Piazza in Your Classroom

Answering the same student questions over and over... An inbox full of student emails... Too little peer-to-peer interaction in your classroom... If these challenges sound familiar to you, you may want to check out the online discussion platform, Piazza.

A recent CRLT study of University of Michigan students and faculty (from Winter 2013) found that Piazza is a great tool for answering student questions, reducing email volume, facilitating student interaction between classes, and increasing the number of students participating in class discussion.
 
Available through CTools, Piazza can help you promote student engagement outside the classroom while keeping the workload manageable. Instead of emailing you with questions after class, students can post questions to Piazza, and other students or GSIs can answer them. As the instructor, you can also answer questions, endorse select student answers, provide feedback, edit student responses, and view reports of student participation. One key strength of Piazza is the ease of organizing questions: you can create tags or folders for each lecture of assignment, so students can easily find out if the question they have has already been answered. 
 
If you are a faculty member who is interested in learning more about Piazza or would like to try it out in your class, join the CRLT on September 23rd at 8:30am for Emerging Tech: Piazza, a workshop where you will get a hands-on guided tour of Piazza and learn about potential uses for it in your classroom. If you are a GSI and would like to learn more about Piazza, CRLT will be hosting Next Steps with IT on October 4th at 9am. This workshop will cover the use of multiple classroom tech tools including Piazza and M+Box.
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Submitted by akgreenb on Tue, 09/17/2013 - 1:59pm
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Lecturers’ Professional Development Fund: Deadline Approaching

CRLT is currently accepting applications for the Lecturers' Professional Development Fund (LPDF), a grant specifically for U-M's Lecturers.  If you are a Lecturer on the Ann Arbor campus with a continuing appointment, you are eligible to apply for a grant of up to $2000 to fund professional development opportunities related to your teaching or scholarship.  For example, the funds could be used to support:

  • attendance at a professional meeting
  • purchase of computer hardware or software
  • travel expenses associated with accessing resources at other institutions
  • editorial, graduate student, or work-study assistance.  

Applications for the grant are due on September 24th at 4pm.  Details about how to apply can be found on our LPDF application page. Prospective applicants can also view the reports from previous LPDF recipients to get a sense of the range of projects that have been funded in the past.  

Every year, CRLT provides over $300,000 to U-M's instructors to support improvements to teaching and curriculum.  For more information about the range of grants available from CRLT, click here.  Read more »

Submitted by tbraun on Thu, 09/12/2013 - 11:33am
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Resources for the First Days of Teaching

What are effective ways to get to know my students and create a positive learning environment from the very beginning of the term? How can I pique students' curiosity about the subject matter? How can I set student expectations for active engagement in the course?

These are common questions we hear about the first days of class, an important time for setting the tone for what is to come in the term. CRLT offers many resources to help faculty and GSIs think carefully about getting the most out of the first days. These include tips for learning student names, activities for building community, and suggestions for ways to introduce course material and communicate expectations.

Other resources about inclusive teaching provide specific strategies for ensuring that you foster learning environments that include and enable all of your students, from the very beginning of the term. Indeed, inclusive teaching can begin before you ever walk into a classroom, as emphasized by these resources on course design and syllabus design.

As always, CRLT consultants are also available to work one-on-one with instructors. We're here to help you get your classes off to a great start.

Submitted by tbraun on Fri, 08/30/2013 - 8:48am
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Breaking the Ice with Your Students

With the beginning of the semester just around the corner, many instructors are strategizing about how best to start productive classroom conversations. Students who speak even briefly at the beginning of a class meeting are more likely to participate in discussions going forward, and a well-chosen icebreaker can help everyone join in. As quick, low-stakes, and often fun activities that involve students at the beginning of a session, icebreakers can be a good way to learn about who's in the classroom, reduce anxiety, and begin thinking together about course content.  

CRLT provides examples of icebreakers and guidance for using them in the Handbook on Departmental GSI Development. We also recently polled our Graduate Teaching Consultants (GTCs) to gather a list of their favorites. Here are some good ideas we received when we asked the GTCs to "tweet" us a particularly effective icebreaker they have used, seen, or heard about: Read more »

Submitted by tbraun on Tue, 08/27/2013 - 1:22pm
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2013 Orientations for New Faculty and GSIs

To welcome new instructors to the University and help prepare them for their first teaching assignments at U-M, CRLT will be offering orientations for new faculty and new GSIs in the last week of August. These programs are all designed to help new instructors meet colleagues from across the campus, learn about the resources available for teaching, and hit the ground running when the teaching term begins. Our work with U-M instructors has convinced us that when teaching is going well, other aspects of faculty or GSI work life are more likely to fall into place. So we take great care to design orientations that make the best possible use of participants' time and cover the topics most salient to getting a good start in the classroom, lab, or studio.

All of us at CRLT are excited to welcome new instructors to campus and to help you get the tools you need to succeed. We look forward to meeting you! Read more »

Submitted by rkniemer on Tue, 08/20/2013 - 9:02am
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