| Celebration of Learning: An Exhibition of Students as Producers
On Monday, January 29th, the Center for Teaching will hold a Celebration of Learning, an exhibition of students as producers. The event will feature posters, presentations, and performances by students from all over campus, sharing what they have learned, created, designed, and discovered. The event will provide the Vanderbilt community with a picture of immersive student learning across the colleges and schools.
We are inviting faculty and other instructors to recommend students to participate in the Celebration of Learning. We are particularly interested in showcasing work done by students as part of courses taught at Vanderbilt. Have you asked your students to tackle open-ended problems, to operate with a degree of autonomy, or to share their work with wider audiences? Please think about students who might share a project from calendar year 2017.
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We’re interested in all types of student projects—podcasts, policy briefs, Wikipedia entries, service-learning projects, digital stories, human-centered design, Twitter fiction, original research, whatever! Most students will share posters or other visual representations of their work, but a few time slots will be available for readings, viewings, and performances. If you’d like to recommend a student, but aren’t sure how they might participate, just let us know and we’ll help you brainstorm. To recommend a student, have them complete this participation form by January 12th. You can wait until the end of the fall semester to decide whom to recommend, or go ahead and recommend a student whose project is already complete. Please don’t invite all your students to participate; select one or two, or perhaps students who worked together on a group project. We are looking to instructors to help us identify students who have done interesting work. If you’re interested in attending the Celebration of Learning, you can RSVP here. Questions about the event? Please contact CFT Program Coordinator Tracy Tveit.
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| Blog Series Highlights Technological Tools and Methods for Teaching Premodern Japanese Materials
At the Association of Asian Studies Annual meeting this past March, Bryan Lowe, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Religious Traditions of Japan and Korea organized a roundtable entitled: “Digital Pedagogy for the Analog Past: Technological Tools and Methods for Teaching Premodern Japanese Materials.” Although the panel was designed by Japanese studies specialists, the tools and findings are relevant for the humanities more generally. In this series, Lowe shares summaries from each of the panelists. Click on the titles below to read more about these strategies from each panelist.
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Halle O’Neal
The University of Edinburgh
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| Will Fleming
University of California Santa Barbara
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Bryan Lowe
Vanderbilt University
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| Crafting an Effective Teaching Statement Workshop
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, January 22nd
Time: 3-4:30pm
Location: Center for Teaching
Open to Graduate Students & Postdocs
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Latest Podcast Episodes on Ed Tech in Higher Education
In the two latest episodes of the Leading Lines podcast we speak with Ákos Lédeczi, professor of computer engineering and senior research scientist at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems here at Vanderbilt University and Nicole Allen, Director of Open Education for the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). Ákos Lédeczi is the lead developer for NetsBlox, a graphical programming language designed to introduce novice programmers from middle school to college to networked programming. Students can use NetsBlox to create simple multiplayer games and to build apps that interface with public data sets. Nicole Allen is an internationally recognized expert and leading voice in the movement for Open Education. She talks about her work promoting the use of open educational resources in higher education.
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| Junior Faculty Spotlight:
Teresa Dunleavy and Kanah Lewallen Each month, the CFT Newsletter highlights the work of our Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows. This month, Teresa Dunleavy, Teaching & Learning, and Kanah Lewallen, nursing, talk about their teaching philosophy and interests.
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| Teresa Dunleavy
I am a learner. I am a teacher. I am a teacher educator. In my work, I strive toward equity in mathematics education. These identities are a central part of my professional and personal lives that influence how I approach teaching. My career has evolved since I started teaching high school mathematics, but what has stayed consistent is my love of learning mathematics and learning about education and sharing that with others. I seek to support others to find or grow their love of learning and teaching, and I am particularly interested in reaching individuals who do not yet know that they could love mathematics and/or who do not yet know that they could love teaching students who have not previously been successful in mathematics. My journey has continued to support me to become a mathematics teacher, teacher educator, and researcher who believes passionately that all students are smart and capable in doing and understanding high-level mathematics, whether they know it yet, or not. Because too few students are successful in learning mathematics in traditional ways, I believe this means we have to redefine & broaden what it means to be smart in math. I believe we have to fight against stereotypes of who can be smart at math and work toward providing opportunities for all students to be successful. My work is also founded on the principle that all students are smart and capable of working on & understanding high-level mathematics, and if you and/or your students have not yet been successful, it is because you and/or they have not yet been given sufficient opportunities to be successful. It can be extremely difficult to support future teachers to believe all students can be successful. And yet, central to my work as a mathematics teacher educator is to break down notions of what it means to do mathematics and what it means to teach all students to find opportunities to engage in rigorous mathematics. I strive to support students and teachers to think this way, and hope that we are on the path toward a society that truly believes everyone can be successful.
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| Kanah Lewallen
Within the School of Nursing, I have the pleasure to instruct students in the Adult Gerontological Primary Care and Family Nurse Practitioner programs. My teaching philosophy is primarily focused around adapting instructions based on the learners’ needs. Educating individuals from different backgrounds can be challenging, and the students that I am instructing have varying levels of nursing experience. Having an understanding of these different backgrounds and fostering a community of learning within the course allow me to use the experience of each student to benefit the entire class while also adapting course work to meet each learners’ needs. Another component of my teaching philosophy is using my own passion to promote confident and well prepared nurse practitioners. I have the great opportunity to instruct students on the care of the older adult. I am very passionate about caring for the older adult, but not everyone shares that passion. Therefore, getting students without that interest to be engaged can be challenging. With our aging population, it is important for our graduates to be well prepared to care for patients over the age of 65. Geriatric care is often complex and lacks clear evidence based guidelines in comparison to other patient populations. This can often leave the student frustrated and lacking confidence. By instructing the student on effective communication and patient centered care, they have the tools to care for this population, which will in-turn improve their confidence. I am looking forward to evaluating how to better serve my students through the JFTF by identifying an effective method to evaluate clinical learning and the development of assignments for clinical courses.
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| Brightspace Support Hours for December We will have regular support including email, phone, and in-person support available through Tuesday, December 19th. We will be providing email only support on the following days through the end of December: - Wednesday, December 20th
7am-11pm - Tuesday, December 26th
10am-12pm and 4-6pm for live email support
- Thursday, December 28th
10am-12pm and 4-6pm for live email support - Friday, December 29th
10am-12pm and 4-6pm for live email support
If users email or call at times when we are not providing live email support, we will respond by email at the next support window. We will resume normal support hours on January 2, 2018!
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| Teaching Lunch on The Honor System As faculty generally know, we and our students are governed by the Honor System (described in Chapter 9 in Part III of the Faculty Manual). Faculty may be less confident, however, about how to decide whether a violation is sufficiently flagrant to require a report to the Honor Council, and about the standards and range of penalties the Honor Council uses. Associate Dean of Students G.L. Black and Director of the Office of Student Accountability, Community Standards, & Academic Integrity Mary Helen Solomon will join us to talk about the evidentiary standard the Honor Council uses and how this may impact whether an instructor chooses to report a suspected violation or issue a warning to the student, as well as the kind of evidence that an instructor might share with the Honor Council. They will also share strategies that faculty use to avoid violations and will answer other questions that arise. Date: Thursday, December 7
Time: 12pm – 1pm
Location: Stevenson Center 6333 This event is open to all faculty. Lunch will be provided so please contact Cynthia Brame if plan to attend.
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