Teaching Tips and Resources

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General Classroom Teaching Tips

Culturally Responsive Teaching

Difficult Moments in the Classroom

Racism and Prejudice

Student-Centered Links

Faculty-Centered Links

Mental Health and Wellness Resources for Students in Crisis

Integrating Wellness Across the Curriculum

Providing Wise Feedback to Students


General Classroom Teaching Tips

K. Patricia Cross Academy This free resource is designed for busy faculty. The site includes short teaching tip videos and downloadable resources that are applicable in a variety of courses.

September 2018 Augsburg Zoom Workshop

Creating Space for Engage Discussions, Faculty Focus

Critiquing Student Work with Dictated Comments, Tomorrow’s Professor, Stanford University

Best Ideas of Teaching 2017, The Chronicle of Higher Education

Tips for Developing Students’ Note-Taking Skills, Faculty Focus

Note-Taking Strategies to Improve Learning, Faculty Focus

Estimating Student Workload for Your Courses, Chronicle of Higher Education
This brief article introduces the Course Workload Estimator from Rice University’s Center for Teaching Excellence – a powerful tool that can help you evaluate the work that you assign your students.

Accessibility MOOC: Designing and Teaching Courses for All Learners
This free course, a collaborative effort of SUNY faculty and staff, is a free self-paced professional development course that will help you gain a better understanding of accessibility as a civil rights issue and develop the knowledge and skills you need to design learning experiences that promote inclusive learning environments. It is designed to be completed in entirety by working approximately 3 hours a week for 6 weeks. However, you are free to move as fast or slow as you like and complete only those portions that you want.

Anyone may enroll and participate. It has been designed for faculty and staff in higher education at any type or level of institution.

Why I’m Saying Goodbye to In-Class Tests
How universal design can accommodate students with disabilities.

Learner-Centered Psychological Principles
These 14 psychological principles pertain to all learners and the learning process. They are best understood as an organized set of principles; no principle should be viewed in isolation. This document is adapted from the principles developed by the American Psychological Association.

Promoting Self-Regulated Learning
Written by Joseph Erickson, Education.

The First 5 Minutes of Class
Four quick ways to shift students’ attention from life’s distractions to your course content.

Top 10 Evidence Based Teaching Strategies

Concerning Classroom Laptop Use

Five Steps to Easily Refresh Your Course

A Brief Guide to Designing Essay Assignments

Teaching Resources, Carleton College Learning and Teaching Center

Syllabus Checklist from the Center for Teaching and Learning at Connecticut College

Time Management Strategies for the Flipped Classroom

The Most Crucial Two Minutes of Class

Writing Resources

Designing Meaningful and Measurable Outcomes: A First Step in Backwards Design

Inclusive Teaching: Supporting All Students in the College Classroom: The Columbia University Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is excited to announce the release of the first ever MOOC (massive open online course) dedicated entirely to the topic of inclusive teaching in higher education. The MOOC provides practical, accessible, and usable strategies that instructors can implement in their classrooms to create and maintain a supportive learning environment for all students. The self-paced course is open to all. 

Encouragement for Online Learners, Faculty Focus

An Argument for Accepting Late Work, Faculty Focus

Knowing When to Teach Current Events

Laziness is a Myth: Helping Students Navigate the Hidden Curriculum

 “What Kind of Group Partner are You?” Instructions and Survey

Creating Accessible Content

Culturally Responsive Teaching

Diversity and Inclusion in the College Classroom
From Faculty Focus, this packet features 20 articles from faculty teaching at a wide range of institutions in the United States and Canada.

How to Talk About Diversity in the Classroom
This article from Inside Higher Ed describes how student leaders at a liberal arts college engaged faculty in conversations about race and diversity.

Racial Equity Tools
This site is home to research, articles, and teaching tips related to Racial Equity. In addition, it offers tools including strategic plans, as well as the ability to evaluate progress and results. You can also connect with others, ask questions, and share ideas.

Moving Towards Inclusive Learning and Teaching: A Synthesis of Recent Literature (2017)

Structure Matters: Twenty-One Teaching Strategies to Promote Student Engagement and Cultivate Classroom Equity

Toward Inclusive STEM Classrooms: What Personal Role Do Faculty Play?

On faculty development of STEM inclusive teaching practices.

Inclusion by Design: Tool Helps Faculty Examine Their Teaching Practices

The Theory and Practice of Culturally Relevant Education: A Synthesis of Research Across Content Areas

Benefits of Engagement with Peers, Faculty, and Diversity for Online Learners

Addressing microaggressions and acts of oppression within online classrooms by utilizing principles of transformative learning and liberatory education

Questions academics can ask to decolonise their classrooms

Difficult Moments in the Classroom

Suggestions for Facilitating Difficult Dialogues in the Classroom
This packet of resources is a companion to the webinar “Move Beyond Civility: How to Facilitate Difficult Dialogues in the Classroom.”

Managing Difficult Conversations and Conflict in the Classroom
These materials collected by Augsburg faculty Joe Erickson, Education, and Jenny Hanson, Communication Studies, offer guidance and specific models for how to productively engage in difficult discussions.

Difficult Dialogues, Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching

Responding to Difficult Moments, University of Michigan Center for Research on Learning and Teaching

A Memo to Students on Cheating, Faculty Focus

Racism and Prejudice

The Nature of Contemporary Prejudice: Insights from Aversive Racism, Social and Personality Psychology Compass

The Racism Root Kit: Understanding the Insidiousness of White Privilege

White Fragility, International Journal of Critical Pedagogy

Student-Centered Links

Supporting Transgender Students in the Classroom

A Holistic Approach to Supporting Students

Responding to Students in Distress

Test Anxiety: Causes and Remedies

First Generation College Students – Feelings of Guilt

Students Helping Students Provide Valuable Feedback on Course Evaluations

Faculty-Centered Links

Preparing for a Sabbatical – Tips for the Proposal

Mid-Career Faculty: How to Stay Engaged, Fulfilled, and Productive

Promoting Supportive Academic Environments for Faculty with Mental Illnesses

Open Doors: A New Take on Teaching Observations

Avoiding Burnout: Self-Care Strategies for Faculty

Tomorrow’s Professor
An e-newsletter from Stanford University and a resource for ongoing faculty-development tips.

Assessment During a Crisis: Responding to a Global Pandemic

Mental Health and Wellness Resources for Students in Crisis

Creating a Culture of Caring Practical Approaches for College and University Faculty to Support Student Wellbeing and Mental Health

The JED Foundation promotes emotional health and suicide prevention among college students and young adults.

Active Minds is a national organization with local chapters that promote access to mental health services and aims to reduce mental illness stigma.

NAMI Minnesota (state chapter of National Alliance on Mental Illness) has calendars of local educational and advocacy events. The NAMI Youth site contains educational and advocacy information specifically related to Minnesota youth.

Mental Health Minnesota has individual and policy advocacy programs and self-help educational resources for download or purchase.

Copeland Center for Wellness and Recovery serves as a clearinghouse for information about Wellness Recovery Action Planning, also known as “WRAP.”

Speaking of Suicide,” the blog of Dr. Stacey Freedenthal, a University of Denver researcher on suicide and suicide prevention, has good resources for professionals, educators, and lay people.

The Suicide Prevention Lifeline phone number is 1-800-273-TALK.

Crisis Connection, a Hennepin County resource, is (612) 379-6363.

Integrating Wellness Across the Curriculum

On January 7, 2016, Gen Ed (Jacqui deVries) and the Center for Wellness and Counseling (Beth Carlson) co-sponsored a workshop on “Integrating Wellness across the Curriculum.” Faculty and staff gathered to learn about and reflect on the data on student health, listen to faculty discuss their own strategies for furthering wellness in the classroom, and brainstorm next steps.

See the Executive Summary of the workshop to read about the specific data and strategies shared at the event.

Providing Wise Feedback to Students

Wise Framing of Feedback

Wise feedback: How to Provide Critical Feedback Across the Racial Divide

Wise Critiques Help Students Succeed

How to Help Students Accept Constructive Criticism: ‘Wise’ Feedback

Word to the Wise: Feedback Intervention to Moderate the Effects of Stereotype Threat and Attributional Ambiguity on Law Students (No, we don’t have a law school, but the lessons are applicable to Augsburg)

Breaking the Cycle of Mistrust: Wise Interventions to Provide Critical Feedback Across the Racial Divide

The Science of “Wise Interventions”: Applying a Social Psychological Perspective to Address Problems and Help People Flourish

Becoming a Warm Demander