Resource Category
How to (Re)frame Your Teaching for Non-academic Jobs
Feb. 12, 2014—By Andrew Greer, Graduate Teaching Fellow Attention fellow graduate students: Eventually we will seek employment outside of our programs. If you’re like me, your search is in full force. With the majority of academic applications behind me, I’ve switched my strategy to applying for non-academic jobs. This switch not only requires transforming my CV into...
Show and Tell: More Visual Presentations
Feb. 10, 2014—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director I’m giving a presentation this afternoon on the use of visuals in lectures and other academic presentations. I like to have the slides or Prezi I use for my own presentations available online at the start of those presentations, so I’m sharing my Prezi for this afternoon’s presentation here on...
More & More Accessible Guides from CFT
Feb. 8, 2014—The CFT has quietly rolled out a new organizational structure for our guides, online documents in which we synthesize and condense some of the research and resulting practices of specific topics in teaching and learning. If you go to the CFT Homepage and hover your mouse over the “Guides” drop-down menu, you’ll see five categories ...
The Mindful PhD: Time, the Superbowl, & Bandwagons
Feb. 6, 2014—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director This past week brought a kind of harmonic convergence of mindfulness in popular culture. First, Time magazine featured “The Mindful Revolution” on the cover. Then, or perhaps simultaneously, word spread (from ESPN to the blogosphere) that the Seattle Seahawks–then heading for the Superbowl, now winners of the Superbowl–regularly practice mindfulness and yoga. This...
Last Week’s ‘T.W.L.’ Conversation on Teaching Writing: Low-Stakes, Written Reading Guides
Jan. 27, 2014—Amanda Benson (Biological Sciences) talked about “Writing as Discovery: Using Low-Stakes Writing to Help Students Learn” on January 21. This lunchtime gathering was the fifth gathering in the “Teaching. Writing. Learning.” series of conversations on teaching writing. To start the conversation, Amanda acknowledged that writing can be intimidating to scientists–faculty and students alike. Her pedagogical...
Students as Producers + Educational Technology
Jan. 25, 2014—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director I’m presenting this morning during the first set of concurrent sessions at the CFT’s GradSTEP event for graduate students and post-docs. The session is titled “Using Technology to Support Students as Producers of Knoweldge,” and it combines two of my favorite topics: students as producers plus educational technology. Certainly, technology...
The Mindful PhD: Doodling & Knitting
Jan. 22, 2014—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director Last week, I had a great conversation about class participation with SoTL Scholar Hasina Mohyuddin and my Graduate-Teaching-Fellow partner in teaching the SoTL Scholars Program Andrew Greer (both PhD candidates in the Department of Human & Organizational Development). I also serendipitously asked my students to work together to create...
The Mindful PhD: Enduring Effects
Jan. 15, 2014—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director I recently announced on Facebook that I take requests. My friend and former colleague Marnie Bullock Dresser asked the following question: “I can already tell there are fewer monkeys when I’m in serious monkey mind mode. I can tell my brain is different; I’m just wanting to trust that...
The Mindful PhD: Support for Stressed Students
Jan. 8, 2014—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director The new semester started yesterday here at Vanderbilt. My students were bright-eyed and enthusiastic, though I know they were experiencing those first-day uncertainties about their new classes, professors, and classmates. Soon enough, these early jitters will turn to a more significant set of stresses as assignments come due, exams...
A (New) Plan for Lesson Planning
Jan. 6, 2014—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director I’ve been teaching my own courses since 1993, and I still experiment with how to manage my notes, preparations, To Do lists, readings, and lesson plans–not because I’m adventurous but because I’m dissatisfied. A Goldilocks of office and organizational supplies, I’ve rejected previous attempts as “too big,” “too messy,”...