Vanderbilt Instructors Open Their Classroom Doors
September 9-13
Would you like to watch one of your colleagues teach to see how they manage the classroom, engage students, or address challenging subjects? Do you ever feel like you toil in private to learn how to teach? You’re not alone.
Too often in higher education we instructors do not have the opportunity to watch and discuss each other’s teaching, and therefore we struggle in what Lee Shulman has called, “pedagogical solitude.” The Center for Teaching has long worked to change this isolation by creating occasions for pedagogical community.
For a fourth year, we are proud to offer five intensive days of teaching visits. On September 9-13, classes taught by some of the most well-respected and awarded teachers across Vanderbilt’s many disciplines will open their classroom doors to faculty and graduate students.
This year’s focus areas:
- Hard Conversations
- Teaching Creativity
- Active Learning
Each visit will conclude with a short reflection discussion immediately following the class session.
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Graduate Student/Postdoc Workshops in September
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Crafting an Effective Teaching Statement
In this workshop, we will address best practices for writing a teaching statement/philosophy for the academic job market. This workshop is open to Vanderbilt graduate students & Postdocs from across the disciplines who want to improve their teaching portfolio materials. All teaching experience levels are welcome.
Date: Monday, September 16
Time: 12:30-2:00 pm
Location: CFT Classroom
Facilitator: Chad Carpenter, CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow
Open to Vanderbilt Graduate Students & Postdocs
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Teaching 101
Have you been thrust into an instructional role for which you feel unprepared? Are you a multi-semester teacher who wants a refresher on some of the basics? Regardless of your teaching experience, this workshop will provide practical, concrete guidance on the mechanics of teaching and classroom presence, with an eye towards small tweaks and adjustments that can have large impacts on classroom dynamics, student learning, and instructor confidence. By the end of the session, participants will be able to:
organize and structure class sessions to maximize student understanding.
describe and implement techniques to speak more confidently and present more effectively for student engagement.
design and put into practice classroom activities that increase authentic participation and meaningful conversations.
Date: Monday, September 23
Time: 1:00-2:30
Location: CFT Classroom
Facilitator: Chelsea Yarborough, CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow
Open to Vanderbilt Graduate Students & Postdocs
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| Brightspace Help is Available!
September Drop-in Hours
Mondays 3:30pm – 5:00pm
Tuesdays 9:00am – 11:00am
Wednesdays 1:00pm – 3:00pm
Thursdays 9:00am – 11:00pm
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Teaching Writing Workshop Series
Over the course of the academic year, the Writing Studio leads a series of faculty workshops focused on different aspects of teaching writing.
Workshops provide participants with current research, strategies for best practices, and a forum for discussing how these approaches might be adapted to teaching writing in their disciplines. The Teaching Writing Workshop Series is open to all writing instructors.
Responding to Student Writing
September 18th, 11:00-12:30
Participants will explore some best practices for responding to their students’ writing. We will discuss effective and generative ways of providing feedback in-person through conferences and written feedback.
Let us know you’re coming!
Writing About Visual Texts
October 28th, 3:00 - 4:30
Participants will learn about common student essay genres in art history and film studies, hear faculty and student writing advice, and examine sample assignments and student essays in order to develop familiarity with these types of assignments as well as ideas for adapting these assignments to other disciplines.
Let us know you’re coming!
Scaffolding Writing Across the Semester
December 10th, 11:00- 12:30
Participants will learn how to use backward design to scaffold writing projects and assignments throughout the semester. They will also have the opportunity to workshop syllabi for courses with writing components. Participants should bring a draft of a syllabus they wish to redesign.
Let us know you’re coming!
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| Mid-Semester Student Feedback
The feedback students provide about your teaching on their end-of-semester course evaluations can be valuable in helping you improve and refine your teaching. Soliciting mid-semester student feedback has the additional benefit of allowing you to hear your students’ concerns while there is still time in the semester to make appropriate changes. A Small Group Analysis (SGA) takes this one step further by involving a CFT consultant to help.
An SGA is a method of gathering anonymous feedback from students about what is helping them learn and what is not, in a course. This service is an excellent way to assess students’ response to your teaching mid-semester. The SGA results will remain completely confidential—only you and the CFT consultant will see them.
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Meet the Newest Member of the CFT: Lead Instructional Technologist Paige Snay!
Paige comes to Vanderbilt from Virginia Tech where she was an Information Technology Specialist. She looks forward to helping instructors build Brightspace courses where students will enjoy learning.
Welcome, Paige!
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CFT Announces New Graduate Teaching Fellows
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| L to R: Chad Carpenter (Mechanical Engineering), Rachel Gould (English), Leah Roberts (Human & Organizational Development), and Chelsea Yarborough (Religion)
The Center for Teaching is excited to announce the Graduate Teaching Fellows for 2019-20. GTFs provide a variety of services for Vanderbilt’s graduate, post docs and professional students, including one-on-one consultations on teaching issues and professional development, syllabus and course design, interpreting and responding to student evaluations, writing teaching statements, and engaging techniques such as discussion leading, lecturing, and using technology in the classroom.
To schedule an appointment with a GTF, please call 322-7290.
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The CFT welcomes the 2019-20
BOLD Fellow Teams!
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Christina Davis working with
David Weintraub, Professor of Physics and Astronomy
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Maria Gorchichko working with
David Ernst, Professor of Physics and Astronomy
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Ethan Joll working with
Dave Merryman, Professor of Biomedical Engineering
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Deborah Levy working with
James Booth, Professor of Psychology Sciences
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Erika Nelson working with
James Hudnut-Beumler, Professor of History
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Christopher Stachurski working with
Susan Verberne-Sutton, Senior Lecturer, Chemistry
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Shih-Yuan Liang working with
Melanie Schuele, Associate Professor of Special Education, and Heather Gillum, Adjunct Associate Professor of Special Education
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The BOLD Fellows program helps graduate students from all disciplines design and develop online learning experiences, from building online learning modules to fostering online spaces for their students to interact. Each Fellow works with a faculty member who has identified a teaching “problem” in a particular course and develops a potential solution that they then integrate into the course. Importantly, as part of the project, they gather data on how the experience impacts student learning and share those results with colleagues.
The program spans two semesters: the Fall 2019 “design and development” semester, in which Fellows receive training and support as they develop their module, and the Spring 2020 “implementation and assessment” semester, in which the Fellows implement the project, gather evidence, and work with the CFT to interpret and present their results.
Look for the poster session where the Fellows will share their projects in May 2020!
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CFT Thanks Our Teaching Affiliates!
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L to R: Amanda Brockman (Sociology), Laura Carter-Stone (Teaching & Learning), Emma Guiberson (Chemistry), Ethan Joll (Biomedical Engineering), Cait Kirby (Biological Sciences), Kelley Knowles (Psychology), Nazirah Mohd Khairi (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science), Jose Luis de Ramon Ruiz (Spanish and Portuguese), Aaron Stevens (Physics and Astronomy), Nadejda Webb (English)
Every August, the Center for Teaching offers Teaching Assistant Orientation (TAO) to all new TAs as a way to learn about TA duties, policies and resources, best practices in teaching, and to come away with some useful tools for immediate use in the classroom.
We wouldn’t be able to make this happen without our wonderful cohort of Teaching Affiliates, who come from all over campus to lead our breakout disciplinary sessions at TAO. We’d like to thank them for all of their hard work with TAO this year.
Thank you, CFT Teaching Affiliates!
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Catch Up with Season Six of the Leading Lines Ed Tech Podcast
Leading Lines kicked off season six in August with an interview with Randall Bass. Randy is vice provost for education and a professor in the English department at Georgetown University. He was the founding director of Georgetown’s teaching center, the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), and one of the first educators to explore the digital humanities through the multi-campus Visible Knowledge Project he directed. More recently, he moved into administration at Georgetown, where he leads the Designing the Future(s) initiative and the Red House incubator for curricular transformation.
To hear the podcast episodes you've missed, visit the Leading Lines website, search for “Leading Lines” in iTunes, or subscribe via RSS. You can also follow us on Twitter, @LeadingLinesPod.
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