Category Archives: Research

“Graphic banner with bookshelf illustrations and icons (globe, books, plant, open book, laptop) displaying the title: ‘Decolonizing Your Reading List: A Practical Starting Guide.’”
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Decolonizing Your Reading List: A Practical Starting Guide

In recent years, many faculty have encountered calls to “decolonize the syllabus.  What does it mean to “decolonize the syllabus? How would a faculty member go about accomplishing this? Like other catchphrases, I really don’t know. Is it a matter of eliminating Shakespeare, Milton, Marx, and other white men and replacing them with more “diverse” authors? Or, is it a matter of re-writing the course from scratch? Should faculty start with a clean slate instead of trying to revise what already exists? Continue reading →

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The Algorithm of Good Teaching: AI vs. Human 

I was with a group of faculty members as they watched a live demonstration of a new built-in AI tool in the learning management system. With a single line of command, the vendor representative generated an entire course module in seconds: topic descriptions, learning goals, readings, PowerPoint slides, practice activities, quizzes, and exams. The quizzes and exams could even be graded automatically.

Everything many of us had spent years learning to design appeared instantly.

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“Hard” isn’t Always Rigorous: Rethinking Course Design

When faculty are tasked with designing their courses, they are often starting from scratch. In addition to creating the learning outcomes, they have to source the materials, design course activities and assessments, and develop course policies. While they are doing all of this, a question that is top of mind is: “Is this rigorous enough?” or “Are my standards high enough?” Continue reading →

Stop Guessing: How UX Research Builds Better Educational Experiences
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Stop Guessing: How UX Research Builds Better Educational Experiences

Is your syllabus clearly organized? Will your students understand it? Is your course site laid out intuitively? Can students identify where to start and how to find different kinds of information?

Just because it’s easy for you to navigate and interpret your course materials doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy for your students–you have a wealth of information about the discipline and course structure that students don’t have when they first encounter it. And it’s very difficult to look at your course through the eyes of someone who doesn’t already have that context.

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“I want that!” The Ins and Outs of Third-Party Tools and the Technology Adoption Process
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“I want that!” The Ins and Outs of Third-Party Tools and the Technology Adoption Process

“Man! I LOVE this tool!”

Have you discovered a tool that changes everything in your teaching? Maybe it makes your grading simpler or easier, or maybe it provides a more interesting or thought-provoking way to engage your students with the material. 

You may have even heard that the tool you like can integrate with your learning management system (LMS), and are wondering about the process of getting the tool adopted on a larger scale for your department, college, or even the whole institution.

Here’s a handy guide to everything “third-party”, and how you can best make use of these resources in your class. Continue reading →

Turning Deadlines From Enemies to Energizers
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Turning Deadlines From Enemies Into Energizers

In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education piece, James M. Lang and Kristi Rudenga discuss combining intrinsic motivation strategies with extrinsic motivators that have come under scrutiny, like deadlines, grades, and punitive course policies. 

These recommendations speak to the moment many educators find themselves in: We’re no longer in the acute phase of the pandemic, where instructors and students are doing the best they can amidst historically challenging circumstances that necessitated changes to many educational norms. Now, we’re grappling with a gray area that’s just as challenging, as we try to decide which educational norms need to be reinstated and which “pandemic lessons” should be integrated into our practice moving forward.

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Revamping Office Hours

I have a hard time getting students to come to my office hours. When I do have one-on-one conversations with students outside of class, they almost always feel like a breakthrough of some sort, especially when meeting with my online students that I rarely chat with synchronously. As I start to wrap up this quarter at DePaul and make my inevitable list of all the things I want to do differently next quarter, I’m looking for ways to see more students during my office hours. 

I’m not the only one trying to figure this out. Derek Bruff and Beckie Supiano reference the same study led by Jeremy L. Hsu at Chapman University. In Spring 2021, Hsu and his team surveyed 500+ STEM students and 28 instructors to figure out what they think about office hours. Students and instructors both identified “Ask questions or review material, including going more in depth into related concepts” as the top reason to use office hours. 

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Post Once, Reply Twice… But Why?

At some point–even prior to the start of COVID-19–most online instructors have relied on the ‘Post Once, Reply Twice’ formula for their online discussions. It is unclear where this formula originated, but like the Pot Roast Principle, there is no real reason we need to be bound by it. Discussions remain a pain point for most online instructors, so what can be done? How do we make our online discussions something students want to engage in? What alternatives exist?
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Brain controlled by puppet strings attached to a hand
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Mind Control: Research on how what we think changes the way our bodies respond

Like many others out there, I’ve become a bit of a podcast obsessive. I know that we can’t really multitask, but when I’m able to go for a run and engage in some learning while I’m running, it almost feels like I’m able to get a two-for-one experience.

Last year, Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast introduced me to Dr. Andrew Huberman, whose Huberman Lab podcast introduced me to Dr. Alia Crum. After hearing Dr. Crum describe the different ways she approaches researching the physiological impacts of mindset shifts, I did a deep(er) dive into her work to better understand how she’s able to empirically capture the ways our bodies respond to our brains learning new information.

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Foundational STEM courses Curated Resources and Action Items

Students watching webinar on computer, studying online.

Authors

Kyle Grice and Margaret Bell

Our faculty learning community (FLC) generated some big ideas to make STEM classrooms more equitable. Below are some big ideas to make STEM classrooms more equitable; we give a brief orientation to the concepts, with links to additional resources, and potential next steps. Of course, this is only a selection of the extensive body of work, and there is more to be done. While there are a lot of ideas within this list, the most important thing is to simply begin. Within some of these ideas are comments from your colleagues at DePaul about their experiences with implementing the ideas. While our FLC focused on STEM, these concepts could be applied to any course at DePaul. Full names of all the participants in the FLC and their contact information are at the end of the document.  

I. Spend some time in social learning and personal reflection

Big ideas: 

Meaningful and sustained change in education and academia can only come from acknowledging several key concepts: 1) Our society was built in a way that disproportionately privileges White / Male / Cis / Hetero / Able-bodied / Young / Neurotypical / Christian / High Socio-economic-status people in education, housing, employment, and health and well-being, at the implicit exclusion or explicit oppression of ‘others’. Therefore, equity, not just equality, is our responsibility in academia. 2) We all have implicit in-group biases developed from existing in our current society and, as instructors, are coming from places of power and privilege. 3) Everyone has equal and infinite potential to learn and grow, and emphasizing a growth mindset in interacting with students can be impactful. Continue reading →