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Adaptive Teaching at Vanderbilt

Jul. 9, 2020—During the university’s June 24th faculty town hall, CFT director Derek Bruff presented several strategies for adaptive teaching and active learning that faculty and other instructors might find useful as they plan their fall courses. While some instructors will be teaching fully online this fall, others may find themselves teaching in classrooms where some students are...

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Sign up for the Brightspace Course Template Workshop

Jul. 8, 2020—The CFT has developed an online course template for online courses in Brightspace. If you are interested in learning more about the template to see if it might work for you, you can sign up for a one-hour workshop with Brightspace Instructional Technologist, Erica Brandon. Erica will walk you through the elements of the template...

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Apply Now for the Online Course Design Institute

Jul. 7, 2020—The Center for Teaching invites Vanderbilt faculty, postdocs, and graduate students to apply to its new Online Course Design Institute, a two-week online experience intended to help participants prepare to teach an online course. The Online Course Design Institute will be offered multiple times this summerand we are now accepting applications. You can hear more about...

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Structures for flex classrooms: pros, cons, and pedagogical choices

Jun. 23, 2020—By Cynthia Brame, CFT Associate Director As we head into the fall thinking about classes where we may have a combination of students who are physically and digitally present, I’ve been thinking about different ways to structure students’ time “in the classroom”. The first and most straightforward of these is to divide students into groups...

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Active Learning in Hybrid and Physically Distanced Classrooms

Jun. 11, 2020—by Derek Bruff, Director If you’ve read Norman Clark’s hypothetical day in the life of a physically distanced classroom, then you’ve probably started to worry about how faculty and other instructors might facilitate discussion, group work, and other forms of active learning this fall. If I’m standing at the front of the classroom with half...

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Did you know that Brightspace Support at the CFT can assist with online teaching questions beyond technical difficulties?

Jun. 8, 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...

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Brightspace Support add Zoom Drop-in Hours

May. 6, 2020—Brightspace support continues to be available to help instructors make the most of their Brightspace courses. Click here for more information about our regular phone and email support Sundays through Fridays. During the month of May, the Brightspace Support team and the Digital Media team at the CFT will be teaming up to offer drop-in...

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Teaching Innovations at Vanderbilt: Leah Marion Roberts and Student-driven Course Goals and Expectations

May. 4, 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. As a student, I find it helpful when a course has clear goals. But while that helps guide student learning, what’s equally, if...

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Flipgrid: Empowering Voices with Asynchronous Online Video Discussions

Apr. 21, 2020—by Patrick Murphy, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese Flipgrid is a free online video tool from Microsoft that allows students to record video for up to 10 minutes.  It has a lot of fun visual effects as well as intuitive assessment and feedback options that can be included in rubric evaluation...

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Resources for Remote Teaching and Learning

Apr. 16, 2020—Over the last month, Center for Teaching staff have created and shared a variety of resources to help the Vanderbilt teaching community make the transition to remote teaching and learning. Those resources include: Putting Some of Your Course Content Online in a Hurry? We Have Resources for You! (Brightspace blog post) Remote Teaching at Vanderbilt: Tools...

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