Pew Faculty Teaching & Learning Center
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Director's Note
No one right answer. Both/and thinking. It’s complicated. I delivered an address at a conference last week and thought that I would begin here by sharing a few of my remarks. For starters, I acknowledged that we are a divided country, as made even more evident in these past weeks. So many emotions, a host of uncertainties, and disparate visions of the past, present, and future are realities that bear on our day-to-day–how we show up, our energies, and our focus. That said, your presence and your voice are needed. Our shared work in service of education remains incredibly significant. In this moment, I invite you to join me in elevating courage, openness, curiosity, awareness, compassion, self-compassion, bridging, and healing.
It is likely not a surprise that there is also no one right answer and plenty of complications in the realm of teaching. Let me share a few examples:
- Course workload estimator: A kind reader brought to our attention that this tool that we shared in a previous newsletter paints a narrow, ableist view of time on task, not accounting for the range of student realities. I am grateful for the caution and recommend that if you reference this tool in service of helping students learn to learn, familiarize yourself with the estimation details section of the website, universal design for learning principles, and offer your own acknowledgments of the complexities of learning.
- Active learning: I admit that I have long been a fan of interactive, engaged, buzzing classrooms. What I should have been paying more attention to is the impact of such activity and the associated noise levels on students’ ability to learn. I was not aware of the startling extent of hearing loss in college students, roughly 20% and much higher among student musicians (2024 meta-analysis). What does that mean for our classrooms? We need to be mindful of spaces, activities, and the assumptions we make regarding students’ ability to engage and learn in the midst of noise. Oh, and just as academic conference participants are increasingly expected to use microphones during sessions, we need to do the same in our classrooms, especially in larger spaces.
- Growth mindset: Most recently during our Strong Start Teaching Institutes, we have promoted the use of language that fosters a growth mindset over a fixed mindset. From the way policies are framed in a syllabus to verbal instructions for an in-class exam, words matter. That said, research has led to varying conclusions as to the effectiveness of growth mindset interventions. I offer the following from the impact statement from a recent meta-analysis: “Despite the large variation in effectiveness, we found positive effects on academic outcomes, mental health, and social functioning, especially when interventions are delivered to people expected to benefit the most.”
Well-being. It’s all connected, right? I have been hearing more folks (including myself) stress that faculty success is student success. If students are to thrive, then faculty also need to be thriving. The following sites make these connections beautifully and offer frameworks, models, as well as practical suggestions:
Snippets. At this particularly busy time of the semester, it may very well be that what is useful is the shortest possible story. Here are several insights that struck me as important to share (with links for further exploration, as always).
“There may be times when we encourage students to do work without using these [AI] tools, but this is a matter of conversation, not policy.” (Your AI Policy is Already Obsolete, Inside Higher Ed)
At the recommendation of a colleague, my holiday break reading list pushes beyond my usual subjects to two books by Timothy Snyder, On Freedom (2024) and On Tyranny (2017). I also welcome your suggested reads. May your upcoming breaks afford time and space to follow your own capacious explorations.
–Christine Rener
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Join a Winter Learning Community!
Learning Communities (LCs) bring together faculty and staff for 1–2 semester-long conversations on topics of mutual interest.
What’s in it for you?
- Fresh perspectives and community discussion on leading teaching practices.
- Lasting connections with colleagues across campus.
- Grant funding for a free reading resource, depending on your LC.
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Midwest SoTL Conference
Indiana University South Bend is hosting a conference of interest to GVSU faculty. The conference theme is Care, Kindness, and Creativity and the keynote speaker is Dr. Cate Denial whose newest book, Pedagogy of Kindness (U Oklahoma Press, 2024), is about attending to justice, believing people, and believing in people. Proposals are being accepted that describe empirical studies of scholarship of teaching and learning, theoretical discussions of SoTL, descriptions of best practices of teaching, and interactive workshops on implementing best practices. Proposals are due by February 2, 2025. See the conference website for details.
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Student Success Series: Promising Practices for Increasing Student Success Conference
Grand Valley faculty and staff are dedicated to helping our students achieve their academic goals. There is a lot of good work happening across the university, and it can be hard to keep track of all the innovative approaches being used to support students. This session of the Student Success Series will be a conference-style event with breakout sessions facilitated by Grand Valley faculty and staff. No matter your role at the university, participants will build their toolkit to better support students.
Date & Time
Tuesday, December 3, 2024
12:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Location
Grand River Room, Russel H. Kirkhof Center, Rm 2250
RSVP by December 2, 2024. For questions, contact Samantha Mayse at maysesa@gvsu.edu.
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Higher Ed AI Conference Opportunity for Faculty and Staff
The University of Central Florida’s Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning and Division of Digital Learning are hosting the 2nd Annual Teaching and Learning with AI Conference from May 28-30, 2025 in Orlando, Florida. Professionals, instructors, researchers, librarians, and policymakers from all sectors of higher education are invited to participate as presenters or attendants.
They are currently accepting proposal submissions for short presentations and poster sessions related to the practice of using AI for teaching and learning in colleges and universities across the country. The submission deadline is Friday, January 17th.
Proposals can cover a broad range of topics including faculty using AI, ethical considerations, discipline specific implementations of AI, and many more. Feel free to reach out to them at teachwithai@ucf.edu with any questions regarding the proposals or the event.
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Want to Give?From economic shifts and job loss to changes in family situations, lots of factors can impact a student’s ability to achieve food security.
Together, we can do something about it. Your gift to the Replenish Student Food Resource Fund, no matter the size, helps ensure no Laker will have to wonder about their next meal. A gift of just $25 can cover the cost of two bags of groceries for Lakers in need. Visit gvsu.edu/giving/givingtuesday to make a gift to Replenish or to the fund that means the most to you at GVSU.
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