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Crazy days

August 18, 2019

The past few weeks have been remarkably busy – I’ve been getting my oldest ready for her first year of college! It’s really interesting experiencing higher ed from a different perspective.

As of today, she is relocated to her new school in another state. She’s starting a pre-orientation program today, then next weekend is orientation for both students and parents. With shopping, packing, and traveling, the beginning of this semester has a really different feel than most. I’ve been working on my fall classes for weeks to be sure I’m ready, since I’ll be on the road late next week and returning the day before classes start.

Fall prep has also overlapped with my summer teaching a bit more than it usually does. As a result, I’m not trying too many new things this semester – at least for now!

Syllabus prep

August 2, 2019

I’ve been working on syllabus prep for my Fall 19 classes this week. It’s always a good time to take stock of what I have planned, and why I decided to include certain assignments in certain classes. Right now I’m updating my Food Systems and Health class (PBH445/EOH645) and updating an assignment I tried for the first time last fall.

This assignment is designed to ensure that students read the textbook and get credit for doing so. Last year I called it “QQC” for Question, Quotation, Comment which I got from another source… (I’ll update this with the source if I can track it down.) This semester I’m calling it Reading Responses (RRs), but the essence is the same. I set up a Google Doc for each student in the class (about 35-40) that’s shared between the student and me. For each assigned chapter from the textbook, the student is expected to write a paragraph long summary and ask a question. I include some prompts for developing a question in the assignment.

The RRs are due before class begins, but points are not assigned on a daily basis to save me some work and time. Instead, I review the documents for points twice a semester to make sure they’ve been completed. In the meantime, to incent on time completion, I review the questions students have developed. If I choose their question for the day’s class session, the student receives 2 extra credit points, and they don’t have many other opportunities to earn that! To be eligible to earn those points, I ask that the RRs are submitted before 6 am on the day of class.

I think this assignment is a really good fit for this class for several reasons. First, it’s a 400 level course. Most of the students are juniors and seniors in our BSPH program, and they should be ready for the type of self-directed learning that I’m asking them to complete. Also, this class taps into my network really well, so I’m able to schedule quite a few guest speakers from our community. Since this assignment ensures that students are completing the reading, I’m able to dedicate a class period to each of this wonderful individuals without trying to squeeze in an abbreviated lecture. I also ask the students to do some independent work, and again I can give them a class period to complete it without trying to lecture even faster than I already do!

A couple of housekeeping details – the midterm and final reviews of the RR documents are each worth 20 points, out of about 250, so the points are meaningful. I also ask students to keep the most recent content at the top of the Google Doc – this makes it faster and easier to find the newest response in each document. I keep all these docs in the same folder, and before I review it on the day of class, I sort it in date/time order so it’s easy to see which students have new content to review. When I do pull a question to use for in-class discussion groups, I ask students to make notes and hand them in, and also for specific deliverables – 3 ways to approach the problem, 2 strong arguments that support an approach, etc. Also, I use a 0 point assignment in Canvas, our LMS, to make sure that the assignment shows up in the Syllabus view, and perhaps most importantly, the Assignments list, since I know that’s how many students primarily navigate the course.

Have a great weekend, and feel free to comment below with similar approaches, assignment ideas, or questions!

Summer plans

July 25, 2019

It’s been a busy summer for me. On top of teaching my summer classes and completing work for my grant, I’m preparing to send my oldest off to college for her first year. It’s still a little slower than the academic year, though, so I’m enjoying having the time to pursue some projects.

The first one was this website. I’d set up a page under UNLV’s old system, but it was a pretty dry bio-and-publications type of thing, and I’m much happier with this new platform. This will be the first time I’ve blogged in a long time, and I’ve got big plans.

Over the summer I also like to work on my teaching. Once the semester starts, it can be hard to adopt new teaching techniques, so most summers I spend some time reading, researching, and listening to podcasts about teaching. My all-time favorite podcast is Teaching In Higher Ed with Bonni Stachowiak. If you teach college students and have never listened to her podcast, I’m really excited to be able to introduce you! If you’ve been a student in one of my classes, then I can almost guarantee that you have been the lucky participant in an activity, grading approach, or new assignment type that she has recommended. Do you have a favorite teaching podcast? Please add it in the comments below – I listen to podcasts all the time while I’m driving, cleaning, working out, etc. and I’d love to add some new ones to my list.

Another podcast I’ve been enjoying is The Science of Happiness from the Greater Good Science Science Center at UC Berkley. It turns out that there are a LOT of evidence-based tools that we can use to help maintain our mental health, contentment with life, and happiness. These are all really important to me, so I’ve gone back to the beginning to catch up on all their fantastic material.

Speaking of those summer classes, I’m going to wrap up now to get some grading done. Thanks for reading, and I’m looking forward to seeing what you recommend!