Struggling to find a balance between answering email constantly and forgetting to follow up with someone? Set your own expectations and boundaries, and then make a plan for communicating these to students and colleagues. Robert Talbert, mathematics professor at Grand Valley State University, argues such a policy should be simple, clearly and ubiquitously stated, and strike a balance of generosity to yourself and others. His article Crafting a Communications Policy offers examples and guidance in creating these policies. In addition to reading Tablert’s excellent piece, this teaching tip offers complementary resources related to his advice.

OaklandU-Specific Resources on Communication and Digital Organization

Students Sign Up with Google Appointments

Talbert recommends using an appointment calendar to reduce the back-and-forth of coordinating a time to meet with students and collaborators. Our past teaching tip favorite Students Sign Up with Google Appointments explains how to set up an appointment calendar. 

Digital Organization and Productivity Guide

e-Learning and Instructional Support’s Digital Organization and Productivity Guide matches communication and organizational needs to tech supported at OU plus other favorite tools. Sections include communication, scheduling, project management, and storage.

Organize and Save Class Messages

With many different courses and policies to manage, students appreciate clear, timely directions, but they can be timely to write anew each semester. Create a document for saving messages you tend to write semester to semester, and reuse them with customized updates for each class. Check out our growing Class and Student Communication Templates for a few messages to save and adapt. 

For more practical ways to create reliable systems for communicating and managing tasks, see communication tips and productivity tips from our series.

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About the Author

Written and designed by Christina Moore, Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. Others may share and adapt under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC. View all CETL Weekly Teaching Tips.

Since many of us have re-worked this familiar document many times, these tools and considerations may give you a new way to refresh your syllabus design that is more usable for you and students.

1. Use the Course Workload Estimator (Rice University). This simple calculator is a helpful starting point for how long students will likely need to spend on a learning task based on their knowledge level and the type of work at hand. Locate a standard reading assignment, practice activity, or other often repeated work task, estimate how long you expect it to take, and then see how it matches with this tool. 

Bonus: Communicate to students an estimate of how long such assignments will take. This can help students from spending too much or too little time on a task, which is a good transparency practice.

1. Evaluate syllabus accessibility. While digital accessibility may first come to mind, and is an important consideration, accessibility also refers to how much agency students have in how they view the syllabus or how inclusive the content and environment will be. The University of Florida’s rubric provides a simple way to evaluate the accessibility your syllabus in broad terms. See CETL’s Syllabus with Accessibility in Mind for recommendations more specific to digital accessibility.
2. Consider areas where the class can customize their syllabus.  Let’s face it: sometimes we can’t get around the fact that a syllabus is a bit long and, dare I say it, boring. By identifying areas where each class can customize their syllabus, students can be more motivated to use it. The Engaging Syllabus Example demonstrates two ways to do this: having students choose banner art relevant to the course, and working with students on a class-specific policy, such as technology use in the classroom or how to approach class cancellations. (I particularly like the banner option, as it helps me visually distinguish between multiple sections of the same course.) 

Bonus: Make these changes live during class on the presenter computer, and use the projector to let students see the changes before their eyes.

1. Have students do something with the syllabus on Day 1. Customizing the syllabus is one of many options for getting students actively working with the syllabus rather than passively receiving information. Other strategies asking them questions about the syllabus in-person or online, guiding them through an active reading of the syllabus, getting them on a syllabus scavenger hunt, and more.
2. Encourage students to customize their copy of the syllabus. If you provide students with the syllabus in Word or Google Docs, students can highlight, prioritize and comment on their own copy of the syllabus, while your original class version is still available in print or on Moodle. 

Bonus: Give students the Customize Your Syllabus Learning Tip for high impact strategies, or customize your own version of this learning tip.

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Written and designed by Christina Moore, Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Oakland University. Others may share and adapt under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC.

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So much has changed since we originally wrote about ChatGPT and artificial intelligence: new chatbots, new AI programs, more powerful outputs. It’s all dizzying to keep up with, leaving us exhausted at the thought of preparing our courses. Some are excited about what AI offers as far as writing and overall work support. How do we appropriately address how AI relates to the work of teaching and learning without being completely overwhelmed? I suggest openly and humbly.

From the firehose of articles, blog, webinars, and crowdsourced resources, I offer a simple “syllabus” with the intention of offering starting points trying to avoid cognitive overload. In it I share the pieces I remember and go back to as I navigate this topic. Here I share a few key points to hold onto:

Say something about AI in the syllabus and with students directly.

While there are vastly different opinions and approaches to using AI, this point is consistent: students need guidance, transparency, standards, and rationale. This doesn’t require having it all figured out, but at least some preliminary thought and sharing with students your current thinking and policies. Browse Classroom Policies for AI Generative Tools to see which ones you gravitate towards, adapt for your needs, and include in the syllabus and assessments. 

Focus on the 1-2 key assessments or activities, and evaluate for AI influence.

The AI conversation prompts us to consider what is most important for students in the coursework and how to maintain its relevancy. Consider these grounding questions to evaluate and update assignments mindful of AI (Bruff, 2023):

1. Why does this assignment make sense for this course?
2. What are specific learning objectives for this assignment?
3. How might students use AI tools while working on this assignment?
4. How might AI undercut the goals of this assignment? How could you mitigate this?
5. How might AI enhance the assignment? Where would students need help figuring that out?
6. Focus on the process. How could you make the assignment more meaningful for students or support them more in the work?

Explain what students get out of the process of coursework.

Key point at the heart of academic integrity and related discussions: what is the motivation to do the work itself? What does it build in the student? What does a student miss out on when not fully engaged?

Define standards and expectations for student skills.

This is also about checking in on our expectations of student outcomes. Higher ed teaching specialist Maha Bali uses a cake as a metaphor for AI, asking these questions:

1. When/where would it be acceptable for students to take shortcuts such as buying from a bakery, baking from a box, or buying a Twinkie instead of baking from scratch?
2. How would you encourage home made?

These key points and references are shared in my Syllabus: ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence, a resources built to grow with the learners who interact with it, just as we should do in our own corners of education. 

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About the Author

Written by Christina Moore, Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Oakland University. Image from Open AI’s ChatGPT. Others may share and adapt under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC.

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"Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day."--Pink Floyd

I’d like you to bring these three letters front and center, in your mind: QTR, “quality time remaining.” While I certainly know there are no guarantees in anything (save for taxes and death), we can guesstimate how many quality years we have left to achieve, attempt, explore, etc. things we’ve always put on the back-burner.

How to Embrace QTR

As with enduring anything, the “how to” of this particular notion is subjective. Unique qualities, beliefs and characteristics are embedded into each of our beings. That being said, what I can tell you is something quite universal: regret is not an enjoyable notion! When striving to get the most out of your life, consider traveling to the metaphorical finish line, if you will. When you reach the end of your timeline here, the goal is to truly believe you’ve lived a meaningful, helpful and giving life. The hope is that at its culmination, your time here has left this place we call home a little better in some meaningful way. For instance . . .

1. Who have I truly helped along the way?
2. What have I done that has had a positive impact?
3. How will I be thought of and/or remembered?

Let’s look at this through the lens of an educator. I’ll answer the above questions in terms of my own educational experiences. Then I encourage you to do the same regarding your personal educational journey. 

1. I’d like to believe I’ve helped many students find and/or develop their passions through having me as their teacher for one year. I’ve hopefully provided one strong foundational step on their staircase to adulthood. 
2. The fact that I am an educator and have dedicated my life to helping others has had a positive impact on those I’ve had the privilege of teaching. Based on feedback, I do know that my “life endurance” lessons have been very well received. They are very appreciative that I care about the ‘whole’ student; not just what they can read and write.
3. This is a powerful notion. At the finish line, how will I be remembered; or as the play “Hamilton” states: “Who will tell my story?” and what will this story say? I can only go by what my students have told and/or written to me. “Mr. D . . . you are the best teacher I’ve ever had!” I’ll take that as a finish line!

These are just a few examples. Feel free to create your own reflection statements/questions to reflect on the “body of work” you’ve created while living.   

Conclusion

Ultimately, we all need reminding that, "The Present Is a Gift". Watching the world and all of its greatest hits and flops, the notion of QTR often comes to my mind. A great activity to close out this notion is to listen to my podcast episode on this topic. When listening, keep this concept in mind when thinking not only about your personal life, but also in correlation with your work. I ask you to do this, as well, because with the notion of QTR, it can be pertinent to ask yourself: Am I even doing what I truly want to do? If you’re not, then I simply ask . . . “What exactly are you waiting for?” (Listen to the podcast episode here.)

A great song correlation for the QTR podcast episode is my song,"Closing Fast." "Closing Fast" was actually inspired by another of my podcast episodes, "No Return to Syndication." Essentially, this life is our one shot. It is not a sitcom where we get an opportunity for a rerun . . . hence, our lifelines can and will close fast. Grab onto life and live it for all its worth! This is a pertinent time to remind anyone who wishes to recognize the time we’re given for what it truly embodies. Perhaps, the Beatles said it best by offering, “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” 

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About the Author

Brian Dalton is an educator of 30-years at Rochester Community Schools. He is also a consultant who has traveled the country providing educators withresources to help them endure the challenges of life as an educator. He is also the author of Teach4Endurance: Surviving the Swim, Bike and Run in Today’s Classroom. Brian uses his endurance racing experiences, lessons learned while training, as well as his unique sense of humor to correlate endurance racing to the greatest endurance challenge of all: teaching! “Strain, rigidity, and stress are surefire killers of any pursuit in which one hopes to flourish,” says Dalton, who has taught for nearly three decades and raced in over 20 triathlons, including three Ironman events. As noted by former NFL coach, Don Clemons, "Brian does a great job in developing a playbook for educators of all ages and positions." Outside the classroom, Brian can be found as a musician on Spotify, iTunes, etc. He also produces his Teach4Endurance Podcast (available onall streaming platforms). You can also find his blog and reach out to him at his website.

Image by Aron Visuals on Unsplash.

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