Faculty in colleges and universities across the country often learn about teaching and classroom management informally through observing faculty whose classes they enjoyed taking as a student, discussions with colleagues, […]
The Teaching + Learning Team
We are writers, thinkers, teachers, learners, storytellers, librarians, technologists, questioners, readers, podcasters, statisticians, planners, contributors to others’ positivity and joy, and people made in the image of God.
Types of Teaching Presence
Teaching presence includes both the planning and forethought that go into building your course and what you do “in the moment” when interacting with your students. The parts of teaching […]
Support Active Learning
Keeping students actively engaged with you, the content, and each other promotes student success. When students are observing, doing, communicating, and reflecting, they are actively working with concepts and people. We […]
Foster Group Work and Participation
Group work is challenging for many students in a face-to-face class. When you add the extra layers of complication from technology and asynchronous communication, it is not surprising that some […]
Communicating with Your Students
Communicating with your students is the core of an online class. Active and timely communication supports teaching presence and when instructors participate supportively and frequently students perceive the instructor as both […]
Cognitive and Social Presence
Cognitive presence is central to successful student learning. The quality of cognitive presence reflects the quality and quantity of critical thinking, collaborative problem-solving, and construction of meaning occurring in student↔student and student↔faculty interactions. You […]
Establish and Maintain Instructor Presence
The concept of presence in teaching builds on the body of work on teaching and learning including Dewey, Chickering and Gamson, and many others studying the psychological and sociological aspects […]
Design Active Learning Experiences
In the framework of Backwards Design, learning activities include any type of activity that students undertake to work with the concepts and skills that lead to reaching the desired learning […]
Gather, Make and Structure Content
As you design your course based on your desired learning outcomes, it is important to think through what parts of your content are critical to support student achievement of those […]
Explore New Content Sources
It is usually easier to adapt or use existing materials than it is to design your own materials from scratch. Here are some repositories that may provide media or course […]