Teaching Innovation Workshops

 

What the Best College Teachers Do - 4-week hybrid workshop  

"You don't teach a class. You teach a student."
—Ken Bain

Bring your successes, bring your challenges, and brainstorm with your colleagues using the  collective wisdom of hundreds of the top faculty in the nation. Inspired by Ken Bain’s book, What the Best College Teachers Do (Harvard, 2004), this workshop explores what works and what doesn’t in promoting authentic learning for students.

The Center for Innovation and Teaching Excellence presents this new hybrid workshop as a combination of four face-to-face meetings while workshop participants are engaged in vigorous online discourse. This provocative dialogue—intended for both veteran Columbia faculty and those brand new to our community—will examine what we really do when we teach, and how we know if we’re actually helping our students learn.

This series will meet, in person, three times. Additionally, there will be online coursework involved for the entire 5 weeks, until the series' conclusion.

 

Teaching to Transgress | bell hooks reading series New for Spring 2012!

“The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.”
                                                   --bell hooks

How do we know when we are educating our students to be truly independent thinkers? Is that the real purpose of our teaching? Should it be? How do we address students who resist non-traditional teaching methods?

Bring your successes, bring your challenges, and brainstorm with your colleagues using the provocative ideas of bell hooks’ book, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom.

This series of conversations will spur us to imagine what kind of classroom we want to create and develop the practical steps for making our vision a reality.

 

Student Course Evaluations: Fact and Fiction

With Jonathan Keiser, Director, and Jessica Wode, Research Analyst
Office of Evaluation and Assessment

Do you know what aspect of a course is most highly correlated with high ratings on student course evaluations? (Hint: it’s not grades!) In this session, we’ll address some of the most common myths about course evaluations and share what research has to say about how best to gather and use student feedback to improve instructional practice. Learn practical ways to encourage students to provide useful information and how to analyze and act on the information you get.

 

The Fulbright Difference

with Norma Green, Journalism, Fulbright Program Representative

Interested in teaching or researching abroad? Want to meet international scholars and practitioners in your field? Columbia's full- and part-time faculty, as well as staff, have been recipients of eight Fulbright awards since 2000 alone. Come hear from recent Columbia Fulbrighters who have traveled to Africa, Europe, and South America and find out how you can apply for opportunities through the Council for International Exchange of Scholars.

Norma Green is also available for departmental presentations and individual faculty consultations. To learn more about Fulbright programs, including eligibility information, tips for applying and complimentary subscriptions to The Global Citizen e-newsletter, please visit http://www.cies.org.

 

Visual Literacy at the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP)

In this workshop, participants will examine and discuss original images from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography Columbia College Chicago to consider how close and thoughtful “readings” of photographs can expand students’ thinking and learning across a variety of disciplines and media.

Led by Corinne Rose, MoCP Manager of Education, and Megan Stielstra, Assistant Director of Center for Innovation in Teaching Excellence, this workshop will include information on how faculty can access and utilize the vast educational resources of the MoCP for their courses.

Curricular resources, including a CD of collection images for classroom use, will be distributed.

 

Professional DevelopmentFest

Need to update your materials for your tenure dossier? Or planning on being on the academic job market in the Fall? A grad student just beginning your academic career? WE CAN HELP!

This interactive program will help you design documents that are relevant to most academic careers.

o Teaching Philosophies
o Curriculum Vitae (CV's)
o Academic Cover Letters

Join us for practical advice you can use right now, plus a lively discussion about what all of this writing about our teaching can help us learn about our teaching and professional life.

 

Instructional DevelopmentFest

Do you have a hard time getting all students to talk during in-class discussion?

How do you get students to listen to each other and express their points of view while keeping a difficult conversation focused on the learning goals of the course?

Instructional Development Fest is an interactive workshop that explores opportunities and complexities of presenting contemporary texts and effective ways to spark and lead difficult dialogues in the classroom.

 

Master Classes: Models of Excellent Teaching at Columbia

Columbia College Chicago is home to some of the most creative artists, scholars, and innovative practitioners of the art of teaching. Yet with all of the hours we spend preparing for and engaged in the classroom, we seldom take the time to learn with and from each other. The Master Class series features faculty members who lead workshops in their areas of expertise, providing a space for colleagues to learn from colleagues.