Module Link

This resource was originally developed with resources from the College STAR grant. That grant has ended and the College STAR modules will now permanently reside at the East Carolina University Office for Faculty Excellence.

Module Introduction

Appalachian State University Game-based learning has been growing in popularity for years, with researchers noticing that good game experiences and effective educational experiences have many similarities. Both types of experiences engage students on many levels, provide multiple means for learning content, and are flexible enough to be used in various contexts and learning situations.

Scott Rice, an Associate Professor and Librarian at Appalachian State University, has used game-based learning in several different contexts to enhance the classroom experience and to deliver game-based learning over the web. He has used games, puzzles, and game-like simulations to teach concepts in an introductory philosophy course, used games to provide library instruction, and created several online educational games. He has also taught a freshman seminar course entitled "The Study of Games," which examined games and game design in detail, with students creating their own games as final projects in the course.

Support for this Module

Original development of this module was made possible by the College STAR (Supporting Transition Access and Retention) initiative.  College STAR was a grant-funded project focused on partnering postsecondary educational professionals and students to learn ways for helping postsecondary campuses become more welcoming of students with learning and attention differences. Much of this work was made possible by generous funding from the Oak Foundation.

Module Link

This resource was originally developed with resources from the College STAR grant. That grant has ended and the College STAR modules will now permanently reside at the East Carolina University Office for Faculty Excellence.

Module Introduction

This case study will provide the rarely explored, student perspective on “flipped” classrooms. It is good teaching practice for educators to seek to better the student learning experience by taking student input. This case study will examine the strengths of a flipped class as well as setbacks and what could have gone differently from the perspective of a student.

Professionals, educators, and administrators strive to better the learning experience of their students. We see this all the time at conferences, roundtable discussions, and professional development training. However, the one voice that should be included in these conversations are students.  Educators may try to gauge student perspective based on classroom engagement but until students are asked to give their honest opinions on decisions that actively affect their learning, we can’t possibly know what works for them.

As a current student, I have been fortunate enough to have taken two flipped courses myself in high school and during my undergraduate program. but Additionally, I was also a research assistant for a flipped chemistry class at Radford University. The purpose of this case study is to provide a student’s perspective on what I observed during my experiences with flipped classrooms. I will provide survey and grading data, as well as qualitative data on the successes and setbacks of a flipped class.

This case study sets itself apart from others because it provides an exclusive student perspective on what works (or doesn’t work) in a flipped classroom. This case study is not defending a flipped classroom but rather examining the strengths and weaknesses of a flipped classroom to better enhance the student learning process. This case study will examine three years of IRB approved research in a chemistry classroom that incorporates student surveys, as well as track and grade data. This case study will also explore personal experiences in several different classes. These personal experiences will explore strengths, barriers, and what could have gone differently to further engage students with diverse learning profiles.

Support for this Module

Original development of this module was made possible by the College STAR (Supporting Transition Access and Retention) initiative.  College STAR was a grant-funded project focused on partnering postsecondary educational professionals and students to learn ways for helping postsecondary campuses become more welcoming of students with learning and attention differences. Much of this work was made possible by generous funding from the Oak Foundation.

Module Link

This resource was originally developed with resources from the College STAR grant. That grant has ended and the College STAR modules will now permanently reside at the East Carolina University Office for Faculty Excellence.

Module Introduction

There are many resources available that explain what the phrase "flipping your classroom" means. The one I like best is the Flipped Learning Network, which was initiated by the original flipped learning pioneers (Jon Bergman and Aaron Sams). The site hosts a number of helpful resources.

What makes the concept of flipped learning so attractive for L2 (Second Language) education is the ability to turn one's classroom into an inspiring, creative, group-learning space free from the necessary (but often tedious) grammar lessons that can deaden a curious student's mind in no time flat. As Mark Twain once said: "The more you explain it, the more I don’t understand it." By moving grammar out of the classroom into pithy, colorful, and engaging digital lessons, the instructor can forego all the in-class explaining and turn the limelight back onto her or his students, where it should be.

This module shows an example of how you can flip sessions in a foreign-language class.

Support for this Module

Original development of this module was made possible by the College STAR (Supporting Transition Access and Retention) initiative.  College STAR was a grant-funded project focused on partnering postsecondary educational professionals and students to learn ways for helping postsecondary campuses become more welcoming of students with learning and attention differences. Much of this work was made possible by generous funding from the Oak Foundation.

Module Link

This resource was originally developed with resources from the College STAR grant. That grant has ended and the College STAR modules will now permanently reside at the East Carolina University Office for Faculty Excellence.

Module Introduction

While there are clear benefits to incorporating videos into your course structure or to "flip" a classroom, it does not come without its challenges. For many educators, time, retention, and finding the right technology for their student’s needs can prove to be difficult. While it is up to the student to take accountability for their actions and watch the videos themselves, it is immensely helpful when the educators make the students feel engaged in the video-learning process.

This case study will offer some easy to incorporate yet, important design elements to creating videos that are not burdensome to either the professor or the students. We will also provide an overview of technology available to aid in video creation and sharing. These lessons were learned through multiple ventures into flipping chemistry courses at Radford University. We will share what we have learned from our latest and most successful flip, where we have comparison data over two years with the same professor between a traditional lecture style and a flipped classroom. As with any substantive change, we made errors in the implementation and as a result made a number of small modifications to the structure of the class before year two that had a large, positive impact on the students. Some of these lessons in hindsight seem obvious, such as holding student accountable through their grades on timely video watching. While others were more unpredictable, like needing to incentive students against scrolling through videos until a board changes and then pausing to take a screen capture as their form of “note taking.” Our easy to make and highly transferable changes will be explained in the context of the quantitative data we collected.

Support for this Module

Original development of this module was made possible by the College STAR (Supporting Transition Access and Retention) initiative.  College STAR was a grant-funded project focused on partnering postsecondary educational professionals and students to learn ways for helping postsecondary campuses become more welcoming of students with learning and attention differences. Much of this work was made possible by generous funding from the Oak Foundation.

Module Link

This resource was originally developed with resources from the College STAR grant. That grant has ended and the College STAR modules will now permanently reside at the East Carolina University Office for Faculty Excellence.

Module Introduction

Flipping can take many forms, depending on the needs of the students and the instructor, but the basic concept is to push activities that a student can complete on his or her own to prepare for class (e.g. listening to a recorded lecture, watching a video, reading required materials, and/or completing an assignment) outside of classroom time. Doing so reserves in-class time for activities that engage students in the material through a variety of active learning strategies.

This module provides an overview of the flipped classroom design, and provides detail on the many ways traditional classrooms can be flipped to provide greater student engagement. A flipped classroom reflects Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, presenting both initial content, and opportunities for application of that content, to meet the needs of diverse learners.

Support for this Module

Original development of this module was made possible by the College STAR (Supporting Transition Access and Retention) initiative.  College STAR was a grant-funded project focused on partnering postsecondary educational professionals and students to learn ways for helping postsecondary campuses become more welcoming of students with learning and attention differences. Much of this work was made possible by generous funding from the Oak Foundation.

Module Link

This resource was originally developed with resources from the College STAR grant. That grant has ended and the College STAR modules will now permanently reside at the East Carolina University Office for Faculty Excellence.

Module Introduction

The college classroom is an important place where students and teachers learn and grow together. It is a place where collaboration occurs as well as idea-sharing and relationship-building. Instructors are one of the most influential figures in the classroom, with the ability to enhance the learning environment and influence the behaviors of all present. This module is designed to share ideas about how instructors can create a learning environment that is "welcoming" for students. By "welcoming" we mean a learning environment that considers the diverse range of strengths and approaches to learning on the college campus today and then facilitates interactions and designs instruction in such a way to maximize learning and reduce barriers in the classroom. Three themes are addressed here in relation to creating a welcoming learning environment; the implementation of effective teaching strategies, the development of a positive relationship between students and teachers, and the effective dealing of conflict in the classroom.

Jennifer Sisk, an English instructor at East Carolina University (ECU) in the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences instructs first year students in the area of English Composition. She has made it her mission through teaching to show students that she cares about them and their success. She is invested not only in the projects they create, but also in their success in college as a whole. Ms. Sisk understands that students, especially first year students, have a lot on their shoulders, and she wants to insure that students have access to a comfortable and safe learning environment where they gain confidence as students during the learning process.

Jennifer Sisk has developed many ways of making the classroom a welcoming place. One strategy involves taking the time to get to know the learners in her classroom each term. For example, during the first week of class she uses a strategy to learn her student's names, physical characteristics, and personality traits (see how she does this in the Instructional Practice section of this module).

As the class progresses during the semester, Ms. Sisk spends a great deal of time learning about her students' learning styles and what they are truly passionate about. Many students comment during post-course evaluations that they feel "Ms. Sisk truly cares about them and their education". She makes it her goal to create a level of comfort where her students feel safe and welcome, which she believes helps them learn.

Read more about creating a welcoming learning environment through the development of a positive relationship between students and teachers, the implementation of effective teaching strategies, and the effective resolution of conflict in the classroom in the Instructional Practice section of this module.

Support for this Module

Original development of this module was made possible by the College STAR (Supporting Transition Access and Retention) initiative.  College STAR was a grant-funded project focused on partnering postsecondary educational professionals and students to learn ways for helping postsecondary campuses become more welcoming of students with learning and attention differences. Much of this work was made possible by generous funding from the Oak Foundation.

Module Link

This resource was originally developed with resources from the College STAR grant. That grant has ended and the College STAR modules will now permanently reside at the East Carolina University Office for Faculty Excellence.

Module Introduction

Innovative teaching isn’t always informed by new developments. Sometimes it’s situated in the past, drawing from established methods proven to enhance student learning. Cooperative learning is one such strategy that has been revitalized in recent years by college faculty who want to engage students by involving them directly in the learning process.

Cooperative learning techniques demonstrate that working together as a group cultivates learning, surpassing the achievements realized under the competitive model of individual learning. In practice for centuries, cooperative learning’s application has grown to encompass modern-day college classrooms. Numerous researchers have documented its benefits. Researchers and brothers David W. Johnson and Roger T. Johnson at the University of Minnesota have championed the strategy for more than 20 years, producing significant contributions to the research used to justify its use and laying the groundwork for its successful implementation.

With cooperative learning, small groups work together in the classroom, assuming assigned roles and taking on individual responsibility for their contributions in solving a problem or tackling an assignment, using one of the established activities discussed in more detail in the Instructional Practice section. Often, the group’s work is subsequently shared with the entire class.

The reasons behind the strategy’s success can be found in its theoretical base (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 1998). Under social interdependence theory, members of a group will cooperate if their affiliation is positive. If they are interdependently connected, their success as a whole is directly impacted by individual contributions. The framework for cooperative learning requires the presence of five factors to be productive: positive interdependence (group dependence upon one another), individual accountability (responsible for individual work), promotive interaction (supportive behavior), social skills (leadership and communication), and group processing (feedback on group efforts).

Support for this Module

Original development of this module was made possible by the College STAR (Supporting Transition Access and Retention) initiative.  College STAR was a grant-funded project focused on partnering postsecondary educational professionals and students to learn ways for helping postsecondary campuses become more welcoming of students with learning and attention differences. Much of this work was made possible by generous funding from the Oak Foundation.

Module Link 

This resource was originally developed with resources from the College STAR grant. That grant has ended and the College STAR modules will now permanently reside at the East Carolina University Office for Faculty Excellence.

Module Introduction

Few academic assignments are as universally dreaded as the research paper. It is certainly the case that one of the most important skills that college students can acquire is the ability to express themselves effectively in long-form writing. At the same time, however, the genre of the research paper can intimidate and alienate students who might find it to be an unfamiliar or onerous medium for communicating what they know and what they think about a topic. One strategy I have found helpful in addressing this issue is to encourage students to develop their research papers into instructional videos. Students still do all the work of researching, organizing, drafting, and revising a research paper, but the added step of using their research paper as a script for a narrated video helps to make the final product more meaningful, encourages students to incorporate visual and auditory elements into their research projects, and enables students to share their writing with their classmates and with a global online community. At the same time, the video project allows students who do not self-identify as strong writers to demonstrate additional knowledge and skills.

This case study provides an overview of how students were supported in the process of developing their research papers into video lectures, as well as a description of the procedure students followed to arrive at this goal. While the most conspicuous element of this teaching strategy is the video itself, this case study also examines the scaffolded manner in which the video project developed through a sequence of stages. Students worked in groups to generate insights and observations, and they developed these notes into an oral presentation, scripted the presentation out into a written essay, and recorded the video as the final step in this sequence of assignments. While the steps students followed to create their videos closely follow the traditional steps of the writing process (Hairston, 1982), the inclusion of the video element led to several novel permutations on the writing process that enhanced students’ engagement with the material and allowed for more opportunities for student writers to receive and respond to feedback from their peers and from the class instructor.

Support for this Module

Original development of this module was made possible by the College STAR (Supporting Transition Access and Retention) initiative.  College STAR was a grant-funded project focused on partnering postsecondary educational professionals and students to learn ways for helping postsecondary campuses become more welcoming of students with learning and attention differences. Much of this work was made possible by generous funding from the Oak Foundation.

Module Link

This resource was originally developed with resources from the College STAR grant. That grant has ended and the College STAR modules will now permanently reside at the East Carolina University Office for Faculty Excellence.

Module Introduction

When faculty members accustomed to teaching face-to-face classes begin teaching online classes they may question how they can make connections with students and communicate with them on an informal level.

At East Carolina University (ECU), Dr. Christine Shea, a Professor in Education Foundations, has reflected on the differences between face-to-face and online instruction—especially the impact of not seeing the students’ faces. She uses basic charts to record information about students in each course, keeping those charts readily available beside her computer monitor. Dr. Shea says her record-keeping system evolved naturally as she worked to develop a way to compensate for not being able to see students and connect regularly in person. Dr. Shea obtains and records student information from students’ emails, chats, and assignments.

Support for this Module

Original development of this module was made possible by the College STAR (Supporting Transition Access and Retention) initiative.  College STAR was a grant-funded project focused on partnering postsecondary educational professionals and students to learn ways for helping postsecondary campuses become more welcoming of students with learning and attention differences. Much of this work was made possible by generous funding from the Oak Foundation.

Module Link

This resource was originally developed with resources from the College STAR grant. That grant has ended and the College STAR modules will now permanently reside at the East Carolina University Office for Faculty Excellence.

Module Introduction

Most students are required to read the same material, write the same tests, and complete the same assignments as all the other students. This traditional pedagogical strategy inherently disadvantages many students, which, in turn, also disengages many students. More than a century ago, Dewey (1916) argued such pedagogical strategies expect students to conform to the educational system, they afford students little freedom, and they ignore learners’ strengths, interests, and skills. An alternative approach provides students with options for reading materials and assessment tools that meet their individual needs and allow them to focus on their personal strengths, interests, and skills. This alternative pedagogical strategy is called “differentiated instruction” and is defined as the process of

“ensuring that what a student learns, how he/she learns it, and how the student demonstrates what he/she has learned is a match for that student’s readiness level, interests, and preferred mode of learning” (Tomlinson, 2004, p. 188).

A more nuanced definition is provided by Carol Tomlinson in the video provided in Figure 1. The relevance of this issue is illustrated by Biancarosa and Snow (2004, p. 8), who suggest that “as many as 70 percent of... [adolescents may] require differentiated instruction … targeted to their individual strengths and weaknesses”.

Based on seminal work by Tomlinson (1999, 2003), “differentiated instruction” has become widely adopted in practice. Over the past two decades, a substantial body of knowledge has been generated about the theory and practice of differentiating what or how a student learns. On the other hand, the theory and practice of differentiating how students demonstrate what they have learned has received considerably less attention. This scarcity of information on the theory and practice of “differentiated assessment” is surprising given Tomlinson’s (2004, p. 188) definition explicitly includes “how the student demonstrates” their knowledge. Therefore, this case study distinguishes between differentiated assessment and differentiated instruction as distinct, but related processes. Thus, differentiated assessment is defined as

the process of ensuring how a student demonstrates knowledge, ideas, and concepts matches their readiness level, their personal interests, and their preferred mode of action and expression.

Most pedagogical strategies allow the teacher to decide what, when, how, and where learning is to be assessed, including differentiated instruction and differentiated assessment. An alternative strategy would be to allow students to decide what, when, how, and where learning is to be assessed. Such a strategy would encourage students to have a “voice” in their learning (see Dewey, 1916) and “play an active role in the assessment process” (Francis, 2008, p. 547). This strategy may become increasingly necessary, as Francis (2008, p. 547) warns, because

… “the lecturer is increasingly seen as being fallible, and students are judged to be far more likely now than at any time previously to challenge methods of assessment and to expect greater input into the assessment process on their part.”

This looming challenge for the academy was recognized almost half a century ago by Friere (2005, p. 73), who warned that the education system emboldens students to conform with teacher demands and become passive participants in their learning.

Assessment empowerment allows students to become active participants in the assessment process. Assessment empowerment allows students to: (i) take control of the assessment of their learning; (ii) choose how they want to demonstrate knowledge, ideas, and concepts; and, (iii) allow them to actively focus on their personal strengths, interests, and skills. My accidental journey into the theory and practice of assessment empowerment began with ad hoc accommodations of students’ needs (e.g. new due dates, alternative test formats). Over my teaching career, I have also regularly allowed students to choose research topics of interest to them, provided choices on tests (e.g. answer three of five questions), and allowed students to choose due dates for tests and assignments. However, these choices may be better described as an expression of “critical democracy” rather than assessment empowerment.

My journey took an interesting turn in the fall of 2015. Students were permitted to choose any medium and means to communicate the results from their major research project (e.g. PowerPoint, poster, photo-essay, diorama, or interpretive dance). One particularly creative student used spoken word to poetically and passionately communicate a compelling, articulate, and well-informed story about the quality of drinking water on Indigenous reservations. This experience provided compelling evidence of the benefits from students playing an active role in the assessment of their learning. Since then, I have been expanding the choices in all my college classes, and especially for introductory (100 and 200-level) courses.

Support for this Module

Original development of this module was made possible by the College STAR (Supporting Transition Access and Retention) initiative.  College STAR was a grant-funded project focused on partnering postsecondary educational professionals and students to learn ways for helping postsecondary campuses become more welcoming of students with learning and attention differences. Much of this work was made possible by generous funding from the Oak Foundation.