Interested in the Digital Humanities? Apply to be a HASTAC Scholar – Deadline Sept. 1
Aug. 19, 2014—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director If you’re a graduate student in the humanities interested in exploring the intersections of teaching, scholarship, and technology, please consider applying to be a HASTAC Scholar for 2014-15. The deadline for applications is September 1st. HASTAC (pronounced “haystack”) is the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, a global network...
An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching – Starts October 6th
Aug. 18, 2014—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director I’m very pleased to announce that the free, seven-week, online course “An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching” is now open for enrollment. The course is designed to provide graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) who are planning college and university faculty...
Reflections from SoTL Scholar Abbey Mann
Aug. 15, 2014—“Scholarly teaching is what every one of us should be engaged in every day that we are in classroom, in our office with students, tutoring, lecturing, conducting discussions, all the roles we play pedagogically. Our work as teachers should meet the highest scholarly standards of groundedness, of openness, of clarity and complexity. But it is...
Grading Writing Assignments in Less than a Lifetime
Aug. 15, 2014—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director One of the greatest stresses experienced by new faculty (and not-so-new faculty) is the amount of time spent on effective teaching. Parkinson’s Law—the notion that a task expands to fill the time available—seems more true for teaching than many other responsibilities. During Wednesday’s Teaching at Vanderbilt orientation for new faculty,...
From the Director: Teaching, Difference, and Power
Aug. 14, 2014—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director Several years ago, I read about a line of research in mathematics education that immediately captured my attention. The research indicated that reminding female students of their gender before they took a math exam tended to decrease their exam performance in a statistically significant way. The reminder could be very...
Just in Time for the Fall Semester – Faculty Teaching Workshops August 18 and 19
Aug. 12, 2014—The Center for Teaching is hosting four Teaching Workshops for faculty next week, just in time for the start of the fall semester. Topics include writing multiple-choice test items, designing effective PowerPoint presentations, facilitating difficult discussions in class, and reducing students’ classroom-based anxieties. All faculty are welcome at these workshops, and two of them include...
Coordination and Coherence: Behind the Scenes of a Multi-Institution MOOC
Aug. 7, 2014—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director, cross-posted from Derek’s blog, Agile Learning Back in November, I announced that the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching would be part of a $750,000, three-year, multi-institution National Science Foundation supporting the creation of two MOOCs (massive open online courses) on evidence-based teaching practices for future STEM (science, technology, engineering, and...
What Can Faculty Do about Students’ Classroom-Based Anxieties? More Than You Think.
Aug. 4, 2014—by Nancy Chick (CFT Assistant Director) Last week, The Princeton Review released its annual list of “The Top 10 Colleges for ___,” and Vanderbilt made a big splash by ranking #1 with the Happiest College Students in the US.* While this is fantastic news for the campus, and it’s interesting to speculate about what makes these...
The Mindful PhD: Sitting Down & Staying Still
Jul. 27, 2014—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director The progressive breakdown of my computer and resulting residencies of IT guys have conspired to force me to read some of the books I have stacked on my desk. Today, I read the copy of Teaching with Heart: Poetry that Speaks to the Courage to Teach (Intrator & Scribner, eds.,...
The Year in Review 2013-14
Jul. 15, 2014—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director Before we get too much closer to the start of the school year and all the orientations, workshops, and seminars the CFT has lined up for August, I wanted to take a moment and look back at the academic year we’ve just completed. My staff and I have prepared a...