Why do all UP students take an English course, regardless of their professional aims? This week on the Teaching & Learning Blog, English chair Lars Erik Larson details how ENG 112 works within UP’s Core program. This is the second essay in Core Matters, a year-long series started by Andrew Guest that offer a discipline-by-discipline explanation of our University’s existing core curriculum.
Teaching and Learning Collaborative
TLC From The TLC: So What About Boundaries?
This week’s post to the Teaching and Learning Collaborative blog concerns a topic not every professor finds comfortable: boundaries, and not the dotted lines you see around countries on a map. Why are boundaries important? Where does your responsibility as a professor begin and end? What are the signs that you need a boundary adjustment? Answers to those questions and more can be found in this article on the TLC blog.
For more information contact Zachary Simmons, psychological sciences, at simmonsz@up.edu.
TLC Blog: National Campaign to Change Direction
How would it look to think about student mental health as less a matter of individual intervention, and more a collective cultural endeavor? This week’s installment of the mental health series on the Teaching & Learning Community Blog considers that question by drawing resources from the national Campaign to Change Direction, a public health effort to shift the culture around mental health through promoting shared habits and language. Included are some simple but effective resources for promoting healthy habits of emotional well-being, and for recognizing signs of emotional suffering.
New TLC Blog Post: Did “Make It Stick” Stick for You?
This year’s pedagogy book title for the College of Arts and Sciences annual reading was Make it Stick: the Science of Successful Learning (Brown/Roediger/McDaniel, 2014). Lars Larson, English, would like to know: If you were among the participants, did the book’s methods “to learn better and remember longer” actually stick? Whether you are new to the book or not, Larson provides a quick overview of its lessons in a recent Teaching and Learning blog post.
For more information contact Larson at larson@up.edu.
TLC Tip of the Week: Virtual Reality in the Classroom
Virtual reality is an emerging technology that allows students to create and learn in immersive environments. According to the American Library Association, this trend will grow in the near future as multimedia producers seek to create more engaging modes of visual storytelling. The Digital Lab currently offers a variety of titles including:
Visit the Digital Lab website for more information regarding Virtual Reality. Faculty are invited to schedule a consultation with lab coordinator José Velazco (velazco@up.edu) and collaborate on a multimedia assignment.
TLC From The TLC: Faculty-Led Abroad Experiences & Planning for Accessibility
Participation in faculty-led study abroad courses, programs and experiences provides outstanding ways for UP students to deepen their understanding of discipline-specific content in an international context. Are you thinking of creating a faculty-led study abroad program or course (or have you already created one)? It is important to plan for accessibility while creating your course or program. Melanie Gangle, program manager for Accessible Education Services (AES), is glad to consult with you in partnership with Eddie Contreras, director of studies abroad, in order to design a faculty-led abroad experience to be as inclusive as possible, and accessible for students with many different types of disabilities. Interested in learning more? Check out this tipsheet from Mobility International USA (MIUSA) and feel free to contact Melanie at gangle@up.eduto continue planning.
TLC From The TLC: Do UP Students Know How to Fail?
Do UP students know how to fail? According to the New York Times, higher education administrators at elite schools have coined the term “failure deprived” to classify a new mental health concern: the inability of high achieving individuals to cope with inevitable experiences of failure. This week’s installment of the mental health series on the UP Teaching & Learning Community blog builds off the most recent Faith & Intellectual Life group discussion to explore how other universities are working to help students learn to fail, and to reflect on what faculty and academic staff might do here at UP.
TLC from the TLC: 9 Ways to Get Waaaay More Out of Class Discussions
Class discussions can sometimes be described as “transient instructional events,” according to Karen Eifler, Garaventa Center. They pass through the class, the course, and the educational experiences of students with few lingering effects. Ideas are batted around, often with forced participation; students don’t take notes; and then the discussion ends—it runs out of steam or the class runs out of time. If asked a few days later about the exchange, most students would be hard-pressed to remember anything beyond what they themselves might have said, if that. Click here for the 2 page PDF that includes 9 concrete tips for avoiding those pitfalls.
TLC from the TLC: Diversity, Inclusion, Mental Health
In this week’s Teaching and Learning Collaborative “TLC from the TLC” story, psychology professor Andrew Guest posits: “Anyone paying attention to higher education in recent years is well aware of two pressing issues on regular repeat: changing perceptions of student mental health needs, and the need to better attend to diversity and inclusion. But how might those two issues intersect? How might an equity lens inform the way academics, and academic institutions, think about student mental health?” For thoughts on these questions drawing on a recent national framework for “Equity in Mental Health” see the latest installment in the mental health series for the Teaching and Learning Community blog.
TLC From The TLC: Building Pathways to Student Learning
As faculty, we can find ourselves in common patterns of thinking about course planning. We sometimes worry about covering the material. Often we may choose texts and materials first before considering what the intended learning outcomes are. Starting with the outcomes in mind is an important approach, but we may find that the end goal is situated at an overly long distance from where the students actually are. We may find ourselves at times flabbergasted by the gap between what we are teaching and what the students are bringing to the learning experience. What are we to do?
This week’s Teaching and Learning Collaborative blog post, “Your image of the student: Where teaching begins” by Jeffrey White, explores Building a Pathway to Student Learning, by Steven Jones, Robert Noyd, and Kenneth Sagendorf (2014), which argues that course planning is a design process that starts with focusing on student learning factors. From this first step, the authors provide a helpful systematic framework for course design.
For more information contact White at x7141 or white@up.edu.