Resource Category
Brush up on Some Essential Brightspace skills
Aug. 4, 2020—Brush up on some essential Brightspace skills before teaching in an online or hybrid format this fall. Join Stacey, the CFT’s Assistant Director for Educational Technology, on Zoom for workshops about Brightspace tools including Discussions and Grades/Feedback. You can register and learn more about the available workshops on the Brightspace workshops page. If you will be...
August Workshops from the Center for Teaching
Aug. 3, 2020—For faculty and other instructors looking for a lot of ideas for teaching this fall in a short amount of time, the Center for Teaching is offering a variety of online workshops in August. Some workshops are focused on teaching with Brightspace, Vanderbilt’s course management system, while others focus on other aspects of adaptive teaching in...
Online Course Development Resources – New from the CFT
Jul. 31, 2020—The Center for Teaching is excited to announce the Online Course Development Resources website. The site is designed to help faculty and other instructors design, teach, and revise their online courses, drawing on research, best practices, and existing resources from the Center for Teaching and around the web. There are two ways to engage with...
Should I record?
Jul. 30, 2020—By Cynthia Brame, CFT Associate Director This fall, we are all going to be thinking about how to ensure that our students can equitably access our courses, even when they have to miss a synchronous meeting. One of the questions we’ll have to answer is whether and when to record those meetings to provide...
Rethinking Assessment Strategies and Procedures
Jul. 29, 2020—By Julie Johnson, Professor of the Practice of Computer Science, Director of Undergraduate Studies in Computer Science With major changes planned for the fall semester, many of us have had to rethink our assessment strategies. One aspect you may have overlooked is the handling of graded student assignments. A simple homework can generate a chain of...
Trauma-Informed Teaching During COVID-19
Jul. 28, 2020—By Leah Marion Roberts, Senior Graduate Teaching Fellow, 2020-2021 Trauma-informed teaching recognizes that students’ emotional and physical wellbeing, sense of security and belonging, and their past and current traumas influence their ability to learn. In other words, it responds to the reality that students are whole people with whole, complicated lives, in and out of...
Did you know that Brightspace Support at the CFT can assist with online teaching questions beyond technical difficulties?
Jul. 22, 2020—The Brightspace team has expertise in a variety of tools found in the Brightspace platform. We’d love to help with understanding how to use Brightspace tools to maximize student learning, choosing appropriate tools for your course goals, structuring your gradebook, and much more! We encourage you to reach out to the Brightspace Team at brightspace@vanderbilt.edu as...
Resources for Teaching Online, Hybrid, and Socially Distant Classes
Jul. 21, 2020—By Heather Fedesco, CFT Assistant Director Thinking about the fall semester and what our teaching will be like raises two very extreme responses. On the one hand, everything feels so uncertain. Will my class be entirely online? Where will my students be taking my course – on campus, in a different time zone, in a...
Suggestions for online teaching at Vanderbilt
Jul. 16, 2020—By Dr. Adriane Seiffert and Dr. Ashleigh Maxcey, Vanderbilt University Department of Psychology The following are thoughts, reflections, and suggestions on teaching online based on our experiences teaching courses over Maymester and Summer 2020. We hope they help you plan your online course as we can all strive to deliver top-notch courses this fall. Discuss...
NEW Online Course Visits Program!
Jul. 13, 2020—Seeing others teach can be a valuable way help us grow our own teaching practice. For years, the CFT has hosted teaching visits for Vanderbilt faculty, post-docs, and grad students to observe their colleagues’ face-to-face classes (such as during the Open Classroom event). In hybrid and online courses, a significant amount of teaching is done digitally, in...