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From the Director: Teaching, Difference, and Power
Aug. 14, 2014—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director Several years ago, I read about a line of research in mathematics education that immediately captured my attention. The research indicated that reminding female students of their gender before they took a math exam tended to decrease their exam performance in a statistically significant way. The reminder could be very...
Just in Time for the Fall Semester – Faculty Teaching Workshops August 18 and 19
Aug. 12, 2014—The Center for Teaching is hosting four Teaching Workshops for faculty next week, just in time for the start of the fall semester. Topics include writing multiple-choice test items, designing effective PowerPoint presentations, facilitating difficult discussions in class, and reducing students’ classroom-based anxieties. All faculty are welcome at these workshops, and two of them include...
Coordination and Coherence: Behind the Scenes of a Multi-Institution MOOC
Aug. 7, 2014—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director, cross-posted from Derek’s blog, Agile Learning Back in November, I announced that the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching would be part of a $750,000, three-year, multi-institution National Science Foundation supporting the creation of two MOOCs (massive open online courses) on evidence-based teaching practices for future STEM (science, technology, engineering, and...
What Can Faculty Do about Students’ Classroom-Based Anxieties? More Than You Think.
Aug. 4, 2014—by Nancy Chick (CFT Assistant Director) Last week, The Princeton Review released its annual list of “The Top 10 Colleges for ___,” and Vanderbilt made a big splash by ranking #1 with the Happiest College Students in the US.* While this is fantastic news for the campus, and it’s interesting to speculate about what makes these...
The Mindful PhD: Sitting Down & Staying Still
Jul. 27, 2014—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director The progressive breakdown of my computer and resulting residencies of IT guys have conspired to force me to read some of the books I have stacked on my desk. Today, I read the copy of Teaching with Heart: Poetry that Speaks to the Courage to Teach (Intrator & Scribner, eds.,...
The Year in Review 2013-14
Jul. 15, 2014—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director Before we get too much closer to the start of the school year and all the orientations, workshops, and seminars the CFT has lined up for August, I wanted to take a moment and look back at the academic year we’ve just completed. My staff and I have prepared a...
Curricular Redesign with the CFT
Jul. 14, 2014—One characteristic of “the best college teachers,” according to Ken Bain (author of the book by this name and founder of the Vanderbilt CFT), is the ability to “reflect deeply on the nature of thinking within their fields“: They know what has to come first, and they can distinguish between foundational concepts and elaborations or illustrations of...