Tip Bits of Effective Teaching

Whether you have tried something new and received favorable results from your students or have lesson learned from trials and errors, the Center for Faculty Development would love to hear from you. Just click the Add a Comment button and share your experience!

First Thing First

Remember those dear reminders in your new purchases? Open me first. Start here. Read me first. Etc., etc. We learned to appreciate these reminders or guidance when we didn’t know what to expect. Sometimes if we had ignored them, we would end up wishing we had read them first.

This semester, you might want to start out differently, especially on what you do the first day of class. As you know, new students come to your course with a wide range of expectations, whether your course is an elective or not. Therefore letting students sample the typical aspects of your course in the first session and experience how they will learn in your classroom will help to narrow the gaps of expectations, theirs and yours.

The first day does not have to limit to checking enrollment list, handing out syllabus, and letting off early.  How to do it differently? Check out Making Your First Class Session Really First Class. It is an invaluable integrated media resources created by CSU faculty on different aspects of preparing for your first day of class. CSU faculty members from different disciplines shared their trials and tribulations on their first days. In this resource, you will understand the different goals for their preparations and what would be required. You will visit their classrooms online and observe how they implemented their goals with new students. You will find supporting materials and templates to plan your own.

Making Your First Class Session Really First Class is part of the ELIXR MERLOT program, elixr.merlot.org, is a digital case story repository that hosts over 30 discipline-specific multimedia stories.