Follow Up Friday

May 14, 2021

This week: summer teaching tips, posts you may have missed, and upcoming events

Summer classes often have a romantic aura about them; the campus is quiet, the weather is nice, and the pace of life seems a little more gentle. But what isn’t gentle is the syllabus cramming and compressing instructors usually have to do if they’re teaching a course in one of the shortened summer sessions. How can anyone pack a full semester into just 5 weeks?

This past week, Clemson Online held two workshops on preparing for summer teaching. Here’s a few of the tips we shared:

Make sure your learners know from the beginning that the summer session will be intensive. If learners are forewarned, they can rise to the challenge of an accelerated learning pace and achieve your learning goals.
If you’re teaching a survey-style course, reduce the scope of your coverage. You can’t cover every single component, so choose the most crucial ones and cover them with a little more depth.
Consider assigning more assessments. This may seem counterintuitive, but shorter, more frequent assessments can help your learners stay on top of the course material and gives you more chances to track their learning progress. Weekly or even daily assignments can be effective elements of an intensive summer class.

If you missed out, don’t worry – Clemson Online will be holding these workshops again in June. So keep checking for updates on those and other future trainings from your colleagues at Clemson Online.