Teaching Strategies

This is a collection of resources that highlight strategies you can use during the semester to enhance student engagement, learning, and motivation. Please contact us if you would like to explore any of these topics further.

Resources

Active Learning

“Active learning is anything course-related that all students in a class session are called upon to do other than watching, listening and taking notes.” (Felder and Brent) This page offers links to a variety of active learning strategies as well as information about flexible classrooms and “flipped” classes.

Anti-racist Pedagogy: What, Why and How?

The Kaneb Center’s Horane Diatta-Holgate discusses anti-racist pedagogy, an approach to teaching which centers the impact of racial histories and cultural experiences within and outside academic spaces.

Building Better Bookends: The First Day of Class

Suggestions for the first day of class, including how to assess students’ preconceptions about your field and their baseline knowledge of the subject (without making them feel like they’ve already failed a quiz).

Building Better Bookends: The Last Day of Class

The last day of class carries outsized importance in both student learning and their lasting impressions of the course. Here we share possible goals for your last day along with sample activities that may help you meet each goal.

Enhancing Growth Mindset

By Kevin Barry What is growth mindset? According to Carol Dweck, author of Mindset, “Growth Mindset is based on the

Facilitating Inclusive Dialogues

By Horane Diatta-Holgate What do we mean by inclusive dialogues? Inclusive dialogues refer to intentionally structured classroom engagement using principles

Gathering and Responding to Early Student Feedback

By Kevin Barry What is early feedback? Early student feedback is feedback on teaching and student learning experiences that are

Giving Effective Feedback on Student Writing

By focusing on providing quality, effective feedback, we can maximize its positive effects on learning—not only helping students become better writers, but better thinkers, with increased confidence and motivation to succeed. The strategies here will help you determine what kind of feedback to give and when, as well as identify potential next steps for helping students actually use your feedback.

Incorporating Trauma-Informed Pedagogy into Your Courses

By Misbah Hyder Why use trauma-informed pedagogy in your course? Trauma-informed pedagogies are increasingly at the forefront of latest conversations

Provost’s Learning Lightning Talks – September 2021

Several Notre Dame faculty members share short talks (four to six minutes long) detailing various teaching strategies they have employed, including work in assessment and learning analytics.

The Spark of Learning: Book talk with author Sarah Rose Cavanagh

Description: Wondering how to energize, motivate, and connect your students in a challenging time? A Notre Dame Learning Speaker Series

(Inter)Active Learning

Description: In this workshop, you will explore a nuanced description of interactive, constructive, active, and passive learning strategies (the “ICAP

Beyond the Abstract: Helping Students Learn to Read Scientific Literature

Fluency in reading primary scientific literature represents an important and complex set of skills for developing scientists. In this workshop, instructors interested in incorporating such scientific papers in undergraduate classes clarify their goals, consider assessment strategies, and develop an arsenal of activities and teaching techniques to help students strengthen those skills.

Cultivating Attention in the Classroom

Description: In this workshop, participants will unpack what attention means in today’s classroom and explore ways to help students avoid

Encouraging and Maintaining a Growth Mindset

Description: This workshop will introduce participants to the research on growth mindset and strategies for promoting it in the classroom.

Engaging Lectures for Effective Learning

Description: Are you preparing to give a lecture, for the first or the fiftieth time? Wondering how you can engage

Engaging Notre Dame Students: Moving from Silence to Scholarly Interaction

Examines approaches to increasing student participation and enhancing student engagement with course material. In particular, this workshop models Write-Pair-Share and the Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique (IF-AT) as potential activities for building a classroom environment that creates a learning space for meaningful interactions and keeps students actively engaged in the course.

Equitable and Effective Team-Based Learning

This workshop looks at inclusive strategies for facilitating student interaction and designing effective teams. Participants have the opportunity to consider assessment criteria for evaluating student groups, strategies for inviting students to co-create team contracts, and the benefits of assigning student roles within group projects.

Facilitating Discussion in Social Sciences and Humanities

Classroom discussion can make or break a course. Done well, it’s the linchpin for meaningful classroom engagement; done poorly, even the best-planned course material can fall flat. In this workshop, participants are introduced to strategies for sparking effective discussions and generating inclusive student interactions as well as ways to assess engagement. A recording of the workshop is also available.