Commentary Category
Gathering feedback during remote teaching and learning: questions and tools to use
Apr. 5, 2020—by Cynthia Brame, CFT associate director As we head into our fourth week of remote teaching and learning at Vanderbilt, it’s a good idea for instructors to gather information from students about how they’re experiencing the shift. You may be doing that informally with your students by checking in via virtual office hours, email, and...
Using OneNote to teach online
Mar. 30, 2020—by Elliott McCarter, Senior Lecturer in Hindi-Urdu, Asian Studies Program and 2019-2020 Junior Faculty Teaching Fellow at Vanderbilt University Upon being called to teach my courses online, I cringed at the thought of being chained to a computer for hours on end as I slowly typed everything in Hindi, Urdu, and Sanskrit. My strong desire...
Junior Faculty Spotlight: Audrey Bowden
Mar. 23, 2020—Each month, the CFT highlights the work of our Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows. This month, Audrey Bowden, Biomedical Engineering, talks about her teaching philosophy and interests. Having recently moved to Vanderbilt, I feel like a re-entrant to teaching, despite the fact that I have been teaching at the college level for eight years. Therefore, participating in the Junior Faculty...
Communicating with your students about the move to online classes
Mar. 12, 2020—by CFT assistant director, Joe Bandy I just wrote my students an email (see below) that you can use as model of things you might say to your students in preparation for next week, if you haven’t considered something like this already. Included in it is a link to a Google Forms survey I constructed...
Celebration of Learning Spotlight: GoCheck Kids Superuser Training and Global Expansion
Mar. 11, 2020—On February 13, 2020, the Center for Teaching held a Celebration of Learning, an exhibition of students as producers. The event featured students from all over campus sharing what they learned, created, designed, and discovered. Alexa Levitt led an initiative to bring early vision screening to underserved areas where preventable vision issues are currently the most debilitating using the...
Teaching Innovations at Vanderbilt: Joe Bandy and Accessibility and Inclusivity in an Environmental Course
Feb. 24, 2020—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern During Spring 2020, the Teaching Innovations at Vanderbilt blog series will highlight teaching innovations that CFT staff have implemented and evaluated in their own courses. Taught by Dr. Joe Bandy, SOC 3314: Environmental Inequality and Justice covers the history, ethics, and policies of environmental activism and how the...
Teaching Innovations at Vanderbilt: Stacey Johnson and Reflective Final Exams
Feb. 10, 2020—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern During Spring 2020, the Teaching Innovations at Vanderbilt blog series will highlight teaching innovations that CFT staff have implemented and evaluated in their own courses. Dr. Stacey Johnson is passionate about teaching languages, and if there is one teaching technique she is passionate about, it’s reflective exams. For...
Teaching Innovations at Vanderbilt: Heather Fedesco and Consulting Groups
Jan. 27, 2020—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern During Spring 2020, the Teaching Innovations at Vanderbilt blog series will highlight teaching innovations that CFT staff have implemented and evaluated in their own courses. Most students can give an example from their own life from a group project gone wrong, but working in groups is often integral to...
Junior Faculty Spotlight: Allison Leich Hilbun
Jan. 14, 2020—Each year, the CFT Newsletter highlights the work of our Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows. This month, Allison Leich Hilbun, Biological Sciences, talks about some of the most useful lessons she has gotten from the Fellowship. Participation in the JFTF program has been exceedingly enlightening. I am excited about what I have learned regarding prior knowledge; although coming into...
Grades as a necessary evil? How they affect student motivation and what we can do about it.
Dec. 19, 2019—By Heather Fedesco, CFT Assistant Director During the December meeting of the CFT’s student motivation journal club, we tackled the perplexing question of whether grades help or hinder student motivation. Chamberlin and colleagues’ paper titled, “The impact of grades on student motivation” gave us a great launching point to embark on this discussion. The authors...