CTE Home >> Programs >> Preparing to Teach@VCU

Preparing to Teach @ VCU Workshop Series

January 7-9, 2013

Greetings from the Center for Teaching Excellence at VCU! The Preparing to Teach (PTT) @ VCU Workshop Series--scheduled on the Monroe Park campus from Monday, 1/7, through Wednesday, 1/9--aims to introduce new (and no-longer-new) VCU faculty to a larger conversation about teaching and learning, with a specific emphasis on the resources and services available via the CTE, and to offer participants practical, hands-on guidance on how to be as successful as possible within (and outside of) the classroom. By the end of the PTT sessions, you will (1) have a better understanding or familiarity with the educational landscape at VCU (i.e., classrooms, students, resources, technology); (2) be able to incorporate some of the strategies and guidance provided during the workshops into your teaching practices and courses; (3) have exposure to what the CTE offers in terms support and guidance for your teaching and learning at VCU (e.g., career development); and (4) more successfully engage with your initial teaching experiences than you might otherwise. Depending on your prior background with teaching at other institutions or at VCU, please feel free to design a path through the PTT workshop offerings which suits your particular needs. If you will be teaching in the college classroom for the first time, you may want to plan to attend the Teaching and Learning @ VCU session prior to selecting the set of workshops which could be appropriate to teaching in your discipline. In addition, we have scheduled a culminating session on the first afternoon of the workshop series called If I Knew Then What I Know Now: Sound Teaching Advice from Junior Faculty at VCU. The purpose of this panel discussion is to give "new" faculty opportunities to benefit from the experiences of their colleagues through candid conversations about teaching and learning at VCU.

Sincerely,
Zachary G. Goodell and Jeffrey Nugent
Co-Directors, Center for Teaching Excellence
Virginia Commonwealth University
(804) 827-0838

Click on any of the titles below for detailed descriptions and to register.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Teaching and Learning @ VCU
9:00am – 9:55 am | Harris Hall, room 5182
People who teach at VCU arrive in the classroom with a variety of experiences: some are new faculty, either A.B.D. or newly-minted Ph.D.s; others have worked at VCU for years but might be entering the classroom for the first time; and still others may have taught at VCU for years but are looking for additional inspiration or ideas about how to enhance their teaching. Being experts in our subject matter does not naturally make us expert teachers. Given all of the content in our respective fields, how do we decide what to teach? How do we decide how we will teach it? How will we know whether our teaching is effective? This session presents a road-map for all of the subsequent PTT@VCU sessions, discussing how different aspects of interaction (student-student, student-instructor, student-content) align across three major themes: communication, collaboration, and assessment of student learning. Faculty members and graduate students who participate in this workshop will leave with a richer understanding of how to enhance student learning by having preliminary exposure to the conditions that are conducive to learning as well as how to best manage these conditions.
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How People Learn and Implications for Syllabus Design
10:05am - 12:00pm | Harris Hall, room 5182
This session will provide the opportunity to explore beliefs participants hold about teaching and learning and how those beliefs align with current theories of how people learn. Instructors' beliefs about teaching and learning impact course design, teaching practice, and student learning, many of which are implicitly or explicitly reflected in a course syllabus. The course syllabus is often the first point of contact instructors have with their students, and this document can offer a framework for student learning throughout the semester. Participants will leave this session with: a better understanding of how you can align your teaching with the science of how people learn, while honoring the need for flexibility, innovation and creativity; alternatives for organizing and presenting the content of a syllabus; methods for developing, communicating, and negotiating instructor/student expectations; approaches for representing how learning objectives, learning activities, and assessments are linked together; and options for creating the conditions for community-building and engagement prior to (and during) the first week of class.
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Inclusive Teaching
1:00pm – 2:25pm| Harris Hall, room 5182
Instructors' beliefs about teaching and learning impact course design, teaching practice, and student learning. The course syllabus is often the first point of contact instructors have with their students, and this document can offer a framework for student learning throughout the semester. How discussions of the syllabus, the instructor's expectations for their students, and the students' expectations for the course are undertaken early in the course can affect students' perceptions of the classroom environment. In cases where students' early perceptions are less-than-positive, we might later observe behaviors that we consider to be "disruptive"--including nonparticipation, distractedness, disengagement, underpreparation, or unpunctuality. This session is designed to help participants develop proactive strategies for including all students as part of a welcoming classroom environment and to collect effective methods for responding to "disruptive" behavior if it emerges.
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If I Knew Then What I Know Now: Sound Teaching Advice from Junior Faculty at VCU
2:35pm – 4:30pm | Harris Hall, room 5182
During this session, a panel of junior faculty members from a variety of disciplines will present issues they encountered during their early teaching experiences at VCU. The subsequent Q&A period is intended to be a highly interactive session where new VCU faculty can benefit from the experiences of their early career colleagues, all of whom have recently adjusted to their first teaching assignments at VCU. The faculty panel will offer their candid advice on their initial expectations about VCU students and teaching in general, how those expectations have been met (or adjusted), and strategies for navigating the support resources and units on campus with ample opportunity for questions and answers.
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Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Introduction to Teaching with Technology @ VCU
9:00am-9:55am | Harris Hall, room 5182
Technology continues to shape the teaching and learning landscape in higher education. Things like software tools, learning management systems, and web-based resources have opened new opportunities for collaboration, content creation and learning that were unimaginable only a short time ago. With an ever increasing set of options, selecting technology tools that best support specific instructional practices and learning goals can be challenging. This session is designed to provide participants with an introduction to the technology resources available at VCU to support teaching and learning. In addition, participants will discuss perspectives they have about the role technology plays in teaching and learning, and consider a research-based set of guidelines for making decisions about teaching with technology. Faculty members should leave this session with a better sense of how to make decisions to use technology in their teaching, and where they can turn for resources and support as they continue exploring.
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Engaging Students in Their Learning
10:05am-12:00pm | Harris Hall, room 5182
The term active learning has been ballyhooed for some time now in higher education. It is often used as an umbrella term for a vast range of activities and techniques that endeavor to get students to do more in the classroom than just take notes and to do more outside of the classroom than just memorize their notes. This workshop is designed to provide participants with a research-based rationale for why active learning works, an introduction to a wide range of techniques that are suitable to various teaching contexts, and a better understanding of how to select active learning techniques based on ones instructional goals or learning outcomes. By the end of this session, participants will be able to: explain how active learning contributes to student learning; identify a range of techniques that are suitable to various teaching contexts; identify a range of techniques that are suitable to various learning outcomes; and develop an active learning technique that is grounded in one's own course.
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Motivating and Supporting Students in Collaborative Work
1:00pm-2:25pm | Harris Hall, room 5182
Instructors may have students work in small groups during class sessions or throughout the semester in order to help students better engage with course materials, complete projects for which the required work exceeds any individual student's capabilities, provide opportunities for students to develop skills as collaborators, or to save time during the assessment of student work. Student reluctance to work in groups with their peers can be the result of misconceptions about group work as something other than a means to reach specific learning outcomes. Participants in this workshop will be able to leave with a preliminary plan for how their students can expect to work together throughout the semester, strategies for identifying and addressing typical challenges related to periodic or sustained periods of group work, and alternative forms of assessment (e.g., peer review, reflective writing, learning contracts) targeted at the processes and products emerging from students' collective work.
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Getting Started with Blackboard
2:35pm-4:30pm | Cabell Library, room 320
Blackboard gives faculty and students ways to access course materials and engage students on a class website. This hands-on session will prepare you to begin effectively using Blackboard 9.1 to enhance your class. Topics include the basics of web based course design, organization of course materials, linkage to other web resources and customization to have Blackboard match your instructional needs. The intent is to make Blackboard work for you, giving you and your students convenient access to your course content, as well as a web platform for learning. The web tools embedded in Blackboard can open new doors to designing and offering learning-centered courses.
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Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Introduction to Scholarly Teaching
9:00am-9:55am | Harris Hall, room 5182
Scholarly teaching is a powerful concept that defines and guides the practice of some of the most successful faculty in the profession. In essence, the scholarly teacher takes a research-based approach to decision making with respect to instructional design, delivery and assessment. They identify a problem or opportunity in the context of a course, they review the literature and/or discuss with colleagues in order to learn more about the issue, they make an informed decision about how to best address the issue, they implement and assess the change, and then they revise based on feedback. Participants in this workshop will be able to identify the skills and strategies necessary for becoming a scholarly teacher. In addition, participants will explore and entertain a variety of ways for demonstrating one`s scholarly approach to teaching for the purpose of annual review, promotion and tenure, or entering the job market.
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Getting Started with Blackboard (repeated session)
10:05am-12:00pm | Cabell Library, room 320
Blackboard gives faculty and students ways to access course materials and engage students on a class website. This hands-on session will prepare you to begin effectively using Blackboard 9.1 to enhance your class. Topics include the basics of web based course design, organization of course materials, linkage to other web resources and customization to have Blackboard match your instructional needs. The intent is to make Blackboard work for you, giving you and your students convenient access to your course content, as well as a web platform for learning. The web tools embedded in Blackboard can open new doors to designing and offering learning-centered courses.
Register for this workshop
Using Clickers in Education
10:05am-12:00pm | Harris Hall, room 5182
Questioning is an essential aspect of the learning process. With the advent of Electronic Response Systems (ERS), instructors have a greater ability to engage with large groups of students through questioning. ERS, or "clickers" as they are commonly known, allow students to respond to questions using handheld devices. Students' answers are displayed graphically allowing instructors to gain instant feedback on students' understanding of concepts and issues. Research shows that the effective use of clickers can lead to increased student engagement, improved learning, and encourage classroom interaction and participation. During this workshop, participants will be introduced to the Turning Point 5 software and learn how to use this software to create polls in their courses. Explore how the use of effective questioning with clickers can play a role in enhancing student learning.
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Teaching Large Classes
1:00pm-2:25pm | Harris Hall, room 5182
This workshop is designed to help prepare faculty for teaching a large enrollment class. Although definitions of what constitutes a large class can vary, this workshop will help anyone who needs to prepare to teach a class of 50 or more students, or more simply put, one that is larger than they are accustomed to teaching. We will cover a range of issues from logistical (i.e. attendance, classroom management, and testing/assessment) to pedagogical (interactive lecturing, active learning techniques, and group assignments).
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Designing your Blackboard Site to Enhance Learning
1:00pm-2:25pm | Cabell Library, room 320
This hands-on session will prepare you to begin effectively using Blackboard and other web resources to enhance how your course site supports learning. Topics include the organization of your course design based on your teaching approach, alignment of content and activities, and integration of other web resources that can provide added learning opportunities. Emphasis is placed on building a course web space that not only provides convenient access to course materials, but also encourages interaction, collaboration and student engagement.
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Assessing and Evaluating Student Learning
2:35pm-4:00pm | Harris Hall, room 5182
Two major approaches for understanding what our students learn are (formative) assessment and (summative) evaluation. This workshop is designed to help you find a balance between these two approaches which would be appropriate for their disciplines and teaching contexts. We will explore how to link assessment/evaluation mechanisms to course learning outcomes; how to integrate Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) into your courses; how to develop or adapt rubrics for assessment/evaluation; and strategies for providing more meaningful feedback on students' work. By the end of this session, participants will be able to: identify the defining qualities of formative and summative approaches to characterizing student learning; integrate assessment and evaluation more seamlessly into your teaching; and develop more meaningful opportunities for students to both give and receive feedback during your courses.
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Location and directions: Harris Hall | Cabell Library