“Joyful learning environments,” Korsunskiy says, “help students thrive.”
Students who are having the most fun, he says, tend to do the best work. Teams that work well together produce the best work. And that goes for instructors, too, Korsunskiy added — his best lesson plans and workshops are the ones he enjoys making.
To help instructors spark that sense of joy in the classroom — or in any learning environment — Korsunskiy has curated a set of “Joy Cards,” which anyone can download here. Each card contains an activity, some of which might take half an hour and others just a minute or two, that Korsunskiy gathered from attendees at a workshop where he gave a keynote on joy last year.
After posting about the cards on LinkedIn, Korsunskiy received positive feedback from readers, some of whom observed that many of the ideas work in a variety of settings, including online courses.
At least one faculty developer suggested the cards might be appealing during a stressful time for higher ed. “Without ignoring the harsh and frightening realities of, well, reality, we can still make some space for joy” in teaching, posted Jessamyn Newhaus, who directs the teaching center at Syracuse University.
Activities in the card deck include having students contribute course-related songs to a playlist, which professors can play during breaks; covering classroom tables with brown paper to encourage students to doodle; and starting off each class period’s slides with a student-submitted pet picture that the student can briefly introduce.
Korsunskiy, who also co-directs the Design Initiative at Dartmouth, has printed and spiral-bound a small number of card decks (as “The Little Book of Joy: Tiny Ways to Infuse Delight Into Teaching and Learning”); he said he’s open to finding a way to sell them if there’s sufficient interest. And he’s collecting more examples with an eye to making additional decks.
Grading group work
Recently, I asked readers to share strategies for addressing students’ concerns about group work. Keith Tookey, an associate professor of computer-information systems at Vermont State University’s Randolph campus, writes:
“The first thing I did, fairly early in my career, was ask each student to (individually and confidentially) estimate how much work was done by each student in the group. This reassured the students that the instructor would be aware of the situation, and allowed me to counsel individual students who were doing too much or too little.
“Then, I noticed a common pattern; students tended to overestimate their own contributions, but when evaluating teammates, had consistent ratios. So I developed a spreadsheet to compensate for that. After that, I had a reliable way to identify problems in participation, and estimate contributions by students within a group. (I use that to inform my grades, but no student’s grade is raised or lowered by their OWN estimation of their work.)”
Whose job is AI literacy?
Lots of professors are skeptical of generative AI, and some don’t want to incorporate it at all. But if students don’t learn about AI in their coursework, how will they become AI literate?
This, of course, raises a host of other questions. The big one: What is AI literacy? Given that AI is becoming part of so many of the tech tools we use daily, is it a skill that all faculty members — and students — should have? If so, given that AI is so new on the scene, whose responsibility is it to define and teach it? And how should it rank among the many priorities facing college administrators and faculty members?
Beth wants to hear more professors’ thoughts and experiences. Share them with her at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com or fill out this Google form.
— Beckie
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