As university instructors, we are all subject matter experts; whether one is an adjunct, a doctoral candidate, or a tenured professor, we know our content. After all, we worked those many years to become experts in our field: extensive research, days of grading, oral exams, dissertating – our subject-field passion has motivated us to endure the rigor and tribulations constitutive of our advanced education. This passion translates into our classroom instruction, and it drives us to engage our classes in such a manner that can inspire our students. The years we have spent in front of students has helped to build confidence in our individual teaching practices, to validate our research interests, and to affirm ourselves as classroom pedagogues.

More often than not our zeal, our interpersonal skills, and our experiences in the classroom have aided in our teaching effectiveness. We are asked to write letters of recommendation by our top students, serve as advisors on thesis committees, and offer both academic and non-academic guidance to our students. However, for the majority of us, we suffered initial growing pains as teachers – at times we have lacked confidence, we have endured setbacks, we have had entire lessons derailed by the untimely prodding from misanthropic students; but we have persevered, and along the road we established robust identities centering our classroom presence and our teaching.

I imagine an informal survey would reveal a common deficit in our own education – the instruction and training in pedagogy. We are all teachers, and most of us are good at what we do; we have found success in academia, and we have created successful student-learning experiences in the college classroom. Our sustained success in the classroom has helped to mask this lack in our own education, for we have learned how to do that which we do – teach. And yet, if we were to turn our research lens onto our own instructional practices and performance we might be forced to admit that our teaching successes are in no minor part due to our passion, and our impassioned classroom engagement.

Whether we are subject matter experts or well-seasoned classroom instructors transitioning into a wholly online ecology, this transition forces us to confront additional obstacles to teaching. Regardless of your comfort-level with teaching, training in pedagogy, or knowledge of assessment methods, technology affords our online classrooms a plethora of opportunities heretofore overlooked in the traditional classroom. Our team has designed AP Course Building 101 to ameliorate the anxiety attendant to changing platforms. To relieve you, as course designers and teachers, of the burden of relearning how to teach in a new environment, we encourage you to take a few minutes to walk through the course building guide, one module at a time.

To access AP Course Building 101: One Module at a Time:

1. Go to Canvas.
2. Log in with the following information:
   • Username: AP_Guest
   • Password: AP_Guest
3. Select Courses in the top navigation.
4. Select AP Course Building 101: One Module at a Time.