At this event, participants exchanged their favorite tips and tricks of “doing more with less” (i.e., providing high-level teaching and learning with reduced resources and more limited time). Slides.
Some tips:
NAME: Pamela McGranahan HOME UNIT: Nursing
TIME-SAVING TIP: Use the voice recording function in Canvas to offer feedback on assignments. It’s a nice break from staring at a screen, goes quickly, and allows the student to hear constructive guidance in your voice, so misunderstandings are reduced as well.
NAME: Casey Gallimore HOME UNIT: School of Pharmacy
TIME-SAVING TIP: If you have multiple instructors grading the same assignment, create a shared Google Doc where each instructor can add common feedback comments. This is time saving for instructors as it provides a shared bank of applicable feedback comments that can be copied and pasted into student assignments. It also helps provide students with feedback that is consistent across evaluators.
NAME: Dave Dwyer HOME UNIT: Nursing
TIME-SAVING TIP: Ensure your rubrics are clear, detailed and coordinated with the syllabus. This sounds obvious, but there are often small discrepancies that result in questions, concerns and additional revisions. Tying the rubrics to the syllabus (and repeating content, when applicable!) is one way to avoid questions about the project and allow the student to work on the project with confidence.
NAME: Claire Barrett HOME UNIT: University Health Services
TIME-SAVING TIP: Overcommunicate course activities, assignments, an deadlines in multiple places up front to prevent individual student inquiries throughout the semester. For example, I include deadlines in the syllabus, in the grade book, on the calendar, in the modules…you can’t miss them!
NAME: Andrea Poulos HOME UNIT: English/ESL
TIME-SAVING TIP: Sometimes your class will meet somewhere unusual/at a new time. Rather than worrying if students will remember, put the info in an Assignment since this will show up on the students’ calendars. (Not an Announcement = often don’t read.)
NAME: Grace Lee HOME UNIT: Kinesiology
TIME-SAVING TIP: If students will be absent due to illness/waiting on COVID results and feel well enough to participate in class, ask fellow students in class to “Zoom” in the ill student. This can help control the number of students that potentially need to make up work/class.
NAME: Morton Ann Gernsbacher HOME UNIT: Psychology
TIME-SAVING TIP: For student letters of recommendation, ask students to give you information about themselves, including the courses or other activities they have participated in with you, the places to which they’re applying and due dates, and other information about themselves. Also, require that students complete as much information about YOU (your name, address, title) as they can on the forms that they submit!
NAME: Falina Enriquez, Dan Pell & Sandrine Pell HOME UNIT: Anthropology, CTLM, MMSD
TIME-SAVING TIP: Academic Reading Circles Academic Reading Circles (Seburn, 2015) is a collaborative, student-centered approach to teaching academic reading. Students approach a shared text from one of five assigned roles, then pool their knowledge in a group discussion. Roles are Leader, Contextualizer, Visualizer, Connector, Highlighter. It shifts relations of power, empowers students, builds practical skills, and makes teaching reading EASIER by letting students sent the agenda. Get any overview of ARC by stepping through this Prezi and read our ACTFL slides.
NAME: Heidi Evans HOME UNIT: English, Program in ESL
TIME-SAVING TIP: Make sure your Canvas course is accessible in manageable chunks. Before each class day, check all pages and associated Canvas objects (quizzes, assignments, etc.) using the Accessibility checker in the rich content editor (the USDOIT Accessibility will flag an overwhelming number of hits, some of which are “false hits,” so tackle this task in small “bites”.)
NAME: Heidi Evans HOME UNIT: English, Program in ESL
TIME-SAVING TIP: In Canvas, create multiple pathways to access important information. In our ESL Canvas courses, we have some resources which can be accessed via the syllabus page, the home page, and each weekly lesson page, along with assignments (when appropriate), via hyperlinks.
NAME: Tim Dalby HOME UNIT: Division of Continuing Studies – Professional Degrees & Certificates.
TIME-SAVING TIP: Using the Canvas test feature. While it does/did take a bit of work to set up, I found I could repurpose questions from the question banks and provide answers so learners could learn through their mistakes/errors.
NAME: Ajay Sethi HOME UNIT: Population Health Sciences
TIME-SAVING TIP: I have found Canvas Announcements to be very helpful. Since previous years’ announcements are saved. I use them to provide a lot of detail and personalized language in my weekly communication with students (every Friday at 7 AM). In a class with a lot of moving parts, students appreciate the structured outline of their upcoming week. They look like I put in a lot of work into them, but I only have to update the one from the previous year! The outline helps me stay on task, too.
NAME: Kurt Kuehne HOME UNIT: Sociology
TIME-SAVING TIP: 1-2x per semester, I survey my students using an anonymous online Qualtrics form. (Search for UW Qualtrics; it’s a simple platform and we all have access through the university). I ask for 2-3 things students like about the course, 2-3 they’d “like to change,” what’s weighing on them this semester in school or life, and any questions (noting that the surveys are anonymous and I won’t be able to respond directly). This feedback is really helpful in catching problems and confusions EARLY. I can’t know for sure, but I strongly suspect that the surveys are saving a lot of time.
NAME: Tim Dalby HOME UNIT: Division of Continuing Studies – Professional Degrees & Certificates
TIME-SAVING TIP: Zoom for Office hours – I have had so many more interactions with folks thanks to Zoom. No more need to travel – and scheduling is so easy with Calendly.
NAME: Dan & Sandrine Pell HOME UNIT: CTLM / MMSD
TIME-SAVING TIP: “Keep Calm and Phone a Friend” To provide opportunities for discussion in remote and hybrid courses, we used a simple strategy that allowed learners to choose when and how to interact, both in terms of tools and timing. Discussion topics, problems and talking points were posted each week. During the week, learners choose when and how to discuss with class partner, discussed the assigned topics with a friend or family member. They summed up their interaction in a discussion post.