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Happy New Year! We have another busy semester coming up at the Center for Teaching, as you can see from this month’s packed newsletter! See below for information on new and continuing learning communities, programs for graduate students and faculty, visiting speakers, podcasts, and more. Perhaps the biggest news is that the Center for Teaching will help Vanderbilt launch Brightspace as its primary course management system in summer 2017. Brightspace will replace Blackboard, the university’s current system. Brightspace has a robust set of features that we think instructors will find both useful and easy to learn, and D2L, the vendor that provides Brightspace, has shown a commitment in its products to faculty- and student-focused innovation. I’m particularly proud of the process that led to the selection of Brightspace. That process, which began in early 2016, included a campuswide needs assessment survey completed by more than 1,000 students and faculty, public vendor demonstrations, and pilots of Brightspace and other systems under consideration. A selection committee consisting of students, faculty and staff from all 10 Vanderbilt colleges and schools reviewed the results of this process and recommended that Vanderbilt adopt Brightspace as its next course management system. We’re excited about the move to Brightspace, and we look forward to continuing to help the Vanderbilt teaching community use course management tools to support teaching and learning. For more information on Brightspace and the upcoming transition, see our Brightspace support site. One more bit of news: The CFT will hold its annual Course Design Institute the week of May 8th. If you’re a faculty member thinking about designing or redesigning a course this summer, look for the call for applications in our February newsletter! Derek Bruff, PhD
Director, Center for Teaching
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New Series of Pedagogical Colloquia Focus on Maymester Courses
As part of the Center for Teaching's program for Senior Faculty Fellows, Robert Barsky (French & Italian) is leading a learning community around Maymesters with the intent of better understanding the many teaching challenges and successes of intensive and immersive study abroad. This spring we will have a series of pedagogical colloquia on Maymester courses, each centered around one faculty member and a Maymester course they have taught, with attention to its goals, its teaching challenges, its innovations, and any lessons learned. This will be followed by a discussion of our teaching practices and the curriculum. The list of colloquia is below. All are welcome to attend. January 13, 1-2pm
Robert Driskill (Economics) Register January 20, 1-2pm
Robert Barsky (French & Italian) Register January 27, 1-2pm
Jessica Greenfield (French & Italian) Register February 3, 1-2pm
Christoph Zeller (German) Register February 10, 1-2pm
Guil Gualda (Earth and Environmental Sci.) Register February 17, 1-2pm
Maria Paz Pintane (Spanish & Portuguese) Register February 24, 1-2pm
Lynn Ramey (French & Italian) Register March 17, 1-2pm
Xianmin Liu (Asian Studies) Register March 24, 1-2pm
Alexandra Sargent (Theatre) Register March 31, 11am-12pm (note special time)
Nathalie Dieu-Porter (French & Italian) Register April 21, 11am-12pm (note special time)
Amanda Benson (Biological Sciences) Register
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| Come Work at the Center for Teaching! Each year the Center for Teaching (CFT) hires a number of graduate students as part of its efforts to mentor and train graduate students, including those serving as teaching assistants or instructors of record here at Vanderbilt as well as those interested in developing teaching skills for future faculty careers. The CFT has several types of positions available for graduate students for the 2017-2018 academic year. Graduate Teaching Fellows – GTFs lead sections of the Certificate in College Teaching program; consult with graduate students about their teaching; facilitate workshops for graduate students at TA Orientation and throughout the year; and assist CFT senior staff with various ongoing and short-term projects, including the creation of online resources for the Vanderbilt teaching community. Learn more about the GTF Program. Teaching Affiliates – The primary responsibility for Teaching Affiliates is to lead a cohort of incoming TAs through a day-long workshop at August’s TA Orientation. These workshops familiarize new TAs with the challenges and opportunities of working at TAs at Vanderbilt and help prepare TAs for the first few weeks of class. Cohorts are divided by discipline, and so the CFT seeks Teaching Affiliates from a wide variety of disciplines on campus. The Teaching Affiliate position is an 70-hour position, with most of those hours occurring in August 2017. CiCT Facilitator – The CiCT Program facilitator will, alongside the Graduate Teaching Fellows, lead a section of the CiCT program. The facilitator will read and prepare lesson plans, lead class sessions, and attend weekly meetings with the GTFs. When the CiCT program is in session (6-8 weeks per semester), the approximate workload will be between 5-10 hrs/week. These positions are great opportunities for graduate students to refine their teaching and presentation skills and network with graduate students outside of their department or program.
Applications for all three types of positions are due by 4pm on Wednesday, February 22, 2017.
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Grad Student Workshop: 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. Facilitators: Lydia Bentley & Alexis McBride,
When: Monday, Jan. 30th
Time: 3 - 4:30pm
Where: CFT Classroom
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| Teaching, Difference, and Power: Class Matters
This semester, the CFT continues this year’s learning community on the many dimensions of social class as part of our ongoing series of discussions of teaching, difference, and power. The purpose of the learning community is to have a wide ranging discussion of both the many issues that arise when teaching a student body of varied class identities, and how the many dimensions of class may be taught effectively. There will be two meetings this semester, one on February 3rd focused on inclusive teaching strategies around class, and one February 24th on fostering an inclusive and class conscious campus life, both meeting from 10:00am to 12:00pm.
The learning community is open to both faculty and graduate students. It will be helpful if participants can attend regularly to form a supportive intellectual community and to work collaboratively to develop courses, lesson plans, or teaching portfolios.
Register
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Blackboard Drop-in Sessions for January
Blackboard Support at the CFT will be offering drop-in training and support for the spring semester for faculty, graduate students, and staff using Blackboard. Come get technical and pedagogical support from a team of Blackboard specialists during our drop-in support hours. Feel free to bring any questions or issues you want to resolve.
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| Junior Faculty Spotlight:
Anjali J. Forber-Pratt
Anjali J. Forber-Pratt, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor at the Department of Human & Organizational Development at Vanderbilt University. She is also a member of Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development, which is one of the top research centers for disability-related work in the country. Her research agenda adopts a social-ecological framework and looks at issues surrounding identity, equity and empowerment for individuals who are different in some way, with a large focus on disability. At Vanderbilt, Dr. Forber-Pratt has taught courses in small group dynamics (HOD 1300), counseling diverse populations (HDC 6150), appraisal and assessment (HDC 6110) and will likely be teaching courses related to qualitative methodology in the future. Across all classes, she strives to facilitate meaningful conversations around diversity in such a way where students feel safe to engage.
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| Brightspace Will Replace Blackboard in Summer 2017 Vanderbilt will launch Brightspace as its primary course management system in summer 2017. Brightspace will replace Blackboard, the university’s current system.
Brightspace, a system produced by the company D2L, was chosen after a yearlong needs assessment and vendor selection process involving faculty, staff, and students. Among other enhancements, Brightspace features an intuitive interface, a virtual classroom space, and the ability to drag and drop files to course content areas.
“The move to Brightspace is part of Vanderbilt’s ongoing strategic effort to embrace educational technologies that foster innovation in learning, teaching and discovery,” Provost Susan R. Wente said. “Brightspace is a modern, responsive course management system that will support effective teaching across the entire campus.”
The campus transition from Blackboard to Brightspace will occur in stages. Beginning this month, staff from Academic Affairs and VUIT will work with D2L to set up and configure Brightspace for Vanderbilt use. During this time, Blackboard will continue to be used as Vanderbilt’s course management system. In April, Brightspace will be available for instructors interested in early adoption. The transition will finish in June, when Blackboard will be decommissioned and Brightspace will be available campus wide.
During and after the transition, the CFT will provide training and support for instructors and students using Brightspace. The Center for Teaching has been the administrative home of Blackboard since 2014 and has provided Blackboard support to the campus since fall 2015. “We are excited to help launch Brightspace as Vanderbilt’s new course management system,” said Derek Bruff, director of the Center for Teaching, “and we look forward to providing faculty and student support in ways that enhance teaching and learning.”
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| CFT Hosts Talk on Service Learning by Randy Stoecker
The Center for Teaching is very proud to host a presentation and discussion entitled, “Liberating Service Learning,” by Randy Stoecker, Professor of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. We hope you can attend. The talk will be February 7th, 1-2:30pm, at the Center for Teaching (1114 19th Ave South, 3rd Floor).
Randy is a highly published scholar in the area of service learning and community engagement, including Research Methods for Community Change: A Project-Based Approach (2005), The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning (2009, co-edited with Elizabeth Tryon), The Landscape of Rural Service Learning, and What It Teaches Us All (2016, co-edited with Nicholas Holton and Charles Ganzert), and dozens of articles on community movements and development, qualitative methods, and social change.
His most recent book and the subject of the talk is Liberating Service Learning and the Rest of Higher Education Civic Engagement (2016), which is a personal and highly critical reflection on the many possibilities and limitations of service learning. In it he expands upon his previous work by sensitively exploring the contradictions of service learning pedagogy, and how when “liberated” from its institutionalized forms, it might help transform higher education and our broader world.
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| Seminar for International FacultyThis seminar helps international faculty hone their instructional skills for the US university classroom context. The interactive sessions, micro-teaching demonstrations, and individualized feedback allow participants to develop and practice effective teaching strategies, instructional language, and improve pronunciation.
The seminar is free and is open to any VU faculty member.
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| BOLD Fellows Program Helps
Develop Online Instruction The CFT, CIRTL Network (Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning), and Vanderbilt Graduate School share a mission to enhance teaching excellence. They are partnering to offer the Blended & Online Learning Design (BOLD) Fellows Program.
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New BOLD Fellow Teams
Alison Hessling working with Melanie Schuele, Associate Professor of Hearing & Speech Sciences
Ke Ding working with Alan Bowers, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Cara Singer and Dillon Pruett working with
Robin Jones, Assistant Professor of Hearing & Speech Sciences
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| The program is designed to help graduate student-faculty teams build expertise in developing online instructional modules grounded in good course design principles and our understanding of how people learn. The teams investigate the use of these modules, collecting data about the effectiveness of the module for promoting student learning. You can view a gallery of past BOLD projects on the BOLD website.
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Latest Podcast Episode on Ed Tech in Higher Education In the latest episode of the Leading Lines podcast we feature an interview with Steve Baskauf, senior lecturer in biological sciences at Vanderbilt University. Steve coordinates the introductory biological sciences labs, trains and mentors the undergraduate and graduate student teaching assistants for those labs, and designing and assesses inquiry-based lab curricula. However, this interview focuses on another aspect of his work at Vanderbilt: biodiversity informatics. Steve has developed Bioimages, an online image database with over 10,000 annotated plant and ecosystem images, and he has created mobile-friendly tree tours of the Vanderbilt campus. We talked with Steve about the semantic web, linked data, and the challenges and opportunities of creating and using machine-readable datasets.
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