Teaching Innovations at Vanderbilt Blog Series
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…[more]
Chelsea Yarborough, Cross-Disciplinary Examples, and Online Covenant Building
Apr. 20, 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. Something I’ve noticed in my time as a student is the false dichotomy sometimes constructed between disciplines. The most obvious example of this is…[more]
Chad Carpenter and Multi-Step Class Problem Solving
Apr. 6, 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. In teaching quantitative courses, it can be easy to fall into the trap of creating plug-and-chug problems for students. However, Chad Carpenter,…[more]
Derek Bruff and Cryptography Escape Rooms
Mar. 9, 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. I heard about Dr. Derek Bruff’s teaching innovation before I started working at the CFT from my freshman RA. She had been in Bruff’s…[more]
Joe Bandy and Accessibility and Inclusivity in an Environmental Course
Feb. 24, 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. Taught by Dr. Joe Bandy, SOC 3314: Environmental Inequality and Justice covers the history, ethics, and policies of environmental activism and how the…[more]
Stacey Johnson and Reflective Final Exams
Feb. 10, 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. Dr. Stacey Johnson is passionate about teaching languages, and if there is one teaching technique she is passionate about, it’s reflective exams. For…[more]
Heather Fedesco and Consulting Groups
Jan. 27, 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. Most students can give an example from their own life from a group project gone wrong, but working in groups is often integral to…[more]
Cynthia Brame, homework to highlight “real life” relevance, and flipped classes
Jan. 13, 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. Working at the CFT has been one of the best decisions I have made in college. It has afforded me many wonderful opportunities,…[more]
Danielle Picard, Mary Anne Caton and Wikipedia Editing
Dec. 15, 2019—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern We’ve all been told—or been the one telling people—to not use Wikipedia as a source. There’s a variety of reasons, of course, with the main one being the credibility of the information. Wikipedia is aware of this and has made a series of changes aimed at rectifying this. Their… [more]
McKanders and Refugee Policy Podcasts
Dec. 2, 2019—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern In the spring of last year, three students from Professor Karla McKanders’s LAW 7620: Refugee Law and Policy course contributed podcasts to the Life of the Law Blog New Voices series. This amazing opportunity for students came about from a final project for the course. The course focuses on the…[more]
Anna Guengerich and Multi-group roleplay
Oct. 29, 2019—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern Certain classes stay with you, and HART-1330W Sacred Sites in World History is one of the classes for me. I still love to talk about the Stave Churches of Norway, which were the topic of my final paper and project. Another part of the class that I found very…[more]
John Bradley and Teaching Writing
Oct. 14, 2019—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern Talking with Dr. John Bradley, director of the Writing Studio, helped me name critical lessons about writing that that I’ve realized firsthand as a Vanderbilt student here. I think teachers and students like me can benefit from both the abstract approaches and the concrete tools Bradley uses to foster…[more]
Garrett Tate, Lily Claiborne, and student analysis of real-world data
Sep. 30, 2019—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern It’s pretty hard to not find volcanoes exciting. That’s part of the reason why I think a new active learning activity in EES-1510: The Dynamic Earth: Introduction to Geological Sciences, is so cool. The other reason I think it’s amazing is that it represents a great example of an…[more]
Sep. 16, 2019—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern As a student, I have complicated feelings about peer review. It can be incredibly helpful, but only if it’s implemented well and if all students involved put real time and effort into giving useful feedback. That’s why I think Dr. Lisa Fazio’s use of Peerceptiv could be useful to…[more]
Dana Kan and Low-Stakes Retrieval Midterms
Sep. 3, 2019—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern I love interviewing professors for this blog series; every time I do it, I learn something new. Speaking with Dr. Dana Kan, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, I learned that classroom acoustics constitute an important aspect of the…[more]
Chris Candelaria and Poster Sessions
Aug. 19, 2019—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern For the first time in this blog series, I was able to go and see the teaching innovation I would write about. During 2019 Spring semester, I visited the end-of-semester poster sessions held for HODE 3225: Introduction to Public Finance of Education, which is taught by Chris Candelaria. Candelaria…[more]
Neil Kelley, Jennifer Bradham and Class Simulations
May. 27, 2019—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern Neil Kelley teaches EES 1030L: Oceanography Lab, assisted by his TAs, Michaela Peterson and Jennifer Bradham. I was able to speak with Kelley and Bradham about a specific lab that, quite frankly, made me want to take the course just so I could be a part of it. And…[more]
Mary Lauren Pfieffer, Anna Richmond, and Pediatric Simulations
May. 13, 2019—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern Teaching Advanced Practice Nursing in Primary Care of the Child is a challenge: students need to understand a range of concepts for caring for children and adolescents across a large developmental spectrum, building knowledge that has cognitive, psychosocial, and motor components. Mary Lauren Pfieffer, Instructor in Nursing, and Anna…[more]
Daniela D’Eugenio and Selective Technology Use
Apr. 29, 2019—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern Personal technological devices, such as phones and laptops, are ubiquitous in society as well as the classroom. Their use is banned outright by some professors and encouraged by others, but just as outside of the classroom, the exact role and extent they should be used is still being explored….[more]
Ravindra Duddu and Cyberlearning Tools
Apr. 15, 2019—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern I had the privilege to sit down with Dr. Ravindra Duddu, an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering who recently won an NSF CAREER grant that focuses on understanding Antarctic ice sheet fracture. To understand this phenomenon of iceberg calving, the grant proposes applying engineering tools and techniques…[more]
Sarah Suiter and Engaging Community Partners
Mar. 28, 2019—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern On Vanderbilt’s campus, it’s easy to forget that there exists a world outside of it. But all around us is Nashville, a bright, bustling city that’s one of the fastest-growing ones in the U.S.A. And as Sarah Suiter is showing, it’s filled with opportunities for students to engage with…[more]
Allison Leich Hilbun and Student Mini-Lectures
Mar. 4, 2019—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern Dr. Allison Leich Hilbun, Senior Lecturer in Biological Sciences, teaches BSCI 3270: Statistical Methods in Biology, also called biostatistics. Dr. Leich Hilbun loves teaching biostatistics, as I witnessed firsthand when I took her class last semester. She pairs her genuine excitement for sharing the material with various activities and assignments…[more]
Corbette Doyle and Group Work Promises
Feb. 22, 2019—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern I recently had the privilege to talk with Professor Corbette Doyle, a Senior Lecturer in Organizational Leadership in the Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations. She has made recent changes in one aspect of her course that strikes fear into many students’ hearts: group work. Doyle, like many professors,…[more]
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