Workshops & Working Groups

Throughout the school year, the Center organizes workshops and on a variety of teaching topics and issues for Vanderbilt faculty, graduate and professional students, post-doctoral fellows, staff, and others.

See also our list of related programs--relevant workshops, conferences and other events being offered by other organizations around campus. For information on past workshops, please see our workshop archive.

Interested in creating a workshop/working group or having a consultation?

Fall 2007 Workshops

Teaching Workshops

These workshops focus on issues particularly relevant to first-time teachers. Drawing on research-based approaches, workshop facilitators will enable participants to identify and address common challenges and opportunities in their teaching practice. 

Conversations on Teaching

Conversations on Teaching focus on emergent pedagogical issues in an informal, roundtable format.  Typically co-sponsored with other campus partners, these sessions often begin with perspectives from panelists, and then open up to a larger group discussion.

9/11/07 - Responding to Student Writing (a Conversation on Teaching)
Part of the Teaching Writing at Vanderbilt Series
Cosponsor: Undergraduate Writing Program
Facilitators: Roger Moore, Director of Undergraduate Writing; Patricia Armstrong, Assistant Director, CFT

Students read our comments on their writing not only to find out why we’ve assigned a particular grade but also to learn how to improve their writing in the future. Panelists will discuss strategies they use to respond to student writing in their classes. Topics for discussion will include using marginal and end comments, commenting representatively (rather than exhaustively), writing end comments that provide students helpful information and guidance as they revise a paper or take on a new project, and how to use written comments in a student conference. For all faculty and graduate student instructors who assign and respond to student writing.

9/17/07 - Discussion-Leading (a Teaching Workshop)

Effective discussions can provoke profound learning, yet they also are particularly challenging to create and sustain. This workshop will use a discussion format to pursue strategies for getting discussion going, and for keeping it going.   More specifically, we’ll explore questions such as:

• How can I ask good questions, and respond to students in a way that encourages their further discussion?
• I’m more clear about my own authority when I’m lecturing—what does my authority consist of when I’m facilitating 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?

9/25/07 - Grading in Quantitative Disciplines (a Teaching Workshop)

Grading can be a source of stress for TAs.  How do you know if you’re being fair in your assessment of student work?  What kind of feedback should you provide on student work?  What do you do when a student questions a grade?  How will you find the time to grade those problem sets?  These and similar questions will be addressed in this interactive session designed for TAs in the quantitative disciplines—math, science, engineering, economics, etc.

9/26/07
Grading for Humanities & Social Sciences (a Teaching Workshop)

The focus of this hands-on workshop will be to provide instructors with information about and tips on establishing grading criteria and rubrics for all types of assignments; grading participation, reflection papers, essay exams and oral presentations; and making grading more time efficient. This workshop complements “Responding to Student Writing,” which will present strategies for grading essays.

10/2/07 - Assessing Conceptual Understanding through Concept Inventories and Concept Maps (a Conversation on Teaching)
Part of Assessing Student Learning Series
Facilitator: Derek Bruff, Assistant Director, CFT
Panelists: Paul King, Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering; Ken Schriver, Senior Lecturer, Physics & Astronomy

Do your students understand the concepts and ideas that are central to your discipline?  How do you know?  In this session, two Vanderbilt faculty members will share their experiences using two tools of assessing student understanding.  Ken Schriver (Physics & Astronomy) will describe his use of concept inventories, multiple-choice tests that assess conceptual knowledge independently of computational ability.  Paul King (Biomedical Engineering) will describe his use of concept maps, annotated pictures that students produce to demonstrate their understandings of the “big picture” in their courses.  A portion of the workshop will be spent facilitating a discussion among participants about the ways in which they can use these tools in their own assessment activities.

The “Assessing Student Learning” series of workshops is intended for Vanderbilt faculty, post-docs, and graduate students interested in learning about effective methods of assessing and understanding the learning of individual students, as well as groups of students at the course and program level.  Faculty and administrators involved in program-level assessment efforts for accreditation or other reasons are encouraged to attend, as are those interested in the “scholarship of teaching and learning.” 

10/3/07 - Teaching Certificate Information Session

The Teaching Certificate program, co-sponsored by the CFT and the Graduate School, is designed to help graduate and professional students and post-docs develop and refine their teaching skills.  This information session will provide an introduction to the program and give attendees a chance to ask questions about how they might begin.

10/4/07 - Pedagogy, Plagiarism and Computer Technologies (a Conversation on Teaching)
Part of the Technology, Values and Teaching Series
Cosponsor: Center for Ethics
Facilitators: Charles Scott, Director, Center for Ethics;Jeff Johnston, Assistant Director, CFT
Panelists: Melinda Brown, Instructional Coordinator, Vanderbilt University Libraries; Cindy Franco, OAK Manager; Michelle Sulikowski, Senior Lecturer, Chemistry and Director of Education for the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology

The internet has put vast amounts of information at student’s fingertips, making it easier than ever to locate resources for academic assignments.  There is rising concern, however, that this greater access to information is leading to increasing incidents of student plagiarism.  Plagiarism Detection Technologies, or PDTs (e.g., Turnitin.com), are tools that instructors can use to help detect and combat internet plagiarism by filtering assignments through some text-matching procedure.  Vanderbilt has recently adopted at PDT called Safe Assign, which is integrated into OAK, Vanderbilt’s Blackboard course management system. Yet these technologies are no substitute for good teaching, and many institutions have questioned the use of PDTs because of concerns about student privacy and copyright infringement. 

Do PDTs incite, what some scholars have called, “a culture of suspicion” on campus? How might this technology undermine the various aspects of learning that often take place around written assignments, including that of helping the student to distinguish his or her own ideas and words from those of others? Furthermore, what role do instructors play in informing students of the definitions of plagiarism and their use of this technology to check student assignments?  What is the proper role for these technologies?  This panel discussion will explore the pedagogical uses and limitations of PDTs.

10/11/07 - Leading a Writing Workshop (a Conversation on Teaching)
Part of the Teaching Writing at Vanderbilt Series
Cosponsor: Undergraduate Writing Program
Facilitators: Roger Moore, Director of Undergraduate Writing; Patricia Armstrong, Assistant Director, CFT
Panelists: Jeff Johnston, Assistant Director, CFT & Lecturer, Earth and Environmental Sciences; Jennifer Clement, Lecturer, English.

One of the challenges of the writing classroom is incorporating meaningful writing instruction into class time. The three panelists will discuss how they structure in-class writing workshops and encourage participation in them, and how the workshops they lead fit into an overall strategy of writing instruction in their discipline.

10/16/07 - Assessing Critical Thinking through Rubrics (a Conversation on Teaching)
Part of Assessing Student Learning Series
Facilitator: Derek Bruff, Assistant Director, CFT
Panelists: Marshall Eakin, Professor, History; Robert Innes, Associate Professor, Human & Organizational Development

Do your students gain the critical thinking and analytical skills you wish them to gain from your courses?  How do you know?  In this session, two Vanderbilt faculty members will share their experiences using rubrics to assess their students’ critical thinking skills.  Rubrics are grading tools that make explicit the criteria and standards of quality used to assess student work.  Robert Innes (Human & Organizational Development) will describe his use of a rubric to assess the critical thinking skills of majors in his department.  Marshall Eakin (History) will describe his use of rubrics to assess critical thinking skills at the individual course level.  A portion of the workshop will be spent facilitating a discussion among participants about the ways in which they can use these tools in their own assessment activities.

The “Assessing Student Learning” series of workshops is intended for Vanderbilt faculty, post-docs, and graduate students interested in learning about effective methods of assessing and understanding the learning of individual students, as well as groups of students at the course and program level.  Faculty and administrators involved in program-level assessment efforts for accreditation or other reasons are encouraged to attend, as are those interested in the “scholarship of teaching and learning.”

10/23/07 - Teaching Laboratory Classes (a Teaching Workshop)

Laboratory classes are an important companion to many science courses at Vanderbilt in providing an opportunity for students to explore material in a “hands-on” way. Leading a lab session has particular challenges and opportunities for TAs that differ from those in a classroom setting. In a format combining presentation and small-group activities, workshop facilitators will focus on a wide range of lab teaching issues, including ideas for improving student motivation and learning in the lab.   This session is intended primarily for graduate students currently teaching lab classes and looking for additional information to help the lab sessions run smoothly.

11/7/07 - Laptops in Classrooms? Pedagogical Pros and Cons (a Conversation on Teaching)
Part of the Technology, Values and Teaching Series
Cosponsor: Center for Ethics
Facilitators: Charles Scott, Director, Center for Ethics;Jeff Johnston, Assistant Director, CFT; Susan Schoenbohm, Program Coordinator, Center for Ethics
Panelists: Duco Jansen, Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt School of Engineering; Jim Lovensheimer, Assistant Professor of Musicology, Music Literature and History, Blair School of Music

Click here for a Podcast interview with panelist, Duco Jansen, during which he describes the ways in which his students use their laptops in his classroom.

There are a variety of practical and pedagogical reasons for students to use laptops in our classrooms, from taking notes on the material presented, to viewing course related media, to complicated problem solving.  However, many students use laptops in our classrooms for other reasons, such as surfing, chatting and emailing.  When do these non-academic uses move from being pesky distractions to harmful disturbances that impair the learning environment?  Recently, in response to students’ misuse of laptops and other technologies in their classrooms, the Blair School of Music has instituted a policy banning the use of all electronic devices (laptops, cellphones, MP3 players, etc) from large lecture halls during class time.  Conversely, all students in the Vanderbilt School of Engineering are required to have the same model of laptop, all with the same software. The use of these laptops is integrated into both classroom and laboratory teaching.  What are the advantages and disadvantages of such policies?   Join us for a lively discussion of these and other issues around the use of laptops in the classroom. 

Interested in creating a workshop/working group?

The Center for Teaching designs tailored workshops or working group for individuals or departments on a variety of topics, including (but not limited to):

• course design
• classroom dynamics
• diversity in the classroom
• motivating students
• teaching with technology
• cooperative learning activities
• assessing student learning
• grading
• interpreting student evaluations
• the scholarship of teaching and learning
• documentation of teaching effectiveness

In addition to workshops and working groups, the CFT offers the following services for individuals and groups:

• consultations with departments or other administrative units
• consultations with individual instructors, based on

• observations of instructors in the classroom
• video recordings of instructors teaching
• feedback from students via focus groups

Contact the CFT at 322-7290 or via our web site www.vanderbilt.edu/cft/contact.php.

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