Tweets from the Celebration of Teaching: Scientists in the Classroom, Academic Inquiry, and Open Education

May 15, 2013 — by CFT Director Derek Bruff When I attend an academic conference, I’m particularly active on Twitter, live-tweeting the conference by sharing observations, reflections, questions, and resources. A conference backchannel can provide a space for discussion and networking, share highlights from...... KEEP READING »

Tags: celebration of teaching, MOOCs, SoTL, STEM
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Using Peer Instruction to Flip Your Classroom: Highlights from Eric Mazur’s Recent Visit

April 15, 2013 — by CFT Director Derek Bruff On April 4th, during his talk at the School of Medicine, Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur polled an audience of Vanderbilt faculty, staff, and students, asking us how we learned what we need to know...... KEEP READING »

Tags: Active Learning, Clickers, Flipped Classroom, STEM
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CIRTL Online Coffee Hour Series: Fostering Critical Thinking in the STEM Classroom

April 12, 2013 — Fostering Critical Thinking Wednesday, April 17th 1-2 pm National polls indicate that over 90% of faculty believe critical thinking is the most important part of undergraduate education, yet how do we foster critical thinking in our teaching? Identifying what it...... KEEP READING »

Tags: Career, CIRTL, STEM
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Eric Mazur on the Flipped Classroom and Peer Instruction, April 4th

March 14, 2013 — by Derek Bruff, CFT Director If you’re interested in improving student learning in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields or in large classes of any discipline, you won’t want to miss Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur’s talk in Light...... KEEP READING »

Tags: Clickers, Flipped Classroom, Large Classes, STEM
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CIRTL Online Coffee Hour Series: Building an Academic Career

January 17, 2013 — Alternative academic career (alt-ac) opportunities appear to be increasing in both number and prominence. What are these positions, and how can you pursue them? How can your teaching or research experience be an asset in these positions? What are the...... KEEP READING »

Tags: Career, CIRTL, STEM
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Teaching with MOOCs: Four Cases

November 26, 2012 — by Derek Bruff, CFT Director Last month in a blog post titled “Better Than a Textbook?“, I noted that some faculty find it easier to think about the massive open online courses (MOOCs) provided by vendors like Coursera as “super-textbooks”...... KEEP READING »

Tags: Coursera, Flipped Classroom, MOOCs, STEM
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CIRTL Online Coffee Hour: Teaching at a Primarily Undergraduate Institution, 9/27 at 1pm

September 24, 2012 — See below for this week’s offering from the CIRTL Network’s online coffee house series on building academic careers in science, engineering, and mathematics. This week’s coffee house features two Vanderbilt alumnae, Tara Davis (Mathematics) and Heather Whitney (Physics). Teaching at...... KEEP READING »

Tags: CIRTL, Future Faculty, STEM
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Leveraging Student Interests through Social Bookmarking

August 29, 2012 — by Derek Bruff, CFT Director I have a new guest post over on the CIRTL Network website describing my use of social bookmarking tools like Delicious and Diigo in my math courses. The post is titled “Leveraging Student Interests through...... KEEP READING »

Tags: CIRTL, Educational Technology, Social Pedagogies, STEM
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Please Take Out Your Cell Phones

July 24, 2012 — by Derek Bruff, CFT Director I have a blog post on mobile learning (using mobile devices like phones and tablets in education) posted over on the CIRTL Network website today. Here’s an excerpt from the post, “Please Take Out Your...... KEEP READING »

Tags: CIRTL, Educational Technology, Mobile Learning, STEM
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Student-Created Infographics and a Seated Poster Session: Two Experiments in Teaching Statistics

June 4, 2012 — by CFT Director Derek Bruff This past spring I taught Math 216, an introduction to statistics for engineering majors, for the fourth time in recent years. In order to make the course a bit more lively for me and for...... KEEP READING »

Tags: Grading, STEM, Student Projects, Visual Thinking
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