Welcome back from the Office for Teaching and Learning!

Welcome back!

Welcome to the fall 2023 semester! Classes officially kick off today and as always, the Office for Teaching and Learning is looking forward to working with you to make your semester a successful one, including fine-tuning your courses and engaging your students.

Who is the OTL?

The Office for Teaching and Learning (OTL) serves all members of the WSU teaching community. We offer confidential individual consultations, workshops and webinars, faculty and student panels, mid-semester assessments, custom sessions designed for individual departments, writing series, grant opportunities, and virtual resources to support our instructors 24/7. We pride ourselves on creating brave spaces for all teaching and learning conversations, including difficult conversations that we need to have with our students.

Resources for the beginning of the semester

The OTL maintains the Virtual Resource Hub (click to self-enroll to access the pages below), a Canvas-based repository of information on a variety of teaching topics. The following topics may be particularly useful as you are starting the semester.

• New Instructor and GTA Resources: new to teaching at WSU? This page is a great place to start.
• Canvas Resources: a new, expanded offering of information on using Canvas, including information about its primary features, using the gradebook, creating quizzes, and more.
• Artificial Intelligence in Teaching and Learning: strategies for adapting to the presence of AI in higher education.
• Active Learning: tips for integrating engagement and interaction in your teaching.
• Building Community and Inclusivity: resources for inclusive teaching practices and communicating with students.

Teaching tidbit: connecting with your students

The first two weeks are an ideal time to connect with your students and set expectations for the semester. Below are five suggestions that can be implemented in any class:

• Get to know your students. Start with learning their names and pronouns as well as relevant academic and personal background information. You could use an online survey platform like MS Forms or have an on-paper questionnaire that students fill out.
• Establish expectations around communication in the course. Be as transparent as possible: How do you want students to contact you? What community guidelines do you want to incorporate to set the tone for how you and your students interact with one another?
• Highlight course expectations. At the end of the semester, what will your students have gained from taking your class? What are the learning outcomes, how do they relate to their studies, and how does it prepare them for their future careers?
• Explore the learning environment together. If you are teaching in person, how will you arrange and organize the classroom? If you are teaching online via Zoom or MS Teams, how will you facilitate those sessions? Can you demonstrate how students should navigate your course in Canvas?
• Engage students via active learning. Allow time for an activity or two that helps students to get to know each other and you.

You can find more information and resources about the First Day of Class in the OTL’s Virtual Resource Hub. You can also visit the Teaching@Wayne Archive to view previous issues.