Tips, strategies, and ideas for designing courses.
Whether or not you are new to teaching in a higher education setting or an experienced university educator, beginning teaching in a new university setting presents unique challenges. Read more about Preparing to Teach a UNT Course for the First Time
This section of the Handbook provides resources for preparing to teach a class at UNT.
For the second nomination for the Teaching Excellence Spotlight, we are featuring Dr. April Prince, a professor in the Department of Music History, Theory, and Ethnomusicology with UNT’s esteemed College of Music. Read more about Our Teaching Excellence Spotlight is on Dr. April Prince
The Teaching Commons Team is working hard on adding more content from the backlogs of CLEAR’s many past workshops, trainings, and events. The existence of this backlog is what partially inspired the beginning of Teaching Commons – we have all this relevant content on teaching and learning, but no single location for sharing it with UNT instructors. Thus, we have added two new Teaching Essentials, the section of our website that houses curated and new content on time-tested and new developments in teaching and learning scholarship. Read more about Two New Teaching Essentials Added
The first experience students have in your online course can make a huge impact on the remainder of the class. Read more about Helping Students Navigate Your Online Course
Clear and consistent organization will allow you and your students to focus more on learning the actual content of your course, not only from the beginning of the semester but throughout the remainder of the course. The beginning information in a course along with the course syllabus are both areas where you can answer initial questions up front, prevent some questions from needing to be asked, and/or prevent other problems from coming up. There is no fool-proof perfect way to put a course together – but there are a lot of things that you can do that will make it easier for everyone involved and make it more enjoyable. Read more about Organizing Your Online Course
In a face-to-face course, instructors often spend part of the first-class meeting going over the syllabus and class policies with students. Creating a designated Start Here area in your online course is like this. This is a place where you can include the most important information that students need to know to get off to a good start in your course. A Start Here area also allows you to emphasize things that are important for this course or expectations that you have for how students will interact with the content, each other, and you. Read more about Designing a Start Here Section for Your Online Course
