Advice from VLE Peers

"Seeking and giving advice are central to effective leadership and decision-making...When the exchange is done well, people on both sides of the table benefit. Those who are truly open to guidance (and not just looking for validation) develop better solutions to problems than they would have on their own." (David Gavin and Joshua Margolis, "The Art of Giving and Receiving Advice," Harvard Business Review, 2015).

If you are teaching or preparing to teach a large or very large enrollment class, your WSU colleagues have some advice for you (quotations taken from a survey of large-enrollment course instructors for AY 2022-23):

• "Use Blackboard for tests and assignments."
• "Make your in-person lectures mandatory."
• "Make sure you have good GTAs to help with grading." "Keep in contact with your GTA(s) and provide support."
• "When a student needs clarification on a topic or asks a question, it is highly likely that others have the same question. Add a slide to each lecture with the questions you received since the previous lecture and go over them in class. This is beneficial for both the students (clarification) and the instructor (cuts down on duplicate questions)."
• "Ask your students what they need for a better learning experience and. follow-up."
• "Consider a flipped classroom for course content and then use in-person [or online synchronous] meetings for active learning and hands-on activities."
• "Be as engaging as you can be. use digital tools like PowerPoint forms/quizzes to poll your class and have them answer questions in real time. Use digital grading tools. when you can, and have clearly defined criteria for what you need to grade manually. Discussion boards help."
• "Have clear rules and stick to them."
• "I have found guest lectures to be nice to break up the monotony and give the students something to look forward to."