Sarah Jones, a doctoral student at Michigan State, reminds us in her insightful post that giving more low-stakes assessments has a multitude of benefits for our students. She writes that providing your student with low-stakes testing will "produce large improvements in student final exam scores, help narrow the grade gap between poorly prepped and highly prepped first year college student, and might even result in more positive course reviews." She cites research by Scott Freeman, David Haak, and Mary Pat Wenderoth (Published in the Life Sciences Education edition of The American Society of Cell Biology) who wrote "We found no evidence that points from active-learning exercises inflate grades or reduce the impact of exams on final grades. When we controlled for variation in student ability, failure rates were lower in a moderately structured course design and were dramatically lower in a highly structured course design. This result supports the hypothesis that active-learning exercises can make students more skilled learners and help bridge the gap between poorly prepared students and their better-prepared peers." Some may be worried that their already heavy workload will be further burdened by more assessment. But the use of Canvas can actually reduce the amount of grading you have to do if you set up the quiz or analysis using the LMS. You can also use peer review, a great active learning tool that enhances learning for all students.

As we enter the last week of planning for our fall semester, I wanted to share just a few tips for the first day of class/semester. A great way to start a class and semester is having your students write a letter to their future selves. Have them list the things they want to learn and accomplish in your class. You should have them turn them in so that you can use the pre-feedback (is there a better word for that?) to shape your class throughout the semester. Be sure and return it to them at or near the end of the term so that they can reflect and use that experience for their next course (or life in general). Why not give the final exam on the first day? I have advocated in the past for this idea. It really provides a road map to guide your students throughout the term. It also identifies very clearly what they can expect to know by the end of the course. Give a low-stakes quiz on the course syllabus during which students can use their mobile devices to access a Canvas quiz. Alternatively, begin an interactive poll that involves students using their classroom response device after which they can see their results. Follow the poll with a classroom discussion before having students retake the poll to improve on their initial answer (Poll everywhere works well for this type of learning experience). Create an inclusive classroom that values all students, their perspectives, and contributions to the community of learners. There are several ways to create inclusive classrooms including using icebreakers, incorporating meaningful and worthy classroom policies, helping students contribute to the learning process, and using teaching strategies that engage students and motivate them to learn. Calling students by name helps to engage with them and shows them that they are important to the class. Establish a culture of feedback where you encourage students to share their classroom experiences. Explain that the feedback you give to students is as meaningful as the feedback they share with you about the course and that you will listen and consider all suggestions. Got more ideas? Please share them in the comments section or forward them to me and I will post there here. Have a great semester!