Helping Students to Succeed

by Dr. Sue Pieper, Coordinator of Assessment With more students struggling academically, particularly in the first year, and fewer students persisting to graduation, many of us in higher education are asking how we can help our students to succeed. One way is to teach students to “think about their thinking.” In other words, we can [...]

Rethinking Your Course with Student Learning in Mind

by Dr. Sue Pieper, Coordinator of Assessment It’s official! During this year, Northern Arizona University will be moving to a new learning management system, Blackboard Learn. As you move your courses to the new system or use the new system for the first time, take advantage of the opportunity to rethink your courses, adjusting them as needed to incorporate [...]

Pedagogy and the iPad

by John J. Doherty and Kevin Ketchner Perhaps the hardest part of owning an iPad is trying to avoid the addictive world of Angry Birds, the favorite game app of the new British Prime Minister. For just $5 you, too, can attack pigs with hard-headed flying birds. That kind of distraction is exactly what many [...]

Blended Learning: It’s Coming Our Way

You’ve probably heard about it. You might even be engaged in it right now. It goes by many names, including hybrid and mixed-mode learning. It’s blended learning, and it’s coming our way.

College Is for Everyone, So Attendance Is Mandatory!

by Larry MacPhee Amidst the flurry of bad press over SB 1070 (.pdf) and the resulting boycott of Arizona, you might have missed something interesting on page two. NAU made the Chronicle, and Slashdot picked up the story. It has been spun as a privacy and digital rights story, but it’s really something much bigger. [...]

Using Assessment to Engage Your Students

by Sue Pieper Coordinator for Assessment, e-Learning Center at Northern Arizona University How can we get students to attend our classes? How can we get students to participate in class? How can we prevent students from cheating? These questions dominated the conversations at a recent Course Redesign (CR) Conference, and faculty in the small group sessions [...]

Pedagogy and Large Course Redesign

By John J. Doherty and Wally Nolan Instructional Designers,  e-Learning Center at Northern Arizona University In this semester’s episodes of our podcast series, Tuesday Tips on Teaching With Technology (iTunes U link), we are highlighting some discussions from the recent Course Redesign Conference held at NAU. With our faculty colleague, Dr. Brandon Cruickshank of the [...]

Tips for Teaching Online

by Lorraine B. Elder Dr. Judith V. Boettcher has written Teaching Online for the First Time — The Quick Guide. She lists ten best practices for designing and teaching a course, and most are spot on, with the possible exception of Best Practice 5: Use both synchronous and asynchronous activities Using both kinds of activities [...]