Faculty Focus Live

Almost everyone loves a good game. In this episode, we'll go through specific gamification strategies and play-based activities you can implement into your own class. From creating badges and leaderboards to playing word associations or the "sometimes, always, never" game, you'll have a toolbox full of ideas you can bring back to your courses.

Additionally, we'll discuss how gamification, when integrated correctly, can increase student persistence and student engagement. Although gamification can be an adventure of fails and successes, it's important to have fun and embrace the power of failure.

Recommended resources:

• What 5 Play-based Activities Can I Use to Create an Active, Learning-centered Class?
• How Do I Design Effective Combinations of Gamified Elements to Encourage Deeper Learning?
• How Can I Use Simple Gamification Strategies to Engage My Students?
• What is Gamification and How Can it Promote a Growth Mindset?

When it comes to public speaking and the constant butterflies your students may get from presenting, "it's all about trying to get the butterflies to fly in formation," David Sandler says.

We practice public speaking as a waiter at a restaurant, in a Teams meeting for a job, on a podcast, and yes, in front of a podium, which is what we may associate most with the word "public speaking," but every day we perform different acts of public speaking. Sandler says this is one reason why teaching public speaking skills to students is so vital. “The world loses out on whatever good ideas students may have to share. The ability to articulate what’s going on in your unique mind—it’s a life skill and that’s the paradigm I use to have people think about my course.”

From working on eye contact while reciting the ABCs to practicing walking up to the podium to a Q&A session, Sandler offers advice on how you can help students find their voice. Additionally, Sandler talks about how people tend to think they’re either an extrovert or introvert and the impact that may have on their speaking abilities, but there's been research on another category called an ambivert. An ambivert lands in the middle but leans toward a side of being an extrovert or introvert. Sandler reminds us that wherever you are on that "timeline," you can still be a good public speaker. 

Recommended resources:

• NCSL On-Demand: Communication (for students)
• How Can I Extend My Research to the Public with a Podcast
• How Do I Include Introverts in Class Discussions?
• How Can I Improve My PowerPoint Presentation Skills?
• How Can I Teach Routine Courses with Energy and Enthusiasm? 

Humor in the classroom, it’s definitely not as easy as we think. For instance, making a joke can fall flat in an online class. You may not see the reactions from your students in their blank, virtual boxes, or your audio might freeze and they miss the joke. But despite these hurdles, it doesn't mean you should give up on fostering humor and positivity into your class—whether you're face-to-face or online.

Humor can improve memory, comprehension, and can even improve engagement. In this episode, we'll dive into different tactics you can use to integrate humor into your course, such as memes which can be used as an assessment, as a learning tool, and can provide you with content that you can use later on, and how you can leverage both humor and positivity to achieve this, and finally, how you can be successful at this even in an online environment.

Recommended Resources:

• Using Humor to Engage Students in the Classroom
• How Do Master Teachers Create a Positive Classroom?
• Using Humor and Levity to Enhance the Online Learning Environment
• How Do I Establish an Engaging Atmosphere in My Online Classroom?

Social media polling. Instagram trivia Tuesdays. Virtual study halls. Get ready for a toolbox of new ideas!

How can you be strategic about implementing social media into your course? Whether it's just one assignment or the entire course, Debbie Fetter offers insight on how she created a strategic social media plan to implement in her own course. Fetter explains how social media can help teach students how to craft a direct message to a specific audience, and how these tools can be used for future employment. Additionally, she often adds polling and trivia via Instagram for low-stakes grades, extra credit, or small prizes. 

Last year, she also created what's known as, "Dr. Fetter's Study Hall." By rebranding her office hours into a study hall and creating practice questions specifically for this, Fetter increased the attendance and virtual community these study halls fostered. 

Time. There’s just never enough of it. You’ve got a million and one things to do when it comes to teaching, and your list is always growing. Intermix that with your personal life, and it becomes a matter of how do you balance it all?

In today’s episode, we’ll touch on how you can use a teaching calendar, how you can better manage your class time in a flipped learning environment so you’re not only utilizing your own time effectively, but also your class time effectively, and finally, we’ll cover tips for managing your workload in an online environment. Although we can’t cross everything off the list for you, we may be able to offer some helpers that can alleviate some of the stress that comes with an instructor’s workload. 

Recommended resources:

• Magna 20-Minute Mentor: How Can a Teaching Calendar Help Me Be More Effective and Efficient in the Online Classroom?
• Magna Online Seminar: Time Management for Faculty and Students in Flipped Learning Environments
• Robert Talbert's multi-part series: rtalbert.org/gtd 
• Magna 20-Minute Mentor: What Are Practical Solutions for Managing My Online Teaching Workload?
• Magna 20-Minute Mentor: How Can I Be a More Productive and Effective Teaching?

As an instructor, giving feedback might come easily. You do it day in and day out when grading papers, offering insight to student responses or peers, and proofing assignments. But what about receiving feedback? Receiving feedback as an instructor can be nerve-wracking and stressful. It can undoubtedly impact your confidence as a teacher.

But what if there were ways that no matter the feedback, good or bad, you could learn to use student feedback constructively, and also better prepare your students to provide feedback that could help make you a more effective teacher. This episode dives into how you can foster a classroom culture that encourages student feedback, whether online or in-person.

Recommended Resources:

• 20-Minute Mentor: How Can Improving Student Feedback Improve the Quality of Each Educational Encounter?
• 20-Minute Mentor: How Can I Get Useful Feedback to Improve My Online Teaching?
• Magna Online Seminar: Using Student Feedback to Immediately Improve Teaching
• 20-Minute Mentor: How Can I Gain Valuable Insight from Course Evaluations? 
• 20-Minute Mentor: How Can Talking through Course Evaluations Improve My Teaching?

In this episode, we dive into how Judy Klimek uses a group exam review to go over answers from the final, individual exam. From fostering engaging conversations to pinpointing challenging questions, each small group reviews the results from their individual exams and comes to a consensus as to why answers were right or wrong. 

As an instructor, Klimek also explains how the group exam review allows her to reassess exam questions in the future and engage one-on-one with students who might need extra assistance. 

Recommended Resources:

• How Can Post-Exam Reviews Become a Powerful Teaching Strategy?
• How Can Understanding Group Dynamics Lead to Better Group Work?
• Are Group Exams a Viable Testing Option?
• How Can I Write Better Exam Questions to Measure Student Performance and Learning?

Diversity and inclusion in higher education...It’s important. It’s imperative. And it’s an essential part of teaching. In this episode, we talk about how you can infuse inclusive teaching strategies into your online classes and your in-person classes. From small scale to large scale incorporations, each inclusive strategy and diversity-related topic matters. Whether you incorporate these strategies into your syllabus, curriculum, or project-based learning activities, you can start to think about how this will improve how your students engage with your course and how you can better establish a classroom culture.

Recommended Resources:

• Magna Online Seminar: Effective Diversity and Inclusion Strategies
• 20-Minute Mentor: How Do I Infuse Equity into Any Online Class?
• Magna Online Seminar: Bringing Diversity and Inclusion into Your Quantitative Course
• Magna Course: Practical Solutions for Faculty: Creating an Inclusive Classroom Climate and Culture
• Magna Online Seminar: Beyond Pedagogy: Infusing Equity into Your Syllabus, Assignments, and Course Content
• Magna Online Seminar: Online Engagement and Assimilation Strategies for Nontraditional and Marginalized Students

In this episode, we talk with Melissa Schettler who presented at our Teaching Professor Conference. Here, she discusses how you can increase student engagement through the use of an engagement rubric. You'll identify desired behaviors, undesired behaviors, challenging behaviors, and then finally, define what you think "perfect participation" looks like with engaged students.

Schettler explains how you can develop and implement your own student engagement rubric to help communicate expected behaviors to your students. What will make your heart sing when you visualize perfect participation and how do you accomplish that? Find out in this episode! Also, feel free to download the engagement rubric Schettler uses in her own classes to inspire your own engagement rubric.

Recommended resources: 

• Melissa Schettler's Engagement Rubric Resource
• Teaching Professor Virtual Conference available through Sept. 30, 2021
• Practical Solutions for Faculty: Engaging Students
• How Do Mini-lectures Improve Student Engagement?
• Maximizing Student Engagement with Course Readings
• Using Active Listening to Deepen Student Engagement in Live Remote Classes

Creating exams…it’s not an easy task. From crafting exam questions to trying to make your exams more accessible while also trying to promote academic integrity – there are numerous elements to consider. In this episode we talk about exam accessibility including time restraints, how you can write better exam questions, and what you can do about online exam security.
 
Although there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to designing online exams or in-person exams, there are numerous factors you can take into consideration to more effectively asses your students and to be more conscious when creating your exams.

Recommended Resources:

20-Minute Mentor: How Can I Make My Exams More Accessible?

20-Minute Mentor: How Can I Write Better Exam Questions to Measure Student Performance and Learning?

20-Minute Mentor: How Can I Increase Exam Security with Custom Question Banks

Magna Online Seminar: Writing Better Multiple-Choice Questions

20-Minute Mentor: How Can Students Use Self-Compassion to Reduce Test Anxiety?

Faculty Focus article: Fourteen Simple Strategies to Reduce Cheating on Online Examinations