Issue link: http://ncumarketing.uberflip.com/i/769485
Mindi Mull, PhD Associate Director of Faculty Support and Development, SSBS Thank you, Claire and Carrie, for sharing some of your strategies! Many of our tasks as teachers are repetitive, so anything we can do to give ourselves more time to focus on the most enjoyable aspects of teaching (providing personalized feedback that allows us to share our expertise) is incredibly valuable. I think being organized (e.g., implementing strategies like Claire's) and efficient (e.g., using tools like the one discussed by Carrie) allows us to be more effective teachers and happier in our work. It is likely that we all have our own strategies that we developed over time. So, if you're new to NCU and are still trying to figure out your teaching efficiencies, I hope these tips are helpful to you. If you've been teaching at NCU for some time, I hope you occasionally reflect on this aspect of your teaching, and make changes or implement new strategies as needed. Do you have a tip or strategy you think others would find useful? Please share! You can send these tips/strategies to me (mmull@ncu.edu) for inclusion in an upcoming faculty newsletter. Thanks! Fewer Key Strokes a Day Keeps Annoyance at Bay As a new adjunct faculty member, one of the most frustrating struggles I encountered was trying to figure out how to organize my time and create time-saving measures. In the beginning, when my student load hovered around 10, I created an elaborate Excel spreadsheet containing feedback information I commonly shared with students. However, as my student load increased, I found myself overwhelmed (and irritated) by the time it took to manage all the information I was accruing. I began to see every second spent typing, copying/pasting, editing, and updating that Excel file as a pestering fly. My irritation grew every time I found myself typing something I had typed a hundred times before, like my name. The day I angrily told my husband that I regretted hyphenating my last name because I was sick of typing it, was the day I realized something needed to change. After all, hyphens require two simultaneous key strokes AND an awkward finger stretch across the keyboard. I did not have time for that. Thankfully, my husband introduced me to "Alfred." Alfred is a productivity app that has more tricks and wisdom than the Office Assistant paperclip. Via Alfred, I was able to create hotkey "snippets" of things I found myself repeatedly typing. So now, instead of arduously typing my full name, I simply hit a unique two key combo and my full name magically appears. I have created snippets for a number of things including paragraph length templates that I can now insert into a student's paper with the light touch of a couple of keys. The less time I spend typing or cutting and pasting repetitive things, the more time I can spend focusing on providing quality customized feedback! Efficiency apps can help you save time and be more productive in multiple ways. They can assist in automating repetitive task, aid with email management, organize files according to customizable rules, and help with paperless workflow. If you aren't using a productivity app to help with some of the repetitive tasks we do on a daily basis, I encourage you to peruse the many products that are available and find one that fits your needs. Carrie Hanson-Bradley, PhD Adjunct Faculty, Department of Marriage and Family Sciences