Category: 8/24 Homework

Flexibility within the existing structure of my courses

•Deadlines for Assignments: 

•Structured deadlines with flexibility to grant extensions

•Student-friendly explanations in syllabus, e.g., importance of keeping up with assignments and meeting deadlines but urging students to reach out if there are challenges in doing so

•Reducing Content in LIN100 •Require a final capstone project instead of 4 smaller projects

Conveying hope.

•Weekly emails/Bb announcements that include feel good images/clip art, e.g., cute animals to elicit positive emotions

•Weekly office hours via zoom

•Opening class sharing activity, e.g., Roses and thorns

Class structure, Assignments & Deadlines

• Encourage submission of partially completed assignments to meet the deadline, with the option of revising them later on. 
• Accept past due assignments and lower the point deduction penalties I usually enforce for late submissions. 
• Prompt grading & feedback.
• Clear guidelines, rubrics and comments for each assignment.
• Response to emails within 48hrs.
• Focus on broad concepts rather than technical/software-specific skills.

Positive/hopeful outlook

• Find opportunities, news articles etc. to highlight  how relevant the skills we are learning in our courses are in the current/post-COVID economy (i.e: advantages of animated vs. live action production in a pandemic; the power of digital and social media in creating systemic changes etc.)

Emotional support

• Dedicate 5 minutes at the beginning and end of each class to discuss students’ concerns – whether they are related to the class or not. 

Inclusive pedagogy

• Use of gender and race neutral nouns in examples/prompts/lectures
• Showcase role models from diverse genders, race, and cultural backgrounds. 
• Growth-mindset encouragement (i.e: “I know you have the ability to master this topic if you follow these steps” instead of “ I know you are smart”)
• Emphasis on the fact that I don’t know everything and that the field we are engaged in is always evolving and requires us to constantly learn new tools, make mistakes, and learn from them. 

Building Community

• Encourage asynchronous peer-to-peer interactions (i.e: discussion boards, Flipgrid, Slack). 
• Facilitate constructive peer reviews (synchronously and asynchronously)