News Category
Applications for New Round of Internal Teaching Grants Now Available
Sep. 23, 2021—The Office of the Provost established two internal funding programs in April 2021, the Educational Advancement Fund and the Course Improvement Grant, designed to support excellence in the classroom through continued pedagogical advancement and long-term educational transformation. The deadline to submit for the upcoming second round of funding is October 15. Read More . . . . .
Course improvement grant spotlight: Choral Library Modernization
Sep. 23, 2021—Tucker Biddlecombe, associate professor of choral studies and director of choral activities, recently talked with CFT assistant director Julaine Fowlin about his Course Improvement Grant, “Choral library modernization.” The Vanderbilt library has a collection of choral music that has been kept for many years by a student organization chorus called the concert choir; this goes back...
Join Queer Teaching, Queer Thriving: A Learning Community on Inclusive Teaching for All Educators
Sep. 23, 2021—The Center for Teaching and the K.C. Potter Center for LGBTQI Life are proud to offer a 2021-2022 learning community about ways campus educators may help LGBTQI students to thrive academically and socially. Open to all faculty, graduate students, and staff of any background, the learning community will discuss a wide variety of issues: the...
Join the Learning Assistant Instructors Learning Community
Sep. 21, 2021—Learning assistants, or LAs, are undergraduates who serve as peer educators in courses that they have previously taken. Supported by training in pedagogy, they extend the reach of faculty members implementing active learning components in a course and help provide personalized experiences that increase students’ sense of belonging. In this learning community, faculty who are...
Course improvement grant spotlight: “Incorporating student feedback in introductory biology to increase learners’ sense of belonging”
Sep. 16, 2021—Jessica Gilpin, senior lecturer in biological sciences, recently told us about her Course Improvement Grant project, “Incorporating student feedback in introductory biology to increase learners’ sense of belonging.” Can you tell us briefly about your project and what inspired you to do this project? As you know, the title of my project is, “Incorporating...
Course improvement grant spotlight: “Making Innovative learning videos for elementary Japanese classes”
Sep. 9, 2021—Nozomi Imai, lecturer of Asian studies, recently talked with CFT assistant director Julaine Fowlin about her Course Improvement Grant, “Making Innovative learning videos for elementary Japanese classes.” Last year when we had to shift to remote and hybrid learning, Nozomi created videos to allow her students to learn at their own pace and provide an...
Course improvement grant spotlight: “Restoration and rehabilitation of Vanderbilt fossil teaching collection”
Sep. 2, 2021—Neil Kelley, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, recently talked to CFT associate director Cynthia Brame about his Course Improvement Grant, “Restoration and rehabilitation of Vanderbilt fossil teaching collection.” Can you tell us briefly about your project and what inspired you to do this project? The project is a very long overdue project in...
Lessons from a Journal Club: Investigating Student Learning – Post 3: Reasons for doing systematic inquiry and final reflections
Sep. 1, 2021—by Leah Marion Roberts, Senior Graduate Teaching Fellow Welcome to the final post in this series on systematic inquiry in teaching and learning contexts. This spring, Cynthia Brame and I facilitated a journal club looking at different ways to investigate student learning. In this blog series, I’m sharing some highlights of our collective learning,...
Center for Teaching 2020-21 Year-in-Review
Aug. 27, 2021—by Derek Bruff, CFT Executive Director I am excited to share the Center for Teaching’s 2020-21 Year-in-Review, now available as a PDF on our website. When higher education pivoted to remote and online instruction in the face of COVID-19, the Vanderbilt teaching community faced the herculean task of fostering student learning during a pandemic. They...
Lessons from a Journal Club: Investigating Student Learning – Post 2: Affective/Cognitive Inquiry and Qualitative/quantitative approaches
Aug. 25, 2021—by Leah Marion Roberts, Senior Graduate Teaching Fellow Assessment of student learning is an essential practice in teaching. As mentioned in the first post in this blog series, asking questions and collecting data about our classes systematically can deepen our knowledge of student experience in our classrooms, and hopefully lead to improved teaching practices. ...