Teaching & Learning Collaborative
TLC Tip of the Week: Creating Engaging Media Assignments
Faculty members who are interested in having students use video, design, or audio tools in their classrooms can visit the Digital Lab and schedule a consultation and collaborate on a multimedia assignment, according to Jose Velazco, Clark Library. The Digital Lab provides instruction on software, loans, equipment, and will work one-to-one with faculty to create engaging assignments meeting curricular goals and offering professional development opportunities for students.
Visit the lab’s Faculty page to view sample assignments.
To arrange a consultation, contact Velazco at velazco@up.edu.
TLC from the TLC: Flipping Your Classroom?
This week’s Teaching and Learning Collaborative article is by Zachary Simmons, psychological sciences. He addresses the idea of “flipped” classrooms, where course content is consumed primarily outside the classroom, with instructional time devoted to application or mastery of the material. “Nothing seems to polarize my students more than their opinion of ‘flipped classrooms,'” he says, and delves more deeply into the topic at this link.
TLC from the TLC: Students (and Instructors) as Political Animals
It is highly likely, across the past few months, that America’s 2016 election has worked its way into your classroom or even your curriculum. In this week’s Teaching & Learning Tip, Lars Erik Larson corrals a series of insights from NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (pictured), who helps explain some unexpected roots beneath our political differences, and why it’s so hard to hold a civil conversation about them. This link offers ideas taken from his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, as well as a link to his post-election insights from a TED talk last month. Haidt’s perspectives offer instructors the background to help foster one of the last spaces left for civil discussion: the college classroom.
Butine Faculty Development Fund Awards
The Committee on Teaching and Scholarship (TAS) has determined award recipients for the 2016-2017 Butine Faculty Development Fund Fall cycle, according to committee chair Aaron Wootton, mathematics. Butine award recipients are:
- Alfrey, Lauren: “Geek Girls: Race, Gender and Power in the Tech Industry,” $3,300
- Barber, Halina & Amber Vermeesch: “Road Less Traveled: Stressors and Coping Strategies Unique to Undergraduate Nursing Students,” $1,776
- Chakrabati, Saikat: “A security framework for resource constrained IoT devices,” $5,000
- Coida, Olivia: “Mechanical Model of the Respiratory System,” $3,000
- Eckman, Ted: “Understanding Distributions of Industrial Odors in North Portland,” $5,000
- Eshleman, Andrew: Funds to attend the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Conference, $1,150
- Gates, Alice: “Enhancing scholarship and teaching in Policy Practice,” $4,550
- Hancock, Christin: “Unspeakable: Sex, Madness, and the Malarial Treatment of Syphilis in Middle America,” $4,060
- Hill, Allie: “Gender and Memory of East German Every-Day Life,” $3,313
- Hoffman, Sr. Angela: “Study of products made by bacteria isolated from soil taken from Pollentia, an ancient Roman city on Mallorca,” $3,038
- Ilosvay, Kimberly: Reflection and Research, $3,000
- Jones, Kevin: “Testing the Applicability of the Circle of Courage Youth Development Model for Undergraduate Social Work Education,” $3,343
- Kotas, Jakob: “A Robust Framework for Airline Scheduling,” $3,000
- Krautscheid, Loretta: “The effect of trans-disciplinary educational strategies on student nurse resilience and moral distress,” $2,936.50
- McRee, Nick: Funds to attend the 12th International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, $1,500
- Meiser, Jeffrey: “The Moral Factor in War: Combat Effectiveness from Chosin to Mosul,” $3,000
- Reyes-Giardiello, Giannina: “Researching masked-social activism in Mexico City,” $850
- Viljee, Shazib: “Analysis of Charcoal Samples for Composition and Energy Content,” $1,809
- Warshawsky, Matthew: “May Your Divine Inspiration Call Me in the Desert’: New Jewish Identity in the Baroque-Era Poetry of the Iberian New Christian João Pinto Delgado,” $3,000
For more information, contact Wootton at x7377 or tas@up.edu.
TLC Tip of the Week: Early Alert
This week’s TLC Tip of the Week comes from early alert coordinator Gina Loschiavo, who has visited just about every department on campus this fall and fielded several recurring questions from faculty as they strive to implement Early Alert in their teaching and advising with students. We thought doing this in the form of an FAQ piece would be an efficient way to remind faculty about crucial aspects of the program.
- One Common Misconception: Early Alert is NOT just about grades. The Early Alert program is a referral program for all faculty, staff, students, and parents who are concerned about the physical, emotional, academic, or personal health of a University student. The Early Alert team can assess the situation, offer support to the student and reporting party, and provide referrals to the breadth of resources on-campus.
- How do I submit an Early Alert? Simply go to up.edu/earlyalert and click the “Submit an Early Alert” button. You will be taken to a form where you can provide information about the student you are concerned about.
- What happens after I submit an Early Alert? Early Alert reports are received by Loschiavo and reviewed by the Early Alert team to offer support to the reporting party and the student. After submitting the report you will be contacted to see if you have additional information to share or if you need guidance to support the student of concern. At any point if you have information you would like to share, please contact Gina.
- What should I do if I want to learn more about the Early Alert program? If you have questions about the Early Alert program or simply want to learn more, please reach out to Loschiavo at x7709 or loschiav@up.edu, or visit the Early Alert website at up.edu/earlyalert.
TLC from the TLC: Rethinking How Office Hours Are Kept
This week’s selection from the Teaching and Learning Collaborative comes from Zachary Simmons, psychological sciences. Like many UP professors, he does his best to carve office hours in stone, held invioalate for the good of his students, but life always seems to do its best to wreak havoc on his best laid plans. Sound familiar? If so, be sure to read his piece on exploring the possibility of keeping virtual office hours on days he cannot be on campus at this link.
A reminder: these weekly tips from the Teaching and Learning Collaborative are meant to be taken in during the time it takes to enjoy a cup of coffee or kombucha at your desk. They are also archived at sites.up.edu/tl. If you have a teaching dilemma for which you’d like some insights or resources, please contact TLC coordinator Karen Eifler, eifler@up.edu, or x8014.
TLC Tip of the Week: Using Failure as a Chance to Teach
TLC from the TLC: Internationalization
This week from the Teaching and Learning Collaborative: As one area of focus in the Strategic Plan Vision 2020 (D), international integration in the university will provide opportunities for students to engage in intercultural and interfaith dialogue and practices. Using a variety of approaches, a course might introduce one assignment or an entire module structured around global learning outcomes. This week’s link provides the framework for thinking about internationalizing a course and broad examples of implementation. Coming next, the TLC will provide a variety of examples of internationalized course design being implemented around campus.
The linked sites have many documents that support ways to conceptualize internationalized course design. See them here and here.
TLC Teaching Tip of the Week: A Brief Tour of Our Campus’s Handbook to Writing
Improving the writing skills of our students across their four years is a cross-campus shared responsibility. Fortunately, both faculty and students have an enlightened resource – a common campus handbook – to help foster a shared vocabulary, writing strategies, and documentation expertise. The most recent update of this blazingly necessary resource offers faculty the chance to (re)familiarize ourselves with its holdings. Kirszner & Mandell’s Pocket Cengage Handbook, 7th ed. offers a buzzing hive of resources: click here for a quick overview. For information contact Lars Erik Larson, English, at larson@up.edu.