News Category
Teaching Large Classes
Jan. 31, 2013—By Cynthia J. Brame, CFT Assistant Director Teaching large classes can pose particular challenges. How do you personalize interaction in a class with more than 100—or even more than 200—students? How do you promote student engagement when it’s so easy for a student to hide in the crowd? How do you provide helpful feedback without...
gradSTEP recap: “Beyond Four Walls: Transcending the Classroom”
Jan. 31, 2013—On Saturday, January 26th, 2013 the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching celebrated its 15th annual Graduate Student Teaching Event for Professional Development (gradSTEP). This year’s event, co-sponsored by the Graduate Student Council, focused on the theme, “Beyond Four Walls: Transcending the Classroom.” The day’s events dealt extensively with how participants could utilize an array of...
GradSTEP 2013 Workshop Preview
Jan. 17, 2013—Finding Teaching Moments in the Field: Learner-centered Field Research Programs Click play below to hear GTF Beth Koontz discuss why she developed a GradSTEP workshop on teaching in the field, and preview some of the activities and topics workshop participants will engage with.
CIRTL Online Coffee Hour Series: Building an Academic Career
Jan. 17, 2013—Alternative academic career (alt-ac) opportunities appear to be increasing in both number and prominence. What are these positions, and how can you pursue them? How can your teaching or research experience be an asset in these positions? What are the advantages and disadvantages of staying in academia in a non-faculty position? Where are the non-academic...
Thinking About Metacognition
Jan. 10, 2013—By Cynthia Brame, CFT Assistant Director I’ve been thinking a good bit about metacognition lately, which is kind of funny, if you think about it. Metacognition can be defined very simply as thinking about thinking, or more fully as by developmental psychologist John Flavell: “Metacognition refers to one’s knowledge concerning one’s own cognitive processes...
CFT Hosts International Scholar Catherine Easton to Study Educational Technology
Dec. 12, 2012—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director This year the CFT is hosting a visiting scholar, Catherine Easton of Lancaster University in the UK, where she teaches law. Catherine is in the United States as part of the International Scholars Program of the UK’s Higher Education Academy (HEA). She will explore how classroom response systems (“clickers”) and...
Interpreting and Making Sense of Course Evaluations
Dec. 11, 2012—As the semester draws to a close, our students are given the opportunity to provide us with a potentially valuable source of feedback on our teaching and its effects on their learning. You may find it challenging, however, to interpret what your end-of-semester course evaluations mean and decide how to act on them. The CFT...
Spatial Teaching
Dec. 10, 2012—GTF Beth Koontz discusses the potential for teaching with spatial technologies in the college classroom. Held in January each year, GradSTEP provides several workshops and discussions on teaching, learning, and professional development issues across the disciplines. This year’s line-up includes a session on teaching with spatial analysis tools: Adding Spatial Dimensions to Teaching led by...
Junior Faculty Teaching Fellow Spotlight:Jason Valentine
Dec. 7, 2012—Each month, the CFT Newsletter highlights the work of our Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows. This month, Jason Valentine, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, talks about his teaching philosophy and interests: My overarching goal in teaching heat transfer is for students to be able to identify the application of heat transfer in various engineering systems and quantitatively...
Professors tweak their pedagogical style with blogs
Dec. 6, 2012—Vanderbilt faculty are increasing incorporating online wiring in their teaching. A recent article by Joan Brasher highlights the work of Assistant Professor of English Humberto Garcia and his course blog The Romantic Period: Romanticism and Apocalypse and Allison Schachter, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and English and her course blog Literature, Photography and Memory. ...