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• 1 2020-07-28T14:23:44-07:00 Creating Adaptable Assessments, Assignments, and Activities 66 plain 2020-09-04T08:49:51-07:00 Now more than ever we need to be adaptable in our course design. To achieve this, we can think about the ways in which we approach assessment, assignments, and activities, incorporating as much flexibility as possible. As you read through this content, keep your purpose and learning outcomes in the forefront of your mind.
  
  How can you use your purpose and outcomes to design assessments, assignments, and activities for your course?
  

  
  Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

  Incorporating UDL into your online teaching can help you move toward a more engaged, equitable, and accessible classroom. It is not a panacea for challenges that arise in online learning; however, it does offer a framework for reducing barriers and maximizing learning for all learners.
  

  Reflect on the Qualities of an Adaptive Course and Course Components.

  1. What seems actionable?
  2. What are you already doing?
  3. What do you want to learn more about?
  4. How can you create a more level playing field for your students?
  5. What are the concepts students routinely misunderstand?
  Next, look at a current assignment or assessment, or think about one you’re designing. Use the matrix to create an assignment that is both transparent and universally designed.
   

  	Engagement: optimize relevance and authenticity, discuss learning goals, offer opportunities for reflection	Representation: clarify what students need to know, provide background information, offer alternatives for presentation of this information	Action & Expression: vary methods for responding to assignment; support student goals and project management, allow students to use multiple tools for constructing their work
  Purpose	What is the purpose of this activity? What are students expected to demonstrate? How does this connect to their personal life?
  Task		What is the first step to take on an assignment? What are the remaining tasks? How can students get themselves unstuck? How can students complete tasks to get the most out of them?
  Criteria for success			What does “good” work look like in your class? For this assignment? How will you communicate this to students?

   

  Activity and Assignment Examples

  • Strategies for Active Learning while Physically Distancing
  • TILT Examples and Resources

  Further Reading

  • ADA Compliance for Course Design
  • Universal Design Learning Guidelines
• 1 media/Why_Scalar Image 1-01.jpg 2020-08-19T15:55:56-07:00 Why: Teach for Social Impact 30 image_header 1011112 2020-09-04T11:21:13-07:00

  May we do work that matters. Vale la pena, it’s worth the pain.
  - Gloria E. Anzaldua (2005, p. 102)

  Teaching is a radical act of hope. It is an assertion of faith in a better future in and increasingly uncertain and fraught present. It is a commitment to that future even if we can’t clearly discern its shape. It is a continuing pedagogical practice rather than a set of static characteristics. Simply put, we teach because we believe it matters. -Kevin M. Gannon (2020, p. 5)

  Robert B. Barr and John Tagg argued twenty five years ago that a paradigm shift was taking place in higher education. This shift was from a teaching paradigm to a learning paradigm. Institutions of higher education would no longer be understood as existing “to provide instruction,” but rather as existing “to produce learning” (italics in original). This mattered to Barr and Tagg because they believed that the dominant paradigm of education confused a means for an end. In this current moment of crisis, it seems that we are reverting back to that dominant paradigm. What technologies do we need to teach our courses? Should my course be in-person, online, or hybrid? These are, of course, important questions, but they confuse the means for the end.
  
  If we are to teach courses that contribute to positive social change, we must focus on what we want students to learn, how we facilitate that learning, and what that means for us as teachers. This will then allow us to make better (both in terms of quality and efficiency) decisions about the specifics of our teaching modalities and tools.
  
  To get started, reflect on your views of education, teaching and learning. Use this exercise to identify what matters to you. This will provide you with a compass to guide your course when you get lost in the details, the worry, and the speculation.
  
  

  Reflect on your views of education, teaching and learning.

  Step 1: Consider another's educational compass
  Choose 2 or more of these short readings, audio recordings, or videos that interest you. As you read, listen, and/or watch, consider how the speakers’ beliefs and values could serve as a compass for designing a course.
  
  Step 2: What is your compass?
  Use this worksheet to think through what matters to you about education generally, and your discipline and course specifically. Note: While we think all these questions are useful to think through, you should skip any questions that do not help you. Regardless, read all of the questions to find the questions that will most serve you.
   
• 1 2020-08-25T14:25:30-07:00 Pedagogies to Frame Your Teaching 26 plain 1016104 2020-09-03T14:18:30-07:00

  “[I experienced] the difference between education as the practice of freedom and education that merely strives to reinforce domination.” – bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 1994, p. 4.

  
  What do pedagogies as a practice of freedom share?
  • Attention to power between the instructor and the student as well as in society
  • Contextualized learning facilitated by addressing social issues in the course content
  • Human connection and human centered learning
  What will these pedagogies help you do?
  • Address power dynamics in and outside the classroom
  • Address how social issues are situated in your content
  • Create human centered spaces in and outside your classroom
  What do these pedagogies create?
  • Change
  • Discomfort
  • Hope
  Caution: Employing these pedagogies may cause discomfort, excitement, liberation, and destabilization. But if we want to have a different world, then we have to be willing to take risks, be brave, and engage in critical conversations.

  Questions to consider when thinking through pedagogy

  1. How do I want the students to learn?
  2. How do I want to grow as a teacher?
  3. How am I creating the right environment so that it is truly safe to fail?
  4. Have we included all the voices and identities necessary into the room to receive feedback?

  Further Reading

  • Boler, M. (2004). Teaching for Hope: The Ethics of Shattering World Views. In Teaching, Learning and Loving. Eds. Daniel Liston and Jim Garrison. New York: Routledge Falmer.
  • Gannon, K. (2020). Radical Hope: a Teaching Manifesto. West Virginia: West Virginia University Press. 
• 1 2020-08-25T14:26:43-07:00 Choosing Technology and Teaching Modalities 16 plain 1016484 2020-08-31T09:28:06-07:00

  Spectrum of Teaching Modalities

  Blended	Blended Synchronous	Hyflex (Hybrid + Flexible)	Fully Online
  Face-to-face, on ground instruction that uses online elements in order for students to complete some of their course work at their own pace. (Kich, 2016).	Face to face, on ground instruction where remote students participate in synchronous classes via web conferencing technologies such as Zoom or Teams (Clemson 2020)	Hybrid format for face-to-face and online students with a flexible attendance policy for students. Students choose to attend face-to-face synchronous class sessions or complete course learning activities online without attending class in person. (Beatty, 2019).	Fully asynchronous delivery, or a combination of asynchronous and synchronous sessions.

  
  
   

  "To be most successful, start small. Make sure you yourself are comfortable with the tech. If you cannot easily and confidently use the tool, it's not the right choice for you. Remember, too, that you can teach very effectively using only the basic set of tools in your LMS...Announcements, Discussion Forums, Assignments, and Quizzes." - Darby Flower, Small Teaching Online

  Further Reading

  Clemson University Office of Teaching Effectiveness, Instructional Playbook

  Reflect on the technology you plan on using in the classroom

  1. How are we using technology to create spaces for collaboration and inclusion?
  2. What barriers are there to the modality we chose? What opportunities can be embraced by choosing this modality?
  3. How can we ensure we have designed for optimal collaboration and have invited multiple perspectives?
  4. How can we create an environment that encourages people to share ideas without fear of judgment and also maintains an awareness of biases?

  Training for teaching in these modalities

  1. Welcome to Canvas course (in your Canvas Course Dashboard)
  2. Teaching an Adaptable Online Course (CTL)
  3. Foundations in Digital Pedagogy (in your Canvas Course Dashboard)
  4. Teaching an Online Course: An Extended Workshop
  5. Teaching and Learning on LinkedIn Learning (WUSTL)
• 1 2020-07-28T14:21:14-07:00 Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions 16 plain 2020-09-02T09:57:52-07:00

  Enduring Understandings (EUs)

  EUs are the goals of the course, or big ideas you want the students to be able to know and do long after the course is over. These are often transferable skills and ideas, some also label them as threshold concepts, things that, once understood, cannot be unlearned. Enduring understandings are explored through an "uncovering" rather than coverage of content. This is through inquiry and discovery by engaging with issues, questions, ideas from experts and real-world issues.

  Essential Questions (EQs)

  EQs are those that align with enduring understandings by sparking genuine and relevant inquiry into the big ideas. They provoke critical thought and discussions from students, often resulting in more questions than answers. Essential questions are not easily answerable. When discussing essential questions, students should be making meaningful connections to ideas, including prior knowledge, resulting in an enduring understanding.
  

  Reflect on your course and consider the following questions

  1. In what ways does your educational purpose, which you explored in the WHY section, align with your course goals? How can you better align your WHY and your course goals?
  2. What is the larger ecosystem in which your course lives? (Within WashU, within St. Louis, within the United States, within the world)
  3. What influences the course? How will your course influence the ecosystem and communities you’ve identified?
  4. What enduring understandings do you want students to walk away with related to social change and your course/discipline?
            a. What do you want students to remember 2-3 years after this course is complete?
  5. What would distinguish students who have taken this course from students who have not?

  Further Reading and Examples

  • Understanding by Design by Wiggins and McTighe (WashU catalog)
  • Equity-Centered Design Framework by David Clifford, Stanford d.school & design school X
  • Resources for Liberatory Design from Stanford d.school
• 1 2020-08-25T10:46:08-07:00 Other Design Considerations 15 plain 1016488 2020-09-04T11:06:56-07:00

  Creating a Sense of Belonging, Connection, and Hope

  Learning is a social process, enacted through interactions between students, faculty, ideas, and increasingly, the community outside the classroom.
  
  Creating brave spaces for these interactions allows students to process, think, discuss, and explore ideas in new ways. This isn’t an easy way forward, though it is hopeful. As most of us know, teaching and learning can be stressful and challenging for both teachers and students in the best of circumstances. In our current times, we may find that we and/or our students may be experiencing something that can only be described as traumatic. Students who may have been struggling prior to the pandemic may be experiencing even more challenges now. What may help us all move through this time is thinking through “trauma-informed strategies”, or even more hopeful, “healing centered engagement.”

  “There is consensus in the literature about the benefits of a student’s sense of belonging. Researchers suggest that higher levels of belonging lead to increases in GPA, academic achievement, and motivation.” – Carey Borkoski, “Cultivating Belonging”

  Before you continue, reflect on the following:
  1. Identity: who am I as a teacher? Who are my students?
  2. Power: How are my students and I respectively situated (relative to opportunity, institutional power)?
  3. Context: What is our situation (this course) and our equity challenge this semester?
  4. Partnership: Given the above, how can we create a partnership that is liberating for all in the course?