From the moment courses moved online in March, Bok Center undergraduate fellows have been compiling a list of effective moves and design choices that faculty and TFs have performed in the new distance-learning environment. Aware that their instructors were making the difficult transition to a new teaching dynamic, they sought to identify and recognize exceptional moments and “moves.” The students playfully use the term “Gold Star Teaching Moves” to reference the iconic symbol of classroom achievement in grade-school, and to indicate the way in which they are inverting the flow of recognition in the classroom.
The Gold Star Teaching project seeks to surface the interesting discoveries and micro-discoveries that are happening in Zoom class meetings, Canvas boards, and Slack workspaces as thousands of instructors and students across the University are working to teach and learn together. We are collecting the students’ reflections on a Gold Star Teaching blog to build an inventory of ideas to aid in the instructional design challenges we will face this summer in preparing for the possibility of a remote fall semester. We hope to inspire instructors by providing examples of moves that helped sustain student interest and that kept students feeling engaged and motivated, cared for and included.
If you are a student and would like to share examples of remote teaching strategies that you have found to be particularly effective, visit goldstar.learning lab.xyz.
If you are an instructor and would like to begin building plans for the fall term, contact us at bokcenter@fas.harvard.edu or visit our Teaching Remotely pages to schedule a consultation.
