| Celebration of Learning: An Exhibition of Students as Producers
On February 4, 2019, the Center for Teaching will hold a Celebration of Learning, an exhibition of students as producers. The event will feature students from all over campus sharing what they have learned, created, designed, and discovered, providing the Vanderbilt community with a picture of deep 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 2018.
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| We’re interested in all types of student projects—podcasts, Wikipedia entries, original research, board games, service-learning projects, digital stories, human-centered design, Twitter fiction, whatever! The event will be formatted like a poster session, but students don’t need to have made posters—we’ll accommodate just about any kind of student project.
To recommend a student, have them complete this participation form by January 21, 2019 . 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.
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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Junior Faculty Spotlight:
Issam Eido
Each month, the CFT Newsletter highlights the work of our Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows. This month, Issam Eido, Religious Studies, talks about his teaching philosophy and interests.
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| I am a senior lecturer at the department of Religious Studies and a former Visiting Professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at the University of Chicago Divinity School and fellow of Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at U of Chicago (2013-2015). In 2012, I was a Fellow of the "Europe in the Middle East/Middle East in Europe" Research program at the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin (affiliated with Corpus Coranicum).
My research generally focuses on the Qur'an in late antiquity, Hadīth Studies, Sufism, and Arabic language. My teaching interests focus on Modern and Classical Arabic language, Arabic Literature, Islamic Studies, and Qur'ānic Arabic. Prior to the Syrian uprising, I served as a lecturer in the faculty of Islamic Studies in the Department of Qur'an and Hadīth Studies at the University of Damascus.
My doctoral work, 'Early Hadīth Scholars and their Criteria of Hadīth Criticism,' presented a new understanding of the criteria used by Muslim scholars in accepting or rejecting traditions attributed to Muhammad and the transformations of that criteria from the classical to the modern period. Currently, my research focuses on the question of Authenticity and the shaping of authoritative Islamic texts among Muslim scholars in the Islamic formative period.
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| Top Hat Week Begins Jan. 28th Are you interested in new ways to engage your students during class? Top Hat is Vanderbilt’s classroom response system, available for free to all faculty, staff, and students. Using Top Hat, instructors can pose polling questions and ask all their students to respond using their phones or laptops. Top Hat quickly collects and visualizes student responses, giving instructors a snapshot of student learning they can use to inform class discussion. The week of January 28, 2019, is Top Hat Week at Vanderbilt. The Center for Teaching is encouraging all faculty to try Top Hat by asking their students just one polling question sometime during the week. Can you spare five or ten minutes of class time to try out a new tool for fostering active learning? Visit our guide for Top Hat week for ideas on using Top Hat in your classroom, along with step-by-step instructions for getting started. It’s easier than you might think. If you have any questions about Top Hat Week, or you’d like to tell us how it went, just email cft@vanderbilt.edu.
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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 2018-2019 academic year.
Graduate Teaching Fellow – 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 Affiliate – 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 as 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 a 70-hour position, with most of those hours occurring in August 2018.
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 Wednesday, February 20th, 2019.
Learn more about each of these positions and apply online by visiting the CFT's employment opportunities page.
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| Leading Lines Ed Tech Podcast with
Max Seidman
In this episode we talk with Max Seidman, senior game designer at Tiltfactor. Seidman gives us a tour of the Tiltfactor lab and discusses more about Tiltfactor’s research into games and social change.
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Happy New Year! We have a busy semester planned at the Center for Teaching, with lots of opportunities for the Vanderbilt teaching community to reflect on their teaching, to connect with colleagues, and to be inspired. Here are just a few highlights… - On February 4th, the CFT will hold a Celebration of Learning, an exhibition of students as producers. The event will feature students from all over campus sharing what they have learned, created, designed, and discovered. If you have a student who has created or designed something interesting in one of your courses, you’re invited to recommend them to participate in the event. And if you’d like to get a sense of what immersive student learning looks like across the colleges and schools, please join us at the Celebration of Learning on February 4th! Details here.
- The week of January 28th is Top Hat Week! Top Hat is Vanderbilt’s classroom response system, allowing instructors to rapidly collect and analyze student responses to in-class questions. Top Hat polling questions can give instructors a snapshot of student learning they can use to inform discussion and engage students. The CFT is encouraging all faculty to try Top Hat by asking their students just one polling question sometime during the week. Details here.
- The CFT hosts a number of learning communities in which faculty, staff, and students learn from and with each other about particular teaching and learning topics. We have four learning communities continuing this spring semester focusing on active learning, international students, digital literacies, and design thinking. You’re welcome to join any of these communities at any time. Details here.
- Now is a great time to schedule a teaching consultation at the CFT! Our instructional consultants are ready to help faculty and graduate student instructors enhance their teaching skills and experiment with new teaching practices. Two of our most popular consultation formats are the small group analysis, in which consultants collect mid-semester student feedback, and the classroom observation. Details here.
Derek Bruff
Director, CFT
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| Upcoming Grad/Postdoc
Workshops
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| Crafting an Effective Teaching Statement: Creating Your Draft
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. This workshop is especially helpful for those who do not have a draft of their teaching philosophy statement prepared. Date: Wednesday, January 16
Time: 2:30pm-4:00pm
Location: CFT Classroom
Facilitator: Gregory Smith, CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow Open to Vanderbilt Graduate Students & Postdocs ________________________
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| Crafting an Effective Teaching Statement: Revising Your Draft
After attending the Creating Your Draft workshop, this Revising Your Draft workshop will allow participants to get feedback on their teaching philosophy statement. This session will include a quick review of best practices for writing a teaching statement/philosophy for the academic job market, however most of the time will be spent peer reviewing each other’s drafts. 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. Those who do not have a draft of their teaching statement completed may still attend this session. The session facilitator will conduct a shortened version of the Creating Your Draft workshop while the other participants are engaging in the peer review process. Date: Thursday, January 31
Time: 9:30-11:00 am
Location: CFT Classroom
Facilitator: Robert Marx, CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow Open to Vanderbilt Graduate Students & Postdocs
REGISTER _______________
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| Teaching 101
Graduate Student/Postdoc Workshop
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: Tuesday, February 5
Time: 9:30-11:00am
Location: CFT Classroom
Facilitators: Chelsea Yarborough and Robert Marx, CFT Graduate Teaching Fellows Open to Vanderbilt Graduate Students & Postdocs
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| Talking to Your Students About Brightspace
Students will have questions about Brightspace. In addition to directing them to Brightspace support at the CFT and our online student resources, there are ways you can communicate to your students in the syllabus, in class, and on Brightspace. Let them know how you plan to use Brightspace and how they can be be successful with Brightspace in your course. Check out this blog post that includes info you can share with students as well as sample verbiage you can use in an announcement, add to your syllabus, or send via email.
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