Speaker 1: I always want to be better at what I do. And so asking my students to reflect on that in their evaluations and then integrating that information into my courses, it means that I'm always making sometimes little tweaks and sometimes big ones to get a better class and hopefully have a more successful student.

Speaker 2: My course has gone over several revisions. And these revisions usually stem from student input. So that would usually take the shape of students not understanding something from my initial design.

Speaker 3: We do get formal student feedback through the form of student evaluations. So every semester at the end of the semester, the students will evaluate the course and the teacher and give detailed feedback, which is part of our review process for every course and specifically the online courses. There's things that might happen that you might not have thought of that are brought to your attention and that are easily changed that are, you know, of course, if it's easier for the student to understand something a certain way or showing it a different way, it's always helpful.

Speaker 4: Well, you know, you can turn the tracking on and off in Blackboard if you want to see where they went, kind of how long they stayed. And so I have all the tracking on. Did they watch the video or did they appear to watch the video?

Speaker 1: If you look at the data and the data is telling you that the students aren't learning this well, then you have to look at your teaching methods. You have to look at the platform that you're delivering that material through. Is it the textbook? Is it the question itself? What can I change to more effectively reach my students? And then the outcomes are going to reflect that learning no matter what.

Speaker 2: Another sort of regular source of revision, again, from the perspective of a faculty member is the change in technologies. So as an example, I had a version of my course in which all of my audio files were stored in the cloud and were embedded in their own players, audio players, in my course. And that worked great for about two semesters. And then mixed content became a problem with browsers online. And so somebody flicked a switch at Firefox and Internet Explorer and said that not all mixed content will be displayed. And so that was not a problem with the Learning Management System, ANGEL, at the time. It was really the browser technologies evolving, and I had to evolve with them.

Speaker 1: The minute I put in a hyperlink to, for instance, how do you use YouTube Live? Well now there's an update to YouTube Live, and that hyperlink doesn't work, or there's been changes, or there used to be a video editor in YouTube that no longer works the same way. So it's a constant updating of the material.

Speaker 5: Items within the discipline change. There are new things that are always introduced, current events may change some things that you're talking about.

Speaker 2: And then there's textbook changes. Textbook changes also require faculty to revisit all their content, make sure that their page numbers, exercises, references, et cetera, are all up to date.

Speaker 1: I'm always looking for, is there a better textbook? And if you have a better textbook, or I mean, honestly, with the way that publishers do addition, new additions and updates, you have to change that material often anyway.

Speaker 3: I think always thinking of a better way to communicate how to do better to a student or in the grading process is always something I'm looking for. How to give better feedback, whether it's me videoing myself in a traditional classroom experience sort of showing them something they might be used to, or a voiceover, or adding my voice to content, or just having a virtual office hour where we can all sign in and either do it digitally or do it through voice content.

Speaker 4: Videos are harder because I usually have to wait until the summer to kind of redo videos. And sometimes I can tell in the middle when I've made a video if it's working or not, so I'll pull that down for maybe the next semester if I find it doesn't work. And I try not to make it something that's in the book already. It's usually something that kind of extends the knowledge that the book offers because I teach Fine Arts Appreciation, which is all of the arts, and sometimes the book is really art heavy. It's got great art things, but it doesn't have great music things, theater things, photography things, dance things, and so I supplement those with the videos.

Speaker 1: I'll probably be looking at my online classes, revitalizing and revising the discussion boards to include more options and with recognition that, again, back to learning style, not every student's going to be a strong writer. There are other opportunities in the classes for them to demonstrate their writing ability. Maybe the discussion board doesn't need to be that space. Maybe they can have the choice to submit something as an audio file or as a video file. What are the multiple ways in which students can demonstrate learning that really still allows them to engage the material and get the most out of the class? So I'm always looking for those opportunities, and I'm not afraid to ask my students, how would you want to do this? Are there other ways that you could do the same work in a way that you think would be more successful? And then integrating that.

Speaker 4: I look at all of them every year to decide what's happening and what I need to throw out and keep. And if I see this kind of visceral response, because I always put extra things in the class. I don't do extra credit, but students can pick and choose what they want to do to get to their point structure. And if I see that they're not doing an assignment, I pretty much will kick that assignment out because they either found that useless or they didn't have enough time to do it. Maybe it was too much leading to what I needed them to do. So I'll pull that out if it didn't work.

Speaker 1: Not just as simple as is this link broken or do I need to update the citation on this handout because now there's a new edition of the text or whatever. Is this still the best way to teach this? Am I reaching my students in the most effective way possible? I actually changed the assignment three times in my interpersonal communication class because what I realized is that I'm not effectively assessing critical thinking in... I can't even remember what the former assignment was, but it wasn't working. So is there a better way? And then I looked at that and then I looked at this. That doesn't work either. I finally settled on what I think is the most effective method for that class to assess critical thinking and it happens to be through written exam questions, which are an enormous pain to grade. It takes me a very long time. Online classes, in-person classes, but it assesses critical thinking I think better than anything else. The students learn the material. They walk out of that class, they're able to make connections between this concept and this concept and to me it's been really exciting.

Speaker 2: All teaching, online teaching, face-to-face teaching, is continuous improvement. And any K-12 teacher and really any instructor who has been doing it for a while will talk about their formative experiences in the early years of their careers. And in those early years, what you learn about for yourself, for your own development, is about missed opportunities. You make mistakes and students are usually very good at making you aware of some of your mistakes. But when you reflect on your teaching, you learn about, oh geez, why didn't I talk about this or why didn't I bring up this resource when I was teaching that lesson? It would have helped so much. And these nuggets for the conscientious teacher, they add up and they embed themselves into your experience as a teacher. And hopefully those missed opportunities dwindle as time goes by. And at one point you have enough experience to change on a dime. We were very good, if we have enough experience, at pivoting and sort of squeezing the richness out of a particular lesson or lecture in a very improvised fashion because of our experience.