Written by Liz Chase and Natalie Hebshie Your students see that they’ve been assigned a “reflection” as part of your class. This usually prompts a range of reactions from my students: “Oh good, this will be easy.” “Ugh, I already did the assignment, why do […]
Category: Learning Sciences
Thinking About “Productive Failure” in Your Teaching
Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery, hmm… but weakness, folly, failure also. Yes: failure, most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is. Jedi Master Yoda In early October of 2021, I finally got around to visiting Martha’s Vineyard so I could see […]
Three Strategies for Building Online Community
Welcome to the new home of ITG’s Instructional Technology Blog! We’ll be posting advice, tips, and strategies for making the most of your digital tools. Check back often for ways to breathe new life into your Canvas courses, spice up your Zoom sessions, craft engaging Panopto videos, and more!
How to Help Students Become Digital Storytellers
We Emersonians know that you don’t need to be a grizzled rogue with a lute to be a storyteller. Nor do you need to read or listen passively as stories are told. It is now possible for anyone—including students—to engage in creative, academic, and journalistic […]
Access to Learning Analytics inside Canvas
This article provides instructors with tutorials for accessing course and student analytics in Canvas. Canvas Analytics provides an overview of students’ activity within your course. You can use this data in correlation with student performance to inform instructional decisions in your course. Course Analytics Overview […]
“Pedagogy” in Higher Education
Everyone seems to have a hill they will die on. A (sometimes) irrational fixation on something that will cause eye-rolling and heavy sighing among others when one starts to sound off and draw out the artillery to defend such hill. For me, that hill is […]
Ways of Implementing UDL principles in Canvas
As educators, we tend to replicate techniques we are comfortable using while assuming our students are OK with them. But in fact, our learners differ in ways that “they perceive and comprehend information that is presented to them”, and learners differ in ways in which […]
Don’t Generalize Generations
In this day and age, it seems you can’t read the Internet without coming across some kind of attention-grabbing headline about how Millennials are destroying an industry, or changing how employers are hiring, or how they present some other obstacle to keeping the world the […]
Incorporate Video Feedback in Teaching
In traditional educational contexts, providing meaningful feedback to students can enhance their learning and improve their learning performance. In online teaching contexts or in response to assignments submitted for formal assessment, providing written feedback is considered to be the most commonly used format. Research shows […]
Teaching Video Composition: The 30-Second Ad
As hard as this may be to believe, the traditional written essay isn’t always the most engaging assignment for students. I’d also venture to say that after spending the better part of a semester grading written essays, even instructors tend to wish for a change […]