Category: Teaching Tip

Do you ever wonder if there is a way to receive feedback on your online courses? Quality Matters (QM), is a nationwide, faculty-centered, peer review process designed to certify the quality of online courses and online components.
The QM Rubric includes 8 standards to improve your course:

1. Course Overview and Introduction
2. Learning Objectives (Competencies)
3. Assessment and Measurement
4. Instructional Materials
5. Learning Activities and Learner Interaction
6. Course Technology
7. Learner Support
8. Accessibility and Usability

Within these standards are specific action steps that you can use today to enhance your online course. These include:

• Organizing your course materials into modules, units, or topics so that your content is easier for your students to navigate
• Providing messages on the front page of your course to welcome your students to your course and guide them on where to begin
• Linking to the Online Learner Support page within MyCanvas Student website with many of the on-campus resources that students need to succeed in your course.

CELT at Iowa State University subscribes to QM. As such you have the opportunity to improve your course, network with fellow QM users, and streamline accreditation preparation.

• Online Course Improvement: CELT offers two on-campus QM workshops to learn the underlying principles of QM and help you review your own courses and develop a course improvement plan.
• Canvas Course Templates: CELT has developed a Canvas Template that helps to meet many of the Quality Matters standards. Even if you are not interested in QM Certification, this template can help to organize your online course materials and give you a head start on your Canvas course creation
• Network with Fellow QM Users: Join the Quality Matters Learning Community in which members will have opportunities to hear about ways to meet the QM standards, as well as discussing best practices, experiences, and solutions to course design problems. No prior QM experience is needed to attend. We hope that you will join us for our first meeting on Sept. 19 (3-4:30 p.m.), register via Learn@ISU.
• Assistance with Streamlining Online Course Accreditation Preparation: If your program, department, or unit is undergoing accreditation, QM provides an in-depth Program Certification process. It provides a framework for the collection and analysis of evidence related to an institution’s online programs – the same evidence that can be used to support accreditation. For information regarding online program accreditation and QM, please visit QM’s Streamlining Accreditation Preparation with Program Review page.

A previous participant sung the praises of CELT QM Coordinator Darrin Jones and the program:

“Darrin knows the QM material very well and is able to present it in a highly practical and orderly manner to make the best use of our time in the workshop. The mix of presenting information and giving time to review our own course materials worked very well. I especially appreciated the final worksheet that brought all of the information together into a prioritized “To Do” list for our own courses. I highly recommend this workshop for anyone teaching an online course.”

If you are interested in seeing the QM Canvas Template, or if you have any questions regarding Quality Matters, please visit the On-Campus Quality Matters Workshop page, or contact Darrin Jones in CELT via email darrinj@iastate.edu or call 515-294-6072.

Best wishes,
Sara Marcketti
Director, CELT

Full Teaching Tip

View the published CELT Teaching Tip: How do you know your online course is meeting the needs of your students? (September 6, 2018 – Constant Contact) website.

Prefer a Print version?

To view the Teaching Tip as a printable document with web addresses, download the Teaching Tip September 6 (PDF)

A Teaching and Learning Community (TLC) is a cross-disciplinary faculty, staff, graduate students, and postdocs group of 8 to 12 members engaging in an active, collaborative, yearlong program with frequent seminars and activities that provide learning, development, community building, and opportunities for scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL).

CELT has the following topic-based learning communities:

• Discuss Published Education Research in Your Discipline (DBER Journal Club)
• ISU Online Learning Community (ISU-OLC)
• Service-Learning Teaching and Learning Community
• Team-Based Learning (TBL) Teaching and Learning Community

You do not have to have experience with these topics prior to attending a TLC meeting. Those who participate in Teaching and Learning Communities report increases in student engagement and student achievement, increased collaboration, and a flexible professional development structure to support you. To find out more, visit CELT’s Teaching and Learning Communities webpage.

If you would like to see a topic for a TLC, suggest one! CELT staff regularly co-facilitate TLCs. CELT will help you:

• Plan the TLC learning objectives.
• Promote the TLC to the ISU community.
• Reserve space within Morrill Hall to host the TLC.
• Work with you to develop potential SoTL research projects.

With a joy for teaching,

Sara Marcketti, Director
Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching

Full Teaching Tip

View the published CELT Teaching Tip: Looking for Community? Consider joining a CELT Teaching & Learning Community! (September 19, 2019 – Constant Contact) website.

Prefer a Print version?

To view the Teaching Tip as a printable document with web addresses, download the CELT Teaching Tip for September 19, 2019 (PDF).

Showing thanks through the lesson of grace in teaching

Recently, a colleague shared, “The lesson of grace in teaching: From weakness to wholeness, the struggle and the hope” blog post with me. This inspiring talk was written by Francis Edward Su (Professor, Harvey Mudd College) upon receipt of the Mathematical Association of America’s Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award.

Professor Su writes, “… good instructional techniques are necessary for good teaching. But they are not sufficient. They are not the foundation.” He elaborates that instead, grace-filled relationships are the foundation for good teaching in that “grace gives you the freedom to explore, freedom to fail, freedom to let students take control of their learning, freedom to affirm the struggling student by your weakness.”

Professor Su provides a number of excellent ways to ensure grace is the foundation of teaching by learning students’ names, providing opportunities for students to make connections with the material, and sharing with students something of ourselves, whether it is the struggles that we have faced in our academic careers or taking an interest in their lives.

Professor Su closes his talk with, “… And not only will grace inspire our students, but it will also inspire us. Just like my students, the moments I remember best from my teaching are the grace-filled moments I have shared with my students and colleagues and former teachers, many of whom are here today. I want to thank them because I didn’t deserve those blessed moments. But they gave them to me anyway.”

Who makes you feel like a valued member of the ISU community?

The Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) is partnering with ISU Learning Communities, the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs, the Student Government, and the Graduate and Professional Student Senate to celebrate and promote effective teaching, advising and mentoring with the annual recognition initiative #CyThx at Iowa State University.

We hope that all Cyclones take time to acknowledge their Iowa State University faculty, graduate teaching assistants, peer mentors, advisers, faculty/staff mentors, colleagues, and more.
Before November 30, Cyclones are encouraged to answer, “Who makes you feel like a valued member of the ISU community?” via our #CyThx at ISU online submission web form.

The #CyThx honorees will be recognized with an email and an acknowledgment on the #CyThx webpage between fall semester grade submission on December 26, and January 10. Additionally, campus leadership will receive notification of who received a #CyThx.

With a joy for teaching,

Sara Marcketti, Director
Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching

Full Teaching Tip

View the published CELT Teaching Tip: An opportunity to give thanks (November 14, 2019 – Constant Contact) website.

Prefer a Print version?

To view the Teaching Tip as a printable document with web addresses, download the CELT Teaching Tip for November 14, 2019 (PDF)

Over the past year, there have been many conversations on campus about the use of open educational resources (OER) in the classroom. OER are teaching materials that are free to access and available under an open copyright license (e.g., Creative Commons website). An OER can be as large as a course (textbook, quizzes, and all) or as small as a lesson plan, but they are always free to access online. So, how can you get started using OER in your courses?

1. Look Around
Getting started with OER is as easy as looking around you at what is available. Depending on your subject area, there may be dozens of resources or there may be none. Tools like the OASIS OER Search tool and the Open Textbook Library website can make locating OER easier, but you may not find all the materials you want in one place.

The one exception to this rule is OpenStax textbook website, free textbooks for general education courses that have been paired with additional instructor materials such as test banks and PowerPoint slides.

If you are interested in using OER in one of your courses but unsure where to start, follow the instructions on the Open & Affordable Education Committee’s Find an OER webpage or send your syllabus via email to Abbey Elder, Open Access Librarian for Parks Library, and schedule a consultation.

2. Start Small
If you cannot find any OER that meet your needs right now, keep in mind that more materials are being published, shared, and adapted every day. If you cannot locate an open textbook or other major resource that fits your needs, consider starting small. You can also start working with OER by utilizing supplementary materials such as PhET Simulations website, interactive simulations that can be used in a wide variety of courses.
As you go through your usual course material review process, keep OER in mind and look at the content currently available to see if there may be a resource you could integrate into your course, either as a supplementary resource or as a replacement for a textbook or lab book you currently assign.

You can read more about why some instructors at ISU are using OER on Iowa State University’s OER Trailblazers webpage.

3. Reuse, Remix, Redistribute
Teaching with OER is not inherently different from teaching with any other educational materials you might find. However, you can do more with OER than most traditional learning materials allow.

Because of their open licenses, OER are freely available to edit, update, and share without requiring any additional copyright clearance or permission from the creator. This leaves more room for instructors to assign individual chapters of a resource or create low-cost course packets containing a variety of resources. You can learn about the various ways that some instructors are adapting OER with their classes on the Open Pedagogy Notebook website.

Regardless of how they got started, educators around the world are implementing OER in their courses to create innovative, personalized learning experiences for their students.

Guest column by,
Abbey Elder, Open Access & Scholarly Communication Librarian
ISU Parks Library

Full Teaching Tip

View the published CELT Teaching Tip: Three tips for teaching with open educational resources (February 21, 2019 – Constant Contact) website.

Prefer a Print version?

To view the Teaching Tip as a printable document with web addresses, download the CELT Teaching Tip for February 21 2019 (PDF)

As the cost of course materials in higher education has climbed to $1,250 a year for undergraduates ( view the Trends in College Pricing 2017 [PDF]) , educators across the United States are beginning to adopt Open Educational Resources (OER) to save students money and encourage student success. OER are openly licensed educational materials that are freely available online. However, using these resources doesn’t just save students money; it also gives educators the flexibility to edit their course materials and adopt new approaches to teaching. Here are a few ways you can get involved with Open Education:

Engaging in Open Educational Practices: As leaders in the Education Technology movement often emphasize, if you change your materials but none of your methods, you aren’t truly taking advantage of the resources available to you. Similarly, using Open Educational Resources in your courses might improve the cost of your class, but integrating OER effectively requires transforming your educational practices as well.

Robin DeRosa of Plymouth State University has integrated Open Educational Practices (OEP) into her teaching by getting her students involved in the process of creating Open Educational Resources. Her class created their online textbook, The Open Anthology of Earlier American Literature , by combining primary source texts with commentaries written and peer reviewed by students. Other educators have implemented OEP by having students create ancillary materials for their courses and editing Wikipedia articles. These are called non-disposable assignments, assignments that classes use and improve upon even after the first students to create them complete the course. You can read more examples of OEP in action from this Open Pedagogy Assignments Compilation GoogleDoc.

Sharing you own course materials openly: Another way you can get involved in Open Education is by openly licensing and sharing the materials you already use in your courses. Sharing your lesson plans, syllabi, and lecture slides can be a great introduction to how Open Education works, and it can help other instructors in your field find resources that might be useful in their courses as well. Consider sharing your course materials in an OER repository or collaborating with other instructors to write a new open textbook in your discipline on the Rebus Active Open Textbook Projects forum . There are plenty of options available if you are interested in sharing or creating OER.

Applying for an ISU Miller Open Education Mini-Grant : If you have a resource you’re currently creating or want to explore options for integrating OER into your class, you might want to consider applying for an ISU Miller Open Education Mini-grant. SVPP, CELT and the University Library have partnered to create this Mini-Grant program to provide funding for instructors at Iowa State who are interested in integrating OER into their teaching. Grants can cover adopting an existing OER, updating open materials, or even creating new OER for your class. Applications are currently open for the 2018/2019 school year and proposals are due April 15 ^th , 2018. To learn more about this mini-grant process, visit the ISU Miller Open Education Mini-Grants website.

Whether you are interested in improving course affordability, sharing your work with other educators, or adopting new pedagogical practices, Open Education provides opportunities you might be interested in pursuing. To learn more about these topics and more, register to attend the Workshop, Miller Open Education Mini-Grants Q&A (Mar. 5, 12:10-1 p.m.) via the Learn@ISU website , visit the University Library’s Guide to Open Educational Resources website or contact Abbey Elder, Open Access & Scholarly Communication Librarian, at aelder@iastate.edu