Connecting with your students during crisis
Empathy is a powerful tool for social connection. Reaching your students now is critical not only to their academic success but also their overall health and wellbeing.
Roundup of relevant Teaching Tips during coronavirus pandemic
As you begin teaching via distance, these tips from the eCampus archives can help you modify your course without losing quality.
Collaborative student research brings diversity to course content
Course content in the Arts is often lacking in diverse perspectives. Involving your students in collaborative research can help in a variety of ways to reinvent that curriculum to reflect our modern world.
A Gentle Reminder to Take a Pause – Revised
This Teaching Tip has been revised from the original version for off-campus options. A default answer to ‘How are you?’ is often currently ‘Busy!’. In addition to forces beyond our control, we take on so much right now and sometimes feel overwhelmed as a result. ...Try Flipgrid for more engaging discussions
Flipgrid is one way to engage students in an interactive discussion and can be utilized without creating additional work for the student or faculty member.
Three ways to encourage student resilience
Today’s college students are excessively stressed. These suggested strategies can make your course less stressful without reducing rigor.
Easter eggs in videos can increase student engagement
See how two UAF instructors are using Easter eggs — hidden features — in their instructional videos to retain student engagement in their online classrooms.
One perspective on Quality Matters course certifications
UAF adopted Quality Matters as a framework for continuous improvement of online and blended courses four years ago. Gary Copus, professor emeritus, shares highlights, benefits and challenges of certifying three UAF Justice courses.
Creating a culture of mentorship
Explore the value of mentorship in academia and get ideas for how you can intentionally promote peer mentorship via course design and departmental initiatives.
Use student conferences to develop positive rapport
Research shows that the relationships between students and their instructors in a university-level course is “one of the most important factors” contributing to student success. Use student conferences to give and receive feedback and build relationships that will improve everyone’s engagement in the course.
A Swiss Army knife for video
Kaltura MediaSpace provides a rich set of tools and features for staff, instructors and students to create video. Learn how to make the most out of what it offers.
Should you require proctored exams?
Proctored exams are a standard practice for preventing cheating but they can also place an inequitable burden on students.
Save time setting up due dates in Blackboard
Setting due dates for assessments in Blackboard can be a time-consuming task. Use the Grade Center Due Dates tool to manage this task faster.
Strategies for the first six weeks of class
The first six weeks are critical to student success (and UAF’s retention goals). Here are three small things you can do to help your students succeed this semester.
Four things to do before the semester starts
A new semester is starting in just a few days and there’s so much to do! Start here with these four step-by-step priorities.
Remove distractions from your class
Taking an online course can sometimes be like walking through an airport — distractions everywhere. Here are some simple and not-so-obvious ways to remove distractions from your course content.
STEAMy ideas for your course
A recent trend in higher education involves integrating arts, humanities, and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) curriculum now known as STEAM. Large research studies (1) show that integration can broaden the student experience within highly...Coaching students toward success
As UAF eCampus launches its eCoaching program, it’s important to remember how our coaching role can lead to student success.
Open resources for accessibility
Accessibility is a topic appearing in mainstream conversation with increasing frequency. When it comes to making course materials inclusive and accessible, there are a variety of open tools available.
Let’s talk about digital literacy
More than ever, faculty are being tasked with fostering digital literacy in order for students to be successful in class and ready for the workforce. Digital literacy as an important component of higher education is something that has become critical in higher...Cancel your final
Give everyone a break from the stress of traditional finals and infuse a new sense of purpose in your final assessment with these suggestions for alternative final assessments.
Teaching Tip: A gentle reminder to take a pause – and a breath (or two)
A default answer to ‘How are you?’ is often currently ‘Busy!’. In addition to forces beyond our control, we take on so much right now and sometimes feel overwhelmed as a result. This year has been unsettling for most of us on some level and many of our workloads have...Are you ready to be Googled?
It’s probably old news to you that it matters what appears when people Google you. However, the pesky thing about managing your web presence is that it’s a continual practice. Here are tips to help you spruce up your online image.
Autocaptions are new in Kaltura
Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Ethical ramifications. IRB application. Supercontinent Pangaea.Sit in a few classes at UAF and these are terms you may hear. These are also terms that have been accurately transcribed by the new autocaptioning feature in Kaltura, UA’s...Quick communication with students
A few ideas on how to easily increase your communication with students while possibly reducing your time performing course management.
Practicing project management
As the semester settles into a rhythm, the more daunting but less urgent projects that we’ve put off are beginning to demand attention. But where to start? Make a plan, commit to a practice and voila, the only work you’ll have to do is the work, not the managing of the anxiety about the work.
Find and create media for your course
In the online learning environment, instructional videos can go a long way in enhancing student understanding, building community, and creating lasting learning experiences. There is no shortage of research pointing to the impact of educational media (Hibbert, 2014...Make use of Blackboard Test Tool
In the UA Blackboard system, one of the most used tools is the Test Tool. It can be used to create quizzes, midterms, exams and pre- and post-assessments.Good and effective use of the Test Tool can be facilitated by carefully thinking about how to configure the...Support students’ basic needs
If we learned anything this summer, it’s that working under conditions of uncertainty and crisis makes it hard to get the work done. This is equally true for students, and it is true at the macro-level of statewide budgeting as well as the micro-level of individual...Ways to support your military students
You may see an increase in the number of service members in your online courses, the result of a new UAF program for deploying military. Here are suggestions for supporting these students and their unique needs.