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Situations may present themselves in which links or rubrics from another course can be useful in a current course. Should this occur, rubrics from other courses can be uploaded into another course. To successfully insert a previously built rubric, please follow the following steps.

Developing and delivering accessible instructional content—meaning content that students with and without disabilities can readily engage with and use—is essential to the success of an online course. While many accessibility standards and guidelines are broadly applicable, there are also specific considerations unique to different content formats and delivery modes. In this piece, we present recommendations for enhancing the accessibility of PDFs for students.

Podcasts are digital audio that you can download or stream onto a computer or mobile device. They are convenient, portable, reusable, and do not require particularly high-tech devices or connections. They are also popular. According to a 2022 Infinite Dial survey, "Seventy-three percent of the U.S. 12+ population (an estimated 209 million people) have listened to online audio in the last month, up from 68% in 2021" (Edison Research, 2022). While podcast use declined slightly in 2022, returning to pre-pandemic levels, the medium is still burgeoning, with plenty of room for further growth.

Office hours, blocks of time designated for faculty and student interaction outside of any regularly scheduled class sessions, are routinely incorporated into university courses (Briody et al., 2019; Hsu et al., 2022). Such sessions are often semi-structured and optional for students, allowing faculty to provide customized support to individual learners when needs arise. This form of faculty-student interaction can support academic achievement, retention, and engagement (Griffin et al., 2014; Guzzardo et al., 2021). That office hours attendance is often at the discretion of individual students, however, can result in underutilization of this valuable supplement to required course sessions and contents (Briody et al., 2019; Griffin et al., 2014; Smith et al., 2017). The purpose of this blog is to delineate empirically guided strategies for optimizing the inclusion of office hours in university courses. In particular, we focus on office hours hosted online, as the online modality can be advantageously employed not only for courses delivered online but also for those delivered residentially.

Over time, you may want to make changes to the syllabus of a course. The syllabus documents are saved in the “Files” area (1) of the course. To preserve the integrity of the document, the Word document is located in the “Instructor Only” folder (3) and the PDF is found in the “Documents” folder (2) so it is visible to students.

While student populations have become increasingly diverse, many groups, including first-generation, non-native English speakers, and individuals with disabilities, still face barriers and bias that can derail their success in college (Super et al., 2020). Traditional grading practices—including penalties for late work, writing in dialects other than standard English, and even plagiarism— are prone to bias and only perpetuate disparities, the research says (Feldman, 2019; Savini, 2021).

Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which has roots in Ronald Mace’s concept of Universal Design, is a pedagogical framework that supports diverse learning needs. According to CAST, the creator of the framework, UDL seeks “to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn” (2018). UDL is not a step-by-step curriculum plan, but rather an approach to pedagogy and curriculum development that aims to make the learning environment as accessible as possible for as many learners as possible (Derer, 2021; CAST, 2018).

While Open Educational Resources (OERs) can take on many forms, including assignments, videos, and articles, open textbooks have provided students with more affordable options for accessing and purchasing required course materials.

From time to time instructors may want to include in their courses copyrighted materials like images, print content, audio recordings, or videos. The University of Minnesota Libraries define copyright as “the area of law that deals with creation, ownership, sale, and use of creative and expressive works.”

Employing a variety of modes of instruction and assessment, as recommended by Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, can enhance the learning experience for students in quantitative courses. Diverse elements such as visual aids, interactive features, and real-world applications can complement, extend, or replace traditional lectures and exams. Since classes consist of students with varying learning preferences and strategies, using multiple modes of representation in a course promotes deeper understanding, engagement, and skill development. This piece details design elements that can be particularly impactful in quantitative courses.