In academia, whispers and tales often circulate, shaping how educators perceive their roles and the strategies they employ in their classrooms. From the mysterious efficacy of specific teaching methods to the supposed shortcuts that promise academic success, rumors, myths, and urban legends abound in the realm of teaching part-time college classes. Though often unsubstantiated, these narratives can wield significant influence, subtly guiding the decisions and beliefs about our career choices.

Simplicity can be a game-changer. By leveraging simple accessibility features, educators can create a more streamlined and effective learning experience for their students.

Creating course announcements and reminders that students will actually read can be a challenging task. With inboxes and courses flooded with messages from various sources, it's crucial to craft announcements and reminders that are informative, engaging, and relevant to students' learning experiences. Here are some tips to help you create announcements and reminders that grab students' attention and keep them informed.

Most of us have participated in an online discussion board. This learning tool brings small groups or hundreds of students together in a single conversation. Virtual discussions are essential components in most online classes. However, are we truly taking advantage of what discussion boards have to offer?

Take a look at four different ways to enhance your class discussion boards.

Initially, I was apprehensive about redesigning my course materials and activities to reflect Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. The thought of planning for this type of integration seemed overwhelming. How could I manage such a task amidst a packed schedule with competing priorities as a part-time college instructor? But as I delved deeper, I discovered that UDL was not as daunting as it initially appeared. In fact, it was quite manageable and made a huge difference in how my students engaged with me, my course, and its materials.

If you work in a for-profit business or recruiting, you may already be familiar with push-and-pull marketing techniques. However, for someone like me, an everyday college instructor, these were new communication strategies, and I wondered how they could be used in my classes to motivate online learners.

I found both techniques to be effective in engaging learners. Here are some suggestions to recreate a similar experience in your class.

As the last week of classes approaches, you might be overwhelmed with tasks, leaving little time to plan an amazing finale for your course. However, achieving a renewed sense of excitement and purpose in your teaching and your student's learning is possible with just a few simple steps and a genuine desire to make it happen. This article will explore these steps and guide you toward finishing your course on a high note.

We talk a lot about how to give feedback to students, but what about how to receive it? Encouraging student feedback effectively evaluates and improves teaching, course design, and student engagement efforts. We’ll take a look at one method for gathering student feedback through the use of a mid-semester survey.

We all think we know what it means to be successful, but need to remember that student success includes their version of studying, practicing, and actualizing their learning. Given the plethora of different ways to learn, there should also be as many different ways to test what we have learned. Universally designed assessment strategies bring us closer to process and reality.

When we use strategies that make learning stick, the learner is more likely to remember what they have learned, value the experience of learning, and put what they have learned into practice.

Is it just me, or is it hard to concentrate when we are surrounded by distractions all the time?

Days like these strengthen my resolve to be present in the moment, despite how challenging it may be, in order to improve my relationships with my students, increase the efficiency of my course preparation, and, most importantly, improve my overall instructor presence.

We always strive to look at instructor presence as an integral part of the greater online course design process and we understand that sometimes you just need a few resources to get you started. Use our simple strategies for maintaining your online presence and make your courses more inviting and supportive for your students.

Feedback may be one of the most powerful teaching and learning methods in your classroom and not all of it has to come from you!

Instructors need feedback to shape lecture materials and modify class activities just as much as students need feedback to assess their progress and learning. Everyone benefits when a tight feedback loop is in place.

Find out how to create feedback loops with your own feedback cycle so everyone benefits.

Whether you're a grad student learning the basics of instructional design, an adjunct instructor out there teaching your first online class, or a seasoned instructor walking in your purpose, you're doing it. You're teaching and learning with technology. And we're here to help you feel equipped and empowered to create and celebrate teaching and learning experiences that look as fantastic as they function!

Effective feedback serves two purposes. It shapes how educators will teach (or reteach) concepts as students progress through the material and provides a vehicle by which students can assess their learning and, in most cases, make changes and grow.

Has course planning or course design recently consumed your schedule as you struggle to strike a balance between alternating online and face-to-face instructional content?

If so, you're not alone.

I’ve found that one of the major pitfalls of repurposing course content in any modality is that when I pull materials together from multiple sources I tend to lose the cohesiveness and necessary smooth navigation that students crave within my course modules. I’ve found that in order to make quick work of remixed content, I first need to better understand the materials I have to work with before making any adjustments.

We understand that there are two things that every instructor needs more of: time, and energy.

But before we can even begin to break down steps for efficiency, you must first believe balance is attainable! In fact, there are easy ways to automate and digitize routine communication and feedback, simple ways to help students build a community of inquiry, and resources to balance different teaching modalities.

Let’s review a few quick strategies and examples for adapting student engagement techniques and draw inspiration from a simplified approach to feedback and grading. These are big issues for sure but by addressing the strategies systematically through a series of small changes, simple approaches could add up to big results.

Hello, we’re the ones behind Teaching Through Noise and work in education technology. As a team, we are ever hopeful that each class, technique, and teaching and learning strategy we implement will bring us one step closer to more powerful and impactful learning experiences. And we desperately want to share those resources with you!