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Hub Newsletter, January 2022

Teaching In-Person in Times of Uncertain Attendance

We start another semester on uneven footing. If you are teaching an in-person course, you might be thinking about how to accommodate a fair number of missing students who are staying home to quarantine, to care for children, or who are sick themselves. Think about your students as partners (as Maya Barak’s Hub Affiliate work suggests) and come together with your students to support quarantined classmates for the next few weeks:

  • Use a flipped approach and make all the work for your in-person class accessible online; during in-person sessions, have students work in groups on the problem sets, discussion boards, google docs, padlets etc
  • A Learner Analysis is often recommended in online courses to help faculty better understand students who aren’t sitting right in front of them. They are also useful for in-person classes, particularly this semester when you might not see all of your students in the first few weeks. Here is a sample learner analysis (google doc that you must copy) that you could adapt to fit your course.
  • If you do lecture in class, ask your students to collaborate on a google doc for shared class notes so that missing students can catch up from the student perspective
  • Consider some of the resources on resilient teaching:
  • If you are teaching for the first time in-person since the pandemic started, check out the Hub’s blog post from last semester about Masking in the Classroom.

Don’t forget that these strategies for resilient classes could also work for you if it’s *you* that’s in quarantine, caring for children whose school has moved remote, or facing any other disruption caused by this moment in the pandemic. Set up a meeting with a Hub Instructional Designer to talk through any of these approaches.

Student-Centered Strategies for Online Courses

Student persistence rates increase in online courses when students feel a sense of belonging and connectedness. These Hub Blog posts suggest small changes you can make that will build a sense of connection in online and hybrid courses:

Building Community in Online Classes

Checking in: How to collect and respond to student feedback online

Why do students feel like they are “teaching themselves” and how can instructors respond?

Tired of “post once, respond twice”? Rethinking discussion board activities

Time-Saving Strategies for Providing Feedback in Online Classes

Easy ways to make time for students

Teach Full-Time in the Active Learning Classroom, this Semester!

This is a late breaking development but the Active Learning Classroom, 1212 ML, is again ready to accommodate up to 3 courses taught full-time in the room during this semester. The application deadline is Wednesday, January 12th, 2022. It’s a short turnaround but also a short application.

The criteria used to select courses will be:

1) feasibility and fit of the course redesign for the ALC space/technology
2) enrollment
3) priority given to faculty who have not yet had a course scheduled in the ALC

If you are interested in teaching full-time in the ALC, please submit an application as soon as possible and before Wednesday, Jan 12th, with the goal to move your course during the second week of classes.

Creative Teaching Fund, due Feb 15

The Creative Teaching Fund is a resource to support innovative teaching with a focus on making learning more engaging, challenging, fulfilling, and effective for students. Applications are accepted on an ongoing basis, for amounts less than $1000, or on February 15th, for amounts up to $3000.

Hub Affiliates, a New Year

Hub Affiliates develop expertise on a teaching and learning topic, of their own choosing, for the benefit of the campus teaching community. Our work in the Hub is connective – we want to be the vehicle that helps faculty share thoughtful teaching strategies with each other.

We are grateful to have worked with last year’s Hub Affiliates:Maya Barak – Students as Partners 
Yi-Su Chen – Authentic Assessment 
Katherine LaCommare – Case Based Learning 
Michael MacDonald – Labor Based Grading 
Troy Murphy – Developing Students’ Oral Presentation Skills 
Carmel Price – Supporting Working-Class Students 
Samir Rawashdeh – Interdisciplinary Project Based Learning 
Alan Wiggins – Open Educational Resources  
Tian An Wong – Teaching Social Justice in Math  

You can read more about their Hub Affiliates projects on the Hub blog and maybe reach out to them if your work connects to theirs.

We are also thrilled to welcome this year’s Hub Affiliates:

Patrick Beauchesne
Jill Darling
Grace Helms Kotre 
Emily Luxon


Stay tuned for more information about their projects

Images by Kelli Tungay on Unsplash and used with permission