Focus Area: Student Engagement
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Make It Stick: A Professional Learning Community
In February and March, the Faculty Center is hosting a professional learning community devoted to Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Belknap Press, Harvard, 2014). The book makes the cognitive science of learning accessible to readers of all disciplines. It explodes some popular assumptions about how we learn best—by cramming for a test…
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Getting Students Talking in Your Classroom
In January, the Faculty Center offers workshops to support teaching faculty as the new semester begins. This month, we hosted sessions on Brightspace, AI course policies, future-focused course planning, and more. One of our most popular sessions gathered faculty to share strategies for encouraging discussion in the classroom. Faced with ongoing pandemic conditions, faculty at…
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Scaffolding for student success
Discussion, as a whole class and in small groups, has always been a vital part of my classroom practice. Sometimes, though, when I pose a question to get things started, students don’t answer right away. Maybe we’re trying to identify unspoken assumptions so that we can evaluate them: “why do people go to college?” Maybe…
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Backward design: Keeping goals in view
Since education policy leaders Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe published Understanding by Design in 1998, backward design has dominated conversations about best practices in curriculum planning, both in US schools and in higher education. Simply put, backward design encourages you to begin your course prep at the end, by first identifying what you want students…
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Revitalizing your teaching philosophy with new practices
Statements of teaching philosophy have long been standard documents for academic employment and promotion dossiers. These statements explain in a page or two how and why we teach. (Guides on how to write a good one proliferate—the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching links many of them here). In addition to…
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Introducing Teaching Foundations: A Series on Pedagogy
Collaboration, Inclusive & Global Learning, Project Based Learning, Student Engagement, Universal DesignWelcome to Teaching Foundations, a new content series devoted to sharing pedagogy resources responsive to our moment with teaching faculty at SUNY Oneonta. I’m Racheal Fest, and I’m excited to join our campus community this semester, supporting faculty pedagogy in the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Center. I bring a background in critical pedagogy, student success…
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What to say — and not to say — to an emotional student
Our Teaching Breakfast reading for explores ways to communicate with students about emotionally charged conversations. What to Say–and not say–to an Emotional Student – The attached article from Harvard Business Publishing provides some tips for helping manage conversations with students on emotional subjects. It has some good tips on what supportive language looks like and…
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How to Have a Classroom Experience that Matters
How to Have a Classroom Experience That Matters – This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education provides some tips for helping students create meaning for the classroom again and fight against students’ feelings of burn-out and meaninglessness that are products of the pandemic. We look forward to talking your ideas for making your classroom…
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How to Give Our Students the Grace We All Need
Our reading for these first weeks is some tips for balancing supporting students and our own well-being. How to Give Our Students the Grace We All Need – This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education provides some tips as we start the semester. It offers some practical advice for way to support your students…
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Learn the Science and Practice of Gratitude Ahead of the Holiday Seasons
At Teaching Breakfast on November 17 & 18, 2021 we will be exploring ways to think about gratitude and the benefit of doing this. This is a reading from The Center for Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan: Learn the Science and Practice of Gratitude Ahead of the Holiday Season – The article shares…
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