Ball State UniversityThe Teaching Innovation Blog

If you’re frustrated by the restrictions that learning objectives place on your course, read this meditation on how objectives can open possibility, rather than closing it down.

Teaching is an act of navigating constraints and agency – and, incidentally, helping students navigate the same. Perhaps you must use a particular textbook, but what chapters you assign are up to you. Perhaps you must meet standards set by an external body, but how you scaffold instruction to help students reach those standards is flexible.

All photos by author. This photo taken in Sunkhaze Meadows National Wildlife Refuge – Milford, ME.

It can be tempting to slot learning objectives into the category of “constraints,” especially if you do not have control over them. You may see objectives as the guardrails for your course, outlining what is permissible in the course and what is not.

There is often joy – and deep learning – to be had in the margins. In the moments when class goes “off the rails.” In the moments when students’ interest sparks and intrinsic motivation guides engagement more than the bounds of the course. In the small human moments that help students feel like they belong, and they matter.

If you value these moments, the guardrails of learning objectives can feel like an obstacle. You deliberately step over them, and they call to you, saying “What you’re doing is not allowed.”

I hope, though, that courses are more of a beautiful hike up a mountain than a hectic drive down a featureless interstate highway. There’s gradual progress, challenging stretches, and lookout points to enjoy the view.

This photo taken in Savannah National Wildlife Refuge – Hardeeville, SC.

Hikes don’t have guardrails – they have guideposts. Marked trees, metal posts, and wooden signs help hikers navigate the trail.

Guideposts don’t stop you from going off trail – in fact, they help you go off trail by giving you a clear place to return to the trail. Guideposts allow you to embrace the beauty and tranquility of hiking, while working consistently toward the goal of reaching the summit.

Guideposts are subtle and helpful nudges, not imposing barriers.

Learning objectives as guideposts can help you identify when and how to go off trail. They can permit and encourage exploration and spontaneity. They can give you a place to return to the trail you’ve set out to tackle.

Where are your students hiking to? What sights will they see along the way? Learning objectives should not limit possibility – they should open up possibility by helping students see what they can do by putting in the work of learning.

This photo taken in Acadia National Park, Schoodic Peninsula – Winter Harbor, ME.
Facebook
Twitter

Explore the greatest hits of 2023 on the Teaching Innovation Blog and discover something to help spark your next course development project.

As the year winds down and you begin preparing your courses for next semester, what are you hoping to change? In the spirit of “small teaching,” we encourage you to consider making one change to your courses that you can implement (relatively) quickly and will make a meaningful impact on your students. 

Whether it’s revitalizing a stale discussion board, incorporating AI into your teaching practices, or exploring equitable grading practices, the Teaching Innovation Blog has ideas and resources to help spark your course development. Below are some of our greatest hits of 2023, with brief descriptions of how you might use them to rethink an element of your course.

Micro-learning: The Game-Changer in Higher Education

Develop a micro lesson. This is a (fairly) quick task because a micro lesson addresses a specific concept and should be short and to the point. Micro lessons can take many forms:  

  • a short video explaining the concept  
  • an infographic highlighting key points  
  • a brief article or blog post  
  • a simple quiz or set of practice questions 

You Don’t Need to be a YouTube Star

Create one course video. You don’t need to be an editing wizard to make great videos; you don’t even need to be charismatic. What you do need: purpose, passion, and personality. State your ‘why’ in your video will ground the focus of the video. Let your passion shine. Any enthusiasm you can convey will help students connect with you. Finally, be yourself, and don’t worry about re-recording small mistakes. Intrusive pets welcome. 

Creating Space and Connections with Discussion Board Roles in Canvas 

Revitalize a Discussion Board with student roles. If you incorporate online discussion boards in your course, you may have noticed a trend: the same students do the heavy lifting. Assigning students discussion roles can help facilitate equitable dialogue. Discussion roles can include conversation starters and closers, so the students are engaged in co-creating knowledge in meaningful and diverse ways. 

How to Use ChatGPT as an Ideation Partner (for You and Your Students)

Ask ChatGPT a question. Think of ChatGPT as a course development ideation partner. In this blog, the writer outlines helpful ways to give ChatGPT constraints and guidance for quick but focused and useful responses. For example, the writer shares 3 tricks that can help you give more context to ChatGPT. 
 
Less Worry, More Learning: How Ungrading Has Changed My Student Experience

Explore ungrading, the practice of decentering the grade to recenter learning. This blog provides a student-focused reflection in an ungraded course. Grades never motivated the writer to reflect on their learning, but rather motivated them to produce the minimum standard for an A. In an ungrading model, the writer found joy in learning, and went above and beyond what was expected.

Want to dive deeper? Check out more posts from the Teaching Innovation Blog.

Facebook
Twitter

Video games often strike a balance between challenging players and forgiving them for not being perfect. How might forgiveness in games lead us to new insights about learning design? 

In platform video games – from the original Super Mario Bros. (1985) to more modern platformers like Celeste (2018) – you control a character who makes often difficult jumps across gaps, spikes, or other hazards. One trick developers use to make these games feel better to play is “coyote time.” 

Named after the Wile E. Coyote cartoon, coyote time is a brief period of time after running off a platform where the game will still register the player pressing the jump button. This means that players don’t have to be absolutely perfect to complete a jump – there’s a small amount of wiggle room. As a result, players are less likely to be frustrated by the feeling that they actually did make the jump, but the game didn’t recognize their input. 

Coyote time in Celeste (2018)

Of course, coyote time makes me think of teaching and learning. It makes me think of all the times we demand precision from students – both in terms of timing and performance. It makes me think of how it would feel for students to have grace windows and large error bars in acceptable performance. It makes me think of the many students who, when they try to run and jump, instead fall into a pit of spikes because they were just a little off. 

Celeste is still a very challenging game, but by adding in coyote time (and many other forgiveness mechanics like it), the developers keep it from feeling frustrating and punishing. This is what I hope our courses strive for: stretching students and challenging them without arbitrarily punishing them for not being perfect. 

This is a delicate balance to achieve. In moments of tension between challenge and forgiveness, I tend to prefer forgiveness. After all, tolerance for error is one of the key tenets of Universal Design. However, I think games can teach us a lot about how to design experiences that are challenging and yet still work to minimize the consequences of errors, mistakes, and imperfections. 

In this post, I’ll explore a few other forgiveness-adjacent game mechanics similar to coyote time. I won’t be suggesting specific teaching practices. Rather, I’ll discuss what I think these mechanics illuminate about the experience of playing a challenging yet forgiving game. By looking outside the world of teaching and learning for inspiration, I hope that we can think creatively about how to create the best possible experience for students. While I may mention a few teaching practices that come to mind, I will mostly be leaving the connections to you, dear reader. 

Let’s dive in. 

Invincibility Frames: Stopping Mistakes from Compounding 

Many games have to address the problem of mistakes compounding on each other. For example, let’s say your game includes combat and is set in a room with walls. A group of enemies backs you into a corner. You get hit, losing some health. Then, to get past the enemies and out of the corner, you inevitably have to take more hits and lose more health. Your mistake (getting cornered) can thus lead to your situation getting worse and worse with little you can do to remedy the situation. 

One solution many games use to deal with this situation is “invincibility frames” or “iframes.” Iframes are a brief period of time after getting hit where your character is immune to damage. For example, in Hades, a game quite prone to the cornering issue I mentioned above, getting hit gives you a brief shield that displays as a gauzy bubble around your character. 

Hades (2020)

While these iframes are short, they make a big difference to how easily players can recover from a bad situation. This is tacitly acknowledged in Hades by the fact that “Hell Mode” disables the iframes entirely. 

Many games also include iframes for situations other than getting hit, such as when dodging an attack. In Hades, you can dash, a very quick form of movement that also works as a dodge mechanic. When you dash, there is a brief period of invulnerability, which makes it much easier to get out of a tricky situation. 

Iframes make me think of all the ways that mistakes in learning can compound on each other. They make me think of how we can give a safety net when students are struggling or backed into a corner. They make me think that sometimes, challenges are best tackled when you know you are going to be invincible, even for just a second. 

Get new posts by email

Enemy Awareness: Failure Is a Path, Not an Immediate Result 

Stealth games have you sneaking around, navigating around guards, cameras, and other traps to reach a particular objective. These enemies are often too dangerous for you to take on in an outright firefight, hence the need for stealth. When enemies spot you, you’ve essentially failed and may need to start over again. Most stealth games would be immensely frustrating if the instant an enemy saw you, they opened fire. 

Stealth games get around this by having “enemy awareness” systems. In these systems, enemies who spot you are moved into an alert state, rather than immediately opening fire. In the alert state, the enemies may change their patrol patterns to look for you. But, crucially, if you’re able to get behind cover or get away from the enemy’s search pattern, you can avoid detection. As a result, failure is not an immediate result of your mistake but a longer path of multiple mistakes. 

Some games, such as Metal Gear Solid, add even more layers to the failure path. For example, if an enemy spots you, they will go to radio it in. During this time, you can potentially dispatch that enemy, returning you back to your original stealthy state. 

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (2010)

Enemy awareness makes me think of the ways that students are immediately impacted by mistakes and not given opportunities to right course. It makes me think of the significant learning (and joy) that happens when we have to recover from our mistakes and are given space to do so. It makes me think that failure feels much better when it is the result of a long string of actions, rather than one or two mistakes. 

Catch-Up Mechanics: Helping Struggling Players Find a Path Forward 

Competitive games often have to address players who have “fallen behind,” since their natural tendency may be to disengage or give up entirely. If you can’t see any path forward, why would you keep playing the game? 

Games often address this issue with the use of “catch-up mechanics,” mechanics that favor the player who is losing, hinder the player who is winning, or both. While video games often include catch-up mechanics, board games are even better at this. 

For example, Power Grid is a board game where you are building your power grid across cities in the United States. Two of the main mechanics of the game are buying power plants at auction and buying fuel to power your plants. Every round, the game determines who is winning and losing based on how large their power grid is. 

Power Grid (2004)

Then, during the power plant auction, the winning player goes first and the losing player goes last. In this auction, the last player is at an advantage, because they can patiently wait out the auction and essentially choose their preferred power plant. Similarly, when buying resources, the winning player goes last and the losing player goes first. Here, buying first is an advantage because you can get cheaper fuel. 

As a result, players who are losing in Power Grid have two significant advantages: they can essentially choose whatever power plant they most want, and they can purchase cheaper fuel than anyone else. This gives them a path forward: a way to climb out of a hole and, with some skillful play, potentially win the game. 

Of course, this example is from a “zero sum game,” a game where one person winning means another person losing. This is, thankfully, not how education works, so here’s a similar idea to consider: automatic health regeneration. 

Many games that include health mechanics will include some way to automatically regenerate health when you are low on health. This ensures that players who are in a bad spot (low on health) have a path forward to “getting back on track.” Crucially, these games will not restore all of a player’s health but usually only a portion that will ensure the player isn’t completely stuck and doomed to die. 

Catch-up mechanics make me think of the ways we discourage learners who fall behind. They make me think that having a possible path forward, even if it’s a tricky one, can encourage persistence and engagement. They make me think that opening a door is always preferable to closing a door. 

Conclusion

I’ve shared four game mechanics related to forgiveness: 

  • Coyote time forgives players for not being perfect in timing their inputs. 
  • Invincibility frames stop mistakes from compounding and allow players to escape a bad situation. 
  • Enemy awareness systems allow failure to be a path, a consequence of multiple decisions and not just one or two mistakes. 
  • Catch-up mechanics give players who are behind a clear path forward, encouraging them to continue playing and striving to win. 

My hope is that by considering these mechanics, you may have some new perspectives on your teaching practices and how you work to both challenge and forgive students. I encourage you to share your reflections in the comments below. 

Facebook
Twitter

References

Burgstahler, Sheryl. “Universal Design: Process, Principles, and Applications.” University of Washington DO-IT. April 12, 2021. https://www.washington.edu/doit/universal-design-process-principles-and-applications. 

Thorson, Maddy. “Celeste & Forgiveness.” Maddy Makes Games. https://maddymakesgames.com/articles/celeste_and_forgiveness/index.html. 

Learn how to use ChatGPT to help you (or your students) quickly and creatively generate and explore ideas.

Most of the higher ed discourse about ChatGPT centers on its ability to produce human-readable text. However, much more fertile ground can be found in using ChatGPT as part of the learning process. For example, ChatGPT can help students compare and critique text, conduct research, spark discussion, and organize their ideas. 

One way I’ve found value out of using ChatGPT is as an ideation partner. AI chatbots can serve as a sounding board and let you explore and iterate ideas quickly and creatively. 

This approach to ChatGPT can work well for both students and teachers – I’ve even used ChatGPT to help me ideate on emails, vacations, and a tabletop roleplaying campaign. As I explore how this approach can work for both you and your students, I’ll highlight some techniques you can use to improve your “prompt writing,” or the process of communicating with ChatGPT to produce positive results. If you want more information on prompt writing, I recommend Anna Bernstein’s video “Master the Art of Prompt Writing.” 

A caveat: This article will be somewhat uncritical toward ChatGPT. Critically evaluating AI tools like ChatGPT is both valuable and necessary, but I simply do not have the space to do so here. I encourage both you and your students to not simply use ChatGPT but to consider what role you want it to play in your work. Approaching ChatGPT with a healthy amount of skepticism will serve you well. 

How to Give ChatGPT Effective Context: Coming Up with Assignment Ideas (Faculty) 

Let’s say we want assignment ideas for a graphic design course, specifically for a unit that teaches students about color theory. We could just ask ChatGPT to “come up with ideas for an assignment in a graphic design course that helps students learn color theory.” This may generate some good ideas, but it may also just give you lots of variations on the same general thing. 

Instead, giving ChatGPT constraints and guidance goes a long way. A good first step here is to tell it how many ideas to give you. For example, you can ask, “Give me 10 ideas for an assignment in a graphic design course that helps students learn color theory.” 

Even still, ChatGPT is likely to produce more “misses” than “hits.” When I put in the above prompt, only 2 or 3 of the 10 ideas were actually viable. 

Of course, that’s largely my fault. The above prompt gives very little context for ChatGPT to incorporate. Who are my students? What are the learning goals? What other types of assignments am I using in the course? 

There are 3 tricks that can help you give more context to ChatGPT. First, try telling ChatGPT who it is. For example, “You are a faculty member teaching at a mid-size public university in the Midwest.” This helps you give some general background context that can inform more specific details through the next two techniques. 

Next, write your prompt and follow it with this: “Don’t do anything yet. Instead, tell me what you think I’m asking you to do.” This will result in ChatGPT stating how it is interpreting your prompt, and you will have the opportunity to correct it. In this case, I realized that through my wording, ChatGPT thought the entire course was about color theory, not the specific assignment. This gave me the opportunity to correct that error. 

Finally, after confirming what ChatGPT thinks you are asking, write, “Before you begin generating ideas, ask me 10 questions that can help you do your job better.” This is extremely effective, since it allows ChatGPT to get context without you trying to think of every possible detail. For example, in this case, here are the 10 questions that ChatGPT asked me (which are all valid questions to ask). 

ChatGPT conversation – read a text transcript

By correcting any errors in ChatGPT’s thinking and having it ask you questions to gather context, you can generate a list of mostly reasonable, viable ideas. In the next section, I’ll shift gears to using it as a student so we can examine how to iterate on and dive deeper into specific ideas. 

How to Explore Ideas: Coming Up with Research Topics (Students) 

Let’s say you’re a student working on a research project where you have to come up with your own research topic related to Ball State’s campus. You have ChatGPT generate a list of ideas, perhaps using some of the techniques detailed above. This is where the real magic of using ChatGPT as an ideation partner begins. 

Again, there are 3 tricks that can help you get closer to an idea that is “ready to go.” First, consider drilling down into a specific idea that interests you by asking, “Tell me more about X idea.” If you follow the previous advice to have ChatGPT list a specific number of ideas, you can simply refer to an idea by number. For example, if you’re interested in idea #7 about the cost of dining halls on campus, you can say, “Tell me more about #7.” ChatGPT will then expand upon that idea and give you more things to think about. 

Next, you can ask for variations on that idea: “Give me 10 variations on #7.” At that point, ChatGPT will create “spin-off” ideas, such as ideas about cost disparities between different dining halls or issues surrounding the cost of healthy or organic food options. Many of these ideas will be clunkers, but that’s okay – you can always ask for more variations. These variations can lead you down interesting avenues, and you may even want to ask ChatGPT to synthesize multiple variations into a single idea. 

Finally, you can ask ChatGPT to expand on an idea, but with a twist. “Expand on #7, but focus specifically on the cost of chain restaurants on campuses, such as Taco Bell or Starbucks.” Once ChatGPT explores this idea, you may want to return to one of the previous techniques, such as asking it to drill down more, clarify, or spin off variations of the idea.

Conclusion: ChatGPT’s Power as an Ideation Partner  

ChatGPT is by no means a perfect ideation partner – it gets things wrong and comes up with unviable ideas. However, it is quicker than us humans will ever be, and it is surprisingly creative in its ability to combine ideas and come up with variations. Also, importantly, it’s free, meaning that you don’t have to ask for someone’s time or energy to come up with and explore ideas. 

The next time you’re ideating on something – whether it’s meal planning or writing a research paper or figuring out how to plan a course – try using ChatGPT as an ideation partner. Just make sure to give it context and help it explore ideas so that you can make the most of this tool. 

How have you used ChatGPT in your work or personal life? How could you use it to help you explore ideas? Share your thoughts in the comments below. 

References

Anna Bernstein, “Master the Art of Prompt Writing: 6 Tips to Writing Better Prompts,” YouTube video, 13:56, May 26, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPf251bDKY0.

Read reflections from Ball State faculty who completed ACUE’s Course in Effective Teaching Practices.

Beginning in 2020, the Division of Online and Strategic Learning has supported a group of Ball State faculty, selected through an application process, to complete ACUE’s Course in Effective Teaching Practices. Delivered asynchronously through Canvas, this course engages faculty in content and activities in 4 main areas: 

  • Creating an Inclusive and Supportive Learning Environment 
  • Promoting Active Learning 
  • Inspiring Inquiry and Preparing Lifelong Learners 
  • Designing Learner-Centered and Equitable Courses 

Here is how Director of Faculty Engagement, Kathleen Jacobi, sees this course fitting into Ball State’s faculty development:

“ACUE’s Course in Effective Teaching Practices compliments many of the themes and interactions employed throughout Ball State’s faculty development programming. Participants, referred to as Faculty Learners, join a cohort of colleagues representing a cross-section of disciplines and teaching experience. They engage with the content through viewing, reading, and application. Interaction with peers occurs both online and in-person as they reflect on their experiences implementing strategies and techniques outlined in the modules. Since February of 2020, over 60 instructors have earned the Credential in Effective College Instruction.” 

I completed this course in Academic Year 22-23 and asked Ball State University faculty in my cohort to reflect on their experience. Below are their thoughts on how the experience has helped them innovate their teaching. You’ll read about a variety of teaching practices, including: 

  • How to open get off to a fast start on Day 1 
  • Using “start-stop-continue” to gather meaningful student feedback 
  • Closing out classes with accountability 

Meet the Faculty Contributors 

Photo of Dr. Ruth Jefferson

Dr. Ruth Jefferson is an Associate Professor of Special Education at Ball State University, working with current and future teachers. She has conducted research primarily in the areas of Response to Intervention (RTI/MTSS), evidence-based practices in reading, at-risk youth, and higher education/community engagement Ruth holds many teaching and administrative certifications, most notably in the areas of reading, learning disabilities, mild disabilities, elementary education, and special education administration. She has extensive experience in PreK-12 education, both in teaching and in administration, and discovered early in her career a passion for helping reluctant readers become avid ones. 

Photo of Chris Wilkey

Chris Wilkey is a three-time Ball State University alum who has come back to teach the Cardinals of the future. In addition to teaching digital marketing and sales, Chris manages the Center for Professional Selling. In this role, he connects students directly with industry partners for engaging and meaningful interactions and connections. 

Jennifer Hill teaches anatomy and physiology courses at Ball State University. She has several decades of teaching experience in biology, health, and education courses. Lifelong learning is very important to Jennifer, as is improving the learning experience for her students. 

Why did you decide to participate in the ACUE course? 

Ruth: I am a life-long teacher and life-long learner. I am always looking for ways to improve and update my pedagogy and the Effective Teaching Practices course through ACUE sounded like something that would be practical and based on current standards in our profession. 

Chris: I decided to participate in the ACUE course for my students. I want to be the best in the classroom and I know that it takes continuous improvement to do so. As a Ball State alum, I want to keep up the quality and the reputation of the education at Ball State for future generations. 

Jennifer: I chose to participate in the course to learn some techniques to help me improve connection with my students in large group classes. 

What has the ACUE course prompted you to reconsider in your teaching practices? 

Chris: The whole dang thing. Each time I did a module, I started this whole “what do I even know about teaching” craziness. And it was a good thing. I was already doing some of the things mentioned in the course, but it was nice to see the logic behind it. 

Get new posts by email

What have you implemented from the ACUE course, and how did it go? 

Chris: The one that jumps to my mind right away is the way I adjusted my first week of classes. Instead of having a day to review the syllabus, I’m building lessons that starts day one and gets the class active and involved right away. The reason I changed my course was my own experience at Ball State. I always thought the first week was wasted when we were just reading a syllabus. By putting content front and center the first week, my students are engaged and connected right away. In my classes this past semester, I had a stronger connection with the students because of this switch. 

Author’s Note: Chris has kindly shared some student reflections after the first week. View Chris’s student reflections here. 

Jennifer: One thing which I implemented from the ACUE course which instantly made a huge difference was doing a “start-stop-continue” survey a few weeks into my classes, long before student evaluations are collected. Basically asking the students what they would like to have added to the course (start), what is not working well (stop), and what is going great (continue). This survey gave me immediate information from a student’s point of view of whether things were working and allowed me to adjust coursework before the class could derail. 

What has been your biggest challenge when implementing practices from the ACUE course? 

Chris: Time and more time. There are so many other things I would like to work into my classes that I learned from ACUE, but I just need to have more time to do it. I took tons of notes and I hope to start adding more things into my classes over the summer and the coming semesters. 

Jennifer: The biggest challenge has been fitting some really great ideas into classes which are often too short in terms of face-to-face meeting times. 

What’s something surprising you learned from the ACUE course? 

Ruth: I guess the most surprising thing that I learned is how many of the things I am already (at least partially) implementing! It was encouraging to know that many of my practices are based in current research and just needed some simple updating. I think this may be a benefit from the ILS training that I participated in a few years ago. This new ACUE course was a logical and effective next step! 

Chris: This is going to sound strange, but I was surprised that this wasn’t a requirement for all of the professors at BSU. We spend so much time talking about teaching, service, and research and rarely do any training on teaching. I learned so much and I feel like every professor could benefit from this course. 

What is your biggest takeaway from the ACUE course? 

Ruth: I think the word that kept appearing in my reflections was “intentionality”. In addition to careful planning, I rely on my intuition and experience as I present to and work with students. I plan to continue being as flexible as possible as it brings a spontaneous aspect to our classes together. However, I also plan to be more intentional about some things, particularly class closings and accountability. Ideas for intentionally planning the CLOSINGS as well as the CONTENT really spoke to me! 

Chris: Never stop learning. If not for yourself, do it for your students (and possibly their future students). And there is a right way to teach and it’s not what most professors practice on a regular basis. 

Jennifer: My biggest take away was that this is a course which was very much worth my time and that every instructor can learn something valuable from it. I would recommend it to seasoned faculty, as well as to people new to college teaching. We simply are not taught the concepts presented in this course before we are placed in the classroom, and we all have something to learn to make classes better for our students. The course allows you to interact with some great people at BSU who also care about student learning. 

Conclusion 

Special thanks to Ruth Jefferson, Chris Wilkey, and Jennifer Hill for contributing. If you’re interested in participating in the ACUE Course in Effective Teaching Practices, be on the lookout for more information through Canvas announcements. 

How do you reflect on your teaching practices? Let us know in the comments below. 

Facebook
Twitter

“Best practices” is a bad way of looking at teaching. How can we frame teaching practices more productively to encourage experimentation and innovation?

I’ve got a gripe I’d like to share. My hope is that my griping might help you consider your teaching practices in a new light. Here goes: I hate the phrase “best practices.” 

My background includes two industries – marketing and teaching – where this phrase is unavoidable. Best practices pop up in virtually every presentation, workshop, article, and more. Every time it happens, it feels intellectually lazy to me. “Best practices” ignores the complexity, nuance, and interconnectedness of ideas and practices in favor of a monolithic concept of what works and what doesn’t work.  

The reality is that “best practices” fail all the time. A “best practice” for holding a class discussion may work on one section and completely flop on another. These are not necessarily flaws with the practices, but flaws in the framing of the idea that there are “best” practices and that following them will lead you to a better place. 

Similarly, “worst practices” work all the time. When I managed social media ads for a living, we had one campaign with an image of a stick figure for the ad. It was, frankly, a terribly constructed image that I would never recommend anyone run as an ad. Over several years, it was our best-performing ad in the entire campaign, which included dozens of “better” ads. 

I have many gripes with “best practices,” so here are 5 reasons I dislike the phrase. Stick around, since I won’t just be griping – I’ll also share alternative ways to frame “best practices” and suggestions for what to do when you find yourself in yet another “best practices” presentation. 

5 Ways “Best Practices” Misses the Mark 

#1 – It Ignores Context 

Context is absolutely key to understanding whether or not something will work. Even the most ironclad “best practice” can easily be broken by transplanting it to a new context. Every context in teaching is aggressively different – the moment in time, the specific group of students, the landscape of higher ed, the social issues of the time, and so on. This is often contained in the old teaching adage that “every class has its own personality.” 

There’s a larger issue at play here in which research and scholarship is universalized out of its original context. A study of two psychology courses might find that a particular strategy increases student engagements, but when that strategy is discussed, the context of the original courses and students is lost. I engaged with this in my previous article, “There Is No Perfect Length for Instructional Videos,” in which I highlighted that much of the advice for video length comes from a single study from massive open online courses (MOOCs). 

#2 – It Presumes a Universal “Best” for Everyone 

The previous point may suggest shifting from “best practices” to “best practices for this specific audience and context.” This doesn’t work, though, because it presumes a single conception of what is best for everyone in an audience. 

One of the teachings of Universal Design for Learning is that every human being is a unique constellation of personality, motivation, social factors, prior learning, skills, knowledge, and much more. In other words, what works for one person may not work for another. This is why variability is central to the UDL framework and all 3 UDL principles begin with “Provide multiple means of…” 

On the other hand, “best practices” generally suggests that there are practices that work “overall.” This is far more true for overall approaches and philosophies than it is for specific practices. For example, UDL as an overall framework has a strong research base that transcends disciplinary contexts. Specific UDL practices, though, may not always work in a certain context and may need to be adapted for your specific context. 

Get new posts by email

#3 – It’s Reductive, Evaluative, and Subjective 

By reducing the plurality and complexity of different practices to “best practices,” we lose a lot of the depth of the range of possible practices. In the process, we are also evaluating and sorting, saying that certain practices get to count as “best” and others do not. 

As with all evaluative processes, there is a lot of subjectivity here. What counts as best practice for one person or organization may not for another. In fact, purveyors of “best practice” often rely upon this – if there was a universally agreed upon set of “best practices,” how would they ever sell tickets to conferences to teach you about the latest and greatest best practices? 

#4 – It Can Mean Wildly Different Things 

One reason “best practices” is so frustrating is that it is used very differently by different people. For some, “best practices” means “I tried something, and it worked.” For others, it means “there are decades of solid research behind this practice showing that it works.” And of course, there’s everything in between, including emergent practices that have promising but tentative empirical backing. 

Which of these it means can also vary between the speaker and the audience. If I mean “I tried this, and it worked,” and you hear “this has strong empirical backing,” we have a disconnect that can lead to negative outcomes. That’s why I would suggest framing these empirically-backed practices as “research-based practices” or “evidence-based practices.” 

#5 – It Favors Similarity and the Status Quo 

One of the more insidious components of the phrase “best practices” is that it suggests we should all value doing things in similar ways. Best practices can easily favor stagnation and the status quo by suggesting that “this is what is best, so you should do it.” 

Social change only happens when people are willing to disrupt and challenge the status quo. This often means working counter to the currents of society, including how you should do things. 

A Better Way to Frame Practices 

What would I suggest as an alternative to “best practices”? I would favor honesty here, even though it often takes more words and energy to contextualize practices. Instead of saying something is “best practice,” we would benefit from saying that “This is a practice that has worked for me and others.” 

With some work, we can still share our excitement at a particular practice without valorizing that practice and holding it up as the “right way.” For example, you could say in a presentation, “I’m excited to share this practice and help you consider if and how you might incorporate it into your teaching.” 

This also has the benefit of focusing on the audience: What are they going to do with this practice? How could they use it to change their teaching? 

How to Engage with “Best Practices” Talk 

If you find yourself hearing about “best practices,” I suggest critically examining those practices. Do they make sense for you and your context? How might they change the dynamic of your teaching? What problems could they help you solve? What are the potential pitfalls for your teaching context? How might you incorporate certain practices alongside others? 

Teaching is an exercise in humility, and “best practices” often frames it as the opposite, as something that can be “figured out.” At the very least, when you hear “best practices,” just remove the “best” and consider whether this “practice” makes sense for you. 

How do you react to “best practices” talk? Share your thoughts in the comments below. 

Facebook
Twitter

How can we both challenge and support students through our assignment design? Learn how careful planning of information, tools, and support can help students navigate uncertainty and solve complex problems.

Assignment design frameworks often emphasize that assignments should be clear (such as Transparent Assignment Design), or that they should be real (such as Authentic Assessment). These approaches can be in tension, as real-world situations are often complex, messy, open-ended, and ill-defined. In fact, that ambiguity is part of the appeal of real-world analogue assignments, as they ask students to seek creative solutions to problems and apply their knowledge in new ways. 

With thoughtful assignment design, it’s possible to integrate these two approaches and create assignments that are clear and open-ended. In other words, we can strive to both challenge and support students. 

Provide Information and Tools to Help Students Navigate Complex Problems 

Designing clear and open-ended assignments requires careful thought and planning for what you communicate to students and what tools you provide them. Consider this situation: 

You’re placed in the wilderness and told you must reach any one of three camps. If that’s all the information you have, you’re likely to be completely lost. You have no way to know which direction to go or for how long. You only know you’ve succeeded if you happen to luck into reaching one of the camps. Unfortunately, this is how far too many “real world” assignments are framed. 

What if you were given a compass and a general direction for each of the camps? You would know which direction to go, but you still would have no idea about which path was hardest and how far each camp was. 

Image of a map and compass being held in a forest setting as a comparison to how information and tools in assignment design can help students navigate complex problems.

Being given a map of the area would illuminate the terrain (and perhaps difficulty) of each path. Marking that map with the camps would further help you determine their distance and different ways to get there. Marking hazards or even marking trails would make navigating the path a safer proposition. 

All of these situations are open-ended: you can still choose which direction to go, how to navigate the path, how to avoid hazards, and much more. However, some of these situations are completely unclear, while others provide information, tools, and supports that clarify the situation and help guide decision-making. 

The goal of assignment design should not be to drop students into the wilderness without any support. Likewise, you should not be walking the path for students. Providing information and tools to guide complex problem-solving both challenges students and helps them succeed in meeting those challenges. 

3 Techniques for Transparent Ambiguity in Assignment Design 

Here are three techniques to help you embrace transparent ambiguity in your assignment design: 

Move your focus away from the end product and toward the framing of the problem. We are often taught to frame our assignments as end products: students will write an essay or take an exam or deliver a presentation. Instead, focus on framing a complex problem for students to solve. Explain the problem clearly and thoroughly, allowing students the freedom to explore multiple solutions and determine the best way to address the problem. 

Answer the questions, “What can you say for sure about the final product? What must you leave up to the student to determine?” For example, if students are crafting marketing materials for an organization, then those materials must integrate that organization’s brand standards in a way that is true to the organization’s brand identity. How students integrate those brand standards and what they build with that organization’s brand may be much more open-ended. I call these “creative constraints” – by giving students a clear picture of both what must be and what is flexible, you can spark creativity and deep engagement with the problem of the assignment. 

Provide guiding questions and help students explore possible solutions. As the wilderness exploration example showed, you can support students in navigating uncertainty while still leaving elements uncertain. If you set up a complex, messy problem but leave students completely alone to address it, they will likely feel lost and overwhelmed. One of the best supports for complex, messy problems is questions, not answers. Help students consider the questions they need to answer and support them exploring solutions to the problem. For example, if you are asking students to research a topic of their choice, give them guidance on how to identify their own interests, find a productive topic, and narrow the scope of research. 

Let’s put all of this together to consider an example of an assignment designed with transparent ambiguity. 

An Example: Restaurant Menu Design 

Image of a person holding a restaurant menu.

In a course on graphic design, one assignment I ask students to complete is a restaurant menu. While this may seem like a finished product, I frame it much more as a design problem to solve. I put myself in the role of the owner of a fictional restaurant. I conduct a design brief meeting with students in which I role-play as the restaurant owner, having students ask me questions about the restaurant and what I need in a menu. 

This process has the benefits of: 

  1. Helping students explore creative solutions to the design problem being presented. 
  2. Being authentic to the types of design situations students will likely find themselves in later in life. 
  3. Developing inquiry skills, a necessary part of identifying the constraints of any design situation. 
  4. Doing all of the above in the “safe” space of the classroom where I can guide and support students through their learning. 

Throughout this process, I make it clear to students that they are not allowed to omit any dishes from their menu design just because they’re inconvenient to their layout. I also specify that files must be properly prepared for printing, though the details of what that looks like will depend on their individual design decisions. 

I emphasize in the assignment that students must listen to their “client” (me in the role-play) and show evidence that they are working to address the client’s needs. This allows for productive exploration of transparent ambiguity during the design brief meeting. I can share with students my “vision” for the restaurant and its brand. I can share with students how I view my dishes and the experience of eating at the restaurant. Students have opportunities to poke and prod at these areas to gain a better understanding that can inform their decision making. 

The specifics of how students address these areas, though, are open-ended. Should the menu have sections or not? What should those sections be? What color scheme should the menu use? How is the restaurant’s brand incorporated? What markers (gluten-free, spicy, etc.) should be included, if any? How are prices framed? What size and material are used in printing? How many pages should the menu be? How are photographs or illustrations incorporated, if at all? Is there a cover, or does the menu immediately launch into presenting dishes? These questions are all open, but by guiding students in inquiry, I’m able to help them explore how to answer these questions. 

Get new posts by email

Additionally, I both provide some of the above questions and support students in brainstorming questions. Before the design brief meeting, we create a collaborative document as a class and determine what questions to ask the “restaurant owner.” I spark the discussion with some of the above questions, then I encourage them to come up with many more. We collaboratively highlight the ones students will actually ask in the design brief session. This process helps students develop inquiry skills while also helping them define the bounds of the assignment.

Helping Students Succeed Through Transparent Ambiguity 

If all this sounds complex and messy, it is! However, it’s also as transparent as possible, giving students core requirements (such as not omitting dishes) and supporting them in navigating the murky areas. Ultimately, this approach both challenges students to explore a complex process and supports them in making that process as transparent and clear as possible. 

Meaningful learning happens when students are challenged and stretched, but also when they are supported and guided. Transparent ambiguity is a powerful way to design assignments precisely because it seeks to do both, guiding students along an unclear path toward solving an authentic problem. 

How do you navigate this tension in your assignments? Share your thoughts in the comments below. 

Facebook
Twitter

Learn why and how to use a GIF as your Canvas course card, welcoming students to your course with some fun and flair.

When students access their Canvas dashboard, your course shows up as one card among many. Your course card image is the only part on the main dashboard you can customize to make your course your own and welcome students to the course. 

While Canvas doesn’t advertise this feature, you can use a GIF (a moving image) on your Canvas course card. Using a GIF as your Canvas course card can personalize your course and help welcome students to the course with levity.

Why I Use GIFs as My Canvas Course Cards 

My (Paige’s) favorite way to customize my Canvas course—and to communicate a bit of my course’s personality—is to use a GIF as my course card. I teach majors in the Department of Media so having something pop culture related as our dashboard touchpoint is very much our vibe.  

I started using GIF course cards simply because they amuse me, but there are other reasons to use them as well. As someone who both teaches and takes grad courses in Canvas, a GIF course card related to the course’s content helps me quickly identify which course I’m looking for on the dashboard.  For this reason, I set a course card and the beginning of the semester and do not change it. 

In the 5-week online screenwriting course I teach, students watch two episodes of NBC’s The Good Place and write responses to the episode discussing how the writers establish each character and use dialogue to move the story forward. For the course card, I chose a GIF of the series’ main character saying a classic line of dialogue from the pilot episode.

Eleanor Shellstrop on The Good Place saying "Somebody forked up"

Early in my Media Management course, we screen an episode of The Office. In it, a new manager partners with a veteran manager to decide how to allocate raises using limited funds. After the screening, we outline the management challenges faced by the characters and what could have been done differently. Later, I use what we learn from that episode to help students understand the different levels of managers in an organization. Because of this foundational content, I chose a GIF from The Office to identify our course.

Kelly Kapoor on The Office saying "You guys, I'm like really smart now, you don't even know."

In my Foundations of Media class this summer, I used a more generic GIF as our course card. We didn’t screen anything specific in this course and it was a 5-week summer class, so I picked something that was silly and related to our summer timeline. I hope it made them smile before they clicked into our class.

Woman celebrating with text "Summer School"

I also use a GIF as the course card for our department’s Canvas Community. I laid out the design in Canva, set it to animate, and exported it as a GIF. It adds a little flair to our site and my hope is that the movement on the dashboard helps remind students that it’s there.

Department of Media Canvas Community - Internships, Job Postings, Department + Faculty Info, Scholarships, Events

Is a GIF course card going to radically change student engagement with your content? Probably not. But it can serve as a welcoming, modern, and fun touchpoint as students enter your virtual classroom each day. 

Finding a GIF to Use for Your Canvas Course Card 

You can find a wide variety of GIFs on the two major GIF search sites, GIPHY and Tenor. Once you find a GIF you like, do the following to download it: 

  • Open the image by clicking on it 
  • Right-click and select “Save image as” 
  • Choose a download location and select “Save” 

If you need to edit the downloaded GIF, such as cropping or rotating, you can do so at ezgif.com. 

You can also choose to make your own GIF from either an image or a video file. The following websites offer free GIF makers and tools to edit your own GIFs: 

If you’re looking to make a GIF from a screen recording, the free version of SnagIt makes this process quick and easy.

Uploading a GIF to Your Canvas Course Card 

Once you have your GIF, you’re ready to upload it to your Canvas course card. Follow these steps to update your course card: 

  1. Open the Canvas course you want to update 
  2. Click “Settings” in the course navigation sidebar 
  3. If you do not already have a course card image, click “Choose Image” 
  4. If you do already have a course card image, click the three dots > “Choose Image”
  5. Click “Upload Image” 
  6. Choose the GIF file you want and click “Open” 
  7. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Update Course Details” (Important: You must do this step for your changes to occur.)

How could you use this feature on your Canvas course cards? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Facebook
Twitter

Arguments for a particular length of instructional videos miss the mark: engaging video can be any length, from less than a minute to more than an hour.

If you listen to the commonly accepted wisdom, every instructional video would be a TED Talk: polished production values and a strict 10-15-minute time limit. 

In a previous post, I argued that common wisdom is wrong about video “quality”: you don’t need to be a YouTube star to create great educational videos. 

I would argue that common wisdom around video length is also wrong. You may have heard that instructional videos should be in a sweet spot of not too short and not too long, often 10-15 minutes long. This view is reminiscent of TED’s 18-minute rule, the length described by TED head Chris Anderson as “long enough to be serious and short enough to hold people’s attention.” 

No matter the specific times suggested, they almost always fall between 5 and 20 minutes. While those times are fine, there is nothing magical about them. In fact, you’ve probably watched and learned from videos that are 30 seconds long and videos that are an hour long. 

Why There Is No Perfect Length for Instructional Videos 

Much of the advice for shorter videos comes from research in contexts other than a traditional 15-week course in higher ed. For example, one commonly cited finding, which suggests students drop off after 6 minutes, comes from a study of 6.9 million video views in a MOOC. 

You should also be wary of advice that derives from student preferences (not actual habits) or from habits that aren’t germane to the classroom (e.g., YouTube or social media video watching habits). 

The key reason there is no perfect length for instructional videos is that, just like with video “quality,” length isn’t the most important factor. Length very well may affect how many students engage with different parts of the video, but it isn’t directly connected with learning. 

Every instructional video has a purpose – a reason you want students to engage with the video. This purpose should drive the video’s length. For example, if your purpose is to illustrate a concept you’ve had students read about with an example or model, the 3-5 minute range may be best. On other hand, if you need to dive deep into the historical context for a topic, you may be looking at 20-40 minutes. 

In addition to purpose, what you say and how you say it is far more critical than length. As Neil A. Bradbury says in a review of studies on instructional videos: 

“The most consistent finding […] is that the greatest variability in student attention arises from differences between teachers and not from the teaching format itself. Certainly, even the most interesting material can be presented in a dull and dry fashion, and it is the job of the instructor to enhance their teaching skills to provide not only rich content but also a satisfying lecture experience for the students.” 

In the post about video quality, I cited three reasons to create your own videos, and they still hold true here: 

  • Videos help my students connect with me as a teacher and a human being 
  • Videos are more engaging than text or other media 
  • Videos help my students learn more efficiently or more effectively 

Try to keep your focus on these items, not on a specific video length. 

Get new posts by email

Exploring the Margins: 1-Minute Videos 

To illustrate this point, I’d like to explore one extreme of the length spectrum: super-short videos. Often referred to as video microlectures, I prefer the term microengagements. If we try to make the format of a lecture fit into a 60-second video, we’re likely destined to fail. However, videos of a minute or less can be a very effective way to engage students in a concept. 

Here are a few possibilities for 1-minute videos: 

  • Interventions for solving a common problem on an assignment 
  • Conversation sparker for the day 
  • Super quick demo of a concept 

Let’s consider some examples, organized by the level of Bloom’s taxonomy each is aligned with. 

  1. Remember – Reminder of an important definition or bring something important to top of mind for students. 
  1. Understand – Clarify a tricky point where students often get stuck or provide an enlightening metaphor for a difficult concept. 
  1. Apply – An example of one way you could apply the content you’re discussing. 
  1. Analyze – Connect two ideas together for students. 
  1. Evaluate – Quick critique of an example artifact. 
  1. Create – Walk through how to solve a common problem in the creation process. 

My point is not that 1-minute videos are the way to go. Rather, I want to encourage you to think of video length as not particularly relevant to pedagogical considerations around video. Instructional videos have value at any length – I encourage you to explore all lengths of videos and see what you can do for your students. 

What length of instructional videos do you use in your courses? Share your thoughts in the comments below. 

References 

Armstrong, Patricia. “Bloom’s Taxonomy.” Vanderbilt University, 2010. https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/.

Bradbury, Neil A. “Attention span during lectures: 8 seconds, 10 minutes, or more?” Advances in Physiological Education 40, no. 4 (December 2016): 509-513. https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00109.2016.

Gallo, Carmine. “The Science Behind TED’s 18-Minute Rule.” LinkedIn, March 13, 2014. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140313205730-5711504-the-science-behind-ted-s-18-minute-rule.

Guo, Philip J., Juho Kim, and Rob Rubin. “How Video Production Affects Student Engagement: An Empirical Study of MOOC Videos.” L@S ’14: Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning @ scale conference (March 2014): 41-50. https://doi.org/10.1145/2556325.2566239.

Did you enjoy this blog post? We would appreciate it if you shared it with your contacts on social media.

Facebook
Twitter

Learn about a simple tweak to your video scripts that can increase how many students engage with your instructional videos.

You spend hours developing an instructional video – preparing the script, adjusting lighting, recording multiple takes, and trimming and combining. You put it up on your course site for students, then check back in after it was due… and only 20% of your students watched the video. 

Does this sound familiar? 

While a variety of interventions can help increase video views in your course, many of them take even more time, such as adding in-video quiz questions to keep your students actively engaged. 

Instead, I want to suggest a quick adjustment to your script that takes very little extra time but can help you increase student video views. 

Inspired by television shows, the idea is simple: 

  • Add a “previously on” to the beginning of your videos 
  • Add a “next time on” to the end of your videos 

In your “previously on,” you can include any of the following: 

  • A quick summary of the last video or reading 
  • A review of an assignment or quiz you previously assigned 
  • Concepts or ideas from the course that will be key to the content of the current video 
  • Course objectives that this video will help students work toward 

Like “previously on” segments in a television show, this is meant to both refresh students’ memory and build interest in the content that is to come. “Previously on” segments at the beginning of a video help ground students in the moment of watching the video and can increase their persistence through the entirety of the video.

In your “next time on,” you can include any of the following: 

  • A quick summary of the next video or reading 
  • A preview of an assignment or quiz that will be coming up in the course 
  • Concepts or ideas that the current video will build upon in the future 

Like “previously on” segments, “next time on” segments help students understand the connections between course content, making your scaffolding clear and transparent. They give students a reason to watch through to the end of the video, and they give them a reason to want to watch the next video. 

Will this solve your video view woes? Of course not. But implementing a “previously on” and “next time on” segment into your videos can help you bump those engagement numbers up a bit. This technique is often best implemented alongside others that can increase video engagement in your course. 

What do you think? How do you work to increase video engagement in your courses? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Facebook
Twitter