Resources for Course Design and Teaching Methods

List of Evidence-Based Teaching Strategies

Clemson University's Top Ten list of evidence-based teaching strategies.

Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) Higher Education Examples and Resources

Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) is an initiative that "aims to advance equitable teaching and learning practices that reduce systemic inequities." It is based off small interventions of making elements of the course clearer and more transparent to students. This site offers many quick resources and examples from various disciplines. 

Videos and downloadable resources for exploring and implementing high-impact, evidence-based teaching techniques

The K. Patricia Cross Academy offers a wide range of free resources. You can search for resources by activity type (e.g., graphic organizing, group work, problem solving), teaching problem (e.g., surface learning, low motivation), and learning taxonomic dimension (e.g., foundational knowledge, integration and synthesis).

Classroom Management

The University of Connecticut's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning present a comprehensive guide to classroom management, including several tips to encourage student engagement. 

Teaching Strategies: Disrespect and Disruption in the College Classroom

The University of Michigan's Center for Research on Teaching and Learning has an excellent guide and set of resources for reducing and responding to disruptive or disrespectful behavior in the classroom.

Ten In-the-moment Responses for Student Incivility and other "Uh Oh/Sigh/Say What Now" Classroom Moments

Dr. Chavella Pittman offers ways to respond to troubling classroom moments.

Navigating Heated, Offensive, and Tense (HOT) Moments in the Classroom

This webpage provides strategies for navigating moments of disruption in the classroom, including ideas for anticipating and navigating heated moments before, during, and after they occur.

Accommodating Stress: Coping with Student Requests

This article offers guidance on how faculty can be fair and responsive while also avoid being taken advantage of. It includes a clear list of pragmatic solutions.

Six Tips for Cultivating a Trauma-Informed Higher Education Classroom at the Beginning of Each Semester

Student-centered strategies for cultivating an optimal learning environment.

Supporting Learning in Students with Autism: What do Professors Need to Know?

This article provides a list of strategies to support young adults with Autism in the classroom. These strategies can benefit all students, not just individuals with autism.

How Universities Can Better Welcome Neurodiverse Students

This site offers a simple overview of issues related to Autism and ADHD and supportive strategies to help these students succeed in the classroom.

Building Neurodiversity-Inclusive Postsecondary Campuses: Recommendations for Leaders in Higher Education

This is a longer article about supports for neurodiverse individuals. You may find helpful tips by scanning the recommendation headers for issues that relate to your classroom. For example, recommendation seven addresses how to "recognize and accommodate sensory discomfort, distraction distress, and overload."

Neurodiversity in Education (Podcast)

This podcast features a scholar of psychology and co-founder of the Neurodiversity Network. They offer a definition of neurodiversity and discuss challenges and strategies in education.

Panel Discussion on Neurodiversity in the University Classroom

"Grounded in a disability justice framework and a commitment to universal design for learning, this virtual presentation and discussion will address key issues, tensions, and helpful strategies to create classrooms that support engagement of and success for neurodiverse learners."

Managing the Meltdown: Supporting autistic youth through episodes

This article outlines stages of dysregulation, including early signs of distress, response strategies, and insight on how a person might feel, act, and think at the peak of a dysregulated episode. This is not a directive for faculty to manage all the needs of a student in a meltdown, but can help foster better understanding of the experience and think about positive ways to respond to initial distress.

Faculty Guide to Supporting Student Mental Health

This guide from the Jed Foundation describes straightforward and significant steps faculty can take to support mental health, recognize and reach out to struggling students, and connect students to professional help. 

Ungrading Light: 4 Simple Ways to Ease the Spotlight Off Points (Chronicle Article)

This article offers strategies for shifting the focus from earning points to learning with purpose. These types of strategies, where grades are de-emphasized or not used at all in evaluation, can improve creativity and motivation while reducing anxiety.

Meaningful Grading: A Guide for Faculty in the Arts

This book "enables faculty to create and implement effective assessment methodologies—research based and field tested—in traditional and online classrooms. In doing so, the book reveals how the daunting challenges of grading in the arts can be turned into opportunities for deeper student learning, increased student engagement, and an enlivened pedagogy."

Active Learning Library

Creating Accessible Classrooms

This webpage outlines different perspectives on ability and provides strategies for creating accessible classrooms that promote belonging and student success.

Inclusive Pedagogy Toolkit

This comprehensive resource from Georgetown University offers evidence-based solutions for designing inclusive learning environments, addressing specific areas of content, pedagogy, assessment, climate, power, and mentorship. 

Teaching for Equity with Empathy (Video)

A scholar of sociology describes a practice of teaching for equity with empathy and provides strategies for implementation.

Making Teaching More Inclusive and Equitable (Podcast)

Discussion about diversity, equity, and inclusion with a focus on anti-racism and neurodiversity awareness. 

Visual Art Culture Education to Cultivate Critical Racial Consciousness

Description of a course module co-designed with students to nurture critical racial consciousness. 

How to Create a Learning Environment where Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are Valued (Podcast)

Dr. Chavella Pittman describes how to create a learning environment where our most vulnerable and marginalized students and faculty can participate and benefit fully in the teaching and learning experience.

Anti-Racism Resources at CIA's Gund Library

This is a link to our library's resources on anti-racism. It includes lists of print and e-books as well as open access resources and related artists.

Reducing Bias In and Out of the Classroom

A collection of resources on bias and how it impacts different actions in higher education.

Diversity & Inclusion Syllabus Statements

The Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning provides reflective questions and examples for crafting a personalized diversity statement.

Podcast Interview with Leigh Patel on her book, No Study Without Struggle: Confronting the Legacy of Settler Colonialism in Higher Education.

This interview is featured on the podcast, Fully Booked. Patel explains and troubles settler colonialism and explores how it is replicated in higher education. Patel, a transdisciplinary scholar, is also the author of Decolonizing Educational Research: From Ownership to Answerability. 

Art and Design Pedagogy in Higher Education: Knowledge, Values, and Ambiguity in the Creative Curriculum (Book)

This book suggests a student-centered model of curriculum that supports the development of creativity.

Art, Artists, and Pedagogy: Philosophy and the Arts in Education (Book)

This book "asks what the purpose of the arts is in education in the twenty-first century" and poses questions of the "relation of the arts to the world and what kind of society we may wish to envisage." Chapters include "Toward 'grown-up-ness in the world' through the arts as critical, quality pedagogy" and "Artists, presence and the gift of being unteacherly". 

A Conversation about Critique as a Signature Pedagogy in the Arts and Humanities

This article discusses the learning process of critique. It also previews and reviews essays in a special edition of the journal, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education.

Studio Critiques of Student Art: As They Are, As They Could Be with Mentoring

Abstract: "Explores the thoughts and feelings of instructors and students when students display their work for critical response. Experiences of instructors and students with critiques; How art critiques can be improved; Application of mentoring notions to critiques; Instructors and students' notion of studio critiques"

Learner-Centered methods shift the focus from the instructor as the provider of knowledge to the students as active participants in the creation and evaluation of knowledge. Five key characteristics of learner-centered teaching are:

1. Student engagement in the hard, messy work of learning.

2. Teaching of explicit skills, including the ability to solve problems, think critically, evaluate evidence, and generate ideas.

3. Encouragement of student reflection on what they are learning and how they are learning it.

4. Students have some control over learning processes, such as the pace of instruction, choice in assignments, and evaluation criteria.

5. Encourages collaborative work and communities of learners. (Weimer, 2012)

Overview of Learner-Centered Teaching

This is an excellent summary of Weimer's book on learner-centered teaching. It provides tips on implementing the approach and potential barriers to these methods.

Is My Teaching Learner-Centered?

This article offers several reflective questions to help you think about practicing learner-centered instruction and course design.

Arts in Society Redesign: A Learner-Centered Approach

Research article on a liberal arts course redesigned to be more problem-centered and learner-centered.

What We're Learning about Learning

Georgetown University's podcast about teaching and learning in higher education. Includes episodes such as alternative grading, accommodations, belongingness, and experiential assignments.

The Key with Inside Higher Ed

Like many other higher education podcasts, this started as a response to the pandemic, and continued on to address related issues such as student wellbeing, the value of higher education, college leadership, and other issues related to equity. One episode of note is "Debating the value of college arts (and other) programs" which features a discussion about pursuing degrees that are not primarily focused on economic outcomes. 

ThinkUDL

This podcast is about Universal Design for Learning (UDL), an approach to learning that centers inclusivity and learner variability.