CUTLA Teaching Tips for Student Engagement
Teaching, learning, and assessment tips that facilitate student learning or promote student engagement based on scholarly literature and suggestions from faculty who have successfully used these strategies.
To Receive Teaching Tips
CUTLA Teaching Tips are weekly e-mail messages to the faculty of UWF describing an instructional strategy that faculty might find helpful in promoting active learning and student engagement. If you are a UWF faculty member and do not currently receive the Teaching Tip e-mail but would like to receive future postings, contact CUTLA.
Contributions Welcomed
Do you have an instructional strategy that improves student learning or promotes student engagement with your class? Send a description of your teaching tip to Claudia Stanny at the Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment for posting in a future Teaching Tip mailing.
Best of Teaching Tips
A collection of 80 of the best teaching tips from 2006-2016 categorized and presented in an easily readable PDF format. Best of Teaching Tips
Fall Semester Teaching Tips
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Write a syllabus that engages and guides students
December 2, 2014A well-written syllabus serves as an invitation to students that describes the overall purpose of the course, documents your expectations for assignments and how you will evaluate students, and creates a common course reference that you and students will used to manage day-to-day activities during the term.
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How many levels of quality should we represent in a rubric?
November 18, 2014Horror vacui. Aristotle Aristotle may or may not have been right when he said nature abhors a vacuum, but when we create a rubric, academics loathe leaving cells empty.
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Make the most of “reporting out” following group work to maximize student learning
November 12, 2014Have you or your students been frustrated when the products of a small group activity don’t seem to reflect specific learning goals? An in-class activity can be misperceived as mere entertainment that distracts from “real” learning if students don’t clearly understand connections between the activity and learning goals.
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Grading that functions as useful feedback to students
November 4, 2014Grading is generally one of the least favorite parts of teaching. Grading can feel stressful when students challenge their grades, attempt to cheat or plagiarize, or focus on earning grades rather than acquiring skills or learning.
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Encourage a growth mindset to help students improve their learning
October 28, 2014Carol Dweck (2006) describes a fixed mindset as the belief that talent, intelligence, or other skills are static, enduring characteristics. The fixed ability mindset assumes that abilities can be assessed, but little can be done to change abilities. In contrast, a growth mindset is the belief that ability can develop and improved.
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Align course exams and assignments with course student learning outcomes
October 21, 2014Skilled teachers identify clear goals (student learning outcomes) for their course, identify and develop learning activities that create opportunities for students to practice and develop skill on these outcomes, and create assessments that are sensitive to the articulated goals (Blumberg, 2009, 2014; Fink, 2003).
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Include non-lecture learning activities in class to improve student learning and retention in STEM disciplines
October 14, 2014Freeman et al. (2014) examined 225 scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) studies that compared the impact of active learning components included in the class meetings (versus laboratory, homework, or recitation sections) to traditional lecture-only class meetings.
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What is Universal Design of Instruction?
October 7, 2014Universal Design of Instruction (UDI) is an approach to teaching that consists of a proactive design and use of inclusive instructional strategies that benefit a broad range of learners including students with disabilities.
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Short video guides for students on effective study strategies
September 30, 2014College students frequently waste time using ineffective study strategies because they are unaware of which strategies are effective or don’t retain the suggestions for effective study provided by their instructors. Stephen Chew, a cognitive psychologist at Samford University, created a series of 5 short YouTube videos that describe effective study strategies and explain why these strategies produce learning that lasts.
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Align class activities with course learning outcomes
September 23, 2014Skilled teachers identify clear goals (student learning outcomes) for their course, identify and develop learning activities that create opportunities for students to practice and develop skill on these outcomes, and create assessments that are sensitive to the articulated goals (Blumberg, 2009, 2014; Fink, 2003).
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Help students learn how to learn: Create assignments to guide student practice with meta-cognition and self-regulation skills
September 16, 2014One of the greatest surprises for a new faculty member (and a repeated surprise for faculty accustomed to teaching advanced undergraduate and graduate students) is that many students do not approach learning with the same study skills and motivations we used as students.
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Assign graded work early in the term to alert students to problems with their learning
September 9, 2014The first exam or major graded assignment in the term delivers a loud message to a certain number of students in a course: You are not performing well enough to succeed in this course. What can faculty do to help students who are “on the edge” pull back from the brink of disaster and succeed in the course?
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How accurate are your assumptions about the students in your class?
September 2, 2014How much do you know about the students enrolled in your class? When was the last time you checked your assumptions about how much time your students spend studying versus working or playing, how motivated they are to learn, or how well prepared they are to tackle the content and skills in your course?
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Write a syllabus that engages and guides students
August 26, 2014A well-written syllabus serves as an invitation to students that describes the overall purpose of the course, documents your expectations for assignments and how you will evaluate students, and creates a common course reference that you and students will use to manage day-to-day activities during the term.
Teaching Tip Topical Archive
The Topical Archive Teaching Tips is an accumulation of CUTLA's weekly Teaching Tips arranged in categories. Archived Teaching Tips
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