T4L | Sherrilyn Coffman | Using World Clouds to Determine Students’ Preferences for Learning | GIFT
Channel: Empower Teaching
Date: 2021-02-23

Sherrilyn Coffman, PhD, RN, COI
Nevada State College

An important part of community building in the online environment is helping students and faculty understand each other’s perspectives and expectations.  I have found that performing a simple assessment of student’s learning preferences early in the course helps to meet this objective. Early in the semester, students in the nursing theory course were asked to respond in writing to the question, “What can we do in this class to maximize learning of all students?” A word cloud was created to represent students’ preferences for learning activities, using the WordItOut website. This simple technique gave the instructor insight on how to personalize learning activities to students’ preferences, and communicated to students that the instructor valued their learning needs.

Presentation type: Great Ideas for Teaching (10 minutes)
Session type: Practical Teaching Strategies
Session track: Inclusive Teaching