The end of the semester and the start of a new one

University teaching has a distinct cycle tied to the semester schedule. It starts with a lot of excitement about new adventures and opportunities and finishes with a sense of exhaustion and then completion and gratification. You all have done a great job "hanging in there." It has become clear that you deal with many challenges, and I hope a number of things we covered in this course has helped you personally deal with some of those challenges.

Here is the summary of points I took away from your final blog. I formated them as suggestions you may want to follow.

GRAD 6100
Final Blog Summary

1) On identifying learning styles. If you don’t have the time or tools to do so, remember that you will always have different learning styles in your class/lab. The best approach is to offer a number of different learning activities that actively engage students: make them do something, have them reflect on what they learned from it, and what they will do with what they learned.
2) Teaching a course is all about time management. It is really easy to get caught up in teaching related activities because they are immediate and always require your attention. Appropriately limit the time you spend on teaching related activities and develop strategies that help you deal with the tasks quickly and effectively (such as using clear and simple rubrics for grading).
3) Create lesson plans in outline with a timeline. If you need to put the critical text/items students really need to know in the lesson plan or on a PPT
4) Learn to manage your time; decide on a strategy, any strategy and execute it!
5) Keep working on your writing skills and use the resources available to you.
6) Work hard on clarifying the learning objectives and goals. They should drive all activities you have the students complete and the type of assessments (quizzes, projects, exams, paper, etc) you require of them to show they understand the material. They will guide your test question writing as well.
7) Use Classroom Assessment Techniques (like the one-minute paper and others) to find out what students are thinking.
8) Go back through the semester’s materials and your textbook to refresh/renew/learn about effective teaching strategies. It’s all there.
9) Make the syllabus a tool of communication to inform the students what the course is about; make them read it by quizzing them over it (for example)
10) Designing a course takes a lot of forethought and an in-depth understanding of the material, especially what should be learned first, second, third…; in other words the sequencing (scaffolding) of material that becomes progressively more complex. No easy way around this one.
11) Know the assumptions you are making about your students, their learning and your teaching, and check if they are correct or not.
12) Reflect on this semester, learn from your experiences, and think about improvements you want to make next semester.
13) Don’t hesitate to ask for help when you’re stuck with a teaching problems or a problem student.