Tools and Resources

The American Association of Colleges and Universities' VALUE rubrics are open educational resources (OER) that enable educators to assess students’ original work. AAC&U offers a proven methodology for applying the VALUE rubrics to evaluate student performance reliably and verifiably across 16 learning outcomes, including critical thinking, ethical reasoning, information literacy, oral and written communication, quantitative literacy, teamwork, and more. Use these rubrics to guide your own development of learning objectives and rubrics.

A low-tech alternative to clickers, Western Washington University's ABCD Cards app can be used in an educational setting as an alternative to paper ABCD card method for formative assessments and in-class active learning activities. The simple interface provides students with a paper-free way to easily display an answer to an instructor's question and for the instructor to quickly look across the room for the general consensus of answers.

A low-tech alternative to clickers, Western Washington University's ABCD Cards app can be used in an educational setting as an alternative to paper ABCD card method for formative assessments and in-class active learning activities. The simple interface provides students with a paper-free way to easily display an answer to an instructor's question and for the instructor to quickly look across the room for the general consensus of answers.

Answers questions on issues such as grading and course scheduling.

Penn State's IT Accessibility Group created this repository of syllabus templates that allow instructors to more easily create an accessible syllabus. The templates are fully editable Microsoft Word files that include accessible headings styles in several fonts, sizes, and text alignments, an accessible default table format showing visible headers and sufficient color contrast, an image of the Penn State shield embedded with alternative text, and instructions on how to use the templates.

This journal focuses on various ways to support and strengthen the teaching of academic writing. From the journal's Website: "Across the Disciplines, a refereed journal devoted to language, learning, and academic writing, publishes articles relevant to writing and writing pedagogy in all their intellectual, political, social, and technological complexity."

We include this article in our repository to demonstrate that faculty have been concerned about and practicing active learning in large courses for decades. This is a classic from 1987 by Peter Frederick in a volume edited by well-known champion of excellent teaching and Prof. Emerita at Penn State, Maryellen Weimer. Teaching Large Classes Well. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 32: 45-56. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Frederick discusses interactive lectures, using questions to involve the class, asking specific questions (rather than "does everyone understand? which no one wants to answer), using small groups, using problem-solving to foster critical thinking, debates, simulations, and role playing. While his examples might be a bit dated, this still makes a lot of sense and provides useful ideas to adapt for the 21st century.

A course redesign tool developed by the UC Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management in partnership with the UC Berkeley Center for Teaching and Learning. This tool supports instructors to develop anti-racist approaches to course design and teaching practices through an accessible and user-friendly model to consider how their instructional choices impact student outcomes. The tool is meant for self-assessment, not to assess score courses or instructors.

Thoughtful, brief posts on teaching and learning in higher education with practical information:
Vee, A. (2025) AI & How We Teach Writing: A Norton Newsletter with Anette Vee.

Link to a blog post by David Clark providing definitions of terms most commonly associated with alternative grading, including specifications grading, ungrading, and standards-based grading.

A free, downloadable collection of articles focused on the history, principles, applications, and practice of the science of learning. Topics include cooperative learning in large enrollment courses, prior learning, and teaching and learning scholarship. Published by the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, Division 2 of the American Psychological Association (APA).

Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) Guides
Discovering the Art of Mathematics includes a library of 11 inquiry-based books freely available for classroom use. These texts can be used as semester-long content for courses or individual chapters can be used as modules to experiment with inquiry-based learning and to help supplement typical topics with classroom tested, inquiry based approaches (e.g. rules for exponents, large numbers, proof). The topic index provides an overview of all our book chapters by topic.

This is a link to a Penn State produced resource on Artifical Intelligence, Pedagogy, and Academic Integrity. It has information and resources on this topic and includes guidance for working with students and adapting to these tools.

This is a great online resource from the University of Texas at Austin. It contains accessible information on university level course assessment.

This is a diagnostic survey for undergraduate, non-science majors taking their first astronomy course. It was developed by the multi-institutional Collaboration for Astronomy Education Research (CAER) including, among many others, Jeff Adams, Rebecca Lindell Adrian, Christine Brick, Gina Brissenden, Grace Deming , Beth Hufnagel , Tim Slater, and Michael Zeilik. The first 21 questions are the content portion of the test, while the final 12 questions collect demographic information.