Author: John Carter

2025 Teaching and Technology Summit Keynotes

March 5, 2025 by John Carter

Learn more about the Opening and Closing Keynote Presentations at the 2025 Ball State University Teaching and Technology Summit. Join us for the 2025 Ball State University Teaching and Technology Summit. With two virtual half days of presentations, the summit provides a space for discussion and collaboration between colleagues on the evolving landscape of teaching […]

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Incorporating a Mindfulness Writing Activity into Your Class

February 12, 2025 by John Carter

Learn about a mindfulness-based writing activity to help learners process course material and support their wellbeing beyond the classroom. I was in graduate school during the pandemic, balancing my work as a student with my work as a graduate teaching assistant, and this experience had a major effect on me and my pedagogy. Like many […]

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Teaching and Technology Summit 2025

January 22, 2025 by John Carter

This blog is the first in our Summit series. Stay tuned next week to learn more about the virtual Ball State Provost Summit, February 6 and 7, 2025. Are you innovating with teaching and technology? Consider presenting at the fourth annual virtual 2025 Teaching and Technology Summit, hosted March 20 and 21 by the Division […]

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Breaking Down Skills to Scaffold Learning

January 15, 2025 by John Carter

A persistent challenge in my teaching practice is navigating the line between what I know and what my learners know and gauging which of my disciplinary knowledge and skills have a complexity I take for granted. As experts in our fields, it can be difficult for us to stay mindful of just how complex basic […]

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Destination: Learning Objectives

September 11, 2024 by John Carter

In my childhood, whenever my family prepared for a road trip, one of the first things my mother would do was get the state atlas down from the shelf in the kitchen and locate our destination. Before determining the route, before making lists of things to pack, and before even making arrangements for lodging, it […]

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Using Canvas Course Templates to Reduce Faculty Multitasking

February 14, 2024 by John Carter

Multitasking is a constant challenge in higher education, but our Canvas Course Templates offer one concrete way to help mitigate some of that. In the lead-up to each semester, one of the most time-consuming tasks on an instructor’s plate is creating their course site on Canvas. Often, it involves creating new material (if it’s a […]

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Reducing the Grading Workload for Low-stakes Assignments with the Set Default Grade Tool

September 13, 2023 by John Carter

Learn how to use the Set Default Grade feature in Canvas’s Gradebook to lighten the grading workload. Whenever a new semester or academic year rolls around, I always find myself thinking about how I get work done and how I can most efficiently approach the grading in the weeks and months ahead of me. With […]

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Thinking Outside the Discussion Board Box

June 14, 2023 by John Carter

Learn about an alternative way of using Canvas discussion boards to create resources students can refer back to and use. In this post, I outline one of my early struggles with discussion boards and how that struggle led to me wondering how else I could use a discussion board to get the biggest pedagogical bang […]

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First-gen Pedagogy: Who are First-generation Students?

March 29, 2023 by John Carter

How do we “view” our first-generation students? Who are they and what identities and backgrounds do they bring with them to the classroom beyond their first-generation status? From childhood memories of hanging out in academic offices to late night co-working sessions decades later as a graduate student, growing up with a mother who was a […]

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