From Ready to Remarkable – A New Term, Some Favorite Resources

Resources for the Start of a New Semester
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The conference rooms and hallways of the Center for Teaching and Learning will be abuzz this month as instructors gather around us in workshops focusing learning and teaching. Given the atmosphere here, we’ve pulled five “semester starting” posts from the archives in order to bring a bit of that hallway energy to blog readers. You’ll find links here to resources addressing:

• What makes a syllabus clearer?
• Ways of Cultivating Learning 
• Strategies to Promote Student Active Listening 
• How Reading – and learning to read well – Matters
• Creating Exams – Reviewing a Few Key Guidelines

Working on This Term’s Syllabus? Three Resources We Like for Use Right Now
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For this post, we’ve culled resources that address two questions: How Do You Convey Value & Intent of Course Policies in Your Syllabus? What 5 Things Does a Presenter Need to Know about Audience Members? 

Non-Majors & Large Enrollment Courses: Ideas from Distinguished Teachers
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This post shares four resources embedded in an August 2013 workshop for teachers of large enrollment courses enrolling culturally and demographically diverse learners pursuing a broad range of academic majors.  The  four faculty members – Jay Hatch, Leon Hsu, Kent Kirkby and Ken Leopold – are all science-based faculty and members of the UMinnesota Academy of Distinguished Teachers.

Incorporating “Designer Statements” as Feedback and/or Assessment Tool
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More and more students construct creative scholarly digital works.  This may include designing a single photoquote that convey their understanding of a readings (such as one of my samples, above), creating one image using digital tools to convey their understanding of a core course concept, developing a small set of presentation slides designed to support learning of a core concept students will necessarily grapple with in their courses, and developing select digital materials – audio, visual, multimedia – to support two different scholarly teaching presentations. This post offers ideas for formative and summative assessment of such learning artifacts.

Students Who Seek Feedback, Use Feedback
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Reading The Teaching Professor forum “There Could Be Another Reason Why Students Seem to Ignore Your Feedback,” I realized many of the responses were framed around a shared assumption that the feedback we teachers offered as readers of student work should spring rom our rubrics, our guidelines, our experiences as the assignment makers. What about their questions about troubling spots, about words that don’t yet “come together,” about snags in research or thinking, about whatever it is students would pose a questions that need addressing before they can more on with thinking and writing? What happens when they – only or also – ask questions as part of learning to seek, select, and apply feedback?