Thank you for visiting the Institute for the Advancement of Higher Education (AdvancED- formerly known as the Center for Teaching).
We are currently redeveloping our site. For current events and workshops, please visit our new site.
Course improvement grant spotlight: “Making Innovative learning videos for elementary Japanese classes”
Sep. 9, 2021—Nozomi Imai, lecturer of Asian studies, recently talked with CFT assistant director Julaine Fowlin about her Course Improvement Grant, “Making Innovative learning videos for elementary Japanese classes.” Last year when we had to shift to remote and hybrid learning, Nozomi created videos to allow her students to learn at their own pace and provide an...
Course improvement grant spotlight: “Restoration and rehabilitation of Vanderbilt fossil teaching collection”
Sep. 2, 2021—Neil Kelley, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, recently talked to CFT associate director Cynthia Brame about his Course Improvement Grant, “Restoration and rehabilitation of Vanderbilt fossil teaching collection.” Can you tell us briefly about your project and what inspired you to do this project? The project is a very long overdue project in...
Lessons from a Journal Club: Investigating Student Learning – Post 3: Reasons for doing systematic inquiry and final reflections
Sep. 1, 2021—by Leah Marion Roberts, Senior Graduate Teaching Fellow Welcome to the final post in this series on systematic inquiry in teaching and learning contexts. This spring, Cynthia Brame and I facilitated a journal club looking at different ways to investigate student learning. In this blog series, I’m sharing some highlights of our collective learning,...
One of these things was not like the others: Experiences with standards- and specifications-based grading
Aug. 30, 2021—This guest blog post comes from Richard F. Haglund, Stevenson Professor of Physics. The following comments are reflections after a year of fruitful dialogue with colleagues in an on-line learning community sponsored by the Center for Teaching, organized and led by Cynthia Brame. What I experienced about grading in 2020-2021 is a significant difference...
Center for Teaching 2020-21 Year-in-Review
Aug. 27, 2021—by Derek Bruff, CFT Executive Director I am excited to share the Center for Teaching’s 2020-21 Year-in-Review, now available as a PDF on our website. When higher education pivoted to remote and online instruction in the face of COVID-19, the Vanderbilt teaching community faced the herculean task of fostering student learning during a pandemic. They...
Lessons from a Journal Club: Investigating Student Learning – Post 2: Affective/Cognitive Inquiry and Qualitative/quantitative approaches
Aug. 25, 2021—by Leah Marion Roberts, Senior Graduate Teaching Fellow Assessment of student learning is an essential practice in teaching. As mentioned in the first post in this blog series, asking questions and collecting data about our classes systematically can deepen our knowledge of student experience in our classrooms, and hopefully lead to improved teaching practices. ...
A Survey to Assess Student Needs in Your Course
Aug. 20, 2021—As we near the beginning of a new semester, many of us are thinking about how we can make space in our classrooms to learn about our students’ needs. In higher education, the question of how we can support students coming back to campus after mostly online experiences is a hot topic in almost every...