Week 1 January 30: Introductions

Topics:

• About TLACC
• Getting on the Commons & Share-Ling
  • CUNY Academic Commons : Create an account (help section & video tour)
• Needs assessment (what do you want to learn?)
• Reflections

February 6: See you at colloquium!

Week 2 February 13: Syllabus and First Day

Relevant readings:

• On Course: Before the Beginning & Week 1
• What the Best College Teachers Do: Chapter 3: How Do They Prepare to Teach
• “The Promising Syllabus” by James M. Lang
• Bloom’s Taxonomy

Topics:

1. Planning your course: working backwards
2. Compare Syllabi
3. Syllabus design
4. Write a course description
5. (Make a proto-syllabus)
6. First day: plans and impressions

Week 3 February 20: Textbooks and Technology

Relevant readings:

• 6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students
• Teaching Without Textbooks
• Digital technology as affordance and barrier in higher education by Maura Smale & Mariana Regalado, Chapter 5

Topics:

1. Teaching Platforms: an overview
2. Teaching resources
3. Designing your class (managing time, participation, pair/group work, tasks, assignments, homework…)
4. Textbooks and teaching materials (OER)
5. Digital grading systems/Excel formulas
6. Dealing with failure

Week 4 February 27: Mapping the structure of your course

1. Course objectives revisited
2. Backwards planning: What do the students need to know?
3. Course components and how to organize them chronologically

Week 5 March 5: Accessibility and Learning Theory

Relevant readings:

• National Research Council: How People Learn Chapters 1 & 2 (pg 1-50)
• On Course: Chapter 7
• Perry’s States of Intellectual Development & “Women’s Ways of Knowing”

1. Melissa Milic (guest speaker): Making your course content accessible
2. Developing your teaching philosophy: Learning theory
3. Multiple intelligences and learning styles
4. Inquiry-based pedagogy
5. Empowering students
6. Eliciting student feedback

Week 6 March 12: Recess due to COVID-19 shutdown

Week 7 March 19: (Virtual meeting: Zoom) Creating and grading assignments

1. Designing effective assignments
2. LOW vs. HIGH stakes assignments
3. Scaffolding
4. Elements of non-writing assignment design
5. Project-based learning
6. Inquiry-based pedagogy
7. WAC philosophy
8. Minimal markup and other efficient grading
9. Peer Review

Week 8 March 26: (Virtual meeting: Zoom) Grading, cont. and Ethics and Problems

1. Managing your time: efficient grading
2. Valid and Reliable grading
3. Minimal markup
4. Plagiarism at CUNY
5. Identifying problems and causes
6. Teaching citations
7. Blackboard plagiarism checker / Turnitin
8. Not taking it personally
9. Setting your policies
   1. Attendance
   2. Late work
   3. Extra credit

Week 9 April 2: (Virtual meeting: Zoom) Micro Lessons and Wrapping Up

10-minute micro lessons with instant feedback

Other topics we can touch on:

1. Observations (procedure, tips, etc.)
2. Miscellaneous tips and advice
3. Re-energizing the classroom (corrective measures to avoid Meredith’s ‘sleeping students’ experience)
4. Odds and ends