2012
Vanderbilt’s Newest Digital Learning Initiative
Sep. 19, 2012—By Derek Bruff, CFT Director This morning Vanderbilt announced a new partnership with the digital learning consortium Coursera. Coursera is an online platform for open-access, non-credit classes, available at no cost to participants. Such courses have been dubbed “MOOCs,” or massive open online courses, and Vanderbilt faculty will offer five such courses via Coursera this...
Upcoming Event: Going Public with Teaching Evaluations
Sep. 18, 2012—Join us for this upcoming Conversation on Teaching! Going Public with Teaching Evaluations Date & Time: Tuesday, September 25 4:10-5:30pm Beginning this Fall, Vanderbilt students will have access to quantitative information from course evaluations so that they may be more informed about their choices of instructors and classes. This is part of a larger...
Junior Faculty: Visit Lori Troxel’s Engineering class at next week’s teaching visit
Sep. 17, 2012—A Teaching Visit involves a small group of faculty who observe a colleague’s class (on a selected day), followed by an hour of conversation about what was observed, particularly shared teaching challenges. The Center for Teaching has hosted Teaching Visits for many years and they have been among the most productive and helpful events we...
Meet CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow Jessica Riviere
Sep. 14, 2012—Over the next few weeks, we will introduce the CFT’s 2012-13 Graduate Teaching Fellows* individually to highlight their areas of expertise, interests, and specific CFT activities. Jessica Riviere is a Ph.D. student in German Literature and is writing a dissertation on late 18th– and early 19th-century women writers. Jessica has taught first- and second-year German...
Episode 36 – Student Learning on Display: Accidental Poisoning by Spanish Fly
Sep. 14, 2012—In an effort to better understand student learning, particularly deep learning, as it occurs at Vanderbilt, the CFT is producing a special series of podcasts highlighting student projects across a variety of disciplines. In this episode, CFT director, Derek Bruff, attends the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Summer Research Program poster session where he talks with Liz DeAngelo,...
Strategies for Grading Workshop: Additional Resources
Sep. 13, 2012—CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow, Beth Koontz, offers additional resources on grading and assessing student work. The CFT recently hosted a teaching workshop on Effective and Efficient Grading focusing on the purposes of grading and how to grade in ways that help students learn more deeply and save time for the instructor. This post provides some...
Upcoming Event: Making the Most of Office Hours
Sep. 13, 2012—Join us for this upcoming Teaching Workshop! Making the Most of Office Hours Date & Time: Thursday, September 20 4:10-5:30pm Everyone who teaches holds office hours, but few intentionally approach these moments with students as opportunities for significant learning. This workshop will explore these one-on-one or small-group teaching situations and provide tips for managing time,...
Online education pioneer to deliver Hall Lecture October 2
Sep. 12, 2012—Daphne Koller will present her ground-breaking work in free, universally accessible college education as the first guest speaker in the 2012 -2013 John R. and Donna S. Hall Engineering Lecture Series. The lecture – The Online Revolution: Education for Everyone – is Tuesday, Oct. 2 at 4:10 p.m. in Vanderbilt’s Wilson Hall, Room 103. The...
New Website Features Course Blogs
Sep. 11, 2012—Increasingly, Vanderbilt instructors are incorporating blogs into their course design. The CFT has assembled blogs from several of these courses in one place. Course Blogs at Vanderbilt is a mash-up of live feeds representing a wide variety of courses that use blogging to help students reflect on, comment about, and introduce new ideas to course...
Junior Faculty: Visit Richard Pitt’s Sociology class at next week’s teaching visit
Sep. 10, 2012—A Teaching Visit involves a small group of faculty who observe a colleague’s class (on a selected day), followed by an hour of conversation about what was observed, particularly shared teaching challenges. The Center for Teaching has hosted Teaching Visits for many years and they have been among the most productive and helpful events we...