Education Commons^™

The Missing Course: An Introduction To College Teaching For Graduate Instructors, Jocelyn M. Cuthbert, Aubrey Rogowski, Michael N. Vakula, Juliana Aguilar, Kenna Kesler

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

A book review of David Gooblar’s book, The Missing Course: Everything they Never Taught You About College Teaching.

Using Online Genres To Promote Students’ Audience Awareness, Elena Taylor

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Writing assignments that students complete in university courses are typically designed for evaluation and grading by the instructor, who, therefore, acts as the sole reader of student written work. However, most written genres students would--and do--encounter in the world beyond the classroom are composed for diverse audiences who influence writers’ text construction considerably. Because most students will be likely to write for multiple audiences as part of their career or future academic endeavors, it is crucial for them to develop a sense of audience awareness as an indispensable rhetorical concept that shapes composing processes. Writing online presents a great opportunity …

Small Changes For A Big Impact: A Review Of Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science In Online Classrooms By Flower Darby, Julia M. Gossard

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

A review of Flower Darby’s 2019 Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classrooms. This article provides a narrative review of Darby’s work and the “small teaching approach,” focusing on the practical skills that Darby provides for the online classroom. Comments are gleaned from the author and two learning circles (one sponsored by USU and another independent) on the book.

About This Issue Fall 2021, Jason Olsen

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

The 10th issue of the Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence wastes little time pointing out that the world of teaching has changed. Rather, it shares relevant examples of strategies teachers and administrators have used to increase the effectiveness of their modern teaching environments.

Full Issue: Journal On Empowering Teaching Excellence, Volume 5, Issue 2, Fall 2021

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

The full Fall 2021 issue (Volume 5, Issue 2) of the Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Effects Of Professional Development Delivered In A Blended Format On General Education Elementary Teachers' Knowledge Of The Response To Intervention Process, Laura Jensen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Research within the last decade suggests that in-service general education elementary teachers’ understanding of and skills in administering Response to Intervention (RtI) practices are limited. A review of literature revealed a shortage of professional publications investigating the effects of RtI training for these teachers on their knowledge and skills. This project examined the effects of professional development delivered in a blended format on elementary general education teachers’ knowledge of the response to intervention process. Participants included female general education teachers with a current teaching assignment in grades one or two with a range of teaching experience from preschool through sixth …

Chapter 6- Resilient And Flexible Teaching (Raft): Integrating A Whole-Person Experience Into Online Teaching, Christina Fabrey, Heather Keith

Resilient Pedagogy

When venturing into wild or unknown territory such as a swiftly moving and ever-changing mountain river, a raft may be a necessary tool for basic survival. But what if during the careful navigation of rapid currents around rocks and other obstacles, you discover that your buoyant and flexible tool helps you to float through the fast and turbulent waters in a way that is meaningful, awe-inspiring, and exciting? As COVID-19 first hit our campuses, many of us switched to emergency remote education as a survival raft, just trying to stay afloat long enough to get to the other side of …

Introduction, Travis N. Thurston

Resilient Pedagogy

Introduction for Resilient Pedagogy.

Resilient Pedagogy: A Foreword, Jesse Stommel

Resilient Pedagogy

Foreword for Resilient Pedagogy.

Land Acknowledgment, Utah State University

Resilient Pedagogy

We acknowledge that Utah State University and all in-state USU institutions reside on the original territories of the eight federally recognized tribes of Utah, that have been living, working, and residing on this land from time immemorial. These tribes are the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Indians, Navajo Nation, Ute Indian Tribe, Northwest Band of Shoshone, Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, San Juan Southern Paiute, Skull Valley Band of Goshute, and the White Mesa Band of the Ute Mountain Ute. We acknowledge the painful history of genocide and forced removal from this land. In offering this land acknowledgment, we affirm …

Praise For Resilient Pedagogy, Rajiv Jhangiani, Tazin Daniels, Jessamyn Neuhaus, Josh Eyler

Resilient Pedagogy

What professionals who reviewed the book have to say about Resilient Pedagogy.

Chapter 3- How Adult Education Can Inform Optimal Online Learning, David S. Noffs, Kristina Wilson

Resilient Pedagogy

David's Story

I first met Krissy Wilson in 2015 when I was asked to design a new graduate course at Northwestern University on learning environment design. Krissy was part of the talented Distance Learning team in the School of Professional Studies. I was a teacher, instructional specialist, and reluctant learning management system administrator at an arts-based city college where I had worked for almost 15 years.

Krissy's Story

I got to know David Noffs first as a faculty member in the Master in Information Design and Strategy program in the School of Professional Studies at Northwestern University. Before he joined …

Chapter 1- Resilient Pedagogy And Self-Determination: Unlocking Student Engagement In Uncertain Times, Lindsay C. Masland

Resilient Pedagogy

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in spring of 2020, like many educators, I experienced a definite disruption in the structure and plans I had designed for my courses. I was teaching a mix of graduate and undergraduate classes—some with as few as seven students, others with as many as 98, some upper-level skills-based courses, others in the broad general education arena, but all of them designed exclusively for face-to-face delivery. In fact, due to some long-standing institutional prejudices against online instruction, the opportunity to teach in a mode other than face-to-face had never materialized over the 10 years I had …

Chapter 2- Productive Disruptions: Resilient Pedagogies That Advocate For Equity, Beth Buyserie, Rachel Welton Bryson, Rachel Quistberg

Resilient Pedagogy

When the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered universities in March 2020, many students and faculty were thrown into shifting uncertainties regarding course delivery and pedagogy. As the pandemic persisted, faculty and students experienced new stressors caused by social isolation, unequal access to technology and resources, economic distress, and many other factors. In addition, the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others in the Black community sparked widespread social unrest that added to and compounded the emotional and material weight of the pandemic. Amid this tumult, higher-education faculty began asking questions about how to move forward with pedagogies resistant to unpredictable and …

Chapter 4- Advancing An Approach Of Resilient Design For Learning By Designing For Extensibility, Flexibility, And Redundancy, Rebecca M. Quintana, Jacob Fortman, James Devaney

Resilient Pedagogy

The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on educational systems requires actors across those systems to develop adaptive capacity and embed resilient thinking into approaches and frameworks for decision-making and design (DeVaney & Quintana, 2020). Events surrounding the COVID-19 crisis have set off a period of rapid adaptation across the higher-education ecosystem and have necessitated that educators consider new pedagogical approaches and frameworks that are responsive to the changes we are witnessing in our contexts of teaching and learning (Chraa et al., 2020; Donovan, 2020; Moorhouse, 2020; Quintana & Quintana, 2020; Zhu & Liu, 2020).

Chapter 5- Lessons From Anticipatory Intelligence: Resilient Pedagogy In The Face Of Future Disruptions, Briana D. Bowen

Resilient Pedagogy

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted universities across the globe in unprecedented ways, requiring many teaching faculty to reexamine and transform approaches to pedagogy. As higher-education institutions have grappled with various methods of hybrid and remote delivery in an effort to best preserve student instruction through the pandemic, most have fervently looked ahead for a more satisfying “new normal.” Yet this moment of unease and transformation is one of critical opportunity for universities and their teaching faculty. Educators are seeing in vivid form how an unexpected “threat”—in this case, a global health challenge—can profoundly disrupt pedagogy, and the immense adaptive innovation …

Chapter 7- Innovative Pedagogies For Promoting University Global Engagement In Times Of Crisis, Steven R. Hawks

Resilient Pedagogy

Even as universities, institutes, and professional associations are renewing their commitment to global engagement and the internationalization of higher-education campuses, there are significant geopolitical and social challenges that are pushing back (van der Wende, 2017). The immediate crisis posed by the global coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has further hampered progress by bringing a number of critical global engagement activities to a sudden halt (Brimmer, 2020). In the midst of these challenges there is an opportunity to consider theory-driven pedagogical innovations that can move the global engagement agenda forward even in times of complexity and crisis.

Chapter 9- A New Normal In Inclusive, Usable Online Learning Experiences, Christopher Phillips, Jared S. Colton

Resilient Pedagogy

The most obvious consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic in higher education has been more students accessing their classes remotely without having the technology and other resources readily available on their local campuses. Students from underrepresented groups have been disproportionately affected as a result of COVID-19, particularly students of color (Alvarez, 2020) and students with disabilities (Hill, 2020; National Center, 2020). This neglect of underrepresented groups in higher education is not unique to the pandemic, of course, and sadly is nothing new to higher education, but COVID-19 has made this problem more apparent.

Chapter 8- Creating Adaptable Courses: A Course Design Approach That Accommodates Flexible Delivery, Kosta Popovic, Eric M. Reyes, Jennifer B. O'Connor, Kay C. Dee, Ella Ingram

Resilient Pedagogy

In early 2020, educators and students around the world endured lapses in quality of educational experiences due to the disruption caused by COVID-19. In return for these lapses, students continued their programs of study within previously established timelines, and educators balanced helping students achieve learning objectives while keeping a manageable workload. Moving forward, students will expect educators and their institutions to deliver high-quality education when disruptions occur, like natural disasters, facilities emergencies, or supply chain disturbances. This expectation will extend to all modes of delivery. We assert that training educators to build adaptable courses that provide them and their students …

Chapter 10- Building Online Toolkits To Support The Development Of Academic Skills And Digital Literacies, Jenae Cohn

Resilient Pedagogy

Personal, environmental, and academic factors contribute to student persistence and retention in college environments in varying and, importantly, intersecting ways. As educators determine what supporting student success in a post-COVID-19 world looks like, it is important to consider how these factors become all the more complicated by the new challenges raised with ubiquitous remote or hybridized learning. The global shift to online learning has opened tremendous gaps in experiences that students might have in learning, working, living, and socializing online. Some students may lack access to laptop computers for learning, while others may not have sufficient broadband access to connect …

Chapter 11- Team-Based Learning Brings Academic Rigor, Collaboration, And Community To Online Learning, Elizabeth Winter, Michele C. Clark, Christopher Burns

Resilient Pedagogy

In early 2020, instructors were faced with a critical and immediate need to move education online in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The decision to discontinue face-to-face classes as a protection from the COVID-19 virus presented several questions and challenges, including the need to quickly develop online classes without adequate time to consider the effectiveness of different strategies. While online learning provides accessible and safe educational opportunities for students sheltering in place as a protection against the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty may question if online education provides the academic rigor, needed competencies, and student learning outcomes they hoped for in …

Chapter 12- Conducting Guided, Virtual Homework Sessions To Support Student Success During Covid Campus Closures, Rebecca Campbell, Kevin Kelly

Resilient Pedagogy

College students have long used community-based practices such as study halls, review sessions, study groups, homework buddies, and the like as academic strategies to support their learning (Hogan, 1999; Madland & Richards, 2019; Thalluri et al., 2014). With increased access to online conferencing capabilities, working in community has been adapted by faculty who have used the technology to participate in virtual write-on-sites, writing retreats and writing sprints. Thus, it is no surprise that both faculty and learning centers saw the potential for creating virtual spaces for students to work together.

Chapter 13- Asynchronous Discussions For First-Year Writers And Beyond: Thinking Outside The Ppr (Prompt, Post, Reply) Box, Miriam Moore

Resilient Pedagogy

Asynchronous discussions can challenge even experienced online learners and teachers: forums can become perfunctory hoops for students to jump through, particularly in the common PPR (prompt, post, reply) format, in which students answer a prompt and then reply to one or more other students. As a peer reviewer for online courses, I have seen rich and insightful discussions that engage students and promote learning, as well as forums that scarcely resemble discussions at all. Research on cultivating dialogue in online discussions has targeted primarily upper-division or graduate courses (see Andreson, 2009; Delahunty, 2018; Delahunty et al., 2014; Garrison et al., …

Chapter 14- Designing Curriculum Collaboratively: A Practice For Learning Alongside Undergraduate Teaching Assistants During Uncertain Times, Jessica Rivera-Mueller, Kresten Erickson

Resilient Pedagogy

The transition to remote learning during the Spring 2020 semester was abrupt for faculty and students, and it did not allow much time for reflection or purposeful planning, especially as individuals were faced with managing multiple aspects of their lives. Educators had to consider quickly what learning experiences and teaching practices could be preserved or revised, as well as what learning activities could or should be removed. These choices were not easy to make. During this challenging moment, however, we discovered how collaborative partnerships between faculty and undergraduate teaching assistants (UTAs) can contribute to the development of a flexible and …

Resilient Pedagogy: Practical Teaching Strategies To Overcome Distance, Disruption, And Distraction, Travis N. Thurston, Kacy Lundstrom, Christopher González, Jesse Stommel, Lindsay C. Masland, Beth Buyserie, Rachel Welton Bryson, Rachel Quistberg, David S. Noffs, Kristina Wilson, Rebecca M. Quintana, Jacob Fortman, James Devaney, Briana D. Bowen, Christina Fabrey, Heather Keith, Steven R. Hawks, Kosta Popovic, Eric M. Reyes, Jennifer B. O'Connor, Kay C. Dee, Ella L. Ingram, Christopher Phillips, Jared S. Colton, Jenae Cohn, Elizabeth Winter, Michele C. Clark, Christopher Burns, Rebecca Campbell, Kevin Kelly, Miriam Moore, Jessica Rivera-Mueller, Kresten Erickson, Maggie Debelius, Susannah Mcgowan, Aiyanna Maciel, Clare Reid, Alexa Eason

Resilient Pedagogy

Resilient Pedagogy offers a comprehensive collection on the topics and issues surrounding resilient pedagogy framed in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the social justice movements that have swept the globe. As a collection, Resilient Pedagogy is a multi-disciplinary and multi-perspective response to actions taken in different classrooms, across different institution types, and from individuals in different institutional roles with the purpose of allowing readers to explore the topics to improve their own teaching practice and support their own students through distance, disruption, and distraction.

Chapter 15- "Things Are Different Now" A Student, Staff, And Faculty Course Design Institute Collaboration, Maggie Debelius, Susannah Mcgowan, Aiyanna Maciel, Clare Reid, Alexa Eason

Resilient Pedagogy

Like other institutions across the world, Georgetown University in Washington, DC switched to remote learning in March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States. Our Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), which serves as both a center for teaching and learning as well as a center for technology innovation, responded quickly with a series of offerings to prepare and support faculty to teach remotely. Options included a virtual conference on digital pedagogy, a series of cohort-based Course Design Institutes (CDI) throughout the summer where faculty engaged with intertwined principles and best practices from inclusive pedagogy …

An Analysis Of Racial Disparities Affecting College Of Business Degree Completion At A University's Satellite Campuses, John S. Jaggi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This research study provides campus-type specific insight into the graduation rates of students of color at a departmental (i.e., School of Business) level. With underrepresented student populations comprising up to a third of business school enrollment, there is institutional and departmental value in understanding how, and at what levels, undergraduate business students of color persist and graduate at satellite campuses.

Findings from this study could be used to inform institutional and departmental administrators and program managers on different strategies to foster not only a more diverse matriculation, but also to improve graduation outcomes for underrepresented student populations. Study results could …

Taking Into Account Interpersonal Aspects Of Teacher Feedback: Principles Of Responding To Student Writing (Republication), Elena Shvidko

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Providing feedback on student work is a fundamental aspect of instruction and an important part of the learning process. A considerable amount of literature describes the pedagogical value of different types of feedback—explicit vs. implicit, comprehensive vs. selective, direct vs. indirect, and feedback on content vs. feedback on form—thus treating feedback primarily as an instructional/informational phenomenon. It must be remembered, however, that there is a real person behind each paper; therefore, interpersonal aspects of teacher feedback should not be disregarded. This article discusses five principles of responding to student writing that take into account this interpersonal nature of feedback: providing …

The Value Of Instructor Interactivity In The Online Classroom, Greg Lucas, Gary Cao, Shaunna Waltemeyer, B. Jean Mandernach, Helen G. Hammond

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

As the number of faculty teaching online continues to grow, so has the interest in and understanding of the role of instructor interaction in the online classroom. Online education provides a unique platform in which course design and teaching are independent factors. Understanding faculty and student perceptions about the shifting role of instructor interaction in the online classroom can provide insight on policies and procedures that can support student learning through student-instructor interaction. Participants included faculty and students responding to an anonymous online survey who indicated “online” as their primary mode of teaching. Three key “value” themes emerged as significantly …

About This Issue - Spring 2021

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

The articles in this issue are unified in offering valuable insight and actionable ideas about how to engage students in their own learning. Instructors can implement these strategies across many content areas and delivery methods.