Northcentral University

David Fawcett, PhD Full-Time Faculty, Department of Marriage and Family Sciences Strategies to Increase Efficiency and Effectiveness An aspect of teaching that I enjoy most is helping students connect with the content. I love to see students have those "Aha!" moments, where ideas and concepts click into place. From my experience, these moments happen more often if I can help students actively engage with course concepts. Some ways I try to do this are: • asking follow-up questions in the feedback • providing a link to a resource on the topic that I find useful or interesting (I have started a little database by topic) • taking a little time to explain a concept that they may have missed in the assignment or that they had a question about • adding ideas ,or even student responses, from previous assignments and integrating them with the current assignment. I have also found that when I send a separate email – one that is not related to evaluation or grading - with some of the resources or ideas that I had about the topic, the students usually respond well, and we often exchange a few emails about the topic. It gives me a chance to interact with the student outside of the Course Room, but still inside of the student-professor process. Facilitating this engagement requires a little more time on my side, which is not always easy to find. I have looked for strategies to increase my efficiency and organization within the current LMS. The NCU one-to-one mentoring model of leading individual students through a course requires faculty to grade different assignments across various courses each week. I find that I am more efficient in grading when I organize my grading by course and week. If I grade the same assignments together, I spend less time reorienting myself to specific assignment content and requirements. There are not always multiple students in the same week of a course, but I find that even grading assignments from different weeks in the same class helps me stay oriented, be a little more efficient with my time, and have more ideas to share with students. It is easier for me to help the student engage with course content when I am emerged in that content. In the current LMS, it is simple to sort submitted assignments by course, but it does take a couple of mouse clicks. Clicking on the 'Grade' button for an assignment navigates away from the main screen and, upon return, the list of assignments reverts to the default sort order. It is not a difficult process to sort again, but it takes some time for the page to refresh. One trick that I use is this: after sorting by class, I right click on the 'Grade' button and select 'Open in new tab.' This allows me to enter the student gradebook, access the assignment description, upload the feedback, and assign the grade all in one place, and when I'm done, I close the new tab and return to my already sorted list of assignments. It is quick to click on the next student in the list and continue in my grading flow. When using this approach, the sorted list does not automatically update the assignment as they are graded, but it does update when you refresh the screen. I like to grade several assignments, usually eight or more, and then refresh the list because I get to see my to-do list significantly decrease. I also try to alternate which classes I grade first so that the same classes are not always getting feedback during the latter part of the week. Though this specific sorting technique will function differently in the new LMS, the organization approach should stay the same. I have found that taking a little time to learn some alternate ways to use the technology has helped me be more efficient with my work, and have more time to engage with students. This helps me spend more time doing what I love - teaching.

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