Resource Category
The Mindful PhD: 2013 Top 10
Dec. 19, 2013—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director I just realized this will be my last entry for 2013. As my social media feeds fill up with Top 10 Lists, I thought I’d pause at the end of the year and offer my own. Since my blog is still fairly new (this is just my 18th post),...
The Mindful PhD: Difficult Discussions
Dec. 13, 2013—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director Several recent campus conversations have focused on facilitating difficult discussions with students in and out of class. I’ve long taught multicultural American literature and women’s studies courses, so I appreciate how hard it is to effectively navigate these moments. As I prepare my syllabus for next semester, I’ve been...
The Mindful PhD: Inspiration, Creativity, & New Ideas
Dec. 4, 2013—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director In “The Science of Inspiration” (2013), Eric Ravenscraft highlights the neuroscientific view of inspiration, epiphanies, and “‘a-ha’ moments”: “When you make a new connection between two ideas, it’s not just a metaphor. Your brain is literally restructuring itself to accommodate new processes…. [T]he more ‘plastic’ your brain is, the...
The Mindful PhD: Labyrinths & Learning
Nov. 20, 2013—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director I’ve been reading everything I find about mindfulness, but I’m eager for more evidence-based work on its effects on learning in the college classroom. As my previous posts indicate, recent years have seen a lot of scientific research (especially in neuroscience and psychology) pointing to the psychological and physiological...
“Inviting Genius”: Students as Producers in African American Studies
Nov. 18, 2013—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director The CFT’s theme this year, “Students as Producers,” has given me the opportunity to talk with some talented and thoughtful colleagues across campus. On October 24, I brought together three of them to have a conversation on teaching about “Producing, Performing, & Creating Learning across the Humanities: Models of...
The Mindful PhD: Reading Like Bruce Lee
Nov. 14, 2013—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director I teach literature. My students read a lot, and I want them to read well—closely, carefully, attentively. I’ve always heard that the best readers were read to when they were young and then read voraciously when they were growing up. This makes great sense to me, but it also...
The Mindful PhD: How It Works, IV
Nov. 6, 2013—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director There are few silver bullets in teaching and learning, but a handful of strategies are so grounded in evidence that I sometimes feel like shouting from rooftops. One is metacognition.* Another is how students view their own intelligence. Carol Dweck describes it as having either a “fixed mindset” (believing...
Speaking into Humanity: French Students as Producers
Nov. 4, 2013—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director The CFT’s theme this year, “Students as Producers,” has given me the opportunity to talk with some talented and thoughtful colleagues across campus. On October 24, I brought together three of them to have a conversation on teaching about “Producing, Performing, & Creating Learning across the Humanities: Models of...
Students as Producers: Bringing the Digital into (and out of) the Humanities Classroom #THATCampVU
Nov. 1, 2013—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director I’m also giving a workshop today at THATCamp Vanderbilt. The session is titled “Students as Producers: Bringing the Digital into (and out of) the Humanities Classroom,” and it’s co-presented with Vivian Finch, doctoral student in German and the CFT’s HASTAC Scholar. Below you’ll find the Prezi we’re using. Click on...
Show and Tell: More Visual Presentations
Nov. 1, 2013—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director I’m giving a presentation later today on campus on effective multimedia presentations, particularly in the classroom context. Since I like to give participants in my sessions access to my slides at the start of those sessions, I’m posting my slides here on the CFT blog. I’m not using slides, of...