Today's video shares information that can help you structure your exam or quiz in your learning management software in a way that is challenging for students who are attempting to work together. Perhaps normally you would be watching the class take the exam in your classroom, or your Testing Center would provide oversight. However, that's not possible now. What can you do? Check out this short video for some key ideas.
March 22, 2020
COVID-19 Teaching: moving exams and quizzes online (Part 1)
If you are needing to give an exam or quiz online, now, your students are most likely sitting (unsupervised) in their home or dorm room. Today's video covers how to restructure that exam to assume it is open book. Ask higher level questions that don't have answers found directly in your textbook or other resources!
COVID-19 Teaching: moving labs online
If you teach a lab course and suddenly need to move it online, here are some hints from some of my colleagues at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on how to modify and reshape the laboratory experience to fit online.
March 19, 2020
COVID-19 Teaching: Backward Design
If you teach at a college or university, you've joined a club of instructors who have made it through 2/3 of the semester and now need to restructure your class to be online or completed remotely. COVID-19 has forced students out of the classroom, and we're really starting a grant experiment to see how we can construct student learning opportunities quickly and in a completely different manner than we had planned.
I'm starting a new series of videos, called "1.5-minute Teaching" in which you'll find short but (hopefully) helpful ideas to help with teaching in this scenario. And, maybe the ideas will be useful later in the normal world as well!
First off, let's talk about Backward Design. Your first step is to figure out what you are going to do--you have to change the syllabus. What content can you keep? How do you redo this section of the semester?
Backward Design is a great tool for constructing your course. If you haven't used it before, here's a great chance to use it for a small piece of your course. Take a listen!
I'm starting a new series of videos, called "1.5-minute Teaching" in which you'll find short but (hopefully) helpful ideas to help with teaching in this scenario. And, maybe the ideas will be useful later in the normal world as well!
First off, let's talk about Backward Design. Your first step is to figure out what you are going to do--you have to change the syllabus. What content can you keep? How do you redo this section of the semester?
Backward Design is a great tool for constructing your course. If you haven't used it before, here's a great chance to use it for a small piece of your course. Take a listen!
June 9, 2019
Lessons from a waterhole
We had spent the day driving from waterhole to waterhole in this large, dry national park in southern Africa. The trees and shrubs on the edge of the road were white with the dust from cars who had made the same trek the day before, and somewhere out there were elephants.
“You arrived too late,” we were told at one waterhole. “There was a black rhino here just five minutes ago, but he has wandered into the bush past that large camel thorn tree.”
And so it went—a journey of being 15 minutes early or 5 minutes late, over and over. Should you sit and wait at an empty waterhole, or move to another one just 15 km away?
For the elephants and rhino, there was certainty. They knew exactly when they would appear for water, but they would not share their appointment calendar with us. Hidden by trees, we could only see evidence of their presence by the large, softball-sized chunks of poo that resembled a shredded globe of garden mulch. The poo mocked us, “Late again.”
Finally, as day was ending, we began to leave a waterhole after watching four giraffe decide whether it was safe to drink—necks and heads tentatively down, then back up at the smallest noise or burst of wind. Giraffe are so shy; it is amazing they do not die of thirst at the edge of the waterhole. But, eventually, the world synchronizes for them—the wind dies, nothing stirs, and the waterhole is empty of other animals. The giraffe bend down to drink.
As we turned to leave, a portion of the universe aligned for us and the elephants as slowly 1, 2, 3, 4, and then eventually 50 wrinkled, gray creatures silently stomped out of the forest towards the water. The smallest of the herd began to run, disregarding all thoughts of danger, and their mothers trotted after them. The entire group walked into the water, drank gallons, and finally baptized themselves with sprays of water and mud. They churned the mud with their feet and reveled in the flying muck. Some of the young were so small they had not learned to use their trunk, but they giddily twirled their little nose-tubes like a baton and were covered in goo by the by-products of others’ mud baths.
Just like that, it was over. A leader turned back to the bush, and the herd disappeared as quickly as it had emerged. We were left in silence at the waterhole with a single vulture who had silently watched the chaos.
As we drove away, we passed another car just arriving to the empty waterhole. “Justice,” we grinned, and we drove out into the world willing to be disappointed again.
“You arrived too late,” we were told at one waterhole. “There was a black rhino here just five minutes ago, but he has wandered into the bush past that large camel thorn tree.”
And so it went—a journey of being 15 minutes early or 5 minutes late, over and over. Should you sit and wait at an empty waterhole, or move to another one just 15 km away?
For the elephants and rhino, there was certainty. They knew exactly when they would appear for water, but they would not share their appointment calendar with us. Hidden by trees, we could only see evidence of their presence by the large, softball-sized chunks of poo that resembled a shredded globe of garden mulch. The poo mocked us, “Late again.”
Finally, as day was ending, we began to leave a waterhole after watching four giraffe decide whether it was safe to drink—necks and heads tentatively down, then back up at the smallest noise or burst of wind. Giraffe are so shy; it is amazing they do not die of thirst at the edge of the waterhole. But, eventually, the world synchronizes for them—the wind dies, nothing stirs, and the waterhole is empty of other animals. The giraffe bend down to drink.
As we turned to leave, a portion of the universe aligned for us and the elephants as slowly 1, 2, 3, 4, and then eventually 50 wrinkled, gray creatures silently stomped out of the forest towards the water. The smallest of the herd began to run, disregarding all thoughts of danger, and their mothers trotted after them. The entire group walked into the water, drank gallons, and finally baptized themselves with sprays of water and mud. They churned the mud with their feet and reveled in the flying muck. Some of the young were so small they had not learned to use their trunk, but they giddily twirled their little nose-tubes like a baton and were covered in goo by the by-products of others’ mud baths.
Just like that, it was over. A leader turned back to the bush, and the herd disappeared as quickly as it had emerged. We were left in silence at the waterhole with a single vulture who had silently watched the chaos.
As we drove away, we passed another car just arriving to the empty waterhole. “Justice,” we grinned, and we drove out into the world willing to be disappointed again.
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| Elephants at Klein Namutoni waterhole, Etosha National Park, Namibia. June 2019, Photo by Larkin Powell |
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