Springing Forward

Before you pack your bags and head off into holiday bliss, let’s wrap up your course and get them ready for your return in the spring semester.  This is the ideal time for course and self reflection.  This checklist focuses on your course content, your course mechanics and your self reflection.

Course Content Clean Up

The course content clean up focuses on reflecting on your content as whole including assignments, discussions, quizzes, projects, activities, and the interactions between you and your students, student and student, and the content and students.  This is an opportunity to look at your performance and your students’ performance to make any changes to your teaching practices and course content to create a better experience for the spring semester.  Take a moment and think about what did or did not work this semester.

Content reflection questions you can ask yourself:

• Did the assignments and activities meet your module objectives?
• Did the assignments and activities have clear and concise directions; did students struggle to understand what you wanted?
• Did your students meet expectations in regards to the course objectives?
• Were the activities fun and interactive?
• Did you have meaningful discussions on course topics with your students?
• Was your feedback meaningful and useful for the students; do you need to update or create rubrics?
• Does your syllabus need to be re-worked?
• If your students completed a course survey, what feedback did your students give about the course itself?
• Overall, was the class a success, why or why not?

Check out the Course Readiness Checklist here!

Course Mechanics

The course mechanics focuses on how you and your students interacted with Brightspace, what tools you learned or want to learn to enhance student the student experiences, and any technical challenges you had this past semester.  Be proactive for the spring semester and mitigate stress by setting up your course in Brightspace at least 2 weeks before the spring semester start in January.

Technical reflection question you can ask yourself:

• Did you run into any issues with the grade book tool?
• Did you use Brightspace to enhance student learning?
• Were your modules/units in the content section set up in a way that students found information easily?
• Are there any broken links to external resources, videos, articles, etc?
• Are you interested in exploring new-to-you features in Brightspace or using external products that easily link to Brightspace?

Term readiness checklist:

• Import content from the previous semester to your new spring semester course.
• Update the Syllabus with any changes to assignment, activities, projects, grading scheme, or objectives.
• Create or modify modules that create a consistent workflow and are organized in a way that students can easily navigate the information.
• Create a library resource page for the students to access resources they may need for their class.
• Check that all links work and update any videos, presentation slides, or articles as needed.
• Create your grade book BEFORE the semester starts.
• Set up your Zoom/Panopto link before the semester starts.
• Check accessibility status of your uploaded documents.

Self Reflect Because You’re Worth It!

Providing students with a high quality educational experience is your top priority and self reflection is a valuable method to help improve your teaching practices and the content of your course every semester.  It is a moment for you to be honest with yourself and organize your thoughts on areas of improvement and congratulate yourself on areas that were stellar.

These self reflection moments could have you pondering if your activities in unit 3 aligned with the overall course objectives or you could think about how engaged and excited the students were for an activity you had them complete in unit 8.  Self reflecting can help you determine your strengths but also helps you become more self aware about areas that may need improvement.  Ending the semester with a course survey/evaluation that your students complete can help you determine what went well and didn’t go well this semester from a student perspective and that perspective is just as important as your own.  There is always room for improvement so take a moment and read through some of the self reflection questions that could help you grow as an educator.

Self reflection questions you can ask yourself:

• What are you the most proud of this past semester?
• What do you think went well this semester?
• What do you think could have gone better this semester?
• When did your students seem the most engaged during the course?
• When did your students seem the least engaged?
• What areas did your students excel in?
• What areas did your students struggle with?
• What aspects could you change to enhance student learning?
• Did you provide accessible content for your students?
• How can you implement these changes?
• Were the objectives and daily details discussed and listed for students to understand and view for each class?
• What activities or videos were effective and which weren’t?
• What do you want to be different moving forward and what steps do you need to get there?

Make a plan and implement the changes you want to see for the next semester.  Even small changes can make a big impact.  Be proud of the hard work you did these past few months and continue to self reflect!