From the Director
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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