Enhancements to Instructional Practices

Incorporate Flexibility

As an instructor or adviser, you can help students feel supported and empowered by providing both flexibility in the ways students meet course/lab expectations and goals and your responsiveness to students’ needs. In addition to responding to students’ needs as they arise, flexibility can be built into the course or other context by incorporating some student autonomy and choice into assignments/activities from the outset.

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Example practices

The strategies below are organized along the timeline of a course: from development and syllabus planning, to early weeks of the semester, to ongoing.

Course Development and Planning

  • Offer students a choice in assignments and the option to choose their “best two out of three” assignments or assessments toward their final grade.
  • In your syllabus, offer the variety of ways that are best for students to contact you with questions or concerns (e.g., office hours, email before 8pm, 10 minutes before class, etc.)
  • Make the grading process as transparent as possible. Consider providing students the opportunity to redress poor performances on exams, etc. if that is feasible for your course timeline.
  • Establish a formalized mechanism through which students can appeal deadlines or ask for an exam makeup.
  • If students are working together on shared reports or publications, build peer or adviser-led revision time into submission timelines.
  • Lay out what your course attendance policies are, if you have them. This will reduce potential anxiety if a student is unable to attend due to illness.

Early (First Two Weeks)

  • Make the grading process as transparent as possible. Consider providing students the opportunity to redress poor performances on exams, etc. if that is feasible for your course timeline.
  • Communicate early and often with graduate student AIs on your team regarding flexibility and transparency of policies, so that these can be applied to their work with undergraduates.

Ongoing

  • Seek feedback from students throughout the semester. This could be done through web-surveys or an anonymous in-class comment card system.
  • Communicate early and often with graduate student AIs on your team regarding flexibility and transparency of policies.