Despite their universal use in online teaching, online discussions often fall flat. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In this episode, we’ll discuss how multiple due dates for a discussion can foster thoughtful responses; we’ll talk about the importance of using Universal Design for Learning to guide your discussion; we’ll discuss the importance of putting yourself in the student perspective when writing your discussion prompts; and finally, we’ll go over techniques for fostering a community within your discussion board and class.

This episode is all about the discussion board!

Recommended Resources:

• 20-Minute Mentor: The Discussion Board and Beyond: How Can I Engage Students Online?
• 20-Minute Mentor: How Do I Create Questions that Stimulate Engaging Conversations in Online Discussion Boards?
• 20-Minute Mentor: What are Three Proven Ways to Manage My Online Discussion Board and Actively Engage Students?

This episode is sponsored by the Teaching Professor Online Conference - network from the comfort of your living room. 

As a STEM educator, how can you reimagine STEM education through a humanities lens? How can you use disruptive innovation to help students think more critically? And how can you teach critical reflection skills in an engineering or math course? 

In this episode, you’ll consider how to make sure your perception of what students want out of their education aligns with what the student actually wants. You’ll go through speaking, writing, activities, and media modes of critical thinking. And finally, you’ll go through a disruptive innovation assignment to encourage students to think more critically and be more impactful in their design. This episode is filled with STEM-inspired information!

Recommended Resources:

• Magna Online Seminar: Reimagining STEM Education Through a Humanities Lens
• 20-Minute Mentor: How Can I Teach Critical Reflection in STEM Courses?
• 20-Minute Mentor: How Can Disruptive Innovation Impact STEM Education?

The first day of class is approaching and this day is filled with emotions. Students might be filled with excitement or dread. They may be filled with eagerness or anxiety, but no matter the emotions it’s an important day for you to set the tone for the rest of the semester. In this episode, we’ll go through specific generative games you can implement on the first day to prime students’ minds for open mindedness; we’ll explain how you an use a kite drawing activity to have students introduce themselves; and we’ll talk about how you can use toast to help explain the diversity of opinions and the merit of working together.

Recommended resource:

• 20-Minute Mentor: How Can I Use the First Day to Set the Tone for a Semester of Learning?
• 20-Minute Mentor: How Can I Maximize the First 10 Minutes of Remote Teaching to Spark Student Engagement?
• Faculty Focus article: Connecting Before We Can Physically Connect: Online Icebreakers to Use for the First Day of Class
• Faculty Focus article: Advice for the First Day of Class: Today We Will
• Faculty Focus article: First Day of Class Activities that Create a Climate for Learning
• Free report: Back to School: First Day of Class Strategies
• TED Talk: Got a wicked problem? First, tell me how you make toast

When you’re designing a course, what should you consider? How can you create your course so students are remembering and recalling the information you’re teaching throughout the entire semester? In this episode, we’ll explain how fundamental and powerful concepts can help you design your course with the big picture in mind. 

We’ll explain how starting from the end when designing your course is beneficial and will help you create an elevator pitch and purpose for your course. And lastly, we’ll go over how you can incorporate interleaving into your course design to improve student retention.

Recommended Resources:

• Magna Online Seminar: Course Design Strategies to Enhance Critical Thinking Skills
• Magna Online Seminar: Creative Course Design: Yes You Can!
• Magna Online Seminar: Using Interleaving in Course Design to Improve Retention

Maybe it's your coach from high school, an instructor from college, a colleague who helped mentor you - no matter who it is, having someone to mentor you, coach you, motivate you, and help you be the best version of yourself is priceless. In this episode, we'll provide a stepwise progression for mentoring:
1. Show them
2. Help them
3. Watch them
4. Let them

And then we'll dive into what makes a great faculty coach and how this differs from mentoring. "Take a minute to think back to your own life experience of great coaches, maybe coaches that you've watched, coaches that you've observed, coaches that you've been coached by...great coaches are typically people who know how to inspire," says Nicki Monahan. "They know how to motivate. They know how to observe carefully and analyze. They know how to listen. They know how to ask good questions. And they know how to help people through the change process, and sometimes that's a hard process. And I would suggest that great coaches aren't born, but they're made and one of the things that makes great coaching is great coach training."

Recommended Resources:

• Magna Online Seminar: Creating and Maintaining a Robust Faculty Mentoring Program
• 20-Minute Mentor: How Do I Move from Mentoring to Coaching in Faculty Development?
• 20-Minute Mentor: Is Coaching a Good Fit for My Faculty Development Program?
• 20-Minute Mentor: What Tools Can I Use to Ensure I Have Effective Coaching Conversations with Faculty?
• 20-Minute Mentor: How Can I Be an Effective Mentor?

In this episode, we talk to Loreen Smith who explains the purpose of a Peer 2 Peer Mentoring Program (P2P), the steps to implement it, and how it can significantly impact students.

Whether it’s a first-year student being mentored or a peer mentor learning how to lead, both roles form connections and are given direction on their journey. Peer mentors gain leadership skills, hands-on experience, and because it is a paid position, they have a job title they can use on their resume. Additionally, the students being mentored often become more confident in their understanding of their learning and learn how they can address any obstacles or barriers to help them achieve their goals.

With just four simple steps, Smith says any university can start their own Peer 2 Peer Mentoring Program:

1. Establish a team
2. Recruit
3. Train mentors
4. Promote the program

Smith says that the joy this program exudes is infectious, and it’s really about making a difference in the students’ lives and seeing how many doors are going to open for them in their own way. 

“We’ve given these students the most important tools that they need to succeed, and that supports connections, direction, and really a reflection for a stronger and more meaningful education,” Smith says.

Resources:

• Reach out to Loreen Smith to learn more about a Peer 2 Peer Mentoring Program (P2P): [email protected]

How do you get your students to engage with the content so they better retain it? How do you get your students to engage in discussion so that everyone is talking and everyone feels empowered to use their voice? 

The concept of student engagement is broad, but today, we're going to talk about how to incorporate min-lectures, the importance of a prediscussion post, and how you can use drawings, a multimedia starter, or social activity to engage students with your content. 

Recommended Resources:

• 20-Minute Mentor:  How Do Mini-lectures Improve Student Engagement?
• 20-Minute Mentor: How Can I Structure Class Discussions to Maximize Student Engagement?
• 20-Minute Mentor: How Can I Maximize the First 10 Minutes of Remote Teaching to Spark Student Engagement?
• Learning Path: Teaching Professor Conference 2021 On-Demand: Student Engagement

How do you get your students to complete the readings you assign? More importantly, how do you get them to engage with and retain the readings you assign? In this episode, we’ll talk about strategies to help students master deep reading, a reading discussion or literature circle you can implement to foster student engagement through reading roles, and a technique to encourage students to do the reading prior to class.

From roles such as a discussion leader, passage master, devil’s advocate, illustrator, creative connector, and reporter, you’ll have students not only talking about the reading but engaging with one another as well. Additionally, Maryellen Weimer offers a technique to encourage students to do the reading prior to class and how to reiterate reading as an essential part of the course.

Recommended Resources:

• 20-Minute Mentor: What Interventions Help Students Master Deep Reading and Engage with Assignments?
• Magna Online Seminar: Maximizing Student Engagement with Course Readings
• 20-Minute Mentor: How Do I Get Students to Read Their Assignments Before Class? 

In this episode, we talk with Jeremy Rentz about the positive aspects that come from students doing work in class. By allowing students to figure things out for themselves, and giving them time to discover and interact with one another, students can have powerful learning experiences. 

By including examples that students can work on during class and encouraging in-class exam reviews, Rentz says students can support each other and he can essentially help “coach” them through the examples. 

“While they are in the class, they have their neighbors to help them, their neighbors can support them, they can ask them questions, they can make them feel good about themselves...and then the other positive that it brings is I can help coach essentially every student in class,” Rentz says. 

Lastly, Rentz encourages that instructors and teachers work together and learn from their colleagues as often as they possibly can.

“One of the things that I want to make sure that I highlight in my session is that I have a few good answers, but collectively, as a group, we have many, many good answers,” Rentz says.

Recommended resources:

• Best of Teaching Professor Conference 2021 Free Report
• The Teaching Professor Conference

We’re chatting about co-construction circles, empathy mapping, and the Teaching Perspectives Inventory with Cynthia Alby, Karynne Kleine, and Caralyn Zehnder who will be presenting at our Teaching Professor Conference. 

They discuss how co-construction circles help give each student something different to focus on in a reading. Someone may be coming up with discussion questions, while someone else is focusing on reading connections, and when students come together in class, they all have something different to bring to the table. 

Additionally, they dive into empathy mapping and how instructors need to ask the question of, Who are we designing for? Empathy mapping fosters an incredible joy for them in designing for diverse groups of students. “We do that through building narratives that describe diverse student experiences and perspectives…”

They also use a tool called the Teaching Perspectives Inventory to get a notion of who they are as teachers and how to better appreciate their colleagues. Rather than having a perspective of “good” and “bad” teachers, they ask the question of, What can we appreciate from that person’s perspective?

You won’t want to miss out on the magic of the Teaching Professor Conference in Atlanta from June 3 – 5.