Once the term begins, you and your students enter into a full motion of course activities—getting connected with one another and moving along the education journey together. Then, when you realize it is the end of the term! I have heard many instructors saying things like “I can’t believe how fast this term has gone!”, “It’s already week 10, and I don’t know where time went!” And with the term at its conclusion, it is an opportunity to debrief, reflect, and take time for self-kindness, for both instructors and instructional designers.

Debrief

A debrief is an activity that helps close out the course development project. A debrief can help instructors more intentionally discuss how the course development process worked in a particular course, identify the challenges that took place while teaching, and outline future improvements and more effective course design approaches (Chatterjee, Juvale, & Jaramillo Cherrez, 2023). If you are an instructor who worked with an instructional designer to develop the course that you just finished teaching, it is important to meet with them and discuss how the course went, what worked well, what items presented challenges for students as well as for the instructors that immediate changes or improvements can be addressed as these are fresh in mind, and what major updates or changes are required before the course is taught again. These debriefs can take place during the last weeks of the term (e.g., finals week or the week after) and be initiated by the instructional designer as a way to close out the course development project, or by the instructor to seek additional instructional design assistance for improvements.

Reflection

Why would you want to reflect as an instructor? Generally speaking, reflection can serve as a mechanism to deliberately process and examine your actions, thoughts, and experiences in developing and teaching the course. For reflection after the term, we will focus on reflection-on-action, which is engaging in this deliberate process after the fact (Brookfield, 2017; Schön, 1987)—after you have taught the course. In reflecting about your course development and teaching experience at the end of the term, you may have the opportunity to not only describe what those experiences were like but also the opportunity to question and evaluate design and teaching choices, identify additional challenges presented in the context of the course, and reviewing student feedback to better understand the instructional design decisions that were successful and those that failed to accomplish your goals and the goals of the course. Reflection can be part of the debrief, but also a regular practice to look back at the course development and teaching experience for future improvements.

Self-Kindness

Self-kindness is not a new concept, but it may well be in the context of education. Applying this concept to your online course development and teaching experience means that you engage in kind actions to yourself—actions to treat yourself with care, compassion, and consideration (Denial, 2023). At the end of the term, as you debrief and/or reflect, think about the teaching actions that went well and consider how they made you feel. Give yourself grace and compassion because you are a human being and capable of so many great things, while acknowledging that the context and experiences may shape us in multiple ways. Also, because you have created an excellent online course and your teaching presence has elevated its quality. In exercising self-kindness, you may feel vulnerable as you may start recognizing the challenges and struggles in your academic and personal lives. Consider giving yourself the same compassion that you can give a loved one or a close friend, recognizing that the challenges, struggles, and failures are part of the human experience—even in teaching. Self-kindness is a way to direct your attention and actions away from judgments and shortcomings. Take care.

I’m curious, how do you conclude a term? Are there specific self-care actions that you take besides grading and submitting final grades?  

References

Brookfield, S. 2017. Becoming a critically reflective teacher. 2nd ed. Jossey-Bass

Chatterjee, R., Juvale, D., & Jaramillo Cherrez, N. (2023). What the debriefs unfold. A multicase study of their experiences of higher education faculty in designing and teaching their asynchronous online courses. The Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 24(1), 25-41.

Denial, C. J. (2024). A pedagogy of kindness. University of Oklahoma Press

Schön, D. A. 1987. Educating the reflective practitioner: Toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions. Jossey-Bass