When Utah Valley University physics professor Dustin Shipp was thinking about how to translate his classes to an online setting, he knew he needed to prioritize interactions between students and faculty.
When Utah Valley University physics professor Dustin Shipp was thinking about how to translate his classes to an online setting, he knew he needed to prioritize interactions between students and faculty.
“We want to make the student feel like they're in a course and not just by themselves,” Shipp said.
Shipp’s favorite instructional tactic is the “big problem of the week” — a regular assignment students have to complete in groups, where Shipp deliberately doesn’t provide every piece of information needed to solve it.
“They have to go out there and attack this like a real-world problem,” Shipp said. “So it has a lot of advantages where it gets the students engaging with each other, teaching each other. They get deeper into the material; they see how it's applied in the real world.”
In 2022, Shipp won a Flex Teaching Award from UVU’s online team in recognition of his success in designing and delivering educational experiences online.
Shipp said his favorite moment is when he can see a concept clicks for a student — something that is just as evident even when he can’t see the student’s face.
“That's really what makes me happiest as a teacher. Whenever I get to experience that, it really makes it feel like I'm doing my job,” Shipp said. “And what's really interesting is I can still hear that even if it's online. I'm not hearing the actual noise, but in just the tone of messages that I receive from students, I can still hear them making that ‘Oh, now it works’ sound. And that's been really fun to experience.”
For more information on UVU online programs and resources, visit uvu.edu/online.
