Category Archives: Enhance Engagement

OSU Faculty Support for Remote Teaching

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The OSU Instructional Support teams have really stepped up and used this opportunity to strengthen the cadre of resources available to faculty to support teaching excellence. They are now putting out bi-weekly “Timely Teaching Tips” with new ideas for you to consider implementing in your classes and timely reminders to help keep both faculty and students as engaged as possible while we’re remote. Here is a list of recorded training sessions as well as the Timely Teaching Tips for weeks 4 & 5! I especially like the reminder to solicit mid-term teaching feedback (you can set up a non-grading, anonymous survey using the “quiz” feature in Canvas), how students can set up remote study groups, and the instructions for creating rubrics to grade work submitted through Canvas. Rubrics are extremely helpful for students to understand how they will be assessed and make your grading work much easier and more objective.

Recorded Sessions

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It’s Time For An Assignment Check-Up

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In several of my classes I have students complete projects of some kind. My WIC class requires a research paper and other faculty in my program have students write large research papers as well, so I try to spice up my “project” options whenever I can. I have found that students are more invested in their final product when they are allowed some choice and creative license around what that final product looks like.

In my aging class, I assigned a final project where groups of students were asked to demonstrate their knowledge about how to work with older adults with various physical limitations. I gave them several prompts indicating what their final project must contain (exercise instruction with and without modification, progression, special considerations for the particular limitation, etc.) but allowed them to demonstrate that knowledge in a paper, Powerpoint presentation, video, podcast, or in any other format that I approved ahead of time. Continue reading →

Power Up the Group Work

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It’s about that time in the term where group projects are hitting the collective radar. For some students, nothing stimulates fear and anxiety like the prospect of having to work with people they do not know or facing the chance of losing complete control over a piece of their grade. For faculty, the fear of group dysfunction may be preventing us from using group projects at all. A recent Teaching Professor article provides some excellent strategies to consider.

In a study by Pauli et al. (2008), the authors describe the experiences of students in groups using the Negative Group Work Experiences (NGWE) questionnaire. They report commonalities among a large sample of psychology students in the following four areas: lack of group commitment, task disorganization, storming, and group fractionation. Below are some ideas for dealing with these common issues our students face when working in groups: Continue reading →

It’s All About How You Start

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s infamous “I Have a Dream” speech, in addition to its poignant message, also serves as an effective recipe for what constitutes a great speech. If he would have begun his speech with something like, “Today I would like to outline for you a five-point plan to end racism in the United States,” as if he was presenting a Powerpoint with learning outcomes, I doubt this speech would have gone down in history as a defining moment in the American Civil Rights Movement.

Like all good orators, Dr. King began this speech with a statement that absolutely grabbed his listeners’ attention. He began,

“I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.” Continue reading →

But I’m Not a Writing Instructor: Writing Resources You Can Use Today!

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We have a special guest blogger this week…Jenna Goldsmith, our mighty OSU-Cascades Writing Instructor and all-around good person, tells us about the important things…with many resources we can all use to make our students (and maybe even ourselves) better writers!

As a writing instructor, much of my work takes place beyond the four walls of the classroom. With only 10 weeks to help my students understand their new identity as college writers, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about efficiency: How can I provide my students with resources they can use on their own time?; What will students actually read and use when it comes time for them to write?; How can I equip students with writing tools that transfer beyond the writing classroom?; How can I empower faculty colleagues to seek out knowledge of writing pedagogies in their discipline? Continue reading →