How to Make Your Course Rock

How do you make your class one of the most popular choices on campus for undergraduate students? You make it interesting, engaging and fun! That's exactly what Associate Professor Dane Alexander has done with his GEOS 3120: Geology of the National Parks and Monuments course.

"I want my students to get their money's worth. I want them to walk out of my classes (whether in person or virtually) with a big smile on their face, excited about what they just learned," says Alexander. He starts almost all his lectures with an intriguing video. For example, he'll show a video of a volcanic eruption, so that when a static lava flow picture appears in his lecture, his students can think back and visualize the process they saw earlier. Pictures of Alexander in a tank top and sandals standing in the Grand Canyon or another national park are common to help personalize his lectures and he often uses his own body to convey scale.

Alexander incorporates charts, objects, and 3D interaction to bring his subject matter to life, make his lectures visually stimulating, and make his students feel like they are actually in the places he speaks about. Seamlessly incorporating all these elements into his lectures was made easy through his partnership with WMUx Instructional Design.

"If I need help, I get it right away. I couldn't do it without them," he says. Everything Alexander incorporates into his lectures and course design is intended to make his students feel like he's talking to them in a face-to-face class. With his GEOS 3120 course now entirely online, he recently thought he could help alleviate student test anxiety by making his exams more like his lectures, where he talks through photos and charts to identify features and explain concepts. He worked with WMUx to incorporate audio of him asking the exam questions and speaking like he does in his lectures, which he hopes will make his students feel more comfortable and relaxed.

"I always try to make my course content as user-friendly as I can for my students," notes Alexander. Through thoughtful course design, Alexander has crafted learning modules that walk his students through the information they need, step-by-step. After completing introductory "tour reports" containing required background reading and linking to specific national park web pages for additional information, students then begin watching Alexander's lectures. The support from WMUx is what enables Alexander to bring these lectures to life.

Working closely with WMUx Instructional Design to make his course as engaging as possible for his students is always his goal and he never stops thinking of new ideas. As he reaches up to pull off a comic strip stuck to his file cabinet off, he grins as he says, "I'm headed over to meet with my Instructional Designer this afternoon so I can get this comic added into my lecture. Isn't that a creative way to depict erosion? I thought the students would think this was funny!" Alexander has grown GEOS 3120 from a 43 student, 2-credit course when he first started teaching in 1986 to a 200+ student, 3 credit course today, so he's clearly doing something right!