There's a better way to prep for class

Preparing for class doesn't have to take forever. Whether you've been teaching the same course for decades or are developing new lessons from scratch, investing just 10 minutes of prep time can dramatically enhance the classroom experience for both you and your students. In fact, University of Michigan Professor George Siedel found that high-quality preparation is the defining characteristic of "legendary" professors.

Jim Lang 's Small Teaching has shown that we don't have to overhaul our teaching strategies in order to make meaningful change. Making the right small changes to our pedagogical practice can have an outsized impact on student learning. But which small changes will make the biggest difference?

Two new online tools help instructors quickly identify the low-hanging fruit when it comes to improving their lesson design. Designed by expert instructors, these tools guide teachers from all disciplines and experience levels toward effective teaching techniques that will work well within particular contexts.

How to transform a lesson in 10 minutes

Two new tools built on evidence-based teaching principles allow instructors to transform their lessons quickly by:

1. Refreshing Lesson Content

No one likes listening to stale material that was written years ago, but it's a ton of work to build new lessons from scratch. The Brainstorming Tool solves this conundrum by dramatically reducing the effort of generating new lesson content. By simply inputting your course name and lesson topic, the tool uses AI to rapidly generate a menu of options for engaging lecture topics, discussion questions, case studies, and more.

Whether you have material already developed or not, using the Brainstorming Tool before every class you teach will provide you with fresh new ideas that you can immediately incorporate into your lesson.

The tool is currently free to use, no credit card required.

2. Diversifying Learning Activities

Instructors too often rely on just a few types of learning activities (e.g., lecture and discussion) to carry the majority of class time. After a while, these activities get as boring to teach as they are to learn from. The Active Learning Library provides a searchable database of over 40 learning activity types, alongside quick tips for how to facilitate them. Instructors can quickly search the database to find activities that will work well in their particular context: for example, it can identify activities that take less than 5 minutes to prepare that focus on developing metacognitive skills for an online course of over 50 students.

We recommend finding just one new activity type to try out in every lesson. Experiment with what works and continuing integrating new types of learning activities that align with your course objectives.

The tool is currently free to use, no credit card required.

It's time to start using a new class prep routine, one that takes less time and leads to more enriching teaching and learning experiences. Using the Brainstorming Tool and the Active Learning Library before each class session can help you transform your lesson in as little as 10 minutes.

Why wing it or keep reusing the same old materials when preparing for class is now this easy?

If you have questions about using these tools or would like to schedule a training for your campus, please contact Michael McCreary .