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.
Student motivation journal club: If it’s bigger than you, the boring is worth it: the power of self-transcending motivation on menial tasks
Oct. 28, 2019—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern, and Heather Fedesco, CFT Assistant Director Unfortunately, it’s hard to avoid the boring in learning. Inevitably, even in the most exciting fields, students need to learn and do a boring, menial, or repetitive task. In STEM, this is especially true. You can’t learn to plot the path of a...
Graduate Student/Postdoc Workshop : Developing a Written Diversity Statement
Oct. 25, 2019—In this workshop, we will discuss evidence-based practices for writing a diversity statement for the academic job market. Increasingly, universities and colleges are requesting that faculty job applicants provide a statement addressing how they plan to contribute to inclusive excellence in their professional lives. Sometimes, a job ad will request that applicants address diversity in the cover...
Leading Lines Ed Tech Podcast Featuring Andrew Wesolek
Oct. 23, 2019—Andrew Wesolek is the director of digital scholarship and scholarly communication at the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries. He is also the co-author, along with Jonathan Lashley and Anne Langley , of the new book OER: A Field Guide for Academic Librarians . OER stands for “open educational resources.” These are educational resources, including but...
Teaching Writing Workshop Series: Writing About Visual Texts
Oct. 22, 2019—Over the course of the academic year, the Writing Studio leads a series of faculty workshops focused on different aspects of teaching writing. Workshops provide participants with current research, strategies for best practices, and a forum for discussing how these approaches might be adapted to teaching writing in their disciplines. The Teaching Writing Workshop Series...
Learning at Play: A One-day Symposium on Games for Learning and Social Change
Oct. 18, 2019—Games, both analog and digital, can immerse players in other worlds and give them experiences that help them see their own worlds in new ways. Play, structured or otherwise, can create opportunities to reflect, grow, and learn. During this one-day symposium, we will explore the ways that games and simulations can be used to foster...
Vandy Vox Wraps a Second Season!
Oct. 15, 2019—This podcast showcases the best of student-produced audio at Vanderbilt University. Each episode features student work from a curricular or co-curricular project, including audio documentaries, radio dramas, spokenword essays, and ongoing podcasts. Listen to all the episodes at vandyvox.com. . .
Teaching Innovations at Vanderbilt: 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...