Conversations on Teaching focus on emergent teaching and learning issues in an informal, discussion-based format.  These sessions provide members of the Vanderbilt teaching community a chance to share their teaching experiences and learn from each other.

Conversations on Teaching typically begin with opening remarks from panelists and then open up to larger group discussions.

Spring 2012 Conversations on Teaching include:

• Strategies and Practices for Effective Discussion Leading
• What is SoTL?
• A Conversation among Students and Faculty: Describing, Achieving, and Sustaining Deep Learning
  

Strategies and Practices for Effective Discussion Leading

Time & Date: Monday, January 30, 4:10-5:30
Facilitator: Milt Cox, CFT Educational Consultant
Format: Conversation on Teaching
Audience: Faculty, Graduate and Professional Students, Post-docs, and Staff

Panel:
Leonard Folgarait, PhD
Professor of History of Art; Latin American Art, European and American Modernism
The College of Arts and Science

Ray Friedman, PhD
Brownlee O. Currey Professor of Management; Associate Dean of Faculty and Research
Owen Graduate School of Management

Karen R. Harris, EdD
Professor and Currey Ingram Chair of Special Education and Literacy; Peabody College
Vanderbilt Kennedy Center

Effective discussions foster learning, yet discussions can be challenging to create and sustain. In this interactive session with panelists who have proven success at discussion leading, you will pursue strategies for initiating discussions and for keeping them lively. You will discuss questions such as: What are effective questions? What can I do if a discussion seems to fall flat? What can I do about students who dominate or withdraw from a discussion? And finally, How can I encourage students to share diverse viewpoints with both respect and candor?

Register Now.

What is SoTL?

Time & Date: Thursday, February 16, 4:10-5:30
Facilitator: Nancy Chick, Assistant Director, CFT
Format: Conversation on Teaching
Audience: Faculty, Graduate and Professional Students, Post-docs, and Staff

The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) is a way of treating teaching as a scholarly activity by posing questions about our students’ learning and its relationship to the ways in which we teach.  SoTL practitioners collect and analyze evidence of their students’ learning to understand what happens in the classroom more fully and promote learning more effectively.  In this session, participants will explore how they might adopt this perspective and ask meaningful questions about their teaching and their students learning in ways that align with their disciplinary research practices.

Register Now.

A Conversation among Students and Faculty: Describing, Achieving, and Sustaining Deep Learning

Time & Date: Thursday, March 22, 4:10-5:30
Facilitator: Milt Cox, CFT Educational Consultant
Format: Conversation on Teaching
Audience: Faculty, Students (Undergraduate, Graduate and Professional Students), Post-docs, and Staff

Instructors want the students in their courses to engage in deep learning, learning that is meaningful and lasting.  Students want that, too, but they sometimes approach that goal cautiously, aware of the constraints on their time and a reward systems that often privileges grades over learning.  What then does deep learning in a course look like?  And how can it be achieved?  Join us for a conversation among instructors and students exploring these questions from our various perspectives.

This conversation is part of the CFT’s ongoing work on the topic of student and instructor expectations for teaching and learning.  This conversation is intended as a roundtable and thus exploratory in nature. You may not leave with lots of concrete strategies for negotiating expectations, but you should take away a better understanding of the issues and challenges involved.

Register Now.