Organization

My peers evaluated my course organization by reviewing my materials and observing my teaching each year. It was clear to those who reviewed my materials that I have spent much time and effort crafting high quality activities that promote engagement. 

With each iteration of teaching a course, I use the feedback from both students and peers to learn what went well and what can be improved. Each semester, I look to modify my resources or create new ones that improve my students’ experience in my classes. As I have been describing in previous sections, I now use the following organizational tools in each of my classes:

1) A weekly-updated calendar TeX file that contains all due dates of assignments, section summaries, and dates for all assessments.

2) A weekly personalized email blast using Mail Merge in Word to all my students with their current points earned for each learning outcome, homework assignment, and their overall grade.

3) A Discord channel for each class where almost all student communication is stored. I also use this extensively to provide feedback and check in with my students.

4) An explicit list of all the learning outcomes for the course.

5) An Excel grade book file the students can use to keep track of their points and see their progress toward each letter grade.

I have used the Canvas home page as the main location for links and files to download (other than lecture materials within the modules). Below is an example of my organization for a section of Elementary Statistics. The top box includes links to the syllabus, a Calendly link for office hours, the calendar TeX file, the Excel grade book file, and the list of learning outcomes. Below that are links to various data sets used in class, and simulation and probability distribution websites.   

I end this section with some comments I have received in my evaluations that concern organization of course material.