Free Online Tools: Digital files come into our lives from many directions: colleagues, students, friends, etc. Everyone has their preferred method of file creation, and the end product may not be a file type we want or are able to read or use. And while some files are pretty easy to convert on our own (.doc to .pdf, for example), there are other types of files for which it’s easier to use an online conversion tool.
Whether you’re designing an all new course or revising and preparing an existing course for a new semester, it’s a lot of work. And work equals time, right? Yes, but that we’re not all necessarily organizing our to-do lists in the most useful way.
You read an article, hear a story or see a show that inspires you to work a new type of assignment or exercise into your course. You decide on an idea. It sounds interesting and you think your students will respond well to it. You spend hours researching and outlining your new exercise. You anticipate its implementation with excitement and hope. The day comes. And then…
What type of work genuinely merits an A grade? The UAF grading system describes an A grade as appropriate for work that “indicates a thorough mastery of course content and outstanding performance in completion of course requirements.’
Dr. Sarah Hayes is planning CHEM 194, Introduction to Environmental Chemistry of the Arctic, for the Fall 2015 semester. The course will have both face-to-face and distance components, inviting all students to draw, submit and analyze water samples from across Alaska. Dr. Hayes is working with Dr. Jennifer Guerard and fellow CITE Fellow Dr. Chris […]
The value of competing against yourself – Ipsative assessment is the practice of determining a student’s progress based on their earlier work. Many assignments and rubrics are designed to measure student work in the normative assessment mode; that is, against a static set of criteria — often necessarily so.
Withdrawing a student results in a “W’ on her transcript (as opposed to the possible “F’ you foresee without significant improvement) and would not factor into her GPA. There are multiple considerations when deciding whether to withdraw a student. Consider the following scenarios, options and implications.
2014 CITE Fellow Dr. Sarah Stanley shares this reflection of her CITE project: Learning is like the jet stream of an airplane–it vanishes! But, as a teacher, I want to capture that jet stream–I want to study and learn from my student’s learning. So, in Fall 2014, I will be, again, working with eye tracking […]
In school I’d sometimes get scolded for “doodling’ during class. The charge was that because I was drawing, I couldn’t possibly have been paying attention. Since then I’ve learned that for me, and for lots of people like me, drawing and attention are linked, the former often improving the latter.
Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization and according to its mission statement, Creative Commons “develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.’ What does that mean? Let’s say one day you notice someone reading a magazine and the back cover has an advertisement that features a picture of a duck that you yourself took over a year ago and posted to your flickr account.
Learning doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and promoting meaningful discussion in the classroom helps create a more dynamic and effective learning community. Get some ideas in this week’s Teaching Tip.
Pinterest is a free image-based curation site that allows users to create themed “boards’ onto which they may “pin’ relevant links, which appear as tiles. Board creators and viewers alike may comment on the pins. In this week’s teaching tip find out how Pinterest relates to education.
Explore the wealth of online language tools: One of the most important habits foreign language students can develop is to practice, and there are many online tools that can help. This week’s teaching tip gives some examples of good online tools for foreign language development.
Critical inquiry often benefits from the inclusion of visual elements, like comics, to complicate and challenge the idea of how we interact with text. Pixton is one of the most flexible and useful online comics-generating tools.