Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy – A Framework for Assessing Student Learning
Apr. 12, 2010—As you head into the final few weeks of classes, you’re probably starting to think about end-of-semester assessments of your students’ learning. If you’re not familiar with Bloom’s taxonomy of learning objectives, it’s worth getting to know since the taxonomy is a useful framework for thinking about the questions we ask of our students, particularly...
Outsourced Grading of Student Papers?
Apr. 8, 2010—A recent Chronicle of Higher Education article reports on the emerging practice of outsourcing the grading of student papers to third-party companies. For example, University of Houston professor Lori Whisenant has outsourced some of the work her TAs used to do to a company called EduMetry: The graders working for EduMetry, based in a Virginia...
Teaching Creativity Through Quilts and Jazz
Apr. 6, 2010—This semester, two CFT senior staff members are teaching courses in the College of Arts & Science. Director Allison Pingree is teaching a new course, American Studies 100W — Quilting and Jazz: American Modes of Creativity. The course is focusing on quilting and jazz, both for what they reveal as quintessentially American forms of artistic expression, and...
CIRTLcast 4/7 – Preparing to be a Faculty Member: What Do I Need to Know about Faculty Work?
Apr. 5, 2010—The CIRTL Network is hosting a webinar titled “Preparing to be a Faculty Member: What Do I Need to Know about Faculty Work?” as part of its CIRTLcast series on Wednesday, April 7th. The webinar features Ann Austin, Professor of Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education and Director of the Global Institute for Higher Education at...
Contemplative Pedagogy
Apr. 2, 2010—“Opening the contemplative mind in schools is not a religious issue but a practical epistemic question… Inviting contemplative study simply includes the natural human capacity for knowing through silence, pondering deeply, beholding, witnessing the contents of consciousness and so forth.” ~ Tobin Hart, Opening the Contemplative Mind in the Classroom, Journal of Transformative Education Vol....
Getting Students to Do the Reading: Pre-Class Reading Quizzes Using Blogs
Apr. 1, 2010—CFT assistant director Derek Bruff authored a guest post on the group blog ProfHacker last week. In the post, he described his use of pre-class reading quizzes in the math courses he teaches to motivate his students to read their textbooks before class. By asking students to respond to open-ended questions about the reading before...
Highlights from Recent “Sustainability Across the Curriculum” Workshop
Mar. 31, 2010—On Tuesday, March 30th, the CFT hosted a workshop titled “Sustainability Across the Curriculum” featuring four faculty panelists: Cecelia Tichi (English), Beth Conklin (Anthropology), James Clarke (Civil & Environmental Engineering), and Jack Barkenbus (Vanderbilt Center for Environmental Management). CFT graduate teaching fellow John Morrell facilitated the session, and CFT assistant director Derek Bruff live-tweeted the...
Is Catching Students Who Cheat on Homework a Lost Cause?
Mar. 31, 2010—Jeffrey Young’s latest “College 2.0” article for the Chronicle of Higher Education is titled “High-Tech Cheating Abounds and Professors Bear Some Blame.” In the article, Young reports on recent research by David E. Pritchard, a physics professor at MIT, indicating that students frequently copy answers to online homework problems in science courses, sometimes by copying...
University of Louisville Clickers Conference June 4 – Talks by VU’s Derek Bruff, Corbette Doyle, John Seibert
Mar. 29, 2010—The 2nd University of Louisville Clickers Conference will be held in Louisville, Kentucky, June 4th this summer. “Clickers” are handheld devices that allow students to respond synchronously to multiple-choice questions posed by their instructors. Distributions of responses are displayed on-screen to inform subsequent teaching choices and motivate discussion among students. CFT assistant director Derek Bruff,...
Learning to Teach through Performance
Mar. 26, 2010—On Monday, March 22, nearly two dozen Vanderbilt faculty and graduate student instructors gathered at the CFT for experiential workshop sessions on “performance pedagogy,” an approach that develops creative thinking and deep understanding through active performance in both teachers and students. These sessions, offered by visiting faculty from the Creativity and Performance in Teaching and...