UP Teaching & Learning Community Blog

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What can an instructional designer do for your course?

woman holding blue paper over her faceHave you ever worked with an instructional designer to improve a course? According to a recent study released by Inside Higher Ed, the chances are that you haven’t. Only a quarter of faculty participants in the study have experience working with an instructional designer, but those who have “overwhelmingly appreciated the experience” – a full 93% of respondents rated their time with an ID as a positive. So what gives? Why are IDs underutilized in higher ed institutions? The truth is that there is sometimes a dearth of available information about available ID resources on campuses coupled with lingering misperceptions about what, exactly, that IDs can do for you.

So, what can time with a UP instructional designer do for your course? According to the study, instructional designers can help faculty understand available technology tools and integrate them into instruction, improve the overall quality of courses, and share ways to foster engagement with 21st-century students, for a start. If you work closely with an ID, they can help you to align the learning objectives and assessments in your course and help you to work out a plan to create multimedia or other elements you may need to develop for your course.

A common refrain from Instructional Designers is that they are not there to change your teaching style – they want to help you get the technology aspects of teaching out of the way so you can focus on what matters most to you and to your students.

You’ve got nothing to lose by taking advantage of the ID resources we have on campus.  Check out these ID and Instructional Technology related links:

  • Contact Academic Technology Services and Innovation’s ID,  Maria Erb today for 1:1 consult. : erb@up.edu
  • Need a quick tip when adding course materials to Moodle? Check out UP Moodle Guides
  • Got a long commute and need something good to listen to? UPTechTalk keeps you up to date on how UP faculty are leveraging technology for all kinds of great outcomes.
  • Sipping some coffee and want something you can use right away?  Gulp down a Tech Tip and set something new in motion.

Photo by Toa Hefitiba on Unsplash

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Is There Such a Thing as a “Helicopter Professor?”

We’re on the other side of Fall Break, bracing for the tsunami that is the end of the semester, and working really, really hard. Really hard. Some colleagues have said it can feel like they are working harder for their students’ success than the students themselves. This might be a good time to reflect on the emerging phenomenon of the “helicopter professor.” Just as “helicopter parents” tend to hover near their children and strive to prevent their experiencing any kind of failure–and therefore deprive their children of the life lessons that recovering from failure can bring about– diligent professors may be on the road to helicopter status as instructors  if they can answer “yep, always” to these questions:

  1. Am I always available (24/7) to clarify criteria and answer questions about the assignments I give?
  2. Do I provide micro-level feedback on multiple drafts of student work?
  3. Do I make it impossible for students to earn low grades in my courses?
  4. Am I constantly exhausted by efforts to be present to and affirm students regardless of their actual performance on academic tasks?

Of course, we want our students to flourish, and UP faculty rightfully take pride in being invested in their success here and beyond. There’s no question it’s possible to do too little for students; but if you find yourself even a little resentful at the relative balance between your effort to teach and students’ apparent efforts to learn, it might be worth taking a deep breath and asking yourself if you are doing too much to ensure academic success and depriving your students of the benefits to be derived from a well-earned failure. Living through a D or an F in an atmosphere that supports your efforts to get back up and try again–and perhaps even to learn that you are a worthwhile person deserving of respect even after you bombed an assignment or missed a deadline–might be every bit as important a learning outcome as anything else found on our syllabi.

If you’d like to read some more on the potential downfalls of helicopter professoring, check out this article by Kristie McAllum (2016)– Managing imposter syndrome among the “Trophy Kids”: Creating teaching practices that develop independence in millennial students.Communication Education, 65 (3), 363-365.

 

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Student Mental Health: What Faculty (Might?) Need to Know

An empty lecture hall.What do UP faculty, and staff on the academic side of the University, need to know about student mental health? This question has been much on my mind the last few years as discussions about mental health in college has seemed to accelerate both locally and nationally.

At UP the issue particularly came to the fore during the 2015-2016 academic year after a tragic constellation of three student and one staff deaths by suicide. This was followed by a burst of concerted attention: Fr. Poorman created an Ad Hoc Panel on Mental Health to audit, consult, and recommend mental health services and supports for students; the organizing theme for the 2016 Faculty Development Day program was mental health; the University increased staff at the Health and Counseling Center and for related programs such as Early Alert.

There is no doubt that progress has been made. But the start of a new academic year, and the classrooms full of new faces, also offers a reminder that the challenges of educating students in head, hands, and heart are ongoing and dynamic; there is always more to do.

One thing I hope to do this year is to start integrating information about student mental health into the work of the Teaching and Learning Collaborative—and I’d love to hear from others on the academic side of the University about what would be most helpful. With the generous cooperation of Karen Eifler and others, the hope is to regularly make information available on this blog, to host periodic brownbag discussions about specific student mental health issues, and to better communicate among faculty and academic staff about ways of attending to the mental health of our students as a part of good teaching and learning.

As I noted during the 2016 Faculty Development Day program, faculty and academic staff do not need to (and really should not) become paraprofessional counselors – we have an excellent staff of real professional counselors on campus, and many other resources devoted to the mental health of our students. But if we are to truly educate our students as whole people, we do need to be aware of what we can and should do to connect students to services and supports they may sometimes need (as just one example, hopefully most faculty now know that submitting an ‘early alert’ for a student of concern is an important first step in getting access to appropriate help).

One of the important realizations I had while working on the 2015-2016 Ad Hoc Panel on Mental Health was that while there are many great support services for students across the University in departments ranging from athletics, to residence life, to public safety, to campus ministry, the faculty are the only group that will inevitably interact with every single UP student. Our classes are the one thing every UP student must do.

As such, there may also be ways to think about the educational environments we create on the academic side of the University in relation to mental health promotion. What, for example, can we do in the ways we communicate with students to help destigmatize mental health concerns? How can we help students separate their grades in courses from their value as people? What are best practices in higher education for helping faculty to be allies in creating healthy campus climates?

But this is also where I need your help; I’d love to hear from others what questions, and what insights, you have (please feel free to email me directly at guesta@up.edu). What can we on the academic side do to better open lines of communication that build off the good work done in recent years at UP related to student mental health? As a starting point, look for more in this blog space through the coming year.