Tip Sheets: Support for Student Learning
Active Learning Classrooms (ALCs) and Flexible Classrooms (FCs) promote collaboration, engagement, and technology-enabled learning. These spaces encourage peer and team-based learning, shifting students from passive recipients to active co-creators. Effective use involves fostering group work, accountability, and adaptable instructional strategies that enhance participation and deepen learning outcomes.
Help students strengthen their academic success with practical strategies for effective note-taking, studying, and information retention.
Support student learning with strategies to improve reading comprehension, retention, and critical engagement with academic texts.
Support student well-being and autonomy by using content warnings to prepare learners for potentially sensitive or distressing material.
Encourage thoughtful dialogue and set clear expectations around the use of generative AI tools in academic work, with strategies to support transparency, integrity, and student learning.
Improve your teaching and collaboration by identifying common communication barriers and applying strategies to foster clarity, understanding, and inclusive dialogue.
Support students in making the most of your feedback with strategies that build feedback literacy, promote reflection, and encourage active engagement in the learning process.
Exam wrappers are activities that “wrap around” an exam to enhance students' meta-cognition and their reflection on their assessments.
Enhance group collaboration by using strategies for decision making that promote participation, manage conflict, and lead to more thoughtful outcomes.
Help students prepare for an independent study by assessing their readiness, setting clear goals, and developing self-directed learning skills needed for meaningful academic exploration.
Advance the success of non-native English speakers by applying inclusive instructional strategies that improve comprehension, lower language barriers, and ensure equal opportunities for participation.
Promote accountability and collaboration in group work by guiding students to co-create group contracts that clarify expectations, define roles, and establish processes for communication and conflict resolution.
Strengthen group collaboration by incorporating structured meeting strategies that promote accountability, streamline communication, and help students manage tasks, roles, and timelines effectively.
Help students succeed in online discussions by encouraging thoughtful contributions, respectful engagement, and consistent participation, while providing guidance on netiquette, critical thinking, and time management.
These digital tools can support student organization and comprehension. By visualizing relationships and scaffolding complex tasks like writing, studying, and project planning, students can better structure their ideas.
Through timely, specific, and constructive feedback, instructors can enhance student learning. This tip provides guidance on how to provide feedback as well as supports to guide students to seek, interpret, and apply feedback to improve their performance and understanding.
Promote self-directed learning by guiding students through goal setting, resource identification, strategy implementation, and reflection. This will empower them to take ownership of their learning and adapt to new challenges.
The tip sheet emphasizes the value of learning contracts in fostering student autonomy by prompting reflection, defining clear goals, and establishing accountability through collaborative planning. It also addresses their potential limitations and provides practical guidance for both learners and instructors.
Promote respectful and effective online communication by setting clear expectations, modeling professional tone, and guiding students in developing digital etiquette that supports constructive dialogue.
Strengthen group work by helping students develop teamwork skills such as communication, accountability, and collaboration, fostering positive dynamics and shared responsibility for collective success.
Improve research writing by focusing on clarity, structure, and argumentation, while using evidence effectively and revising purposefully to communicate ideas with precision and academic integrity.
Learning style preferences refer to the “characteristic strengths and preferences in the ways [people] take in and process information” (Felder, 1996). This teaching tip reviews important considerations when understanding and applying learning styles and the Soloman-Felder model of learning styles.