By Samadrita Kuiti As an extraordinary fall semester winds down, I feel the necessity of reflecting on what I have learned from my own experiences as a primary instructor of both English literature and intro-level composition courses throughout 2020. Like many college-level instructors across the disciplinary spectrum, I had to come up with contingency plans […]
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Making Your Lessons Meme-orable
By Megan Lyons In March 2020, when academic institutions across the country shifted to online instruction, instructors faced a quandary. They could either be passive, simply transferring their in-person teaching methods to an online environment, or they could be active, innovating their lessons and striving to connect with students across this new modality of teaching. […]
3 Tenets of Pandemic Pedagogy
By Mollie Kervick Things are not normal. This may come as a surprise to many of us, especially those of us in academia where the pressures to meet deadlines, generate writing, submit articles for publication, and teach vulnerable students are more acutely felt than ever before. As a graduate student instructor of a composition course, […]
Embracing Change to Reconsider Teaching Practices
By Emma Björngard-Basayne and Kristi Kaeppel with thanks to Hanna Gunn and Mandy Long for their contributions. When the announcement was made that classes were moving online for the semester, I (Emma) felt nervous, wondering if I would be able to make my abruptly-online classes as good of a learning experience as my in-person classes. […]
Introducing Contemplative Practices in Engineering Courses
By Phoebe Szarek In engineering and related disciplines (e.g. STEM), there is a certain level of objectivity that is expected and even required. We are taught to make the best decision based on current technology, objectives, constraints, and foundational math and science. There is very little space for “I feel” in most of these situations. […]
The Quiet Minority That’s Thriving Online
By Kristi Kaeppel with special thanks to Asanka Amarasinghe for sharing his experiences In a recent online teaching seminar I attended, the presenter posed the following provocative statement for participants to discuss: in-person classes are obsolete. If this were in-person and mics were not muted, I imagine I would have seen heads rise suddenly from […]
Pass it on: Advice for Students New to Remote Coursework
By Emily Ng Edited by Kristi Kaeppel As instructors and students in higher education, we find ourselves—suddenly, uneasily—thrust into a new landscape. Some of us may have experience teaching or learning online to varying degrees, while for others, this is unfamiliar terrain that demands of us a quick adaptation. In order to ease anxieties and […]
Storytelling: Bringing Color Back to the Classroom
By Monika Arbačiauskaitė “In a world where time cannot be measured, there are no clocks, no calendars, no definite appointments. Events are triggered by other events, not by time.”- Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams In Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman offers a fictional retelling of Albert Einstein’s grappling with the theory of time. Through visiting Einstein’s dreams, Lightman […]
Exploring Genres Beyond the Research Paper
By Sophie Buckner Aw… the research essay. The staple in undergraduate writing. At best, the student research essay poses a provocative question and curates convincing and credible evidence to support the student writer’s own unique answer to that question. At its worst, the research essay is a frustrating document embodying the boredom and/or confusion of […]
Student Engagement: Where to Start As a Teaching Assistant
By Elizabeth Herder When I started in graduate school, I was expected to teach three laboratory sections of Fundamentals of Microbiology. I was anxious to perform well in this position. I, like so many others of my peer group, had heard phrases like “active learning” and “student engagement” but without having a clear understanding of […]