You know that Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a way to lower barriers for all learners. You also know how to caption videos and implement plus-one design thinking.
Now it’s time to go beyond the basics and move toward expert-level UDL practices in the classroom and across campus. It’s time to identify emerging, proficient, and expert-level practices in universal design for learning with this 20-Minute Mentor led by UDL expert Thomas Tobin.
Upon completion of this program, you’ll be able to:
Have the skills to move from a content-focused approach to accessibility into a more interaction-focused mindset.
Understand how to outline specific ways to implement expert-level aspects of the universal learning design (UDL) framework.
Educators want their academic research to reach as many people as possible, particularly educational practitioners. However, research findings are often published in various scholarly journals and are limited to people who subscribe to, look for or read scholarly research. A podcast is an excellent communication tool to promote your research among a lay audience who usually would not be exposed to it.
This 20-Minute Mentor offers the basic steps for starting your own educational podcast. Receive new ideas for starting a research-based podcast, including information about needed technology and practical ideas for overcoming problems. Learn why a podcast can be a new and exciting way to share research and how to start one in 10 practical steps.
Upon completion of this program, you’ll be able to:
• Implement 10 steps to start a podcast, including defining the intended purpose, audience, and format
• Recognize the importance of naming and branding a podcast
• Grasp the basics of the recording and editing process
• Understand the distribution and marketing process
Uncovering practical, easy-to-implement ways for turning discussion boards into core teaching tools is just one part of this program!
This 20-Minute Mentor also explores other options for engagement online and outside of the online classroom. Drawing from the Universal Design for Learning, the program reveals options besides discussion boards that ignite online participation. Learn strategic ways for students to take more excellent initiative in dealing with the coursework and with their fellow students through group or individual activities. The presenter shares examples from her teaching to demonstrate how these ideas can work in an online classroom.
Upon completion of this program, you’ll be able to:
• Identify challenges of the traditional discussion board
Assess features in an LMS for engagement potential.
Identify three options for student engagement that are appropriate for almost any class
Balancing teaching, scholarship, and citizenship responsibilities is challenging for college professors. What can teachers do to fulfill their civic responsibilities? For faculty who want to refresh and reinvigorate their citizenship at their institutions, this 20-Minute Mentor shares citizenship advice gleaned from outstanding professors. Some of their suggestions may surprise you!
Upon completing this program, you’ll be able to: improve your citizenship service, reconsider what you might do to improve your effectiveness as a faculty citizen and recognize your obligation to your colleagues to be the very best citizen you can be.
Greetings and salutations, friends and colleagues,
Welcome to April, a month that, in a nod to T.S. Eliot’s epic The Waste Land, an esteemed late colleague of ours – former Director of the Honors Program, Mike Daher – often referred to as “the cruelest month.” Between the tantalizing but not yet fully realized promise of warmer temperatures and the final crunch of winter term – doing all that we can to shepherd as many of our students through to a successful conclusion – it almost seems as if Eliot specifically had a certain community college in Michigan in mind when he penned this line.
As we begin this final leg of the semester, this week’s Monday Morning Mentor focuses on translating strategies from a F2F modality – namely, classroom assessment techniques (CATs) – to the online environment. As usual, this presentation is available on-demand through midnight this Sunday, April 9, and login details are provided below.
Next, here is one last reminder that The Fourth Annual Black Male Retention, Success, and Best Practice Conference will be held at HFC this Friday, April 7, 2023 (8:00-5:00). Once again, we do hope that you can make some time to attend this important event. Programming and registration information is supplied below.
Though it is a bit further off, June will also be upon us sooner than we realize, and recent LAND conference attendees have indicated that “The Grading Conference” is definitely a worthwhile event. It is virtual with a registration fee of only $50, and this year it takes place June 9 and 10. Below, you will find further details.
Finally, once more, please remember that the Michigan, College, University, Partnership (MiCUP) at Lawrence Technological University has been running immersive, in-person sessions for instructors this semester as well, examining how students are learning through authentic scientific experiments in the classroom. Though two of these have already passed, one more remains on Friday, April 21. This final session will be held in the same location as the first two – on HFC’s campus in room J-110. Scott Corp, project coordinator, has provided a flyer for these events, which is posted on the CTEI Moodle hub and is accessible here through this link.
Meanwhile, although I close with the samse sentiment each week, it still always seems to bear repeating – please never hesitate to e-mail either or both of us if you have any questions or recommendations.
Upcoming Events
Event
Description
Time/Date
Link
Monday Morning Mentor
How Can I Adapt 5 Popular Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) to the Online Classroom?
Numerous research studies within learning science show that interactivity is needed to promote learning in online learning environments. H5P offers power and simplicity for educators looking to engage students with digital content.
This 20-Minute Mentor covers five ideas for using basic H5P options to help students interact with—and retain— course content. Save time and effort with tools that make interactivity easy to create! The instructor provides examples of users who successfully use the platform herself.
Upon completion of this program, you’ll be able to:
• Identify several H5P tools
Describe several ways H5P tools can be used to help students engage and learn, including content presentation, practice, and instructions.
Observe interactive elements in H5P, including automatic feedback options.
Providing opportunities for students to practice and receive feedback in low-stakes assignments facilitates their learning. Yet how can you, as a faculty member, offer these opportunities without creating an inordinate amount of grading? This 20-Minute Mentor demonstrates how faculty can become more strategic about how and when they chose to grade student work in ways that both make their time more impactful for students and decrease their effort. Our expert presenter helps you consider your reasons for grading, how to prioritize your grading comments and ways to build feedback into class time.
Upon completion of this program, you’ll be able to:
• Identify the reasons you are opting to grade student work
Optimize feedback provided to students while being strategic about the time invested in grading
Create activities to be used in the classroom that reduce the need for individual grading
Coming off a St. Patrick’s Day weekend, here’s hopin’ that no one is residually feeling…um…shall we just say, too “green.” 😜💚 Speaking of St. Patty’s Day, let’s all congratulate our students and faculty in 5101 for a beautiful Irish-themed buffet, over which Rosemary and I enjoyed a CTEI planning luncheon last Wednesday. Finally, on one last important note, before we get down to CTEI business here in this week’s Digest, we would be remiss if we failed to give a shout-out to HFC’s own men’s basketball team, who, on the heels of a fantastic season, enter the NJCAA National Championship Tournament tomorrow in Danville, IL, as the nation’s #3-seeded team. GO HAWKS!
As for upcoming CTEI programming, this week’s Monday Morning Mentor examines the topic of grading – how to do it more quickly and efficiently while having a more significant impact on student learning. This week’s clip is available today through midnight this Sunday, March 26, and as always, log in details are provided below.
Next, we are delighted to be joined by Tazeen Ayub for our next Teamwork Tuesday, which will occur tomorrow at 2 p.m. Tazeen is a recent recipient of a fellowship with the Detroit Equity Action Lab (DEAL). During this week’s session, she will discuss the great work that she has been doing with this group and share what she has learned. As usual, you can join in on the conversation in-person in the CTEI Hyflex Room (N-01) or via the Zoom link below.
We are also excited to remind you once again that The Fourth Annual Black Male Retention, Success, and Best Practice Conference will be held at HFC on Friday, April 7, 2023 (8:00-5:00). We hope that you can find the time to attend – and possibly even present at – this event. While the call for papers officially expired on March 11, if you wish to offer a talk, there is still a chance that this due date could be extended for another few days – but I would recommend acting fast if you still hope to speak at this conference. Please refer to the additional information supplied below for proposals and event registration.
Meanwhile, Academic Impressions offers a free webcast on March 29 titled Future Trends in Higher Education — Defining the Impact of the Metaverse in Higher Education. More specifics and a registration link are supplied below.
Similarly, though it may seem a long way off, June will be here before we know it, and we have been informed by recent LAND conference attendees that “The Grading Conference” is definitely a worthwhile event. It is virtual with a registration fee of only $50, and this year it takes place on June 9 and 10. Below, you will find further details.
Finally, please remember that the Michigan College, University, Partnership (MiCUP) at Lawrence Technological University will also run immersive in-person sessions for instructors, examining how students learn through authentic scientific experiments in the classroom. Though the first of these has already passed, two more are still upcoming, with the next taking place this Friday, March 24. Both remaining sessions will be held on HFC’s campus in room J-110. Scott Corp, project coordinator, has provided a flyer for these events, posted on the CTEI Moodle hub and accessible here through this link.
As usual, please e-mail either of us if you have any questions or recommendations.
This 20-Minute Mentor provides step-by-step instructions for a call-to-action project. The presenter explains the model she uses in her own classes and the ways that this model can be used in different course settings, disciplines, and class sizes.
Guidelines for executing every step of the call-to-action activity and results from the presenter’s own online classroom activity arm you with the knowledge and confidence to engage your online students through service learning.
Upon completion of this program, you’ll be able to:
• Identify three benefits to using service learning in your courses
• Explain key features of one model of service learning for an online course
• Apply the model to classes the participant teaches
• Help students settle on a course-related topic for their activity
• Describe different calls to action that students can employ
• Show students how to find and follow up with participants in their project
• Leverage social media to show how one person can make a difference
We can all use fresh ideas to engage students with course content. What can the games we play teach us about designing our courses? Games have kept people engaged for decades because they have systematically designed engagement practices.
This 20-Minute Mentor explores how to recognize and apply these engagement practices to course design. You’ll learn that the core principles of course design are very similar to the principles of game design, how to look at games for inspiration, and that it can be easy to modify your courses to make them more engaging.
MARCH 6, 2023
Upon completion of this program, you’ll be able to:
Analyze an engagement strategy for effectiveness and suitability
Gather original ideas from current games
Take your discoveries from games and thoughtfully implement them into your own courses
CTEI Happenings 