University Teaching and Learning Course – Fall 2020

The University Teaching and Learning Course is offered to all new professors and on-the-job faculty. For the new comers, this course will prepare you on some important aspects of university teaching and learning, such as course design, learning assessment and feedback, teaching for student engagement and working with groups. For the experienced faculty, this course can give you new insights in your teaching and useful advice on current teaching pedagogy to enhance student learning.

In response to the latest development of COVID-19 outbreak and the special teaching arrangement announced by the University, four workshops focusing on using Zoom for teaching will be arranged for all new teaching staff. You may refer to the following information.

Program Rundown

University Teaching and Learning Course Outline:

Module 1: How Learning Works

Any effective teaching must begin with a consideration of how students learn. When it comes to teaching, you could base your teaching approaches on personal experience, opinion, habit or your colleagues’ advice - but these approaches may not be ideal if your goal is to be an effective teacher.

Understanding the science of learning can improve your teaching and help you address some common classroom challenges, such as why can’t students engage in my class? Why do students continue to apply the same ineffective learning strategies? What can I do to help students apply what they have learned? This session aims to introduce research-based learning theory coupled with practical tips to improve your teaching.

Module 2: Course Design based on Outcome-Based Education

This module will explain course design based on an Outcome Based Education (OBE) approach, which emphasizes the importance of establishing clear learning outcomes, then design teaching and learning activities and assessment tasks that align with those intended learning outcomes. The session identify the key components of an effective course design and help you applying OBE in your own context. Bring along a course outline that you would like to create the course intended learning outcomes for.

Module 3: Learning Assessment and Feedback

The process of marking, grading and giving feedback is crucial: it is the most powerful lever teachers have to orient students' study efforts towards the most important things in the most appropriate ways. Students will pay most attention to what they think is being assessed – so, in this session we will look in more detail at the implications of key areas such as: setting assessment tasks; specifying outcome criteria; helping students self-review; and giving feedback.

Module 4: Creating Rubrics for Assessment

A rubric is a grading guide that explicitly communicates the expectations for an assignment by listing a coherent set of criteria and clearly describing levels of performance quality for these criteria. Rubrics are often used for written assignments; project work; group/team work; peer evaluations; and oral presentations.  This session will help you learn about what a rubric is and how to design an effective rubric for assessment tasks. Bring to the session an assignment or assessment for which you would like to create a rubric for.

Module 5: Teaching for Student Engagement

Keeping students captivated and ready to learn is not an easy task. It required both careful planning and skillful facilitation. This module will introduce some handy and interactive student engagement techniques that can help you keeping students motivated, no matter in what class size.

Module 6: Working with Students in Teams or Groups

Having students work in groups/ teams is effective in helping them to apply concepts, rather than simply   learn about them. Working with peers enables students to pool ideas, see problems from different perspectives and benefit from analyzing, discussing and exploring their own ideas and gain feedback from their peers. This module will look into how to facilitate student learning in (1) teams where they need to work together on a project for an extended period and (2) ad-hoc groups that are formed during class where they need to work cooperatively to accomplish some learning goals within a class session.

Module 7: Zoom Meetings Basics

This workshop is designed to introduce Zoom's basic features for new faculty and teaching staff who have not used Zoom for teaching and will cover:

• interacting as a student and suggested student etiquette
• using basic features to facilitate live online lessons and manage interaction (screen share, annotations, chat, raise hands, and mute/unmute)
• understanding Zoom global settings, basic settings and scheduling recurring Zoom sessions through Canvas
• accessing and publishing recorded Zoom sessions in Canvas after a class
• viewing Zoom attendance records in Canvas after a class

Module 8: Zoom Polling

Use polling in online live lectures to gather instant responses from students, check the temperature of the class and get a feel for student understanding throughout your lesson.

• Experience Single Answer, Multiple Selections and Multiple Questions within a poll
• Creating Polls on the fly during the session
• Creating Polls before the session
• Using non-verbal YES/NO buttons as a poll
• Downloading Poll results
• Managing Polls as Host and Co-host
• Other polling options

Module 9: Zoom Whiteboard

• Use whiteboard alternatives in online live lectures for handwriting math equations, chemical reactions, etc. The module will cover:
• Experience using the Whiteboard in Zoom
• Use a webcam or a mobile phone with a mount as a visualizer (i.e. document camera) and handwrite formulae and equations on a piece of paper
• Use a pen computing device (e.g. iPad Pro, MS Surface, Wacom Tablet) and digitally write formulae and equations on the device

Module 10: Zoom Breakout Rooms

Use Zoom Breakout Rooms to facilitate group discussions during your live online class - giving students opportunities to articulate their understanding or apply new concepts learned through collaborative groupwork.

• Explore audio, video and screen share controls inside a Breakout Room
• How to set-up Breakout Rooms – manual, random or pre-assign groups
• Roles of Host vs Co-host during Breakout Rooms
• Managing groups and Pedagogical Best Practices with Breakout Rooms

Please Click here for registration.

Facilitators: CEI staff

PPT slides and recording link: https://canvas.ust.hk/courses/31892