The end of the semester also provides an opportunity for reflection and review. At the risk of repeating myself, now would be a great time to drag out that reflective journal, look back and take notes. If your projects or programs feel like they are missing the mark, how do they get adjusted? Who can you talk to for a second opinion? And, most important, if it is on track or hitting on the mark, how can you share this with others?

If you taught this spring, those course evaluations are now coming in. Most people I talk to (and really, my own experience) approach these with mixed feelings – we want to see the positives, fixate on the few negatives, and puzzle about what to do with all this. And while student evaluations of teaching can often be a poor proxy for measures of instructional quality, they do tell us some things about the ways students encounter the class and material. While some things may be hard to adjust, knowing what obstacles exist for students can help understand their responses to our work. This in turn, can point out ways to improve that experience for them and, importantly, for you.  This very handy guide to interpreting and responding to student evaluations from the good folks at UGA’s Center for Teaching and Learning is a good place to start.

With the full implementation of Core IMPACTS set for fall term, one change you may be making will be updating your syllabus. A big shift in our approach to courses in General Education is helping students understand how these courses connect and have meaning. This happens in a variety of ways, obviously, but two main ones are the questions that we “answer” in these classes and the competencies that students develop in the course.

While the up front ask is that syllabi for courses in Core IMPACTS include orienting questions, learning outcomes and career competencies, these won’t do much to change the ways students (and others) view these courses. Articulating the ways in which these questions and outcomes are addressed throughout the course and specifying to students when (and how) they are working on these competencies is a larger part of the change.  The syllabus is where we introduce our students to their course, of course, and so it makes sense to start there and maybe do some “renovating.” To help you with this, check out the attached overview of the recently released MomentumU course on Syllabus Review and Redesign.