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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. ...

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A Survey to Assess Student Needs in Your Course

Aug. 20, 2021—As we near the beginning of a new semester, many of us are thinking about how we can make space in our classrooms to learn about our students’ needs. In higher education, the question of how we can support students coming back to campus after mostly online experiences is a hot topic in almost every...

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Digital Media Lab Open House

Aug. 19, 2021—Date: Monday, August 23rd Time: 1:00-3:00pm Location: Digital Commons, 1101 19th Ave. South, Room 012 Facilitators: Rhett McDaniel, CFT assistant director Tracye Davis, digital media specialist Seth Shepherd, digital media specialist Visit the CFT’s new Digital Media Lab located in the Digital Commons. This new facility provides instructors with the software, equipment, environment, and instructional staff needed to...

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Lessons from a Journal Club: Investigating Student Learning – Post 1: What is vs. what works?

Aug. 18, 2021—by Leah Marion Roberts, Senior Graduate Teaching Fellow   Assessment of student learning is a familiar and essential component of teaching.  As college instructors, we constantly ask ourselves questions like: “Are my students learning?” “What do they still not understand?” “Do students feel they can approach me with questions or concerns?”or, “That cool new thing...

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Upcoming Workshop: Teaching with Top Hat

Aug. 10, 2021—Date: Thursday, August 12th Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm Location: Zoom Facilitator: Rhett McDaniel, CFT assistant director Guest Faculty: Jesse Blocher, associate professor of the practice of data science and finance   In this session you’ll hear about Top Hat, Vanderbilt’s student polling application. Top Hat allows you to ask multiple question types, receive responses, and generate discussions with real-time feedback...

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Online Teaching

Aug. 9, 2021—This faculty learning community is for Vanderbilt faculty, staff, or grad students who want to dig deeper into online and hybrid course design principles in order to create excellent socially-distanced courses. In our working group, we will explore principles of effective online teaching as described in research literature, expert accounts, and personal perspectives. As a...

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Join Queer Teaching, Queer Thriving: A Learning Community on Inclusive Teaching for All Educators

Aug. 9, 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...

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Want to signal inclusion to your neurodivergent students? Use this syllabus statement

Jul. 29, 2021—  In 2020-2021, a group of faculty met throughout the year to consider ways to promote equity and inclusion in their courses and programs (you can see a brief description of how they got started here). Keivan Stassun, professor of physics & astronomy, committed to developing a statement that faculty can use in their course...

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CFT Announces New Graduate Teaching Fellows

Jul. 29, 2021—L to R: Yvonne Chen (Sociology), Sara Eccleston (Human & Organizational Development), Jose Luis de Ramon Ruiz (Spanish and Portuguese), and Leah Roberts (Human & Organizational Development) The Center for Teaching is excited to welcome the Graduate Teaching Fellows for the 2021-2022 academic year. The Graduate Teaching Fellows provide a variety of services for Vanderbilt’s graduate and professional students and postdocs, including one-on-one consultations on teaching issues and...

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Teaching at Vanderbilt New Faculty Orientation

Jul. 28, 2021—At the beginning of every academic year, the Center for Teaching hosts “Teaching at Vanderbilt,” an orientation for junior and senior faculty new to Vanderbilt. The orientation features an introduction to strategies for launching a successful teaching career at Vanderbilt, with concurrent sessions on a variety of practical topics. Teaching at Vanderbilt is an opportunity...

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