Today’s blog post is intended to help you design a group project that your students will not only learn a lot from, but also one that students actually enjoy. If you’ve assigned one before, I’m sure you are familiar with the frustration many students feel when completing a good project. I believe this assignment type is essential, though, so I’m not willing to give up using it in my courses. If you’re looking for ready-made group project examples, I already have a post on my literary analysis project and one on my multimodal genre remediation project. The first assignment is the one I mention throughout the video included in today’s post. If you’re unsure about how to grade a group project that involves different elements, you can also watch my video on using weighted unit grading. But, let’s turn our focus onto assignment design.

We are more than halfway through the semester, so hopefully you’ve been able to get most of your students speaking up during class discussions. If you’ve done a Midterm Chat, then you also have a good idea of what students consider to be stronger and weaker elements of your teaching style. But, there are probably still some shy students that you are having trouble getting to speak up in class. They sit quietly in their seats and seem to be listening to your lectures and the class discussions, but you have no idea what their voices sound like. In today’s post, I go over three strategies for communicating with shy students, or those who are just too self-conscious to ask questions in class. If you’d rather see a video version of these strategies, that’s an option for you, too.