By LINDSAY ONUFER

Over the past few years, I have found myself redesigning my courses every semester, first to support emergency remote instruction during the height of the pandemic, then to address rapidly evolving artificial intelligence tools. I kept waiting to settle into some version of a stable “new normal.”

Instead, the “new normal” has been characterized by ongoing volatility due to changing course modalities, student needs and artificial intelligence tools that reshape approaches to teaching and assessment. The cycle of constantly reinventing my courses became exhausting, and I searched for more sustainable teaching practices. I found that resilient pedagogy provides a framework for adapting to ongoing change that gives students structured flexibility while also preserving my teaching capacity.

What is resilient pedagogy?

Resilient pedagogy is a course design approach that draws on three design principles: extensibility, flexibility and redundancy (Quintana et al., 2021). Rather than treating disruption as an anomaly, resilient pedagogy assumes that disruption is inherent or even productive in learning experiences, and instructors can account for that in their course design.

Resilient pedagogy shares characteristics with other frameworks for proactive, inclusive teaching, like Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Both emphasize designing for diverse learning needs and creating accessible learning experiences from the outset rather than relying on retroactive fixes.

In practice, resilient pedagogy uses many of the same strategies as UDL: establishing predictable course design, communicating transparently with students, and giving students multiple ways to engage in and demonstrate learning. Whereas UDL is primarily focused on providing accessibility in stable conditions, resilient pedagogy takes a systems approach, focusing more on instructional continuity and adaptability in unstable conditions.

Further, proponents of resilient pedagogy argue that change can act as a catalyst for noticing and responding to inequities that may become embedded in normalized classroom routines (Buyserie et al., 2021). Disruption can be generative when it helps us examine and question whether a previous status quo was working well for us and our students.

Maintaining teaching workload is also part of resilient teaching. Resilient pedagogy is not about constantly planning for every possible change that might occur during a semester, endless flexibility or lowering academic standards. “Resilience” in this context refers to creating course architecture that can more easily adapt to change without major course revisions.

Strategies for resilient teaching

Here are a few strategies aligned with the key principles of resilient teaching.

Extensibility means course design can adapt across contexts (e.g., shifting from in-person to online without having to rebuild the entire course). Designing for extensibility involves considering what course elements may need to be changed or added later, then designing with those changes in mind.

Strategies

• Adopt a predictable, modular Canvas course shell structure and rhythm for course activities and communications. Organize Canvas content into weekly or unit-based modules with consistently organized and named components (e.g. overview, readings, lecture, assessments). Establish a pattern for sending out communications or conducting routine class activities (e.g. class announcements posted in Canvas on Mondays, low-stakes comprehension checks occur during Thursday class sessions). This reduces the cognitive load for students, who learn where to find things and what to expect each week, and it prevents instructors from needing to re-explain course structure or where information is located.
• Select learning activities and assessments that could work for courses of different sizes or modality. For example, using Top Hat questions as retrieval practice could work in classes of any size. This prevents having to redesign activities and assessments each semester.

Flexibility means intentionally providing options instead of relying on ad hoc exceptions. Options should be aligned with learning objectives, bounded and transparently communicated.

Strategies

• Create assessments evaluated using the same performance criteria or rubric but give students the choice of topic or format. Academic standards remain consistent while allowing for more student choice and agency.
• Give students a limited number of no-questions-asked extensions or absences to reduce student anxiety and the need for you to handle these requests on a case-by-case basis.

Redundancy means building more than one way for students to access content, participate and recover if something goes wrong. Redundancy is about establishing multiple planned pathways, not duplication.

Strategies

• Provide course materials like slides, notes or handouts so that missing a single class session does not significantly interfere with student learning.

• Build in ways that students can recover from low-stakes failures. For example, you can set up your Canvas grade center to drop the lowest grade of a specific assignment category, have a pre-established way to make up missed assessment or revise an assessment, or offer limited, class-wide opportunities for extra credit by submitting assessments early.

• Scaffold tiered feedback (Masland, 2021) can provide students with different levels of guidance without requiring in-depth comments for each assignment. For example, you could provide a scored rubric for routine tasks; short, targeted feedback drawing from comment banks on patterns that occur across assignments; and more in-depth, holistic comments on major or scaffolded assignments. This approach preserves meaningful feedback while managing instructor labor.

A student’s perspective on resilient teaching

This example is shared with permission from Dr. Rachel Maley, teaching assistant professor in English, and was written by one of her students, Uzoamaka Amaeze, a neuroscience major and the undergraduate student liaison for the University Center for Teaching and Learning.

As a student who is easily distracted, resilient pedagogy is particularly important to my learning experience. A strong example of resilient pedagogy in action is my Childhood’s Books (& Toys) class taught by Dr. Rachel Maley.

Dr. Maley uses a specifications grading-inspired token system to offer flexibility in her class. She gives us tokens tracked in the Canvas grade center that can be used to eliminate absences, gain an additional 48 hours on homework and quizzes, drop a working group activity, or add a point to a quiz. Each student starts the semester with three tokens, and there are opportunities to earn more throughout the semester by participating and in- and out-of-class engagement opportunities.

If they are not used, all three tokens can be used for a slight boost to a passing final grade (e.g. B- to B). It is reassuring to know that your professor’s syllabus covers unexpected situations. Resilient pedagogy also reduces the risk of being ‘left behind’ if something unavoidable were to happen, like a family emergency or injury.

Extend your learning

Like other pedagogical approaches, resilient teaching is not a checklist. Instead, it is a reframing of course design and teaching as work that anticipates change and attends to student and faculty needs.

Want help incorporating or expanding resilient teaching strategies into your courses? Contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at teaching@pitt.edu for a consultation.

Lindsay Onufer is the senior program manager of assessment in the University Center for Teaching and Learning.