All masters for AU18 core and elective courses are ready for your edits! As a reminder, masters shells are used for getting your courses ready between offerings; currently, OTL refreshes the masters before each offering so they have the latest template, as well as content from the most recent offering of your courses for you to work from. Do let us know as soon as possible if you would like to use Carmen for your graduate courses as well!

Here are some important dates that are coming up:

• July 15th: Spring course Team Reports due
• August 1st: Autumn syllabi due
• August W1 – W2: Autumn masters finalized and loaded into semester shells

The summer is a great time to work on projects (with us)! We’ve offered some low-effort but potentially high-impact project ideas in Part 1 of this series … and we have even more for you in Part 2!

Back to the Basics: Start with the Team Report

The post-offering team report is a good opportunity for you and your team to reflect upon how your course went: what worked, what didn’t quite work, how did the students respond, what can be even better yet, and so on.

In terms of overall course design, the following questions may be relevant:

• Are your course goals and objectives still accurate? One way to approach this question may be to consider how well they support the latest industry expectations of day one veterinarians? Some courses, especially those earlier in the sequence, may provide such support indirectly by targeting foundational knowledge, skills, and so on. Sometimes, your students may need a little bit of help seeing the relevance of your course or your class session – this may be a good place to start tackling this need.
• How well do your contact hour outcomes support your courses goals and objectives? Adequate alignment of contact hours is essential for achieving the overall goals and objectives of your course, and often helps with the (sometimes difficult) decision of what should be specifically targeted, and what should be supplemental. Here are some tips for writing learning outcomes.
• How well do your assessments evaluate your students’ achievement on your stated learning outcomes? The content and format of your assessments should be aligned with your outcomes. For example, a multiple-choice question on what is considered Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) may not be appropriate for “explain the importance of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)”, but would certainly be for “list common PPEs in veterinary practice.” Here’s our collection of resources on developing assessments.

As you review your student evaluations as part of the team report project, you may come across additional themes or ideas that you may want to explore or discuss further. Feel free to reach out to OTL for a conversation!

Examine Your Existing Assessments

Depending on your course design plans, you may decide to reuse your existing assessments and exam questions – but there is always room for improvement! In addition to alignment, some other suggestions include:

• Rubrics that are well-constructed make it clear to all of your students what your assignments and/or assessments expect of them, and can make grading exponentially easier for you. For example, we have worked with instructors on constructing analytic rubrics for writing assignments, and the Spring 2018 Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) were graded on rubrics as well. We have a section on our website regarding rubrics in terms of transparency, reliability, and efficiency, including a recent blog post.
• The summer is also a great opportunity for you and your team to review/revise your test questions in Carmen and/or ExamSoft. Testing is most appropriate for foundational knowledge and lower-order thinking skills, but it is not impossible for a well-written question to target something more advanced, such as application. We recently hosted a faculty development session on writing test questions and item analysis, and we are currently brainstorming recommendations regarding the process of writing test questions, which we will share in a future update.

Re-imagine Your Contact Hour

Continuing the theme of alignment, the learning materials and activities in your course should support your students’ achievement on the assessments and, in turn, your learning outcomes. This is not to suggest “teaching to the test itself” – rather, the alignment helps to ensure that students are provided the information as well as experiences that they need.

In many cases, aligning materials and activities may present opportunities to re-imagine your contact hour; for example, you can assign review materials and knowledge check activities to be completed by students before each class session, and reserve class time for discussion, elaboration, and/or application:

• Carmen and Top Hat are great tools to implement your out-of-class experiences. Options in Carmen include modules, assignments, quizzes, and discussions; options in Top Hat include file uploads, interactive pages, questions, and discussions that can either be assigned for review or for homework.
• During a class session, Top Hat is a great tool for quick knowledge checks and discussions. In addition, the Center for Teaching and Learning at Yale University provides a list of active learning strategies that you can implement to further engage your students in thinking and doing.
  • As we work with our Clinical and Professional Skills Lab (CSPL) partners to design and develop the learning units, we have also been brainstorming activity ideas that takes advantage of the new space.
  • In the meantime, the Wenger Lab is an existing space that is optimized for active learning, equipped with movable furniture and computers/screen for group work.
• Lastly, the portability and versatility of the iPads presents opportunities for learning activities in terms of interactive / multimedia content, digital creation, as well as collaboration. We’d love to talk with you if you have ideas!

While the summer break has just begun for (most of) our students, Teaching and Learning already has its sight set on the upcoming Autumn 2018 courses – in fact, we have just finished refreshing the Autumn core courses, and they are now ready for your edits, design/redesign work, and so on! We will do the same with electives in the next week or so.

With the students gone, the summer is not only a great time to slow down and recharge (as much as you are able to, that is), but also for projects (with us)! In fact, there are a couple projects that we think are relatively low-effort, but would have potentially large impact on your students learning experiences!

This is the first set of recommendations that we have – stay tuned for more in the following weeks.

When in Doubt, Start with your Syllabus

While a mere document, the syllabus is your students’ first look into the ins-and-outs of your course – who teach it, what are they expected to know and be able to do (i.e. outcomes), how would their learning be assessed (read: how are they graded), what are the academic integrity expectations (i.e. the honor code and assessment types), how can they get help (i.e. office hours), and so on. For this reason, the syllabus should be informative and accurate, while concise enough that it’s not an exercise in comprehension skills.

The Curriculum Management System (CMT) provides a great outline as well as templates for what should go in your syllabus.

One step further: While CMT-generated syllabi serve as official record, you may find it a fun exercise in creativity to transform your syllabi in something a little more designed, as long as the information is consistent – something like this, for instance. Read on for more ideas …

A Little “Incentive” to Read the Syllabus

Ever find yourself devoting most of your first class session reading through the syllabus verbatim? Answering students’ questions about the course when the answers are readily available on the syllabus? Well, you may need a syllabus quiz! The Office of Distance Education and eLearning recommends a required syllabus quiz at the beginning of the course, with the release of other course content contingent upon receiving a passing score on the quiz. For just a little bit more “incentive”, you can attach a point value to your syllabus quiz.

While you may continue to find it beneficial to engage in syllabus Q&A during your first class session, the syllabus quiz should help with filtering out the basic questions you might be asked otherwise. Contact Teaching and Learning if you are interested!

One step further: All DVM courses come with a “Course Q&A” discussion board that you can take advantage of – students may already have satisfactory answers to each others’ questions, and you can intervene / elaborate when and where needed. Many instructors have also used the Announcements functionality to share answers to individual students’ questions with the entire class.

“Face Time” with your Incoming Students can Start Before First Class Session

A short course introduction video can be an invaluable tool that serves multiple purposes: 1) it’s a great opportunity for you to talk briefly about your course, its purpose, why it is important, its structure, and so on; 2) it puts a face to your name; and 3) it can be your students’ first opportunity to get to know who you are as a professional, as an instructor, and/or even an individual from a personal perspective. This social presence can be especially in an online course, where “face time” with instructors can be limited if not non-existent.

Below is an example from the Online Master of Learning Technologies program – if you are interested, contact Teaching and Learning!

One step further: We have updated the Carmen template to include a course banner area – this provides even more opportunity for you to customize your course landing page! Below are some examples.