kelly A. Hogan, associate dean of instructional innovation for the college of arts and sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, passed along DART: Decibel Analysis for Research in Teaching.

DART analyzes audio recordings of class periods to help professors who want to use active learning gauge their use of class time. It deciphers when one voice, multiple voices, or no voices are heard, providing an estimate of when an instructor is lecturing, assigning students to work in small groups, or asking them to complete an activity on their own. It's "genius," writes Hogan, who is also a teaching professor of biology. The tool, she said, can help professors determine how student-centered their classroom really is. You can learn more about using DART here, and read a paper about its development here.

Is there a tool you'd like to share with fellow readers? Send me a note, at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com, and I may pass it along.

Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us, at dan.berrett@chronicle.com, beckie.supiano@chronicle.com, beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com, or steve.johnson@chronicle.com.

-Beckie

Love the Teaching newsletter? Recommend it to a friend by sending them this link. Want to learn more about The Chronicle' s coverage of teaching and learning? Read this. Have questions about the newsletter? Read this FAQ. Past issues are available here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
This Professor Ends Class With a 'Hotwash,' a Technique Used by First Responders

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
You're reading the latest issue of Teaching, a weekly newsletter from a team of Chronicle journalists. Sign up here to get it in your inbox on Thursdays. Welcome to Teaching, a free weekly newsletter from The Chronicle of Higher Education. This week: The "hotwash" - a form of immediate debriefing - is usually associated with disaster-relief assessment.

# data[].attributes.body
Activities and ideas.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Zoom can change the way you teach and interact with learners, by giving you the ability to hold online office hours with learners anywhere in the world on a one-time or recurring basis.

Why hold online office hours with Zoom?

Pre-schedule upcoming office hours
By scheduling an upcoming meeting in Zoom, you can generate a link that can be shared with students to virtually join you at the appropriate time.

Consider using the waiting room feature
You can use the waiting room feature in conjunction with your Personal Meeting Room. This will allow you to use the same meeting link for all of your office hour sessions throughout the semester, but to admit only one student at a time into a meeting for privacy. You can still require students to sign up for a specific time slot on a calendar or spreadsheet to avoid long wait times.

Meet with individual students about assignments or tests
If you would like to meet with a student from your office or home, you can start a meeting and invite the student to join you directly from Zoom.

Meet with groups to discuss projects
Because Zoom has functionality to allow up to 300 people to join a virtual meeting, you can also meet with groups to discuss a project, presentation, or assignment.

Conduct online review sessions the night before an exam

Equipment

Computer with a good internet connection

Headphones or earbuds (optional)

Microphone (either built-in to your computer or separate)

Web cam (optional, but preferred for face-to-face contact)

Before your meeting

Schedule specific virtual office hours at the beginning of the semester and communicate them to your students
If using your Personal Meeting Room for office hours, consider using a calendar or spreadsheet to allow students to sign up for a specific time slot

Let students know your meeting expectations

Can students enter and exit the "room" as they wish, or should they enter only at the time you specify? Will you be using the waiting room feature to control access to the meeting?

Will you want students to share their screens during the meeting?

Are you recording the meeting for future access and referral?
Note: if you will potentially discuss Protected Health Information (PHI), adhere to PHI security protocols.

Log in and be ready for the meeting before it is scheduled to begin

If you will need applications like Word or Excel for the meeting, keep them minimized when not in use

Look your best

Find a background that is free of distractions

Have adequate lighting so you are easily visible

Turn off background distractions like email notifications and cell phone rings

Mute your mic and turn your video off - you can turn those on when you are ready to start.

After your meeting

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Zoom can change the way you teach and interact with learners, by giving you the ability to hold online office hours with learners anywhere in the world on a one-time or recurring basis. Pre-schedule upcoming office hours By scheduling an upcoming meeting in Zoom, you can generate a link that can be shared with students to virtually join you at the appropriate time.

# data[].attributes.body
https://github.com/UKHomeOffice/posters/blob/master/accessibility/dos-donts/posters_en-UK/accessibility-posters-set.pdf

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Host interactive online meetings | Poll Everywhere

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Create
Richer HTML5 Content in Existing Publishing Platforms

Share
Content Seamlessly Across Any H5P Capable Site

Reuse and modify
Content in Your Browser at Any Time

Start creating rich interactive content on your own website. It's free and easy to get started.

Get started with H5P

Supercharge your website with H5P

H5P makes it easy to create, share and reuse HTML5 content and applications. H5P empowers everyone to create rich and interactive web experiences more efficiently - all you need is a web browser and a web site with an H5P plugin.

Mobile friendly content

H5P content is responsive and mobile friendly, which means that users will experience the same rich, interactive content on computers, smartphones and tablets alike.

Share rich content

H5P enables existing CMSs and LMSs to create richer content. With H5P, authors may create and edit interactive videos, presentations, games, advertisements and more. Content may be imported and exported. All that is needed to view or edit H5P content is a web browser. H5P content types and applications are shared here on H5P.org. H5P content may be created on any H5P enabled web site like H5P.com or your own Drupal or WordPress site with the H5P plugin installed.

Free to use

H5P is a completely free and open technology, licensed with the MIT license. Demos/downloads, tutorials and documentation are all available for users who want to join the community.

Check out the content types

There are several H5P content types and applications to suit various needs.

Need help with H5P?

Take a look at the Documentation pages. If you can't find an answer there, you can post a question to the H5P community in the Forum. Selected companies also provide H5P related services.

Wed, 10/25/2023 - 10:18

Learn how to use Chat GPT to create H5P content.

Thu, 06/29/2023 - 14:39

Teachers, instructional designers and other authors may now build content more than three times faster with the help of AI and the new tool, Smart Import. We have also launched a new version of the Moodle plugin for H5P.

Thu, 06/29/2023 - 14:40

Falcon on the future of AI and H5P, and the results from last month's survey.

Want to help us spread the word?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
H5P empowers everyone to create, share and reuse interactive content - all you need is a web browser and a web site that supports H5P.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Modernize workflows with Zoom's trusted collaboration tools: including video meetings, team chat, VoIP phone, webinars, whiteboard, contact center, and events.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We express ourselves in different ways. On Flip, you can use our simple and fun built-in camera to record your thoughts, add effects and share within your Flip group as video, audio only or text in your web browser or mobile app.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Flip is a video discussion and sharing app, free from Microsoft.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Flip (formerly Flipgrid) is a video discussion and video sharing app, free from Microsoft, built for classrooms and beyond. Learn more.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Coggle is online software for creating and sharing mindmaps and flowcharts. It works online in your browser: there's nothing to download or install. Log in to start diagramming!

Whether you're taking notes, brainstorming, planning, or doing something awesomely creative, it is super simple to visualise your ideas with Coggle. Share with as many friends or colleagues as you like. Changes you make will show up instantly in their browser, wherever they are in the world

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The clear way to share complex information. Coggle is a collaborative mind-mapping tool that helps you make sense of complex things. Create unlimited mind maps and easily share them with friends and colleagues.

# data[].attributes.body
"There’s never a bad time to re-examine and rethink your syllabi"!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There’s never a bad time to re-examine and rethink how to write your syllabus. This guide walks you through everything you need to know, with specific tips and strategies, to craft an effective syllabus.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The high cost of course materials is a concern for both students and parents. These costs place many students at academic risk. "Affordable course content" describes any free, low-cost or open educational resources that can serve as alternatives to high-cost course materials. Faculty interested in open or affordable course content can:

Affordable Course Content Awards

VCU Libraries, the Office of the Provost, the ALT Lab and Online@VCU, the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, Academic Technologies, and Barnes and Noble @ VCU are partnering for a third round of awards to support faculty adoption of zero-cost resources and creation of openly-licensed alternatives to expensive textbooks. Learn more about the Affordable Course Content Awards.
Apply by Feb. 28 for new cycle of VIVA grants.
2020 VIVA Course Redesign Grants

The third round of VIVA Course Redesign Grants is open for applications. These grants are designed to empower Virginia faculty with the resources and time they need to redesign courses by swapping out textbooks and other expensive course materials for open, no cost, or library options. Applications are due February 28, 2020.
Learn more about the VIVA Course Redesign Grants.
VIVA Faculty Textbook Portal

The VIVA Faculty Textbook Portal helps faculty find ebooks that can be used as course materials. . Faculty can select from over 200,000 titles that include open access books, currently available ebooks, and ebooks available for purchase on request.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The high cost of course materials is a concern for both students and parents. These costs place many students at academic risk. "Affordable course content" describes any free, low-cost or open educational resources that can serve as alternatives to high-cost course materials.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Additional Resources

Quick Guides: These 2-page documents provide information on teaching-related topics such as active learning techniques, building resilience in students, and establishing ground rules in the classroom.

National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity: VCU has a membership to NCFDD's exclusive teaching content with online guides, bootcamps, curriculum help, writing challenges and more.

The POD Network is the premier organization for faculty and educational development in higher ed in the United States. Many centers for teaching (CTL's) have developed a living document to help faculty navigate classroom challenges that are associated with political and social events over the last year. This document provides resources.

Teaching Forum Newsletter Articles

Between 1998 and 2003 the Center for Teaching (CFT) at Vanderbilt published a newsletter called Teaching Forum which printed articles about a variety of teaching topics as well as notices of CFT news and events. Back issues ofTeaching Forum are available online at the link above and in the library.

Essays on Teaching Excellence

The Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network is the professional organization to which teaching centers such as the CFT belong. POD publishes several "Essays on Teaching Excellence" each semester, and these are available at the link above. Note that you must have a VUNet ID and password to view these articles.
Adapted from materials made public by the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University under a creative commons license.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Quick Guides: These 2-page documents provide information on teaching-related topics such as active learning techniques, building resilience in students, and establishing ground rules in the classroom. National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity: VCU has a membership to NCFDD's exclusive teaching content with online guides, bootcamps, curriculum help, writing challenges and more.

# data[].attributes.body
We Are Here!

# data[].attributes.body
"Inclusive teaching is not condescending or fake. Rather, it’s a realization that traditional pedagogical methods — traditionally applied — have not served all of our students well."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A quick glance at enrollment trends across American higher education doesn't offer nearly as much fuel for optimism as it might have a decade ago. Those of us at nonprofit four-year colleges and universities may have (at least quietly) welcomed the precipitous enrollment drop in the for-profit sector, but lately we find ourselves trending in the same direction.

Although the downturn is not as pronounced, enrollments across the nonprofit sector (including at two-year colleges) have been gradually declining in recent years, and there's little to suggest that trend will reverse itself anytime soon. Put simply, everyone's fighting for a piece of the same shrinking pie.

At the other end of the admissions funnel are worrisome signs as well. The data look decent, at least superficially: Six-year completion rates across higher ed are up for the first time since the 2008 recession, and there's been a significant increase in that rate for students at both private and public four-year institutions, in particular. Break down those data into cohorts, however, and the picture is decidedly mixed.

The most troubling aspect is the racial disparity in persistence and completion rates for African-American and Hispanic students. As the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center's recent report on college completion tells us:

"When examined by race and ethnicity, Asian and white students had much higher completion rates (68.9 percent and 66.1 percent, respectively) than Hispanic and black students (48.6 percent and 39.5 percent, respectively). Black students represent the only group that is more likely to stop out or discontinue enrollment than to complete a credential within six years ... Among students who started in four-year public institutions, black students had the lowest six-year completion rate (46.0 percent). The completion rate of Hispanic students was almost 10 percentage points higher (55.7 percent). Over two-thirds of white students (71.7 percent) and three-quarters of Asian students (75.8 percent) completed a degree within the same period."

Clearly, the gaps for black and Hispanic students, in the face of a general upward trend, show that significant numbers are unable to access the benefits that we continually proclaim will result from higher education. They are also - in light of what we know about declining enrollments - evidence that our institutions are missing key opportunities to sustain ourselves for the long term.

It's not as if higher education hasn't noticed these problems. If you work at a small, tuition-dependent institution like I do, you most likely are aware of every bump and dip in your enrollment forecasts. You also probably know, at least in an anecdotal or general sense, that certain student cohorts graduate in significantly lower numbers than others.

Both students of color and our own colleges and universities, then, are ill-served by the status quo. But what are we doing about it? Persistence and completion rates are tied to enrollments, and working on the former offers a promising way forward in maintaining the latter. In short, if you can't recruit additional students, you need to make every effort to keep more of the ones you already have.

Chances are, no matter your institutional setting, efforts are already underway to minimize the disparities that affect graduation rates of some minority-student groups. There is no shortage of proposed solutions: partnerships with local secondary schools, summer bridge programs, First-Year Experience programs, new student seminars built around a college success curriculum, expansion of developmental coursework, a stronger focus on diversity in student services and campus life - the list is an impressive one.

Yet when I survey the range of initiatives, I'm struck by what I don't see: Where is the institutional emphasis on inclusive teaching? I'm not opposed to any of the measures I've listed above. I've participated in varieties of all of them and found them useful, rewarding, and occasionally quite powerful. But when it comes to closing the shameful gaps in college student success, we need to place pedagogy at the center of our efforts.

Even with the expansion of campus activities and amenities, and the proliferation of student services, the fact remains: What happens with and between professors and students in the classroom - physical or online - remains the heart of our enterprise. It's the critical element of year-to-year persistence and degree completion.

Obvious, I know. But that very obviousness has allowed most institutions to create an entire network of multicultural or diversity programs while assuming that the teaching part will take care of itself. And judging by the data, it hasn't.

So here's a thought: How about we make a genuine commitment to inclusive pedagogy? Some institutions, including the University of Michigan, are already moving in that direction. Their commitment rests on three imperatives:

That we treat all of our students equitably (which is related to, yet distinct from, "equally").

That all of our students have full access to learning, and the tools they need to do so successfully and meaningfully.

That all of our students feel welcomed, supported, and valued as they learn.

No doubt there are some readers who see that list and start rolling their eyes: Are we supposed to put out the red carpet for little Johnny and Susie and give them trophies for doing what they're supposed to do?

Inclusive teaching is not condescending or fake. Rather, it's a realization that traditional pedagogical methods - traditionally applied - have not served all of our students well. It's a commitment to put actual substance behind our cheerful declarations that all students deserve access to higher education. Mumbling about "snowflakes" accomplishes nothing but further entrenching ineffective and unskillful practices. The beauty of inclusive pedagogy is that, rather than making special accommodations that would decrease equity, it actually benefits all students, not just those at whose needs it was originally aimed.

So what is inclusive pedagogy? It is a mind-set, a teaching-and-learning worldview, more than a discrete set of techniques. But that mind-set does value specific practices which, research suggests, are effective for a mix of students. More specifically:

It values course design. Inclusive teaching asks us to critically examine not just the way we teach on a day-to-day basis, but the prep work and organization we do before the course begins. Does our course design - including assigned readings, assessments, and daily activities - reflect a diverse array of identities and perspectives? Am I having my students read a bunch of monographs, all authored by white males, for example? And if I am, what am I telling students about how knowledge is produced in my field, and more important, about who is producing it?

Even such quotidian practices as in-class videos or case studies ought to be examined. What types of people do my students see when they watch a video featuring an expert in my discipline? Do the experts look like my students? In my teaching, am I mostly relying on one pedagogical method, where I might be able to connect with a wider array of students by differentiating the types of instruction I use? What assumptions am I making about my students' prior experiences and educational opportunities when I ask questions in class or design my exams?

It values discernment. As faculty members, we must regularly ask ourselves: What biases am I carrying, and how do I counteract their effects? Biases that both we and our students carry with us, for example, can influence class discussion in powerful ways. Inclusive pedagogy involves being aware of such tendencies and intervening to mitigate their effects.

That's true not just within the classroom environment, but in the web of interactions students experience. A campus-climate survey might reveal, for example, vastly different experiences for white students and students of color in such key locations as the bursar's or financial-aid offices. As more and more institutions expand their developmental course offerings, particularly in composition and math, how are students identified as candidates for remedial education? Are instructors in those courses familiar with the research on stereotype threat? If not, there is a very real chance of exacerbating the already-significant problems that make developmental courses a persistent obstacle to student success.

Those are no small concerns for institutions that want to eliminate the pronounced racial disparities in their persistence and completion rates. Inclusive pedagogy requires us to consistently practice this type of discernment, and to realize that all of us are embedded in a larger cultural context where inequities and power imbalances exist.

It values a sense of belonging. How do we erode those old inequities and power imbalances in the classroom? By intentionally using teaching strategies that promote a sense of belonging, a critical element of student learning, and thus, of student success writ large. Active-learning techniques - like sharing the responsibility for leading discussions or framing classroom expectations with our students - show them they indeed belong in this "scholarly space" and give them the confidence to engage with the course and one another. A well-organized class that invites regular student participation is a critical element in fostering a sense of belonging.

And belonging matters. We know that students learn better - and can engage with more complex material - when they feel socially connected to one another and the class. We know classroom climate matters, and that negative emotional connotations disrupt the learning process, sometimes seriously.

We can design all the summer-bridge and first-year programs we want, but if we neglect pedagogy, then we're building a really nice house only to furnish it with stuff we found on the curb. Likewise, if the student-life and the academic-affairs folks aren't talking about how they can complement each other's efforts, then how can the institution hope for comprehensive improvement? Piecemeal planning produces piecemeal outcomes.

But student success - especially for African-American and Latino/a students - is a systemic question that demands systemic efforts to answer. It's never been more important for us to make that effort. If we mean what we say about the intrinsic value of higher education, then we must ensure not just access, but success. Inclusive teaching promotes the effective and meaningful learning that's the vital foundation for student success

Beyond even that benefit, though, by focusing on inclusive teaching, we benefit our own institutions by keeping more students on our campuses and enabling them to graduate. Given the climate in which most of us are operating, there's simply too much to lose by not committing to inclusive teaching. Conversely, we have everything to gain.

Kevin Gannon is a professor of history at Grand View University and director of its Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. Browse his previous columns .

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A quick glance at enrollment trends across American higher education doesn't offer nearly as much fuel for optimism as it might have a decade ago. Those of us at nonprofit four-year colleges and universities may have (at least quietly) welcomed the precipitous enrollment drop in the for-profit sector, but lately we find ourselves trending in the same direction.

# data[].attributes.body
"Their early, thin-slice judgments are powerful enough to condition their attitudes toward the entire course, the effort they are willing to put into it, and the relationship they will have with you and their peers throughout the semester."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Iwas 21 years old when I first stepped into a college classroom as an instructor. My master's program had assigned me to teach a composition course and gave me a brief orientation to teaching the week before the semester began. I was so close in age to my students, so nervous about how they would perceive me, and so uncertain about what I was doing that I had precisely one goal for the first day of the semester: Get through it.

I managed to achieve that modest goal. But over the course of the next couple of decades of full-time teaching, I have become much more aware of the extent to which the first day of class sets the tone for everything that follows. In her book, The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom With the Science of Emotion, the psychologist Sarah Rose Cavanagh explores how humans quickly make initial judgments of people, on the basis of thin slices of evidence. "On the first few days of class," she explains, "students will be forming their impressions of you, and this impression may be more important than much of what you do later."

On that first day, I would argue, your students are forming a lasting impression not just of you as a teacher but of your course, too. Their early, thin-slice judgments are powerful enough to condition their attitudes toward the entire course, the effort they are willing to put into it, and the relationship they will have with you and their peers throughout the semester.

So that first class meeting is a big deal. You want to give students a taste of the engaging intellectual journey they will undertake in the coming weeks - and you have great flexibility in how you go about it. Helping you to make that opening session as effective as possible, whatever your discipline, is the goal of this online guide. What you can expect to find here:

I'll start, as we academics so love to do, with a little bit of theory - specifically, four core principles that can help shape your planning for the first day of your course.

Next, I'll cover the logistics of a successful first day, including managing the space and technology as well as getting to know your students.

To show you how to put the principles and the logistics into practice, I will provide examples of what a good set of first-day activities might look like in four disciplines.

I'll finish with some suggestions for how to support the good work you have done on the first day with some follow-up activities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Iwas 21 years old when I first stepped into a college classroom as an instructor. My master's program had assigned me to teach a composition course and gave me a brief orientation to teaching the week before the semester began.