Spring 2006 Workshops

Throughout the school year, the Center organizes workshops facilitated by CFT senior staff, Graduate Teaching Fellows, University administrators and faculty, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and invited guests.

• The Teaching Workshop features practical, applied sessions on basic teaching practice in a variety of disciplines. While Vanderbilt instructors of all levels are welcome, most sessions are designed for those with little teaching experience.

• Conversations on Teaching are occasional, informal, and topical. Sessions typically begin with a panel offering brief remarks, followed by open discussion with workshop participants.

Working Groups are small cohorts who commit to meet regularly to discuss either a specific teaching practice or a more conceptual set of issues.

Related Programs are relevant workshops, conferences and other events being offered by other organizations around campus.

JANUARY

Fri. 1/20/05 - Learning as a Community Endeavor (faculty only)
12:10pm – 1:30pm, Sarratt 189
Facilitator: Dennis Jacobs, Vice President and Associate Provost, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Notre Dame. Jacobs, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry since 1988, is Vice President and Associate Provost for undergraduate studies at the University of Notre Dame. Selected as the 2002 U.S. Professor of the Year for Doctoral and Research Universities, he has garnered a national reputation for innovative pedagogy in the classroom and for significant contributions to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.  Dr. Jacobs earned a Ph.D. from Stanford University and two B.S. degrees from the University of California at Irvine.  While sustaining a dynamic laboratory research program, he brings the same investigative spirit into the classroom – a place where reflective examination of student learning informs teaching practice.

The development of new knowledge is inherently a communal act, as scholars vigorously debate ideas and interpretations.  So too, learning reaches new heights when students are provided with opportunities to interact with and challenge one another. Dennis Jacobs will share how he has exploited a Classroom Response System to simultaneously engage 200 students in making scientific predictions and defending their ideas.  He also will share how student teams are going out into the local community to collect and analyze soil, dust, and water samples from homes where disadvantaged youth have become lead poisoned. 

Sat. 1/21/06 - GradSTEP Conference– “Making Learning Happen”           
Plenary Speaker: Dennis Jacobs, Vice President and Associate Provost, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Notre Dame (see above for Jacobs' bio)
9am – 2pm, Featheringill Hall

Mon. 1/23/06 - Using Peer Response In and Out of the Classroom (part of the “Responding to Student Writing Series”) (Teaching Workshop)
4:10pm – 5:30pm, Calhoun 117
Facilitators: Amy Hodges-Hamilton, Director of Undergraduate Writing; Patricia Armstrong, Assistant Director, CFT.
Asking students to read one another’s work has many benefits for student-writers and teachers of writing.  Two benefits are: student writers receive more feedback than if the instructor alone reads and responds to their work and students often grow as both writers and critical thinkers through the process of peer response. In this interactive workshop we’ll discuss developing guidelines for peer response, incorporating peer response into classroom activities, and encouraging students to read one another’s work outside of class.  For all faculty and graduate student instructors who use writing activities in their courses.

Mon. 1/30/06 - TAs and Their Supervisors (Conversation on Teaching)
12:10pm – 1:30pm, Sarratt 189
Facilitators: Jeff Sheehan, Graduate Teaching Fellow, CFT; Derek Bruff, Assistant Director, CFT
The quality of the working relationship between a faculty member and teaching assistants assigned to a course has a significant impact on the overall success of that course.  Join us for a conversation on teaching in which we examine the different roles and abilities faculty and TAs have in encouraging student learning in a course and discuss best practices for course policies and teaching staff structures that can help to maximize student learning.  This session is for both TAs and supervisors of TAs, and we plan to have a positive exchange of ideas and experiences among participants.

FEBRUARY

Thurs. 2/02/06 - Classroom Response Systems (Conversation on Teaching)
4:10pm – 5:30pm, Calhoun 117
Facilitators: Derek Bruff, Assistant Director, CFT
Panelists: Adam List, Senior Lecturer, Chemistry; Christopher Rowe, Senior Lecturer, Engineering Science; Robert Innes, Associate Professor, Human & Organizational Development; Stephen Buckles, Professor, Economics.
A classroom response system (sometimes called a “personal response system” or “audience response system”) is a set of hardware and software that allows a teacher to pose a multiple-choice question to his or her students, students to submit their individual answers to the question electronically (using “clickers”), and the teacher to quickly analyze student responses.  These systems can be used to check for student understanding during class, encourage student participation and discussion, and teach in ways responsive to student learning needs. This Conversation on Teaching will feature a panel of Vanderbilt faculty members sharing their experiences using classroom response systems.

Thurs. 2/09/06 - Lectures that Motivate Learning (Teaching Workshop)
4:10-5:30pm, Calhoun 117
Facilitator: Patricia Armstrong, Assistant Director, CFT
In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore both the “why” and the “how” of lecturing.  What kind of material is best presented in lecture?  When might students learn more from exploring a topic through in-class work or an assignment than from listening to information about it in a lecture?  What should you keep in mind when preparing and delivering a lecture?  Designed for instructors new to lecturing or who want to reinvigorate their practice.

Wed. 2/15/06 - The Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning in Graduate Education
3:00pm - 4:30pm (reception to follow from 4:30pm - 5:30pm)
Location: Light Hall 214
Facilitators: Bob Mathieu, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and Ann Austin, Professor of Educational Administration at Michigan State University

The NSF funded Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) has created a prototype interdisciplinary professional development program in teaching and learning that prepares science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduate students, and with them post-doctoral researchers, staff, and current faculty, to meet the future challenges of national STEM higher education. More information about CIRTL is on the web (http://www.cirtl.net/) and in the information below.

On February 15-16, two representatives from CIRTL will be visiting Vanderbilt, talking to administrators, faculty, graduate students and post-docs about joining the CIRTL network. The network currently consists of 5 other universities (University of Wisconsin – Madison, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Howard University, Michigan State University, and the Pennsylvania State University).

We invite all administrators, faculty, graduate students and post-docs in STEM disciplines to attend this presentation on Wednesday, February 15, from 3-4:30pm to learn more about the CIRTL Network and the invitation currently being extended to Vanderbilt. There will be a reception immediately following the presentation to allow for more informal discussion.

Thurs. 2/16/06 - Inquiry-Based Labs (Conversation on Teaching)
4:10pm – 5:30pm, Calhoun 117
Facilitator: Jeff Johnston, Assistant Director, CFT
Panelists: Stacy Klein, Research Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Radiological Sciences, and Teaching and Learning; Ken Schriver, Senior Lecturer, Physics and Astronomy; Mark Woelfle, Senior Lecturer, Biological Sciences.
Laboratory classes are an important part of most science courses at Vanderbilt in providing an opportunity for students to explore material from the lecture in a “hands-on” way.  Developed in response to criticisms of the traditional “cookbook” labs, inquiry-based labs require students to develop hypothesis, design and conduct experiments, collect and interpret data, and write about their results.

Join us for a conversation with a panel of science faculty working to implement inquiry-based labs at Vanderbilt.  What exactly is an inquiry-based lab class and how does it differ from the more traditional lab classes? What are the particular challenges and opportunities to integrating an inquiry-based lab into departmental curricula?  How does the role of the lab instructors (faculty and TAs) change in an inquiry-based setting?  These are just a few of the issues that will be explored in this workshop.

Thurs. 2/23/06 - Strategies for Commenting on Student Writing (part of the “Responding to Student Writing Series”) (Teaching Workshop)
4:10pm – 5:30pm, Calhoun 117
Facilitators: Amy Hodges-Hamilton, 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.  Using papers by Vanderbilt undergraduates in a variety of disciplines, we’ll explore how to comment representatively (rather than exhaustively) while we’re reading and discuss the kinds of end comments that provide students helpful information and guidance as they revise a paper or take on a new project.  For all faculty and graduate student instructors who assign and respond to student writing.

MARCH

Wed. 3/1/06 - Teaching Portfolios (Teaching Workshop)
4:10pm – 5:30pm, Wilson 120
Facilitators: Susan Crisafulli, Graduate Teaching Fellow, CFT; Derek Bruff, Assistant Director, CFT
Teaching portfolios are becoming a common requirement in academic job applications. What is the place of the portfolio in the job market today and how can you use one to highlight the strengths of your application? What exactly should you put in a teaching portfolio and how should you go about constructing one? In this workshop, we will describe the components and construction of an effective teaching portfolio, analyze as a group several sample portfolios, and give you a chance to ask questions about your own portfolio -- whether you're on the job market now or expect to be in the future.

Tues. 3/14/06 - Gender, Emotion and the Classroom (Conversations on Teaching) (Co-sponsored by the Writing Studio)
4:10 - 5:30, Calhoun 117
Facilitators:Allison Pingree, Director, CFT; Amy Hodges-Hamilton, Director of Undergraduate Writing
Building on a previous session (co-sponsored by the Writing Studio and Women ’s & Gender Studies) in fall 2005 on ”Gender, Authority & Collaboration in the Classroom,” this discussion will begin with a small panel explore a variety of issues as we pursue our core question: How does emotion shape and impact learning in the college classroom?

• What subject areas or topics, and / or what teaching contexts (office hours, large lectures, seminars, etc.), are particularly likely to evoke profound and intense emotions, and why?
• What kinds of emotion are “acceptable” or not for the college classroom? To what extent is teaching about, or with, deep emotion seen as not academically serious or worthy, and why? How does gender shape, and get shaped by, emotional experience and expression in teaching and learning?
• What are the potential risks, and gains, in allowing (or encouraging) emotion to weave through our classes and other interactions with students? What are pedagogical strategies for working with emotion effectively while teaching, and working with students, in these areas?

Wed. 3/22/06  - Teaching Statements (Teaching Workshop)
4:10pm – 5:30pm, Calhoun 117
Facilitators: Susan Crisafulli, Graduate Teaching Fellow, CFT; Patricia Armstrong, Assistant Director, CFT
Whether you have been teaching for ten years or ten weeks, it is no easy task to write about your teaching in an eloquent and persuasive way.  With this challenge in mind, this workshop will help you identify your core teaching values and use those values as a guide to determine the form you want your statement to take.  We will examine such questions as: What exactly is a teaching statement?  What purpose does it serve, and what does it look like?  What characteristics are common to all teaching statements?  How can I communicate my core values about teaching in an effective way?  This session is intended for a wide range of teachers wanting to reflect on and document their teaching--from graduate students on the job market, to post-docs or principle investigators writing education-focused grants, to faculty preparing for review processes.

Mon. 3/27/06  - Engaging Students with Data and Information, Lessons from Edward Tufte  (Conversation on Teaching)
12:10pm-1:30pm, Sarratt 189 (Lunch Provided)
Facilitator: Jeff Johnston, Assistant Director, CFT
Panelists: David Furse, Adjunct Faculty, Owen Graduate School of Management; Jonathan Gilligan, Senior Lecturer, Earth and Environmental Sciences; Shane Hutson, Assistant Professor, Physics and Astronomy.

When principles of design replicate principles of thought, the act of arranging information becomes an act of insight. ­– Edward Tufte

Last winter the Center for Teaching invited nine Vanderbilt faculty members to attend a 1-day seminar by Edward Tufte on presenting data and information. Tufte, an emeritus professor at Yale, is a world-renowned expert on the visual presentation of complex statistical and scientific data.  His writing includes The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, Visual Explanations and The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint.  Join us for a second conversation with some of the Vanderbilt faculty who attended the seminar and have been exploring how Tufte’s ideas can enhance student learning in our classrooms.

APRIL

Wed. 4/5/06  - Mentoring As Teaching (Teaching Workshop)
4:10pm-5:30pm, Calhoun 117
Facilitators: Jeff Johnston, Assistant Director, CFT; Ellen Fanning, HHMI Professor, Stevenson Professor of Molecular Biology, Dept. of Biological Sciences.
The classroom is only one type of learning environment on the Vanderbilt campus.  Mentoring can be a particularly rewarding learning opportunity, for both the student and mentor alike. This workshop will present a brief overview of a particularly effective mentoring program on the Vanderbilt campus, the Community of Scholars, an innovative undergraduate research program in the Department of Biological Sciences built around strong mentoring relationships between all levels of participants: faculty, post-docs, graduate students, and undergraduates. We will describe and reflect on a 2-day workshop developed by the Center for Teaching specifically for developing effective laboratory mentors in the Community of Scholars program.  We will also discuss some important principles from cognitive science and what they tell us about effective mentoring, regardless of the discipline.  Finally, we will open the discussion to participants for questions, and a conversation about additional effective mentoring programs on campus.

MAY

Wed., May 10, 2006 - F2P2 & Teaching Certificate Graduation Ceremony and Celebration
4:30pm – 6:00pm
Rand Function Room, Sarratt 220
Wine and hors d’oeuvres
Presentation begins at 5:00

Related Programs

JANUARY

Tuesday, 1/24/06 - "I Hate Grad School, but What Else am I Good at?"(part of the "Women in Academe" series, co-sponsored with the Career Center)
4:10- 5:30, Buttrick Hall rm 206
In this session we will speak with counselors from the Career Center regarding how to conduct an effective job search highlighting the skills you’ve acquired while in higher education.

Thursday, 1/26/06 - Teaching and Conducting Community-Based Participatory Research Series - Interdisciplinary Colloquium Series at Vanderbilt University (find out more about the TCCPR Colloquium at http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/tccpr/index.htm)
Facilitator: Patricia Maguire, Ed.D., Professor, Education and Counseling, Western New Mexico University; Chair, Gallup Graduate Studies Center; Assistant to Dean of Extended University

• Engaging Teachers in Action Research: Laboring in the Field of Possibility
  10:00-11:00, Wyatt Center, Room 223
  A presentation on the lessons being learned and the challenges being embraced by a teacher education MAT program in the southwest USA that is trying to create a sustainable space to nurture teacher action researchers.

• Surviving and Thriving: the Challenges and Joys of Participatory Action Research for Graduate Students
  11:30-1:00, Peabody Library, Room 303
  A discussion on some of the many challenges, dilemmas, and potential joys of engaging in participatory action research as a graduate student. Students are asked to read the following article for discussion during the session.
  Maguire, P. (1993). Challenges, contradictions, and celebrations: attempting participatory research as a doctoral student. In P. Park, M. Brydon-Miller, B. Hall, & T. Jackson (Eds), Voices of change (pp.157-176). Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey.
  1:30-3:30, Mayborn Hall, Room 207

• Feminist-informed Action Research: Who Cares Anyway?
  4:15-5:15, Calhoun Hall, Room 117
  A presentation on feminist-informed action research, addressing questions such as Who cares? Why do it? If you wanted to do it, what might it look like? Can non-feminist identified people do feminist-informed action research?

FEBRUARY

Tuesday, 2/14/06 -Interactive Strategies for Increasing Active Learning in the Lecture Hall
(sponsored by Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Grand Rounds in Medical Education)
12:00 – 1:00pm, 208 Light Hall*
Facilitator: Boyd Richards, Ph.D., Professor and Director of the Office of Curriculum; Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas

This presentation consists of a “lecture within a lecture” designed to compare and contrast four strategies for stimulating learner engagement in the lecture setting, including team-based learning, recently introduced into medical education.    
At the end of this presentation you will:

• be able to describe basic principles and strategies to promote active learning in the lecture hall with a single instructor
• want to learn more about these principles and strategies
• consider where and how to use these principles and strategies in your teaching

Tuesday, 2/14/06 - Faculty Workshop - Team Learning: An Introduction to a New Teaching Strategy for Health Professions Education
(sponsored by Vanderbilt University School of Medicine;Office for Teaching and Learning in Medicine)
4:30pm – 6:30pm, Board of Trust Room, Student Life Center*
Facilitator: Boyd Richards, Ph.D., Professor and Director of the Office of Curriculum; Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas

The workshop will begin with a brief introduction to the role of reflective practice in facilitating teaching innovation and improvement.  The workshop will progress through three 30-40 minute segments:

• Definition and illustrations of team learning
• Implications of team learning from the student perspective (role play of students in a small part of a team learning course)
• What team learning means from the faculty perspective (review outcome data, summarize lessons learned, consider resources to support teachers desiring to use team learning)

Through your participation, you will:

• want to learn more about principles and strategies of team learning to promote active learning
• consider where and how to use these principles and strategies in your teaching

Thursday, 2/16/06 - Postdoctoral Association Seminar: "Junior Faculty Perspective on Setting Up and Managing a Lab"
2pm-4pm, Room 206 PRB
For more information go to the Medical Center Office of Postdoctoral Affairs website.

Tuesday, 2/21/06 - All You Ever Wanted to Know about Faculty Governance but Were Afraid to Ask
12:10pm-1:30pm, 015 Buttrick Hall (classroom in the Learning Resource Center) (Lunch Provided)
Facilitators: Carolyn Dever, Associate Dean, College of Arts & Science, Professor, English and Women's and Gender Studies; Jonathan Bremer, Program Coordinator, Arts & Science Dean’s Office.
What do faculty members do in their committee and service work across the university, and how much of their time does it take? What kinds of faculty committees are at work here at Vanderbilt--and in the College of Arts & Science in particular--and how do they inter-relate? We'll explore these and related questions in this session.

Tuesday, 2/ 21/06 - Depression in Graduate School (part of the "Women in Academe" series)
4:10pm- 5:30pm, Buttrick Hall rm 206
Representatives from the Psychological Counseling Center will present a talk on the characteristics of depression, as well as effective tools on how to manage it.

MARCH

Thursday, 3/2/06 - EndNote: Cite While You Write an Academic Research Paper
12pm-1:30pm, Garland Hall Computer Lab #119D
Facilitator: Gajendiran Mahadevan, Research Associate, Biomedical Engineering
This hands-on workshop is designed for undergraduates, graduates, and postdocs in all disciplines who are interested to learn all about EndNote. EndNote is a software tool used to build personal reference libraries by accessing remote databases for academic publishing and managing bibliographies. EndNote is known for its innovative features such as the ability to search online bibliographic databases, organize references and images, and create instant bibliographies for more than 2000 journal style from
35 discipline. Other available software tools including Reference Manager will also be addressed in this workshop.

Thursday, 3/2/06 - Intersecting Lives: Judy Chicago and Donald Woodman in Collaboration: A Lecture by Vivien Green Fryd, Professor of Art History, American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies
6:30pm, Sarratt Cinema (a reception will precede the talk at 5:30 pm in the Sarratt Gallery)
Judy, Chicago, world-renowned feminist artist, and Donald Woodman, photographer, are currently involved with the Chancellor's Artists-in- Residence Program at Vanderbilt University entitled "A Multimedia Project of Discovery." Professsor Fryd will discuss the collaboration of these two artists in their art work, most notably The Holocaust Project, and their feminist pedagogy.

3/2/06 - 3/3-06 “Career Opportunities in the Biomedical and Biological Sciences” Symposium
Time: TBA, 208 Light Hall (and broadcast into 202 and 214 Light Hall)
Sponsored by the office of Biomedical Research Education and Training (BRET) (For additional information, please contact Kim Petrie at 2-6885 or kim.petrie@vanderbilt.edu.)
This two-day event features panel presentations and small-group discussions with scientists who have pursued a variety of careers after attaining their PhD. The panelists will discuss how their careers evolved and help you prepare for a career in industry, academia, government, or private foundations. Career areas represented include research, administration, teaching, consulting, writing, program management, regulatory affairs, technology transfer, law, science policy, clinical science, forensic science, and defense. There is no fee to attend, but registration is requested because lunch will be provided for attendees of the small group discussions.

Thursday, 3/23/06 - Combating Sexual Harassment in Grad School (part of the "Women in Academe" series)
4:10pm- 5:30pm, Buttrick Hall rm 206
After defining the specifics of sexual harassment and reviewing the reporting process and their possible outcomes, we will present the different resources provided by Vanderbilt University that assist in its prevention and attenuation.

Tuesday, 3/28/06 - Panel Discussion: Writing Across the Curriculum (sponsored by the Writing Studio as part of its Grand Opening festivities)
4:00pm - 5:00pm, Alumni Hall 117
Panelists: Dan Cornfield, Sociology; Vivien Fryd, Art and Art History; Kevin Leander, Teaching and Learning
Panelists will compare writing practices particular to their fields of study.

Thursday, 3/30/06 - Keynote Address: "Strategies to Help Students Grow as Writers" (sponsored by the Writing Studio as part of its Grand Opening festivities)
4:00pm - 5:00pm, 203A Alumni Hall
Speaker: Dr. Deborah Coxwell Teague, Director of First-Year writing, FSU
GRAND OPENING RECEPTION following from 5:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. in 117 Alumni Hall.

APRIL

Tuesday, 4/4/06 - Private Universes in the Science Classroom
4:10pm - 5:30pm, Calhoun Hall 117
Facilitator: Rosemary White, Graduate Student in Chemistry
Teachers often have trouble identifying the misconceptions students bring to the classroom and have an even more difficult time correcting popular science myths. This problem occurs at all levels of education. In one study, a group of Harvard graduates were asked simple astronomy questions, and the majority of their answers were incorrect. In this workshop, we will examine the beliefs and ideas students enter the science classroom with (their private universes) and where these ideas originate. We will then develop strategies to overcome these preconceived notions so students can gain the knowledge required for mastery in the science disciplines.

Tuesday, 4/4/06 - The Dual Career Couple (part of the "Women in Academe" series,Co-Sponsored with the Career Center)
4:10pm- 5:30pm, Buttrick Hall rm 206
This session will explore the trials and hardships that come with academics vying for positions at the same institution.  Some of Vanderbilt's own dual career couples will discuss the issues they've encountered in their job searches and share advice on how to mesh personal and professional lives. (See the Women's Center website)

Thursday, 4/6/06 - Teaching Controversial Subjects Through Public Media
4:10pm - 5:30pm, Calhoun 117
Facilitator: Ljubica Jovanovic, Ph.D. candidate, Graduate Department of Religion
Mass media employs compelling representations of controversial subjects to evoke powerful responses from viewers. These depictions often affect public opinion and override more nuanced scholarly studies on sensitive social, political, and cultural subjects. Starting with the example of popular representations of Islam, this workshop will examine how public media tools can be used mindfully to evoke scholarly discussions in classrooms and other public settings. Designed for students, teachers, and community members interested in presenting and discussing sensitive cultural issues.

Tuesday, 4/11/06 - Learner-Centered Limits of Presentation Technologies
4:10pm - 5:30pm, Calhoun Hall 117
Facilitator: Peter Schmidt, PE, Research Assistant, Mechanical Engineering Department
This seminar will address how acoustics, visibility, technology, and room design can limit or handicap an audience's comprenension of presented information. We will then discuss how, as presenters, we can be mindful of these limitations and design our presentations to maximize the amount of useful information the audience receives. If you give presentations in any forum; seminars, conferences, classrooms or to clients, this workshop will provide you with useful information on how to make your presentation more effective.

Wednesday, 4/12/06 - Active Learning in a Quantitative Class
4:10pm - 5:30pm, Calhoun 117
Facilitator: Sergiy Volodymyrovyc Borodachov, PhD candidate, Department of Mathematics
Learning is by nature an active endeavor, a dynamic process and is
not just piling up on top of existing knowledge. Students learn better when
they have enough opportunities to apply what they study. Active learning provides opportunities for students to talk and listen, read and write and reflect as they approach course content through these and other activities such as problem solving, informal group work, case studies, role playing – all of which require students to apply what they are learning. Different people learn in different ways, and if a teacher relies only on one
teaching approach, it may be difficult to get through to a significant number of students. At this workshop we will discuss different methods and strategies to facilitate active learning in a class which involves mathematical reasoning. (For Graduate and Post-doctoral students.

Monday, 4/17/06 - Information Infrastructure and Its Orphans
5:00pm - 6:30pm, Wyatt Center Rotunda (reception to follow)
Lecturers: Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Center for Science, Technology and Society, Santa Clara University
The literature about the Web is replete with stories about the amount of information that can be found about anyone, anywhere, at any time. You can track down old school friends, your fleeting thoughts are recorded in your email out boxes, your search terms are recorded by Google and Yahoo and turned over (or not) to the government. In this talk, we turn our analytic attention to what doesn't get represented-because it does not fit within the classification systems and ontologies being developed, because it represents another form of knowing that the Web is not configured to represent, and so forth. We describe the shape of what is left out of the current attention economy of the internet, in an attempt to give some texture to what is silenced or systematically overlooked in the drive to save everything ('memory' being cheap). From this perspective, designing classification systems to classify and remember information always also involves positive acts of forgetting, deciding what should be forgotten as well as what should be remembered when producing knowledge. We discuss organizational strategies for forgetting, such as erecting an historical "clearance" that blocks information from passing into the present or deploying systematic rules of "erasure" that filter out information in current practice. New information infrastructures encode particular values even as they conjure the world in computable form.

MAY

Tuesday, 5/9/06 - “How People Learn” Engineering: A Workshop on Designing Effective Instruction Based on VaNTH Research
Time: 8:30 – 3:00 (light breakfast and lunch provided), Featheringill Hall, Room 129
Introduction: Thomas R. Harris, M.D., Ph.D., Biomedical Engineering
Presenters: Stacy Klein, Ph.D., Biomedical Engineering; Alene Harris, Ph.D., Teaching & Learning
Resources: Anita Mahadevan-Jansen, Ph.D. Biomedical Engineering; Chris Rowe, M.E., Engineering Science
You are invited to participate in a research-based workshop to develop learning environments. Come and work with fellow engineers to develop ideas tailored for a specific course that you teach. Bring your thoughts about course content objectives and desired student outcomes and learn how to adapt some of the things you already do to make them more effective, plus gain some new ideas – and share ideas with others.

Tuesday, 5/23/06 - “Hot Topics in Medical Education” James C. Overall Visiting Professor Lecture)
Lecturer: Kenneth B. Roberts, MD, Director of Pediatric Teaching Program in the Moses Cone Health System and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine
Sponsors: Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt and the Division of Continuing Medical Education
Time and Location: 7:45am, Wadlington Conference Room, 2202 VCH

Spring 2006 Working Groups

• Course Design (for faculty)
• Course Design (for grad students, professional students, and post-docs)
• Campus Visit (for grad students, professional students, and post-docs)
• Teaching and Learning (part of Cycle 2 in Teaching Certificate Program)
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (part of Cycle 3 in Teaching Certificate Program)
• Teaching With Technology

Course Design Working Group (for faculty)
What do you want your students to learn, and how do you really know if they have? Our course design groups involve a small number of faculty (typically 4 per group) who are designing a new course or rethinking an existing course. In these groups, faculty meet four times during the semester for structured discussions as each participant (re)designs a course.

Course Design Working Group (for graduate students, professional students, and post-doctoral students)
Graduate students, professional students and post-docs interested in creating a new course—or revising a current course—are invited to join this working group.  Participants will commit to attending four two-hour sessions; we will determine our schedule as a group. The sessions will cover the following topics: 1) Learning Goals, 2) Assessment, 3) Teaching Strategies & Activities and 4) Syllabus Creation. Each session will include a brief pedagogical lesson, followed by individual work on your own course design and then group discussion in which we will share our challenges, ideas, and issues.  This working group is facilitated by a fellow graduate student—Kat Baker, CFT graduate teaching fellow—but depends on members’ active engagement in assisting each other to achieve course designs.

Campus Visit Working Group (for graduate students, professional students, and post-doctoral students)
CLOSED. The graduate students, professional students, and postdocs who participate in this working group have the opportunity to learn firsthand about other campuses by visiting two different types of institutions (usually public and private, large research and small liberal arts) during the semester. On each day-long visit, we will discuss the school's mission with staff, administrators, and students; observe faculty members in the classroom; and interview those faculty members about their roles and responsibilities. Shortly after the last campus visit, we will meet to process our experiences.

Teaching and Learning Working Group (part of Cycle 2 in the Teaching Certificate Program
Participants in this group will read and discuss selections from the established literature on teaching and learning in higher education.  Initial meetings will focus on core texts with broad, cross-disciplinary relevance.  Later meetings will offer participants the opportunity to focus on specific pedagogical topics, techniques, or methods related to their individual needs and interests.  While this group is designed to support the second inquiry phase of the Teaching Certificate program, all graduate and professional students and post-docs are invited to participate. Meetings will take place on selected Tuesdays - 2/7/06, 2/21/06, 3/14/06, 3/28/06) from 9am-10am in the Center for Teaching conference room (Calhoun 116).

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Working Group (part of Cycle 3 in the Teaching Certificate Program)
The purpose of the SoTL Working Group is to assist its members in approaching their teaching in a scholarly manner.  To that end, each member of the Working Group will design and implement a small scholarly project on student learning that will involve

• asking questions about student learning and the teaching activities designed to promote student learning,
• answering those questions by analyzing evidence of student learning, and
• sharing the results of that analysis publicly in order to invite review and to contribute to the body of knowledge on student learning in a variety of contexts.

Completion of these projects will provide group members with improved insight into how their teaching can impact student learning.  For more information on the kind of scholarly project on teaching required by the SoTL Working Group, see the Center’s Teaching Guide on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. The Working Group will meet several times during the semester to provide resources to assist its members in their projects and to provide feedback to its members as they conduct and reflect on their projects.  The SoTL Working Group is primarily intended for participants in the Center for Teaching’s Teaching Certificate program as means of completing Cycle 3 of that program. 

Teaching with Technology Working Group
Members of the Teaching with Technology Working Group will explore ways in which computer technologies can be used to improve their teaching practice and their students’ learning.  The first two working group sessions will provide an overview of teaching with technology and an introduction to a variety of instructional technologies.  In the remaining sessions, each member will give one brief (20-30 minute) presentation on a specific technology of their choosing that is of interest to them and is relevant to their current or future teaching. Members of the working group will have the opportunity to learn about and perhaps implement a technology they find interesting and to hear about effective uses of other instructional technologies from their fellow group members. 

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