The Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching promotes university teaching that leads to meaningful student learning. Our offerings are available to any members of the Vanderbilt community interested in developing their teaching practices.
Join the CFT’s Learning Community on Community Engagement Pedagogies
Sep. 8, 2015—The CFT is proud to continue its programming for faculty and graduate students interested in community engagement pedagogies (often called service learning), with a year-long discussion group or learning community. As former Vanderbilt faculty Janet Eyler and Dwight E. Giles once stated, service learning is “a form of experiential education where learning occurs through a...
Be Part of the Teaching, Gender, and Sexuality Learning Community
Sep. 4, 2015—All year, the CFT continues its attention to issues of teaching, difference, and power by organizing a learning community on Teaching, Gender, and Sexuality. The hope for the group is to have a dynamic discussion of, both the many issues that arise when teaching a student body of varied gendered and sexual identities, and how...
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...
Three things I learned while writing about test-enhanced learning
Aug. 24, 2015—By Rachel Biel, CFT undergraduate intern I recently had the privilege of coauthoring an essay about the benefits of testing beyond assessment. As a student who is tested most commonly for formal assessment, the idea of testing as part of the learning process was new to me. Beyond the practical implications of incorporating more testing...
Learning about the basics of learning
Aug. 17, 2015—By Cynthia Brame, Ph.D., CFT Assistant Director Last September, I read an article in the New York Times Magazine suggesting that pre-testing could improve subsequent student learning. The article was based on work by Elizabeth Ligon Bjork and colleagues, and indicated that pre-testing could help students avoid the “fluency fallacy” and might alert them to...
Fall Blackboard News: New Features, New Support
Aug. 16, 2015—As the new administrative home for Blackboard, the Center for Teaching (CFT) is excited to announce a number of developments for Vanderbilt’s primary course management system, all part of Vanderbilt’s strategic investment in the use of technology to support student learning. New Features A number of platform upgrades were rolled out this summer providing new...