6 Way to Stay Connected and Sane When You’re ‘Stuck at Home’

At some point in your life you’ll probably be ‘stuck at home’ for some long period/s of time. Whether you’re social distancing due to coronavirus, you have an infant that limits your ability to leave the house, or you’re taking care of a loved one or relative, staying home can be harder than it sounds…

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How To ‘Do It All’ (But Not at the Same Time)

I don’t know if this is exclusive to women, but in our day and age, I get the impression that we all tend to feel like we’re supposed to do everything, do it well, and do it fairly easily. But as I’ve gotten older, and taken on more responsibility each year (a job with ever-increasing…

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How to Keep Growing and Learning When Teaching Online

The transition from teaching predominantly in the classroom to teaching almost exclusively at home comes with a lot of adjustment, and if you’re not careful, it can become a slippery slope to barely teaching at all and/or losing a good chunk of your income. Here are 5 easy things I’ve done during the past four…

How to Increase Student Success With One Simple Email

The title of this article immediately caught my attention: She sent 1 email. Grades increased 25%. (Here’s the link: https://www.eab.com/daily-briefing/2018/08/20/she-sent-1-email-grades-increased-25-percent? As someone who likes to produce results in simple and efficient ways, I was engaged immediately. To summarize the short article, if you email students in an encouraging and non-judgmental way after doing poorly on…

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TextExpander: How to Save Time Writing Emails and Providing Online Assignment Feedback

Have you ever been grading online assignments or replying to emails when it just felt like you were saying different versions of the same thing over and over again? I feel that way a lot of the time, and I know I’m not the only one. It turns out there’s actually a solution for this…

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3 Ways to Make Your To-Do List Less Overwhelming When Working At Home

Working from home instead of driving to an office everyday can reduce stress in a number of ways, but it can also leave you feeling overwhelmed with both home and work responsibilities since there aren’t any real boundaries (for instance, trying to be professional during an exam review webinar while sitting in a messy house,…

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How to Make the Most of a Flexible Work Schedule During the Holiday Season

Somehow the semester flew by, and somewhere around the beginning of November I started realizing that for the past few months I hadn’t fully taken advantage of the fact that I work from home, make my own hours, and can go do fun things with my little one whenever I want. I was working a…

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3 Canvas Tricks Every College Instructor Should Know About

If you teach online, or even in the classroom, you’re probably familiar with the popular learning management system, Canvas (it seems to be every college’s go-to LMS these days). It’s pretty intuitive and easy to use (which is why most instructors tend to prefer it over Blackboard), but there are a few Canvas tools that…

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Why Fall is My Favorite Season/Semester to Teach Online

I had a few other blog posts lined up to use this month, but I didn’t want to miss my opportunity to write a holiday-themed post (my favorite!). As online teachers know, sometimes the work we do at our computer year-round can get repetitive, but I like to break up the year by thinking about…