MindTap offers a wealth content that will enhance your course. There are many effective ways you can customize your approach to setting it up at start of semester. Most instructors struggle with where to start. This is especially true if you are a MindTap instructor and are introducing MindTap to students.
One Professor’s Experience With MindTap
Maggie Major, a Harrisburg Area Community College educator, has been successfully implementing MindTap in her online College Experience courses since 2004. Introduction to College Experience is a mandatory course for all incoming freshman. It runs for seven weeks, twelve weeks and fourteen weeks. Maggie excels at helping students get on the ground running from day one.
Keep your eyes on the goal
There are many amazing resources to choose from when customizing MindTap to your course. Maggie’s first tip is to start small, and use your course objectives to guide you. What are your course objectives? This will help you to find MindTap content that helps you meet your course objectives. For maximum effectiveness, these assignments should be completed. Maggie will hide content that isn’t relevant to her course and make other content she considers ‘nice to possess’ for students to use as practice items.
Set the Scene
It’s important to create the foundation for student success once your course has been customized. Maggie’s second tip? Give your students information about MindTap in a variety ways. Two weeks before the class begins, she sends a welcome email to her students informing them about MindTap. Maggie creates a personalized course orientation video that introduces MindTap. All of this information is also available in the OPEN ME FIRST module within the LMS, along with additional supporting material. Maggie found that this method helped her students quickly get on board.
Success Tip
MindTap is a learning tool that requires patience. Take notes throughout the semester about any hiccups you experienced or how you could improve your MindTap course. You can start by using only a few items that are compatible with the course content and then look ahead to how you can integrate more. Students will find resources for self-study once they dive in.
