Teaching in a virtual environment can be challenging. When logging in to teach a synchronous Zoom session, many of my students and myself, have already spent hours that day staring at the screens of digital devices. They probably do not want to spend an hour or more listening to a boring lecture. I successfully used […]
As instructors, we have come a long way since the March 2020 #greatpivot – survival mode in Spring to get our students to the finish line and naïve optimism for the Fall since we had summer to prepare. It is finally now, in Spring ’21, after a full year of intensive online teaching, that I am gaining […]
As we shifted to remote teaching this spring, we have (hopefully) been reminded to think about humanizing online learning, which Michelle Pacansky-Brock has conceptualized as encompassing not only facilitation (creating a lively, approachable presence that cultivates empathy and awareness) but also course design. Okay, I thought, I’m human. I can humanize. Yeah, well, I’m also […]
I’ve always considered myself a stickler for things such as due dates and required attendance and really didn’t see how the move to online instruction would be any different. When the announcement came that we were moving to online instruction and all face to face classes needed to go virtual, I took the time to […]
While I want to acknowledge that accessibility issues exist, I love online learning, because it is accessible to those with physical or practical challenges to education. Social distancing regulations due to covid-19 are causing many of us to have these challenges right now, but many people face everyday physical and practical challenges. I learned most […]
We received such positive feedback on part one of this series and understand that folks are eager for the sequel. Below, we continue to share what we learned from first-year composition students at CSUCI as they interviewed one another about their experiences. What fears did you have about college that turned out not to be […]
As 2019 Teaching and Learning Innovations Fellows, we set out to look more closely at how we could better support students’ transitions from high school to college writing and propel students to success at the university and beyond. As part of this work, we asked students in our first-year composition courses to interview one another, […]
One of the aspects of teaching in the world’s largest public university system that I love the most is the CSU’s bone-deep commitment to an equitable education for all. While most of us can point to a seemingly tone-deaf initiative or two, at its core, the CSU was created to be the people’s university. For […]
Though I was a part of TLi’s Blended Learning Cohort 4 in 2013, I am now teaching my first blended classes. Three sections of my First-Year Composition Course in the English Program are blended. We meet face-to-face once a week for an hour and 15 minutes and the rest of the class is online. I […]
This is part 1 in a series of blog posts to highlight the work of our Teaching & Learning Innovations team. Each team member was asked to write a post about the work of one of their colleagues. When I first met Megan Eberhardt-Alstot and asked her about her work, a smile lit her face […]
