Tag: participation

Faculty Today

Breaking the ice – 5 tips for getting your discussions started in myCourses

Classes start in just over two weeks, so it’s the perfect time to start getting your myCourses pages ready for the semester. The Discussions tool can be a great way to add an online component to your course. This blog post contains recommendations for creating exciting online discussions, with a focus on how you can leverage online icebreaker activities as an opportunity to introduce students to the Discussions tool.

Faculty Today

Turning class participation into short written assignments

In the entry from the Teaching Professor Blog pasted below, Maryellen Weimer, PhD, suggests that instructors give students a participation grade for writing ABOUT participation, not for talking up in class. What a novel idea! Weimer writes that the common approach to grading participation rewards students who like to talk and know that verbal participation will win them points. Instead, she suggests that writing short papers about the role participation plays in the learning process is a more fruitful strategy to help students appreciate how important interaction is to the learning process. Read more –>