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Tools and Resources

Alphabetical List

Browse through the tools by the title of the resource.

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This book describes current educational theory and research and offers models of teaching and learning that go beyond the typical lecture-laboratory format. Topics include: student motivation, active learning, use of technology in teaching, and teaching diverse students.

This document describes several strategies that can be used to make concepts "concrete" and provide tactile material that can help students learn.

When students avoid a feared situation, task, or topic, their anxiety may increase or spread to other aspects of life. If instructors can help the students feel safe and supported as they encounter the feared situation, task, or topic, the students are likely to engage with the anxiety in ways that increase their own self-efficacy. To help, instructors can preview and give clear instructions for the feared situation, as well as building in small, incremental steps of increasing exposure to the anxiety-producing situation.

Designing Effective Reviews: Helping Students Give Helpful Feedback

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This module explores the qualities of effective reviews. Good review prompts help reviewers provide feedback that writers can use to make high-quality revisions.

The module identifies some of the choices that instructors can make while designing review tasks in order to generate helpful feedback. It will discuss the qualities of effective review prompts, design choices, and frameworks for helping structure open-ended feedback.

We use this handout in our inclusive teaching workshop. It is adapted from “Managing Hot Moments in the Classroom” by Lee Warren at Harvard's Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. It includes suggestions about how to manage difficult conversations by planning before the course as well ideas for what to do during the course ("in the moment").

Face-to-face, online and hybrid courses all have the same credit hour requirements for students. How can faculty know if they are assigning a workload that is too heavy or too light? How can faculty set expectations for student time on task? How can faculty answer students questions about "how long with this assignment take?" This website provides guidelines to help estimate student activity times--with the caveat that hours are not a measure of learning.

This site provides faculty, instructional designers, and faculty developers with general estimates of student time needed for learning. These estimates are particularly important in online and blended courses where students often under estimate the amount of time needed to learn, and where faculty also frequently ask “is there too much/not enough?” in the course. Faculty are the ultimate decision-makers in determining their course’s alignment to credit hour requirements and in making estimations about the amount of time students spend “in” and “out” of class for blended courses or engaged in learning activities for online courses.

Easily Estimate Your Students' Instructional Time
Online and hybrid courses with online components can make it challenging to assess how much time students spend on learning. To help faculty and instructional designers estimate how many hours of work and learning are involved in a course plan, this web app was created.

This app is a quick and easy way to see how hours are distributed across types of activities throughout the entire course and complements the other resources and documentation on the Hours of Instructional Activity Equivalents (HIA) for Undergraduate Courses page.

The Daily Nous, "News for and about the philosophy profession" shares slides from a professor Andrew Mills at Otterbein University that summarizes the research about how computers and phones in class affect student performance. Prof. Mills has made his slides available to other faculty. Might they be adapted into an activity where students predict the research and see the results in slides using the Assertion Evidence model?

This webpage lists many resources to help faculty work with diverse students, including strategies for working with specific minority groups, such as students with disabilities. The resources are related to diversity and inclusion.

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