Celebration of Learning 2014
Schedule | Exhibition | Keynote | Programs | RSVP | Blog Posts 
As part of its “Students as Producers” theme year, the Center for Teaching will hold a Celebration of Learning on April 21, 2014, in Alumni Hall from 3 to 6 p.m. This event is co-sponsored by the Graduate School.
- The event will feature students and the products of their learning experiences in courses at Vanderbilt this year. Imagine an exhibition of posters, presentations, and performances by students from all over campus, sharing what they have discovered, created, designed, authored, and solved. The event will provide the Vanderbilt community with a picture of deep, engaged student learning across the colleges and schools.
- There will also be a keynote presentation on the theme of “Students as Producers” by Randy Bass, Vice Provost for Education and Professor of English at Georgetown University. Randy is known for his efforts in his own classes and with other faculty to make student learning visible, having worked at the intersections of new media technologies and the scholarship of teaching and learning for twenty years. He’s also an incredibly engaging speaker. Randy’s keynote is co-sponsored by the American Studies program.
- Students in two of the CFT’s graduate student programs will share the projects they completed for those programs. The Blended and Online Learning Design (BOLD) Fellows will present the online learning modules they designed and assessed this year, and our SoTL Scholars will share their work in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). These students, along with graduates of our Certificate in College Teaching, will be recognized at the event for their accomplishments.
- A reception will follow, during which we will honor the students participating in the event, their instructors, as well as students and faculty who have completed CFT programs this year.
We hope that you’ll attend the Celebration of Learning and be inspired by the impressive student work on display, as well as by the keynote from Randy Bass. RSVP here.
Schedule
3:00 – 3:15 – Opening Remarks by Derek Bruff, CFT Director
3:15 – 4:15 – Exhibition featuring student posters and presentations, including the BOLD Fellows
4:15 – 5:30 – Keynote by Randy Bass, Vice Provost for Education and Professor of English, Georgetown University
5:30 – 6:30 – Reception featuring posters from the SoTL Scholar program
The event will be held on the second floor of Alumni Hall. RSVP here.
Exhibition
Original research by first- and second-year undergraduates conducted within a biology lab course. Original short stories written for a Spanish course. MRI machines built by engineering students in a design course. Video documentaries created by future teachers to explore social and philosophical aspects of education. Handcrafted creations in which theatre students show how history has influenced fashion design.
These are just some of the products of student learning that will be exhibited at the Celebration of Learning. Our students need not be merely consumers of knowledge, but also producers of meaningful, generative work alongside the university’s faculty. By hosting an exhibition of student projects, posters, presentations, and performances, the Celebration of Learning will provide the Vanderbilt community with a picture of deep, engaged student learning across the colleges and schools.
It is significant that most of the student work that will be featured at the Celebration of Learning has been or will be produced within courses here at Vanderbilt. Our students are frequently involved in knowledge production outside of the classroom, through undergraduate research, internships, student organizations, and entrepreneurial activities. These are significant learning experiences for students, but we can also think of students as producers inside the classroom, taking on the roles of scholars, creators, researchers, performers, and designers. Not only does this kind of work foster deeper learning while students are on campus, but it also helps prepare them to solve tough problems, create new knowledge, and build technologies and organizations that make a difference after they graduate.
Faculty, if you would like to nominate one or more of your students to share their work at the Celebration of Learning, please contact Center for Teaching director Derek Bruff by Monday, March 24, 2014.
Participating students, please see this page for important information.
Keynote
The event will also feature a keynote presentation on the theme of “Students as Producers” by Randy Bass, Vice Provost for Education and Professor of English at Georgetown University. At Georgetown, he is responsible for curriculum quality and development, as well as innovation in education and technology-enhanced learning. He was also the founding executive director of Georgetown’s teaching center, the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), and continues to serve there as a senior scholar for pedagogical research. Bass is known for his efforts in his own classes and with other faculty to make student learning visible, working at the intersections of new media technologies and the scholarship of teaching and learning for twenty years.
Randy has led a number of multi-institution initiatives that connect with our “Students as Producers” theme. He served as creator and director of the American Studies Crossroads Project, an early and influential effort to explore the use of new technologies in American Studies funded by the Department of Education’s FIPSE program. Randy was director and principle investigator of the Visible Knowledge Project, a digital humanities and learning project spanning twenty universities funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies. And he was co-leader of the Social Pedagogies Project, funded by the Teagle Foundation, in which faculty at ten campuses explored teaching strategies that connect students with authentic audiences.
To get a sense of what Randy will share in his keynote—and his incredibly engaging presentation style—watch his 2011 EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative talk, “The Problem of Learning in the Postcourse Era.” His 2012 EDUCAUSE Review article, “Disrupting Ourselves: The Problem of Learning in Higher Education,” covers similar ground and is a provocative read. And his introduction to the Social Pedagogies Project, “Designing for Difficulty: Social Pedagogies as a Framework for Course Design,” co-authored with Heidi Elmendorf, has been instrumental in the development of our “Students as Producers” theme year.
Watch the keynote presentation by Randy Bass.
Programs
During the Celebration of Learning, we will recognize the students and faculty who have completed the following CFT programs this year.
The Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows
The Center for Teaching’s Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows program offers its fellows many opportunities to enhance their teaching and be active members of a teaching community at Vanderbilt. Fellows engage in a variety of program activities sequenced to develop and refine their teaching skills over the course of the year. These activities will help to make more effective and efficient use of time on tasks they would be doing anyway—designing courses, planning lessons, and reflecting and writing about your teaching.
The Certificate in College Teaching
The Certificate in College Teaching assists graduate students and post doctoral fellows gain a clearer, deeper, more active approach to teaching and learning in higher education. The certificate focuses on the research on how people learn and best teaching practices, and supports the university’s pursuit of excellence in teaching and learning.
The SoTL Scholars Program
The SoTL Scholars Program is a two-semester program that meets approximately eight times each semester. Participant meetings are workshop-oriented and designed to help turn the faculty member’s inchoate research question into a product that they can publish or present at one of a number of SoTL conferences. At the Celebration of Learning, the 2013-14 SoTL Scholars will share their projects in a poster session during the reception.
The BOLD Fellows Program
The BOLD Fellows Program helps graduate student/faculty teams build expertise in developing online instructional modules grounded in good course design principles and our understanding of how people learn. STEM faculty members partner with graduate students or postdocs to design and develop online modules for integration into a course, either as a tool to promote flipping the classroom, a module for a blended course, or a unit within a MOOC. At the Celebration of Learning, the 2013-14 BOLD Fellows will share their projects during the exhibition at the start of the event.
RSVP
Click here if RSVP form does appear below.
Students as Producers Blog Posts
Students as Producers: Initiatives at Other Universities
March 3, 2014 — by Derek Bruff, CFT Director Last month, I reported that the 2014 Horizon Report on current trends in educational technology identified as one of its six key trends a shift from students as consumers (of information, of content, of knowledge)…… KEEP READING »
Students as Producers of Disciplinary Habits
February 14, 2014 — by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director The CFT’s recent Teaching Visit hosted by Phil Ackerman-Lieberman illustrated our 2013-14 theme of Students as Producers in a way that’s different from our previous examples. These other instances typically focus on specific course…… KEEP READING »
The Power of Design: What design projects can teach our students—and us
February 13, 2014 — By Cynthia J. Brame, Assistant Director This year, the CFT has adopted a “Students as Producers” theme, exploring ways that instructors can scaffold their classes to help students do meaningful, creative work. Design projects, the linchpin of any engineering curriculum,…… KEEP READING »
From the Director: 2014 Horizon Report, Randy Bass Keynote
February 7, 2014 — By Derek Bruff, CFT Director Earlier this week, the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative released the 2014 Horizon Report, an annual report on current trends in technology in higher education. One of the six key trends…… KEEP READING »
Learn to Produce or Produce to Learn?
February 5, 2014 — Vanderbilt faculty members have found a variety of ways to engage students as producers in their classes and guided students to produce work for authentic audiences. The CFT celebrated its 16th annual Graduate Student Teaching Event for Professional Development (GradSTEP)…… KEEP READING »
Students as Producers + Educational Technology
January 25, 2014 — by Derek Bruff, CFT Director I’m presenting this morning during the first set of concurrent sessions at the CFT’s GradSTEP event for graduate students and post-docs. The session is titled “Using Technology to Support Students as Producers of Knoweldge,” and…… KEEP READING »
BOLD Fellow Zane Ricks Creates Interactive Learning Module for Biostatistics Course
January 6, 2014 — The BOLD Fellows program is designed to bring together graduate students and faculty members interested in blended and online learning. Graduate students develop online learning modules for implementation in a faculty mentor’s course and then gather data on the effects…… KEEP READING »
“Inviting Genius”: Students as Producers in African American Studies
November 18, 2013 — by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director The CFT’s theme this year, “Students as Producers,” has given me the opportunity to talk with some talented and thoughtful colleagues across campus. On October 24, I brought together three of them to have…… KEEP READING »
Speaking into Humanity: French Students as Producers
November 4, 2013 — by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director The CFT’s theme this year, “Students as Producers,” has given me the opportunity to talk with some talented and thoughtful colleagues across campus. On October 24, I brought together three of them to have…… KEEP READING »
Students as Producers: Bringing the Digital into (and out of) the Humanities Classroom #THATCampVU
November 1, 2013 — by Derek Bruff, CFT Director I’m also giving a workshop today at THATCamp Vanderbilt. The session is titled “Students as Producers: Bringing the Digital into (and out of) the Humanities Classroom,” and it’s co-presented with Vivian Finch, doctoral student in…… KEEP READING »
Self-Authoring Community Activism:
Women & Gender Studies Students as Producers
October 30, 2013 — by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director The CFT’s theme this year, “Students as Producers,” has given me the opportunity to talk with some talented and thoughtful colleagues across campus. On October 24, I brought together three of them to have…… KEEP READING »
Beyond the Five-Page Paper: Representing Student Learning Visually
October 28, 2013 — by Derek Bruff, CFT Director Recently, CFT assistant director Nancy Chick and I led a workshop titled “Beyond the Five-Page Paper: Representing Student Learning Visually,” part of the CFT’s “Students as Producers” theme year. We don’t dismiss the importance of…… KEEP READING »
From a Student’s View: Solving a Campus Navigation Challenge
October 22, 2013 — by Julie Lapidot, CFT Student Assistant Today’s post is part of our “Students as Producers” theme year, as well as our irregular “From a Student’s View” blog series. Allanah Jackson is a Peabody sophomore who had the opportunity last spring…… KEEP READING »
CFT Offers New Guide: “Beyond the Essay: Making Student Thinking Visible in the Humanities”
October 21, 2013 — In August, the CFT announced a theme for much of our programming this year: Students as Producers. A new guide written by CFT Assistant Director Nancy Chick applies this theme to the disciplines in the humanities. “Beyond the Essay: Making…… KEEP READING »
Students as Producers: Incorporating Research and Design in Science and Engineering Courses
October 7, 2013 — by Julie Lapidot, CFT Student Assistant, and Derek Bruff, CFT Director On September 25th, the Center for Teaching hosted a conversation on teaching on the theme of “Students as Producers” organized by CFT assistant director Cynthia Brame. The conversation centered…… KEEP READING »