Faculty Focus Live

College is hard. That's why Ben Blood dedicates so much time to student success; it's also why he spends time teaching students about metacognition, time management, self-discipline, help-seeking, and resilience/perseverance. Here, you'll take away specific strategies you can implement into your class to help students succeed and also help students "find their why:" The reason they're in college; the reason this is important to them; and their reason why.

“If you fail it’s not a signal, it’s not a sign that you should quit. It’s not a flare being shot up to tell you you’re not worthy of college. Instead, we need to use our failures as opportunities for growth.” -Ben Blood 

Recommended Resources:

• Ben Blood's blog with resources, access to his OER, and more: https://accountabiltycoachingforcollegesuccess.com/ 
• Magna Online Seminar: Harnessing the Power of Open Pedagogy and Open Syllabi to Promote Student Success
• Magna Online Seminar: Applying Andragogy to Online Course Design to Increase Student Engagement and Success
• Magna Online Seminar: Teaching Underprepared Students to Take Control of Their Learning by Developing Metacognitive Skills
• Magna Online Seminar: Teaching Underprepared Students: Strategies that Work

In episode 12, we chat with Stephanie Dunson, PhD, who recently started her own podcast: 100 Mistakes Academic Writers Make...and How to Fix Them. In this interview, we talk about embracing the messy parts of writing and acknowledge that those messy parts are most often necessary to create a piece of published work.

Additionally, Dunson explains how we can be so focused on the end result, that sometimes we forget to step back and acknowledge the gaps that we're missing in our own writing. She offers questions to think about when writing and how this can foster a more intentional writing process. Also, stay tuned for a sneak peek into the upcoming podcast episodes she's most excited for.

Resources:

• Stephanie Dunson's podcast: 100 Mistakes Academic Writers Make...and How to Fix Them
• Taking My Career to the Next Level: Grant Writing Tips and Resources
• How Can I Write Better Letters of Recommendation?
• How Can I Extend My Research to the Public with a Podcast?

In the past year, many instructors worried that their online teaching presence might miss the in-person cues they picked up on with students in the classroom. In turn questions arose: How do you assess your students online? How do you make sure they’re learning the content? How do you gauge student learning through online activities? 

In this episode, we'll provide ideas on how you can implement check points into your online teaching, and how you can use student-created videos to assess students in your online class. Additionally, we'll touch on how you can create writing assignments that can be used as an effective means of assessment, and how focusing on the process of writing can help foster student learning.

Resources mentioned:

• How Can I Gauge Online Learning Through Engaging Activities and Assessments?
• How Can I Assess Students in My Online Classes Through Student-created Videos?
• Effective Writing Assessment in the Online Classroom

This week's episode is sponsored by the Teaching Professor Virtual Conference. Join the conference anytime and anywhere from June 7 through September 30, where you'll have on-demand access to plenaries, sessions, downloadable handouts, and networking opportunities. 

If you've been considering attending our Teaching Professor Conference (virtually or in person), look no further! Here, we chat with a few of our presenters about why their topic session is so important to them.

Liz Norell talks about how rewarding it is to witness those "aha moments" and how you can use different tools to cultivate your presence in the classroom. Next, Ashley Harvey explores invisible emotional labors associated with teaching and how to keep your positive emotion and energy at bay. Then, Dr. Tarsha Reid dives into how to incorporate culturally relevant pedagogy for African American students, and lastly, Jane Sutterlin explains how learning science and emotion science have helped guide her online teaching.

 Register here for the Teaching Professor Conference

How can you help students overcome their distaste for collaborative group work online (and also thereby change your view of such work)? Wendy Trevor discusses how the timing of the assignment, the structure, instructor presence, feedback, and a grading rubric which privileges individual contributions, and signals the importance of engaging with others' views, can help students approach group work more positively. Additionally, she touches on how group projects can foster the kind of communication skills and cooperative work employers today value.

Resources related to online group work:

• How Can Understanding Group Dynamics Lead to Better Group Work?
• Online Group Work: Making it Meaningful and Manageable
• How Can I Make Online Group Projects More Effective?
• How Do I Assign Students to Groups?

This week's episode is sponsored by The Teaching Professor Conference. Join us in-person at New Orleans from June 4 - 6, or join us virtually with on-demand sessions from June 7 - September 30. 

Your teaching philosophy helps examine who are you as a teacher and examines what beliefs and values are at the heart of what you do. In this episode, Maryellen Weimer reflects with other instructors on stories and vulnerabilities that helped shape their personas and philosophies in the classroom.

Resources Mentioned:

• Who Am I When I Teach? Understanding Teaching Persona
• Considering the Courage and Practice of Teaching
• Teaching Philosophies: Time for a Revisit
• Free report: Examples and Tips on How to Write a Teaching Philosophy Statement

This week's episode is sponsored by The Teaching Professor Conference. Join us in-person at New Orleans from June 4 - 6, or join us virtually with on-demand sessions from June 7 - September 30. 

Are some of your students struggling with online learning? Have you seen a decrease in motivation or engagement? If the answer is yes, that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad teacher or instructor. It might just mean there’s a missing piece, and today, we’re here to find that missing piece. The piece that recognizes that maybe one, two, a handful, or all of your students are struggling with online learning. We’re here to find the piece that helps incentivize, helps empathize, and helps motivate those students both in the online realm and in-person classroom.

Resources Mentioned:

• How Can I Help Students Who Are Struggling with Online Learning?
• How Can I Adapt My Teaching so Students Thrive in a Polysynchronous Classroom?
• Increasing Student Engagement, Persistence, and Success Online Using Emotion Science

This week's episode is sponsored by The Teaching Professor Conference. Join us in-person at New Orleans from June 4 - 6, or join us virtually with on-demand sessions from June 7 - September 30. 

Glenn Walton gives us 9 ½ ways to humanize your teaching in an online environment. From rubber chickens to sound boxes and a screaming monkey, it’s never a dull moment in his classes.

1. Use poll questions and chat box questions
2. Be predictably unpredictable
3. Be visually appealing
4. Be trendy
5. Explain your expectations
6. Be everywhere
7. Design your class to be more inviting and pleasant
8. Course materials
9. Human factors
½. Half way and another half: Ours and yours

This week's episode is sponsored by The Teaching Professor Conference. Join us in-person or virtually and pursue your passion to teach.

Recommended resources:

• How Can I Maximize the First 10 Minutes of Remote Teaching to Spark Student Engagement
• How Can I Incorporate Best Practices into My Online Teaching?
• Using Microlearning to Improve Student Understanding of Course Content

Online discussion boards. It’s something that’s come up a lot this past year as we’ve migrated to the online platform. One of the main questions is how do you get your online discussions to be more than just, “Hey Theresa! I agree with your statement, that’s a great point.” 
In this episode,  we’ll go over a few things you can do with your online discussion board, from using responses to give narrative shape to creating questions, and specific activities you can use in your discussion board to spark responses that aren’t so mundane. 

Mentioned resources:

• How Do I Create Questions that Stimulate Engaging Conversations in Online Discussion Boards? 
• What Are Three Proven Ways to Manage My Online Discussion Board and Actively Engage Students?
• How to Design and Facilitate Online Discussions that Improve Student Learning and Engagement

Other resources:

• Free article: How Superheroes Can Bring Your Online Discussion Board to Life
• Free article: Leveraging Bloom's Taxonomy to Elevate Discussion Boards in Online Courses
• Free report: Tools and Strategies for Engaging Online Students
• 20-Minute Mentor: How Can Discussion Responses Give Narrative Shape to an Online Class?

In this episode, we sit down with Ken Alford to discuss how he's kept the storytelling element within his online classes and what you can do to help students see you as a person.

"Share your story, and let them know that you know life happens to everybody. We’re all in this human drama together, and I think the more we can connect with each other, the better it is. I think anything we can do to keep each other as people and not just textbook reciters and question writers, is helpful."

Featured products with Ken Alford:

• What is the Best Teaching Advice I Ever Received?
• Creative Course Design: Yes You Can!
• Energize Your Lectures to Help Students Meaningfully Engage with Your Subject
• How Can I Be an Effective Mentor?
• How Can I Effectively Supervise Teaching and Research Assistants?
• How Can I Effectively Mentor Students?
• What are 10 Tips to Collaborate with Colleagues?
• Teaching Underprepared Students