Resource Category
New CFT Teaching Guide – Leveraging Study Abroad: Collecting and Teaching with Authentic Resources
Aug. 24, 2016—By Stacey M. Johnson and Vivian Finch, CFT Assistant Directors In language classrooms, instructors often bring in authentic language and culture resources for students to examine. These resources help students to gain a perspective on how people use language in culturally situated ways. For many students, contact with authentic resources is one of the most...
Teaching with Digital Timelines
Jun. 28, 2016—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director This year the Center for Teaching hosted a few educational technology working groups for faculty, staff, and students interested in exploring ways particular technologies might meet their instructional goals. One of the groups investigated the use of digital timeline tools, like Tiki-Toki and TimelineJS, that facilitate the creation of online,...
Making Course Evaluations More Meaningful
Apr. 11, 2016—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director Course evaluations for spring semester courses begin today. When I served on the Provost’s Committee on the Evaluation of Teaching a couple of years ago, I found that instructors commonly face two challenges when it comes to course evaluations: motivating students to complete them (and thus increasing response rates) and...
EdTech Spotlight: Clickers, Critical Thinking, and Legal Education
Feb. 22, 2016—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director. Cross-posted from Derek’s blog, Agile Learning. The other week I blogged about one of the educational technology working groups the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching is hosting this year. That group is exploring the use of digital timelines in teaching. Another group, which I’ll discuss in this post, is looking at...
New CFT Teaching Guide on Group Work
Oct. 22, 2015—We’ve all been there: victims of unproductive and frustrating group work. Perhaps an instructor poses a question, tells us to turn to our neighbor and discuss it, and we all sit silently…because the answer’s obvious and there’s nothing to discuss. Or perhaps we have an end-of-semester project to develop, and two of the four group...
What makes group work work?
Sep. 2, 2015—by Cynthia Brame, CFT Assistant Director We’ve all been there: victims of unproductive and frustrating group work. Perhaps an instructor poses a question, tells us to turn to our neighbor and discuss it, and we all sit silently…because the answer’s obvious and there’s nothing to discuss. Or perhaps we have an end-of-semester project to develop,...
Making the most out of educational videos
Aug. 31, 2015—by Cynthia J. Brame, CFT Assistant Director Faculty Focus recently released the results of a survey on the flipped classroom, reporting that approximately three quarters of the >1000 respondents had tried flipping the classroom—and that most of them (>60%) found the experience positive for themselves and their students. While about three-fourths of the respondents found...
Peer review of teaching with a helping hand from the CFT
Aug. 11, 2015—by Cynthia Brame, Assistant Director Peer review is a cornerstone of the way that academics build new knowledge, helping to ensure high quality research that moves fields forward. Peer review of teaching can be a valuable tool for much the same reasons it is valuable for research. It can help departments and individuals reflect on...
Thinking STEM, Teaching STEM: A Blog Series
Jun. 4, 2015—By Vivian Finch, CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow “Thinking STEM, Teaching STEM” is a blog series that spotlights some of the videos produced at Vanderbilt for the CIRTL MOOC course, “An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching.” This course drew on the expertise of experienced STEM faculty, educational researchers, and representatives of university teaching centers. As previously mentioned,...
Thinking STEM, Teaching STEM: A Blog Series
May. 28, 2015—By Vivian Finch, CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow “Thinking STEM, Teaching STEM” is a blog series that spotlights some of the videos produced at Vanderbilt for the CIRTL MOOC course, “An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching.” This course drew on the expertise of experienced STEM faculty, educational researchers, and representatives of university teaching centers. As previously mentioned,...