Curriculum, Assessment & Teaching Transformation Blog

Embark on a transformative journey with Dr. Jeffrey Kohler as we tackle the mid-semester crescendo of higher education. Our enlightening discussion promises to arm you with the strategies you need to navigate midterm assessments while keeping your students engaged and on track.

If you have been entering your grades in HUB for a while, you are likely familiar with the classic options of either manually entering every grade for your students - a tedious process especially if you have a larger class, or uploading a spreadsheet with all the final grades for your students. HUB has recently been updated to allow for a new way to upload grades. This blog will guide you on how to export your final grades to import via the New Way in HUB.

I think we can all agree that life changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. All areas of one’s life from home, work and school have been affected in some way. As an educator, I wanted to take a look at how teaching has changed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As preparation for winter courses comes into full effect, as an instructor, you want to consider: Why are students signed up for your course? What are students hoping to get out of the course? What skills or information do you want your students to obtain?

The temperatures are dipping, we have not seen sunlight in three weeks, and the Bills continue to play with our emotions, which can only mean the end of another fall semester has arrived. With it, of course, thoughts begin to turn toward holiday meals, the beginnings of a festive mindset, and the cheery prospect of course evaluations opening.

A confession: despite the title, I don’t really love course evaluations. If two years of answering emails for the campus-wide course evaluations system has taught me anything, it is that I am not alone. They can be a source of enormous stress, a confusing labyrinth of ever-changing user interfaces and new tools that muddy the quest for clear answers.

As educators we are well aware of the many delays in bringing theory to practice. Whether it is through delayed pedagogical recommendations in adjusting campus learning spaces, conceptual challenges encountered in effectively leveraging distance and remote learning opportunities, or in identifying creative ways of providing students with the course experiences sufficient to actively construct and add meaning to their own learning, we are constantly dealing with the overarching problem of delayed practical application of theory.

A perennial problem that we, in the assessment world, grapple with involves understanding the full impact of the physical space on learners and instructors.

In our Director’s previous blog post, Carol Van Zile-Tamsen introduced our friends and partners to the enhanced structure of the Office of Curriculum, Assessment and Teaching Transformation. Through the merger of CEI and OEE Carol explained what—in its broadest sense—it is that we are trying to achieve in relation to supporting the University’s needs.

In these past few weeks following our recent merger between the Office of Educational Effectiveness and the Center for Educational Innovation, I have been thinking hard about how to most effectively communicate what it is about our new office that will allow us to better serve the university.

Story is one of those elements encountered around every corner, embedded into our lives so deeply that we may not always notice it. It powers every successful advertising campaign and drives our purchasing habits, inspires dinner table conversation as well as the subsequent family arguments, and designs the visuals that flood our sub-conscience as we close our eyes each night.