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Derek Bruff Named Director of the Center for Teaching
Nov. 16, 2011—Tim McNamara, Vice Provost for Faculty and International Affairs, announced yesterday that Derek Bruff has agreed to be the Director of the Center for Teaching. From the announcement: This appointment is the culmination of several weeks of consultation with faculty, staff, and academic leaders throughout the university, and has the enthusiastic support of the Provost....
Everyone’s a Visual Learner – A Conference Report
Nov. 15, 2011—by CFT Acting Director Derek Bruff Jose Vazquez of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and I co-facilitated a 75-minute session at the POD Network / HBCU Faculty Development Network joint conference in Atlanta last month. Our session was titled “Everyone’s a Visual Learner: Using Visual Thinking in the Classroom.” The feedback we received on...
Motivating Students through Authentic Audiences
Nov. 7, 2011—CFT Acting Director Derek Bruff authored an essay titled “A Social Network Can be a Learning Network” that appears in this week’s special issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education on online learning. In the essay, Derek uses the notion of social pedagogies to frame three educational technologies (social bookmarking, backchannels, and collaborative documents) that...
Writing in Space: Collaborative Writing in a Digital Age, November 7th
Nov. 3, 2011—CFT Acting Director Derek Bruff will be a panelist at a Vanderbilt Writing Studio event Monday, November 7th, from 3:45 to 4:30 p.m. in the Commons Multipurpose Room 237. Details below… How do networked technologies open new, collaborative possibilities for the way we write? Please join us for a virtual discussion on innovative practices in...
A Conversation on Student and Faculty Expectations for Writing
Nov. 1, 2011—This is a guest post by Katherine Fusco, assistant director at the Vanderbilt Writing Studio and lecturer in English. On September 27th, the CFT and the Writing Studio co-hosted an event centered on what faculty and students think about writing. When I work with student writers at the Writing Studio, I sometimes find myself beating...
Hitting the Road: Conference Season for the CFT
Oct. 21, 2011—Four members of the CFT staff are attending conferences across the country over the next three weeks. This week, CFT educational consultant Milt Cox is participating in the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) conference in Milwaukee. Milt’s on a panel titled “Transforming Educational Development of SoTL by Engaging in, Leading,...
Twitter as an Enabler of Critical Thinking
Oct. 18, 2011—This is a guest post by Corbette Doyle, a Lecturer in Leadership, Policy & Organizations, and Steph Milne, her TA. In addition to her TA role, Steph recently earned her undergraduate degree and is currently a second-year graduate student in LPO. This Thursday, October 20th, at 4:00 p.m., Corbette and Steph will be discussing their...
The University’s Social Responsibilities – A Faculty View of the CFT’s 25th Anniversary Symposium
Sep. 27, 2011—This is a guest post by Doug Fisher. Doug is an associate professor of computer science and computer engineering. Doug also recently served as a program director in the National Science Foundation’s Division of Information and Intelligent Systems. This post is part of our series of posts related to the CFT’s 25th anniversary. I thoroughly...
Responding to Changing Technologies – A Report from the CFT’s 25th Anniversary Symposium
Sep. 23, 2011—by Derek Bruff, CFT Acting Director In my last post, I shared some highlights from the first hour of our discussion of changing technologies at the CFT’s 25th anniversary symposium earlier this month. The discussion raised several challenges in responding to our changing technological world, including: meeting student expectations for technology use in higher education,...
Changing Technologies – A Report from the CFT’s 25th Anniversary Symposium
Sep. 22, 2011—by Derek Bruff, CFT Acting Director As I mentioned last week, our 25th anniversary symposium was a fantastic event, with faculty, students, and staff engaged in deep and important discussions about the future of teaching at Vanderbilt. One of the themes of the discussion was the challenge to teaching and learning provided by changing technologies....