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Gradstep 2009

Saturday, January 17, 2009

1:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Buttrick Hall

This event has already occurred.

Held in January each year, GradSTEP provides several workshops and discussions on teaching, learning, and professional development issues across the disciplines. All Vanderbilt graduate and professional students, as well as post-doctoral fellows, are invited to attend.

This year's GradSTEP includes a virtual world in which participants are invited to share their questions and ideas related to teaching with each other prior to the event through a blog. Bloggers are also invited to provide suggestions for the topic of a Session II Workshop. Come blog with us at GRADSTEPBLOG.

Schedule of Events

Session I Workshops (1:00 - 2:15PM):

There are five workshop options for each session of gradSTEP 2009.  Participants will select one. Options for Session I are as follows:

Teaching with Clickers: Engaging Students with Classroom Response System
Facilitator: Derek Bruff, Assistant Director, Center for Teaching

Classroom response systems (“clickers”) are technologies that enable teachers to rapidly collect and analyze student responses to multiple-choice (and sometimes free-response) questions during class.  These systems can be used to effectively engage and assess students, particularly in large classes.  This workshop explores questions and activities that make the most of these systems, as well as solutions to common challenges involved in teaching with clickers, including writing effective clicker questions, structuring class time using clickers, and responding to results of clicker questions.

Course Design for Student Learning
Facilitator: Erin Rehel, Graduate Teaching Fellow, Center for Teaching

This workshop will examine course design from the perspective of student learning. Workshop activities will help you determine learning goals, consider assessments to measure students’ progress toward those goals, and choose learning activities that provide students with a chance to practice the knowledge and skills you want them to gain in your course.

(This session will be repeated in February, 2009 at the CFT.)

Fostering Critical Thinking
Facilitator: Patrick Ahern, Graduate Teaching Fellow, Center for Teaching

Many educators agree that fostering "critical thinking" is one of the primary goals of college education. But what is critical thinking? Is it a general competency or discipline-specific? What challenges might we encounter in trying to encourage it in our students?

Learning by Discussing
Facilitator: Maria Ebner, Graduate Teaching Fellow, Center for Teaching

Effective discussions can provoke profound learning, yet they are particularly challenging to create and sustain. This workshop will pursue strategies for getting discussion going and for keeping it lively.   Questions to be considered include:

• How can I ask good questions? 
• How can I respond to students in a way that encourages their further discussion?
• How can I encourage students to share diverse viewpoints with both respect and candor?
• What can I do if discussion seems to fall flat or fall apart?
• What can I do about students who dominate or withdraw from discussion?

The Art of Effective Presentations
Facilitator: Juan Rojas, Graduate Teaching Fellow, Center for Teaching

In our academic and professional lives, instructors are called on to give presentations in a variety of formats and for a variety of audiences: conference papers, class lectures, research presentations, lab overviews, etc.  In this session, participants will analyze what characterizes effective presentations, as well as the common challenges faced in giving them. Participants will also develop strategies and plans for upcoming presentations.

Session II Workshops (2:30 - 3:45PM):

There are five workshop options for each session of gradSTEP 2009.  Participants will select one. Options for Session II are as follows:

Writing a Teaching Statement
Facilitator: Erin Rehel, Graduate Teaching Fellow, Center for Teaching

What is a teaching statement?  What purpose does it serve on the job market and beyond? How to create such a statement?  In this workshop, participants will identify core teaching values and determine how those values influence their teaching practice (current or anticipated) so that they can produce engaging teaching statements.

Assessment and Grading
Facilitator: Patrick Ahern, Graduate Teaching Fellow, Center for Teaching

This session will review ‘best practices’ of assessment and grading, as well as consider questions such as the following:

• How do I uncover what previous knowledge or preconceptions my students are bringing to class? 
• How can I know if how I’m teaching is effective?
• What are the different ways to assess the learning successes or failures throughout a semester?
• How can grading teach?
• When is grading a failed opportunity?
• How do I use grading as a tool to clarify expectations and direction in my class?

Web-based Learning
Facilitator: Maria Ebner, Graduate Teaching Fellow, Center for Teaching

This workshop will focus on Web 2.0 technologies in classrooms, and their impact on teaching. It has been estimated that a typical student will read 2300 web pages and 1281 Facebook profiles this year, and only 8 books.  That student will write over 500 pages of email, but only 42 pages for class assignments this semester. Students of the 21st Century enter our classrooms with different experiences, expectations, and learning styles than previous generations of students.  To reach these students, we educators can employ today’s web technologies as powerful tools for creating effective, collaborative web-based learning spaces.

New Online Productivity and Collaboration Tools
Facilitator: Juan Rojas, Graduate Teaching Fellow, Center for Teaching

This workshop will explore exciting new technologies that allow team members to create, modify, and share documents, files and presentations in real-time no matter where each of the members are located. These new tools come with many innovative functionalities, such as enabling the user to embed a document in a web page or a video in a presentation.  We will also consider new technologies that help the user visualize data in ways that bring it to life for students, for example, displaying changes over time.  These tools are cutting-edge means of promoting community learning.  

(This workshop will be repeated on January 26, 2009, at the CFT.)

Open Session - Topic to be Determined
Facilitator: Derek Bruff, Assistant Director, Center for Teaching

The topic of this workshop will be determined by you, the participants! We have created a Blog for this year's GradSTEP and want to hear what topics you'd like to hear about. Visit our blog and share with us the teaching topics you'd like to learn more about.

Happy Hour (4:00 - 5:00PM):

Join GradSTEP participants and facilitators in the Buttrick Hall Atrium for conversation over good food and beverages.

This event has already occurred.

For information on past events, please see our gradSTEP Archive.

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