Planning your Courses and Teaching for Fall 2021:Resources for Faculty and Instructors

During the Summer of 2021, The Office of Teaching and Learning hosted a series of active workshops designed to support planning for Fall 2021 courses. All session materials and planning worksheets are organized below by topic. They have been designed for self-guided use.

• Course Design Models and Delivery Modes
• Course Assessment Design: Balancing High- and Low-Stakes Assessments and Workload
• Transitioning Exams to Other Forms of Assessment
• Synchronous Active Learning in In-Person, Virtual, or Hybrid/Blended Modes
• Asynchronous Active Learning in In-Person, Virtual, or Hybrid/Blended Modes

Course Design Models and Delivery Modes 

These materials offer information, strategies, and planning templates for reflecting on previous offerings of your course to identify what worked well and what you’d like to modify, and for considering the design and structure of your upcoming course, especially with respect to how to integrate and repurpose aspects of in-person and remote teaching.

• Course Design Models: Blended, Hybrid, Flipped, HyFlex (Handout 1)
• Delivery and Engagement Modes for Each Course Element (Handout 2)
• Key Effective Practices in Blended and Hybrid Courses (Handout 3)
• Planning Worksheets and Templates

Course Assessment Design: Balancing High- and Low-Stakes Assessments and Workload

These materials offer information, strategies, and planning templates for reviewing the overall structure of your course assessments, including the balance and distribution of high- and low-stakes assessments and assessment workload.

• Finding the Balance Between Low and High Stakes Assessments (Handout 1)
• Common Challenges and Potential Solutions for Balancing the Workload, Flow, Organization, and Weighting of Course Assessments (Handout 2)
• Planning Worksheets and Templates

Transitioning Exams to Other Forms of Assessment

These materials offer information, strategies, and planning templates for exploring alternative assessments that could replace your exams and align with your student learning outcomes.

• Principles of Effective and Inclusive Assessment (Handout 1)
• Exploring Alternative Assessment Types (Handout 2)
• Assessment Checklist (Handout 3)
• Planning Worksheets and Sessions

Synchronous Active Learning in In-Person, Virtual, or Hybrid/Blended Modes

These materials offer information, strategies, and planning templates for considering which synchronous active learning activities to add or modify for your courses to facilitate student engagement and learning.

• Effective Practices for Designing and Implementing Synchronous Active Learning (Handout 1)
• Exploring Synchronous Active Learning Activities (Handout 2)
• Using a Backchannel in In-Person Synchronous Classes
• Planning Worksheets and Templates

Asynchronous Active Learning in In-Person, Virtual, or Hybrid/Blended Modes

These materials offer information, strategies, and planning templates for considering which asynchronous active learning activities to add or modify for your courses to facilitate student engagement and learning.

• Effective Practices for Designing and Implementing Asynchronous Active Learning (Handout 1)
• Exploring Asynchronous Active Learning Activities (Handout 2)
• Planning Worksheets and Templates