Teaching Effectively

Higher Education by Design:

Best Practices for Curricular Planning and Instruction

Bruce M. Mackh, PhD

Faculty are Experienced Students

• Nearly every faculty member was first a student, most of us for a very long time.

• Four years as undergraduates

• Two or three years for masters’ degrees

• Three or more years for doctoral degrees.

• We have rich stories to tell about both the excellent educators in whose classrooms we were privileged to sit, and memorably bad faculty who serve as the embodiment of our own cautionary tales – individuals whom we would never want to emulate.

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Modes of Instructional Delivery

• Pedagogical practice is what happens inside the classroom, when you and your students interact with one another.

• Lecture

• Discussion

• Student participation

• Demonstration

• The sections that follow contain advice gleaned from thousands of hours of formal observation and personal experience.

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Teaching: Part 1 -Lecture

• Remember that you’re the center of attention.

• Your own enthusiasm for your topic and passion for your discipline are the most powerful pedagogical tools you possess.

• When you demonstrate this passion, it’s contagious – it’s what draws students into the lecture and keeps them engaged in the course as a whole.

• The dark side of this attention is that students see and remember every little thing that you do, even if you have a habit of absent-mindedly scratching your nose.

• If you’re using a PowerPoint or other presentation software, don’t read your slides verbatim.

• Look up frequently and make eye contact with students. Nothing is as boring as a teacher who merely reads aloud and never looks up or speaks spontaneously.

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Lecture, continued

• Use stories, anecdotes, examples, and other conversational devices to hold students’ interest and make your points relevant. • The human brain needs to connect new learning to prior knowledge. • By deliberately helping students to make these connections with frequent

analogies and stories, you’re far more likely to increase your students’ opportunities for success.

• Don’t just sit at a desk or stand behind the lectern all the time. Move around the classroom sometimes.

• Stay on point. • You have a limited number of minutes to present the material you intend to teach

that day. • Going off on a lengthy tangent about a favorite activity, last night’s sporting event,

or the latest news might make for an entertaining conversation, but you won’t accomplish your instructional goals that way.

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Multimedia

• Use multimedia, visual aids, audio clips, or other means of adding interesting content to your lecture, going beyond basic PowerPoint presentations.

• Students cannot sit and listen to you for an hour or more with nothing but the sound of your voice to occupy their attention.

• We must remember that our students grew up in a fast-paced multimedia environment where their attention is fragmented every moment they’re outside of your classroom.

• Using multimedia requires advance preparation along with projection systems, audio equipment, etc.…

• Don’t use a new technology for the first time when students are in the room — set it up in advance and test it to make sure it works.

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Teaching: Part 2 –Active Student Participation

• Plan to engage students in activities during your lesson even if most of your teaching involves lecture. These can include:

• Small group discussions/break-out sessions

• Turn and Talk (ask a question, then have students turn and talk to the person next to them about the answer for one or two minutes, then return to the whole-class lecture.)

• Active learning or hands-on activities

• Collaborative projects

• Cooperative problem-solving

• If students are working in small groups, move around the classroom and facilitate their discussions or activities, keeping them on task, answering questions, or giving feedback. Don’t just sit at a desk.

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Teaching: Part 3 – Rules for Discussion

• Discussion is among the most crucial of classroom activities, where the flow of ideas can enrich the learning experience for both the students and faculty.

• However, it’s very easy for a discussion to be derailed by student behaviors. The following suggestions can help to deepen yourdiscussions, keep the conversation on track, and avoid having one or two students monopolize the conversation while others sit passively.

• Ask students to justify or clarify their contributions to the discussion or critique their peers’ answers, re-state what a peer has just said, or provide a rationale as to why they agree or disagree with a peer.

• Be sure to call on different students each time — don’t limit your interaction to the few who raise their hands. Don’t let one or two students control the conversation.

• Keep all discussions or activities on track.

• As often as possible, respond to students with a question rather than an answer or a statement.

• If just one or two students are struggling to grasp a new concept, plan to work with them outside of class and proceed with yourplanned instruction.

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Teaching: Part 4 –Demonstration and Guided PracticeOf course, not all lessons will require a demonstration component, but they’re very common in lab-based or studio-based courses.

Keep in mind that modeling a new process or procedure, showing the correct use of equipment, or other similar tasks require that students have a clear line of sight to what you’re doing. Use a projection system or other technology if necessary to ensure that everyone can see.

If a lesson requires demonstration, you must also provide students with opportunities to practice these new skills in class while you’re there to guide and re-demonstrate one-on-one or work with a small group of those who need a bit more help.

Depending on the lesson, guided practice may comprise as much as half of the class period or more.

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Online Pedagogies

• Teaching an online class demands a different set of skills than teaching on campus.

• Virtually all interaction between the students and instructor occurs in writing, subject to time delays between someone’s original post and a peer’s or faculty member’s reply.

• This means that talking and listening – the bedrock of face-to-face learning – are notably absent, forcing us to approach instruction differently than we’re used to.

• Content in an online course is generally built-in and pre-determined by the course developer rather than the person who will teach it.

• Therefore, if you’re instructing a course, you did not design yourself, you’ll need to invest some time in reading all of the materials embedded in the course so that you’re familiar with what students have been taught and what they’ve been told to do.

• Online lectures tend to be presented as PowerPoints or similar slide-based formats, with or without embedded verbal narration, but they may also be presented as videos. Assignments must include step-by-step, explicit instructions.

• All expectations for students must be thoroughly planned in order to anticipate potential misunderstanding, explained clearly, and easily accessible within the online classroom.

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Quality Matters

The Quality Matters standards outline expectations for online courses.

• Course overview and introduction: students should receive a positive first impression, including any important information necessary to get started in the course.

• Learning Objectives: these are the same as we discussed in Chapter 3.

• Assessment and Measurement: just as in an on-campus course, every learning activity should be paired with an assessment that measures students’ achievement.

• Instructional Materials: everything students need in order to be successful in the course should be available from the first day of class, clearly organized and accessible.

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Quality Matters 2

Course Activities and Learner Interaction: our instruction and interactions online differ from courses where we meet face to face. This will be discussed in the next few slides.

Course Technology: clearly, online learning is dependent on technology. This should be user-friendly, easy to navigate, and technical support should be readily available.

Learner Support: online courses should have a prominent section displaying crucial information. Students also need to know where everything can be found and how to avail themselves of support.

Usability and Accessibility: we need to consider all of our students’ learning needs, especially those with disabilities that might require us to utilize alternative forms of communication, such as posting a transcript of an online lecture for a hearing-impaired student.

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Online Pedagogies - 2

• To bolster your success and facilitate student learning, the following words of advice could be helpful.

• Post detailed expectations about student participation, beginning on the first day of class.

• For example, you might want students to respond to two of their peers in every online discussion, and you might ask that those responses be at least 100 words in length in order to receive full credit.

• You might ask that students include a reference to the week’s readings in those responses or provide support for their statements by citing external sources.

• Students are used to treating online communication very casually. If you hold a higher standard, you’ll have to teach your expectations, such as prohibiting “text speak” or insisting on the use of correct English in discussion posts.

• If a student asks a question in a brick-and-mortar classroom, faculty can respond immediately.

• When a student asks a question in an online discussion forum or via email, they must wait for faculty to notice the question and to compose an adequate reply.

• Therefore, it’s essential to check your online classroom and your linked email frequently and to respond to queries promptly.

Online Pedagogies - 3

• Written interactions lack the nuance and subtlety of face-to-face encounters.

• It’s easy to misinterpret written commentary because we don’t hear the speaker’s tone of voice or see their facial expressions, which can lead to unintended consequences.

• Instructors need to weigh their words carefully when responding to students.

• This includes proofreading your words before hitting “post” or “submit”.

• We always notice our student’s errors, but they notice our mistakes even more acutely. It’s essential to model the type of communication we expect from our students.

• Frequent communication with students is essential.

• At minimum, you should send a weekly email to all students with reminders of due dates, helpful information about upcoming assignments, and additional resources such as links to websites or document attachments like study guides or templates for assignments.

Online Pedagogies - 4

If your course includes a discussion board component, students genuinely appreciate faculty members; engaged participation in

these discussions.

• Especially when faculty did not design the course, discussions are a valuable opportunity to provide individualized instruction to your students and to share your own experience and disciplinary expertise with the group.

Provide an opportunity for students to see your face and hear your voice at the

beginning of the course so that you’re not just a disembodied online entity.

• Post your photo along with your contact information.

• Provide a short video welcoming students to your classroom, much as you would welcome them in a face-to-face class.

• You can also use a web service like Jing to post verbal comments on students’ assignments.

Online Pedagogies -5

• Remember that students in online courses tend to have varied work schedules and personal commitments, so not everyone will be able to attend.

• Provide an alternative assignment or activity for those who cannot participate in the online meeting at the appointed time.

If possible, schedule voluntary real-time (synchronous) meetings using a

provider such as Zoom, where students can discuss important

course concepts, ask you questions directly, and interact with one

another.

• Respond to student email within 24 hours.

• Post feedback on student assignments within 48 hours.

• Post grades within 48 hours of the end of the instructional unit (module, week, etc.)

Provide students with your preferred contact information and check that

media at least twice daily.

Online Pedagogies - 6

Online students tend to disappear.

• As soon as you notice that a student has not been active in the online classroom, send an email or make a phone call asking if the student is experiencing any problems and offering to help them return to active participation in the course.

• If the student does not respond to your efforts to reach out, contact their academic advisor.

• Follow institutional procedure for raising student performance alerts.

When grading, provide an explanation of any points you deduct.

• Using rubrics or checklists can make this task more efficient.

Feedback and Critique

• Instructors in creative disciplines regularly provide feedback to students about their creative work beyond rubrics and otherassessment mechanisms, usually through informal meetings with individual students or more formalized group critique sessions.

• This process can also apply to student writing or presentations in any discipline.

• As we discussed previously, evaluation is crucial in any academic area, including substantive diagnosis of the strengths and weaknesses of the student’s work. However, this should occur without resorting to needlessly destructive or disheartening negativity.

• This is not to say that assessment should be sugar coated, but it should also not be an exercise in oppositional contrarianism.

• The primary goal of any assessment should be an honest appraisal of a student’s learning relative to a given academic task.

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Three-Part Feedback

•Begin with a statement about what was good in comparison to the entire project. What was the best thing you noticed?

Recognize Success

•Phrasing criticism as suggestions for improvement helps students receive your comments without becoming defensive. Instead of saying, “This was wrong” a statement like, “This could be even better if you …” puts students in a more receptive frame of mind.

Suggest Improvement

•Ask a question about how they completed the work•Share a personal example

•Provide references or helpful materials

•Offer additional assistance to make the work better

Personal Connection

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LBNT & LBNT+• Students should learn how to assess their own work and the work of their peers as well as becoming proficient at receiving constructive

criticism and acting upon it.

• Self-Assessment: LBNT

• LB = Like Best

• What did the student like best about his or her own work?

• NT = Next Time

• If given the chance, what would the student do differently the next time?

• Peer Evaluation: LBNT+

• LB = Like Best

• What did you like best about your classmate’s work?

• NT = Next Time

• If given the chance, what would you suggest the student do differently the next time?

• + = Plus

• What other words of advice or encouragement could you share with your classmate?

• What personal connection might you make?

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Informal Feedback and Interactions with Students

Educators provide feedback to our students all of the time, even when we’re just answering a question. The way we respond to our students has a tremendous impact on their learning experience.

Let’s look at this through several scenarios, considering two ways faculty could react that either shuts down learning or fosters it.

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Scenario 1

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Scenario 2

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Scenario 3

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Scenario 4

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Establishing Classroom Policies

• Most educators establish a set of policies applicable to their classrooms.

• Carefully thinking through this set of student expectations is good professional practice.

• Students should know exactly how you expect them to behave in your classroom and what the consequences for running afoul of those expectations will be.

• We commonly tell students that they should power off their electronics, for example, and require them to use polite, respectful communication with their peers.

• We may limit their freedom to eat and drink in our classrooms, or we may impose penalties for excessive tardiness or for skipping class.

• When these expectations are set forth in writing, posted clearly on your syllabus, you establish a strong climate for learning.

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Late Work Policy

Establishing a policy for late work can help motivate students to complete their assignments on time.

• A common practice is to inform students that they might incur a penalty of up to 10% of the assignment’s total value for each day the work is late.

• In theory, this could result in the student’s reaching a state of failure in a mere 5 days.

• Most faculty also include a set of caveats, listing exceptions to this rule if the student provides documentation of serious illness, a death in the family, or military deployment, for example.

We know that students will sometimes try to take advantage of these policies and their exceptions.

Nevertheless, students encounter circumstances beyond their control that make it difficult or impossible to meet your expectations.

• When such things happen, we’re within our rights to assess penalties for their late work.

• We should also ask ourselves if this is a best practice in education.

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Why assess a late penalty? Common rationales:

Students must learn to be responsible.

Meeting deadlines is part of adult life, so we prepare students for the real world by holding them accountable for our classroom deadlines.

Making exceptions is not fair to the other students who worked hard to turn in their work on time.

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Link Policies to Course Objectives

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• When we hold onto rigid late work policies because we believe that we should help our students build character or acquire life skills, we should also remember that our job is to teach students the specific disciplinary content of our courses, not to be their parent.

• Teaching character and life skills is not within our sphere of influence as university educators unless these behaviors are

• directly related to our course content

• clearly listed among our outcomes and objectives

• tied to expected professional conduct within the discipline.

• For example, I recently read a syllabus for a graduate course where students were required to dress in business attire for everyclass period.

• Expectations were clearly laid out in the syllabus, such as the requirement that male students wear a pressed shirt with a tie, the shirt must be tucked into dress pants that were worn with a belt, and the student must wear dress shoes with dark socks.

• This course was specifically about professionalism in the workplace, so the requirement for professional dress was overtly tied to the course objectives.

Fair ≠ Equal

• The idea that fairness involves treating all students the exactly same is difficult to support, since the words “fair” and “equal” have been proven repeatedly to be much different ideas.

• However, treating students experiencing the same situation in the same way makes sense, such as allowing an exception to your late work policy for a student who suffered a devastating computer malfunction and then extending the same grace to another student with a similar problem.

• Consistency is important standard, but this should be applied by responding to similar circumstances in similar ways rather than making a habit of enforcing the letter of the law every time without exception, or conversely approaching every situation completely differently.

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Decisive Factors

• When a student stops you after class or sends you an email to explain that they could not turn in her assignment that day because ___ (fill in any reason), your decision of whether accept the work late and/or whether to assess a late penalty will depend on several factors:

• How crucial is the due date within the overall schedule of the course?.

• Is this the first time the student has asked for an extension, or is this a habitual problem?

• Is the student’s reason legitimate? (Would you personally find it difficult to meet an external deadline if you were faced with the same situation that the student is experiencing?)

• Would accepting the student’s work late violate any disciplinary or professional standards overtly tied to the assignment?

• Have you made exceptions for other students experiencing similar difficulties in the past?

What’s the point?

Best practice with regard to classroom policies, especially late penalties, involves a return to one of the most important considerations when planning instruction: we need to ask ourselves, “What’s the point?”

•We create assignments because we want our students to learn disciplinary content by means of the planned experience.

•We assess their work in order to evaluate their learning of this disciplinary content.

•Whether or not the work is late, students who actually complete the work successfully should receive appropriate assessment.

Unless the performance of this task explicitly ties to a disciplinary standard specific to the assignment, the student’s demonstration of learning through the assignment should still be paramount.

•This is not to say that late penalties cannot apply.

•But if we keep the point of the assignment in mind, we should weight our acknowledgement of the student’s learning over punitive measures for lateness, even when we have a published policy stating that such consequences will be imposed.

We are just as much within our rights as educators to respond with compassion, empathy, and wisdom as we are to enforce rigid policies.

Providing Alternatives• Sometimes, a student’s loss of points seems to be unavoidable.

• Let’s say a faculty member is teaching an online class that includes extensive online discussions.

• The student is hospitalized for two weeks, missing an important group discussion.

• In this class, the discussion board closes at a fixed date, disallowing late responses.

• This student, therefore, cannot earn points for the discussion even though he had a legitimate excuse.

• It would therefore be up to the faculty member to take one of several actions.

• Depending on the online classroom’s technological structure, she may be able to exempt the student from the assignment altogether.

• She may offer the student an alternative assignment or extra credit to make up the missed points.

• Or she could choose to do nothing, resulting in a lost learning opportunity for the student and a substantial blow to his grade.

• Asking, “What’s the point?” leads us to the second choice – offering an alternative assignment or extra credit. If our goal as educators is for our students to learn, then our policies and our response to violations of these policies should all be informed by this overarching value.

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The Teachable Moment• We’re always teaching our students every time we interact with them, not just when we’re standing behind the lectern.

• When you ignore students, you teach them that you don’t care whether they succeed or fail.

• When you overlook problem behaviors in the classroom, you teach students that you have no control over what’s happening or that you’re ineffective.

• When you respond brusquely to inquiries, you teach students that you think poorly of them.

• Most students will be more receptive to learning if they believe that their professor cares about them and trusts that they willtreat them fairly.

• The phrase “the teachable moment” is admittedly somewhat cliché in educational circles, having been in widespread use for over 60 years.

• Nevertheless, we’re confronted by many such opportunities to offer additional instruction or input that will enhance our students’ learning.

• When we provide high quality feedback on students’ work, when we treat them kindly and respectfully, when we not only answer a question but provide additional resources to extend students’ learning, we move beyond being merely adequate and reach towards becoming excellent educators.

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Immediacy

• When we demonstrate to our students that we care about their wellbeing, we model immediacy.

Physical Immediacy:• Gesture while talking to the class• Look at the class while talking• Smile at the whole class while talking• Move around the room while

teaching• Have a relaxed posture or body

position while talking to the class• Smile at individual students while

talking to the class• Use a variety of vocal expressions

while talking to the class

Verbal Immediacy:• Use personal examples or talk about experiences outside of class• Ask questions or encourage students to talk• Get into discussions based on something a student brings up even when this

isn’t part of the planned lecture• Use humor in class• Address students by name• Engage in conversations with individual students before or after class• Refer to class as “our” class or what “we” are doing• Provide feedback on students’ individual work through comments on

assignments• Ask students how they feel about an assignment• Invite students to meet outside of class if they have questions or want to

discuss something• Praise students’ work, actions, or comments• Discuss things unrelated to class with individual students or with the class as a

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It Matters

• I think it is impossible to underestimate the power of the connections we build with our students. Poet and author Maya Angelou has been widely quoted as saying, “People will forget what you said; people will forget what you did; but they will never forget how you made them feel.”

• For faculty, connections with students are temporary and ephemeral: we teach hundreds, even thousands of students over the duration of our careers, with new faces in our classrooms every semester. For our students, though, their connection to us becomes a deeply ingrained memory tied inextricably to their experience in our classrooms. I’ve never forgotten the way faculty made me feel when I was a student, whether they inspired me, encouraged me, or demeaned and discouraged me. Furthermore, the problems that I’m called upon to mediate between students and faculty are generally more about emotions than whatever the actual disagreement or misunderstanding might have been.

• What you do in your classroom exists within concentric circles of influence like ripples in a pond, radiating out to the program, department, college, school, university, community, and discipline (at the very least). Your choices impact students, sometimes profoundly. You might be the influential person who changes the trajectory of their career, or you might be the person who discourages them from an otherwise bright future. What you say to your students matters, sometimes in ways you could never anticipate.

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Improvisation and Serendipity

Excellence also sometimes means deviating from our plans when opportunities arise. Our course planning is important because it provides a framework within which our instruction takes place. Nevertheless, we’re not trying to standardize our teaching. We continue to have the creative freedom to make changes along the way, especially when these might benefit our students’ learning in ways we couldn’t have anticipated when we made our plans.

Just like we might leave the highway to visit a historical site even if the detour delays our travel plans, we can follow up on an interesting class discussion, make changes to our planned assignments, or change the content of our lectures in response to students’ performance on formative assessments.

Before you decide to change your plans, ask yourself this question: Will the change I want to make still support my students in meeting the course’s outcomes and objectives? If yes, then we should feel empowered to seize emerging instructional opportunities. If no, we should seriously consider whether it is worthwhile.

Making a schedule change to take advantage of a serendipitous opportunity, to seize a teachable moment, or to re-teach a concept that students did not grasp the first time are all good choices, supporting the necessity of flexibility and improvisation. Pursuing a personal agenda unrelated to your course content is not as defensible and not in the true spirit of academic freedom.

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Remember

Providing valuable feedback is among faculty members’ most important responsibilities. The way you approach this task can inspire students to greater success or discourage them.

Structure formal feedback around the principles of

•recognize success

•suggest improvement

•make a personal connection.

•“LBNT+” which works well for self-evaluation and peer evaluation

In every interaction with students, you teach them something, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

•They learn from your demeanor, the tone of your voice, your body language, and your emails, as well as,from your lectures and assignments.

•Make sure that what you’re teaching in every interaction is what you want students to learn.

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