The Office of Teaching and Learning blog highlights ideas, practices, and conversations that shape teaching and learning across our institution. Here, you鈥檒l find reflections, insights, and perspectives on learning that inspire innovation and thoughtful practice.听
So, we鈥檝e explored the use of ePortfolios and how they can be a powerful tool for both formative and summative assessments. Now, in the fourth and final installment of our 鈥淐onnecting the Dots with ePortfolios鈥 blog series, we are going to investigate the ways ePortfolios can be used to assess programmatic learning outcomes.听
Maybe you teach a writing course and want to add options, like video or audio responses, to give students more choice in how they showcase their learning for the summative assessment. Or maybe you teach a STEM course and are looking for ways to better document students鈥 processes and their growth as a part of their final assignment.鈥
First, utilizing an ePortfolio for low stakes, formative assessments has been shown to increase student engagement and completion of assignments. In a recent study, researchers found that having students complete low stakes, formative assignments within an ePortfolio and gathering them for inclusion in a larger, comprehensive ePortfolio supported higher levels of completion and engagement.
Over the last few months the rise of AI writing tools generally, and ChatGPT specifically, has been a pervasive topic of conversation, especially in higher education.
The OTL has invited faculty with wide disciplinary expertise to contribute their perspectives on ChatGPT and AI writing tools for our OTL Blog. More faculty blogs to come!
Implicit bias can be sneaky. This term refers to the unconscious bias that forms the assumptions that we make about students based on social identity (Imazeki, 2021). These assumptions can be invisible to us, especially in course-level assessment.
As the academic quarter comes to an end, and we approach finals week, it is important to review key assessment technologies available to DU faculty for equity and inclusion. Two particular tools to pay attention to are LockDown Browser and Respondus Monitor.听
Last week, we talked about oral exams as a means of assessment in online courses. This week, we want to introduce how group exams can be facilitated in the online learning environment. If you are interested in both increasing your student engagement and enhancing your online assessment strategies, consider how group exams could work in your course.听
When thinking through assessment in online courses, are you considering how to observe students鈥 interactions with the course material? Your answer to this question may look differently depending upon the context of your course. Dr. Sabine Lang, from the 91短视频鈥檚 Mathematics Department facilitates online assessment in her courses through multi-modal approaches, offering students multiple opportunities to engage with the content and test their knowledge.听
On February 24, more than 50 faculty and staff from across the university gathered for the Winter Retention and Student Success Forum, focused on a pressing and complex issue:鈥academic readiness. This quarterly forum, part of an , is designed not just to share information but to spark collaborative, action-oriented dialogue around student success.听听
One key finding from the NSSE data is the decline in collaborative learning among both first-year students and seniors over the past decade, with a slight rebound from a low point in 2021.
Perhaps you鈥檙e familiar with ePortfolios, recognized as a by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) as a powerful and effective teaching tool for students. And maybe you have heard of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a framework for learning that acknowledges the diverse background of students and strives to give students equal opportunities to succeed. At first glance, these pedagogical tools may appear unrelated. But they actually intersect in multiple meaningful ways! In this blog post, we will explore the ways in which the flexibility of ePortfolios allows for the implementation of multiple means of engagement, representation, and action/expression, aligning with UDL guidelines and enhancing the learning experience for students.
These are not ordinary times. I think that our well-intentioned anxieties about not doing enough for our students are exacerbated because most of us do not teach online regularly. We aren鈥檛 sure how to calculate whether we are doing enough 鈥 or whether we might be doing too much. But doing too much can be exhausting. As Dean Danny McIntosh keeps reminding CAHSS faculty, this will be a long quarter, and we need to make sure that what we do is sustainable, for ourselves and our students, so that none of us burn out.
This 2025-2026 Academic Year the OTL is hosting monthly events called the AI Exchange where we collaborate with offices across the DU campus to learn more about artificial intelligence (AI) in teaching and learning contexts. Sessions vary across the purpose and scope 鈥 some may center skill building and others may offer a show-and-tell approach to learning more about how AI is integrated to support student learning experiences and outcomes.
On February 24, more than 50 faculty and staff from across the university gathered for the Winter Retention and Student Success Forum, focused on a pressing and complex issue:鈥academic readiness. This quarterly forum, part of an , is designed not just to share information but to spark collaborative, action-oriented dialogue around student success.听听
One key finding from the NSSE data is the decline in collaborative learning among both first-year students and seniors over the past decade, with a slight rebound from a low point in 2021.
The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE, pronounced 鈥淣essie鈥) 2024 survey results provide insights into undergraduate students鈥 engagement and learning experiences at DU.听
Perhaps you鈥檙e familiar with ePortfolios, recognized as a by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) as a powerful and effective teaching tool for students. And maybe you have heard of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a framework for learning that acknowledges the diverse background of students and strives to give students equal opportunities to succeed. At first glance, these pedagogical tools may appear unrelated. But they actually intersect in multiple meaningful ways! In this blog post, we will explore the ways in which the flexibility of ePortfolios allows for the implementation of multiple means of engagement, representation, and action/expression, aligning with UDL guidelines and enhancing the learning experience for students.
So, we鈥檝e explored the use of ePortfolios and how they can be a powerful tool for both formative and summative assessments. Now, in the fourth and final installment of our 鈥淐onnecting the Dots with ePortfolios鈥 blog series, we are going to investigate the ways ePortfolios can be used to assess programmatic learning outcomes.听
