Faculty Focus Live

Every now and then it’s important to take a step back to self-reflect and listen to advice from other educators. With an exhausting past few years, here’s your reminder that your purpose as an educator is so impactful and so important. Today, we’ll talk about mindful teaching and how you can use the acronym HEARTS to be mindful of your presence as an instructor. And then, Ken Alford will talk abou...

There’s been a lot of chat about ChatGPT and artificial intelligence (AI) in the field of higher education. From concerns about academic integrity to prohibiting this all-knowing AI, but today, I want us to see AI from a different perspective. What if you could use AI at your university to help students experiencing food insecurity and connect them with resources? What if you could use AI for your...

Have you ever been asked this question by a student: Will this be on the exam? Do I need to know this? In today’s episode, Maryellen Weimer will offer evidence-based study strategies that you can implement into your course to help prepare students for exams. Rather than cramming the night before, you can encourage students to take more responsibility in their review techniques and redesign exams t...

We’re going to talk about community, swift trust, and storytelling. Whether you teach an online or in-person class, you want your students to feel as if they are entering a community where they are welcome, safe, and can share ideas among each other. You want to establish common interests and a sense of togetherness because they are going to be solving problems together, they’ll be investigating a...

Today, we're going to talk about racial justice, the relationship between food and culture, and a type of plan-do-check-act cycle for diversity, equity, and inclusion work. To start, Santos Felipe Ramos explains how food is so intertwined with culture that it makes for an effective method of inquiry into racial identity and racial disparities, in his seminar, Understanding Racial Justice Thro...

Have you ever had a student say, "Wow, this class is so hard!" or "These homework assignments are impossible!" Many students might even do their own research before taking your class, trying to determine what the workload might be or what the level of difficulty is. For this reason, it’s important to understand how you can communicate your definition of academic rigor and ensur...

In this episode, we're going to talk about a Twitter thread that went viral. Dr. Liz Norell's thread on her night class now has more than 800,000 views. On it, Norell talks about ice breakers, her liquid syllabus, ungrading, a "punchy" Word document syllabus she created the night before, and communicating the message of care and belonging.  When it comes to ungrading, Norell te...

Ungrading might seem a little daunting, right? How can you just take away grades? How can you assess students without actually grading their essays, projects, or homework? How do you prepare students who depend on grades to adapt to a new type of grading?  In this episode, we’ll cover what ungrading actually is, some of the research behind it, and how it can be brought to any classroom by having a...

In this episode, we’ll cover snippets from the Wellbeing Elixir course, presented by Seena Haines and Stuart Haines, on how gratitude is associated with numerous mental and physical benefits; how extending generosity to others has been shown to lower blood pressure, increase self-esteem and self-worth, and enhance optimism; and lastly, we’ll cover goal setting and how both success and failure are...

Teaching students in the classroom while simultaneously teaching students online is hard. How do you bring students together when some are in the classroom and some are online? What tools can you use to cater to this type of Hyflex or hybrid teaching?  In this episode, we’ll explain different tools and techniques you can use in a Hyflex setting, we’ll go over a couple of best practices to keep in...

Today is all about the memory, from short-term to long-term. Do you still remember your childhood phone number? What about your high school fight song? Or the street you lived on when you were eight years old? We might remember some of these things, but sometimes we forget what we read this morning or what we ate for breakfast two days ago. Don’t worry, there are numerous proven ways to manipulate...

How do you make your online classroom feel welcoming and safe for your students? Unlike the face-to-face classroom, you don’t always have the opportunity to greet students with a warm smile and ask them how they’re doing. So, how do you bring these in-class approaches to your online environment?  In this episode, we’ll cover techniques on how to be culturally responsive in your online courses, we’...

Lectures can be boring, without a doubt, but they don’t have to be. There are a variety of creative approaches for making your lecture more interactive and interesting for your students so that they stay tuned in and remember the content you want them to remember.  In this episode, we’ll talk about how you can start and end your lecture with bookends, how to incorporate lecture wrappers, and diffe...

Today’s episode is all about technology. Now, you may be tired of hearing about all the tools and gadgets you can integrate into your courses, but we’ll go through easy-to-use technologies, including the appropriate application and benefits of each. We also don’t expect you to start integrating every single one of these tools. Start with just one, or maybe two, and see how it goes.   We’ll demonst...

As an educator, you’ve been through some of the toughest years of teaching. Many have faced academic stressors, burnout, anxiety, and so much more. So this is your timely reminder to take care of yourself. In today’s episode, we’ll talk about resiliency, appreciative inquiry, growth mindset, and mindful self-compassion. The following tools, resources, and techniques can help you construct a more j...

Despite their universal use in online teaching, online discussions often fall flat. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In this episode, we’ll discuss how multiple due dates for a discussion can foster thoughtful responses; we’ll talk about the importance of using Universal Design for Learning to guide your discussion; we’ll discuss the importance of putting yourself in the student perspective whe...

As a STEM educator, how can you reimagine STEM education through a humanities lens? How can you use disruptive innovation to help students think more critically? And how can you teach critical reflection skills in an engineering or math course?  In this episode, you’ll consider how to make sure your perception of what students want out of their education aligns with what the student actually wants...

The first day of class is approaching and this day is filled with emotions. Students might be filled with excitement or dread. They may be filled with eagerness or anxiety, but no matter the emotions it’s an important day for you to set the tone for the rest of the semester. In this episode, we’ll go through specific generative games you can implement on the first day to prime students’ minds for...

When you’re designing a course, what should you consider? How can you create your course so students are remembering and recalling the information you’re teaching throughout the entire semester? In this episode, we’ll explain how fundamental and powerful concepts can help you design your course with the big picture in mind.  We’ll explain how starting from the end when designing your course is ben...

Maybe it's your coach from high school, an instructor from college, a colleague who helped mentor you - no matter who it is, having someone to mentor you, coach you, motivate you, and help you be the best version of yourself is priceless. In this episode, we'll provide a stepwise progression for mentoring: 1. Show them 2. Help them 3. Watch them 4. Let them And then we'll dive into...

In this episode, we talk to Loreen Smith who explains the purpose of a Peer 2 Peer Mentoring Program (P2P), the steps to implement it, and how it can significantly impact students. Whether it’s a first-year student being mentored or a peer mentor learning how to lead, both roles form connections and are given direction on their journey. Peer mentors gain leadership skills, hands-on experience, and...

How do you get your students to engage with the content so they better retain it? How do you get your students to engage in discussion so that everyone is talking and everyone feels empowered to use their voice?  The concept of student engagement is broad, but today, we're going to talk about how to incorporate min-lectures, the importance of a prediscussion post, and how you can use drawings...

How do you get your students to complete the readings you assign? More importantly, how do you get them to engage with and retain the readings you assign? In this episode, we’ll talk about strategies to help students master deep reading, a reading discussion or literature circle you can implement to foster student engagement through reading roles, and a technique to encourage students to do the re...

In this episode, we talk with Jeremy Rentz about the positive aspects that come from students doing work in class. By allowing students to figure things out for themselves, and giving them time to discover and interact with one another, students can have powerful learning experiences.  By including examples that students can work on during class and encouraging in-class exam reviews, Rentz says st...

We’re chatting about co-construction circles, empathy mapping, and the Teaching Perspectives Inventory with Cynthia Alby, Karynne Kleine, and Caralyn Zehnder who will be presenting at our Teaching Professor Conference.  They discuss how co-construction circles help give each student something different to focus on in a reading. Someone may be coming up with discussion questions, while someone else...