Category Archives: curriculum development

Strategies for using technology effectively in the college classroom

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by Naa Amponsah Dodoo
Ph.D. student, University of Florida

Teaching with technology is in and it’s in to stay.

Most if not all educational institutions have jumped on the use of technology in the classroom bandwagon with a passion in an effort to ensure that they are keeping up with the trend of incorporating technology into the classroom. Universities also want to take advantage of the benefits that technology is thought to achieve both for the instructors and the students

The phrase “Teaching with Technology” might evoke different views of technology use in education which could include the use of PowerPoint presentations, clickers, Skype for guest speakers, discussion boards, video and audio when appropriate to complement the lesson for the day, or the use of social media for assignments or topics.  My colleague Ginger Blackstone’s blog Lectures come alive: Using technology effectively in the classroom provides great resources for different technologies that can be used in and out of the classroom that takes the teaching and learning experience to another step.

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Tips for designing experiential learning and studio teaching

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by Gary Green
Master’s student, University of Florida

As teachers, we are all competing with unlimited distractions to keep and hold our students’ attention. One way to accomplish this is to create a learning environment that physically, mentally, and emotionally engages the students.

Many universities are looking to employ these strategies, particularly in their journalism schools as the University of Florida is doing with the Innovation News Center or Arizona State is doing with the News21 laboratory. However, journalism isn’t the only discipline that can benefit from experiential teaching methods.

McKeachie’s Teaching Tips (Marilla Svinicki & Wilbert J. McKeachie, 2014) says that if you want students to transfer knowledge into the real world, it helps if the learning takes place in a real world environment.

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Lectures come alive: Using technology effectively in the classroom

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by Ginger Blackstone, M.A.
Ph.D. student, University of Florida

When it comes to the 21st Century classroom environment, lesson plans full of lectures and pop quizzes are often inadequate for engaging and retaining students’ attention.  In today’s electronically-saturated world, it’s all about technology.  Instructors looking for that upper edge to connect with their students can utilize a wide array of online resources and hi-tech gadgetry to grab students’ attention and keep it.  

Why is technology such a big deal?  The proper use of technology can enhance the learning experience by incorporating more of our senses, bringing “boring” topics to life, and helping to break social barriers that may keep shy or introverted students from participating in class discussions. Indeed, Dr. Curtis Bonk, a professor of Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University, argues that instructors have an ethical obligation to incorporate technology in their courses. Not only do today’s students expect it, but so do their future hiring managers.

That said, many of us have experienced how the misuse of technology can be equally ineffective: cluttered PowerPoints with too many tiny words for the audience to read, lengthy video clips that lull viewers into a zombie-like state, malfunctioning hardware or software that steamrolls even the most well-constructed presentations, and so forth. The key to engaging the audience is to know how to properly use technology. (And always have a Plan B if something goes awry.)
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Strategies for recognizing and promoting cultural differences in the college classroom

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by Lynsey Saunders
Ph.D. student, University of Florida

Many terms or phrases may come to mind when trying to consider what cultural diversity means.

The classroom is one of the most culturally diverse settings for students and teachers. Everyone in the classroom may share similarities, but each person’s individual differences could really help enhance the learning environment.

It’s best to look at cultural diversity in the classroom as bringing parts of a whole together. Teaching students that each one of them can contribute something innovative, unique, and worthwhile based on their backgrounds will help bring their learning experience full circle.

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Tips for handling large classes

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by Nicki Karimipour
Ph.D. student, University of Florida

Teaching a large class may not be ideal, but could become a necessary part of our teaching careers, especially at Research I institutions around the country. Based on the classroom poll, most of us consider a large class to range anywhere from 50 to100 (and more) students. Some auditoriums and lecture halls can accommodate hundreds of people.

I took some of the most common concerns from my classmates and organized them into five main categories.

Challenge #1 – Course organization

These are decisions you should be making before ever stepping foot into the auditorium or lecture hall – decisions about the syllabus and what topics will be covered in your course.

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Creating Rubrics: The art of evaluation

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by Andrea E. Hall
Ph.D. student, University of Florida

One of the biggest issues surrounding teaching today is how to effectively evaluate students. While testing is a major component, especially for our brothers and sisters in secondary education, it isn’t the be-all and end-all of the educational system as it is often made out to be.

Wilbert McKeachie’s book McKeachie’s Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers stresses the importance of validity in assessment. Just like in research, validity asks if the assessment is measuring what it is supposed to be measuring. The reality in teaching is some topics simply can’t be evaluated as effectively with tests, which is where papers and projects often become the choice method.

However, there are often more variables to consider when assigning a paper or project than filling in multiple-choice bubbles. This where creating a rubric as a guide for both the student and later for you, as the grading teacher, is useful.

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Developing and using group assignments: Bridging the theoretical and the practical

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by Jordan Neil
Ph.D. student, University of Florida

In my presentation in Mass Communication Teaching, I looked to highlight many of the facets that comprise successful group assignments, as well as the common barriers to
achieving that success. Furthermore, against a backdrop of why group assignments are important within teaching theoretically, the presentation was structured so as to also provide real-life, practical examples to draw reference from.

Although most of my research for the presentation was based off the work by educational scholar Wilbert McKeachie, in his book “McKeachie’s Teaching Tips,” I found ancillary readings online to supplement and support the textbook.

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8 tips for developing more effective lesson plans for college teaching

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by Julie Dodd

I feel like I’ve sat in on classes across the communications curriculum, as I’ve just finished reading a collection of lesson plans from the graduate students in Mass Communication Teaching.

I’ve been a part of group discussions, watched PowerPoint presentations, been assigned to a small group to compare print and digital versions of magazines, and looked for media examples to illustrate concepts discussed in class.

I’ve thought about the history of communication before iPads, televisions and newspapers. I’ve considered how best to tell a story. I’ve debated what media ethics should mean to reporters.

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Consider different learning styles when you plan your teaching

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by Jessica Marsh
Master’s student, University of Florida

A learning style is defined as the preferred, or best, method for an individual to gain knowledge. It is important to realize that though a student (or yourself) may have a preferred method of learning, learning styles are not fixed. This means that learning styles can be developed and improved over time. So if you took the quiz below and learned you were primarily an auditory learner you can still work on developing skills to become a better visual, or tactile learner.

Learning styles are unique like fingerprints. They vary from individual to individual and from subject to subject. You may use a different learning style when attempting to learn Algebra than you do attempting to learn Chemistry. Similarly learning styles can vary based on what you are being asked to do with the information (synthesize, memorize, apply, construct, etc.). When constructing assignments and presentations, it’s important to

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Strategies for creating university course syllabi

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by Julie Dodd

An important part of successful teaching is being able to design an effective course. The foundation of course design is the course syllabus.

In Mass Communication Teaching (MMC 6930), each class member determines an undergraduate communications course to create a syllabus for. Decisions for developing the syllabus include:

understandingbydesignWhat are the Student Learning Outcomes (SLO). Curriculum design and learning theory support determining the big-picture outcomes for the course and letting those guide the course structure and week-by-week instruction and assignments. A very helpful book for this big-picture to small-picture planning is Understanding by Design (Wiggins and McTighe).

How will student learning be assessed. “McKeachie’s Teaching Tips” recommends using several assessment strategies to enable students who have a variety of learning styles to demonstrate what they have learned. Assessment can include quizzes and exams, major papers or projects, team projects, and class participation.

How will the class be structured. A typical course at the University of Florida is three credits and meets three hours each week. The decision is whether the class will meet three times a week for an hour each time, once a week for three hours, or twice a week, meeting for one hour one day and two hours on the other day.

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