Discover Best Practices
Teaching Tips
It's never too early to start planning for the next term, whether it's the course syllabus or the course materials themselves -- including your Bb course site. Each link below provides timely tips concerning the corresponding week of the semester.
- Week One - Use SPOT report to improve current course, block student access to copyrighted materials on last semester’s Blackboard courses, the first-day attendance policy for online courses, and assignments for recently enrolled on-campus students.
- Week Two - Get to know your students.
- Week Three - Use the Technology-Enhanced Classrooms.
- Week Four - Deter unoriginal work.
- Week Five - Help students maintain integrity in their papers and projects.
- Week Six - Get feedback from your students at midterm.
- Week Seven - Organize grading criteria in a rubric.
- Week Eight - Integrate "active learning" into your class.
- Week Nine - Place book orders online.
- Week Ten- Use a course calendar to manage your workload.
- Week Eleven - Design an online lesson for those days you have to cancel class.
- Week Twelve - Increase your students' research skills.
- Week Thirteen - Keep a teaching journal.
While you are still experiencing the successes and challenges of this semester, consider recording some notes on practices and activities that are or aren't moving the class towards your stated objectives. You might want to reflect on your teaching and note what you might like to try or change in a future course. Once the semester is over, we tend to forget the assignment that didn’t work as well as intended or the lecture that created confusion – and thus be destined to repeat the same mistakes in subsequent semesters. Even a few notes could prompt you on how to design more effective instruction in the future. See Improving Your Teaching with Feedback (
108 Kb), particularly the section on "Self-Reflection" in "Instruction at FSU," the faculty teaching handbook. - Week Fourteen - Begin drafting next semester’s syllabus.
- Week Fifteen - Copy contents from your spring Bb course site into your summer or fall course site.
