| What's a GSIC (and why should you apply to be one)? Wed, 01/30/2013 Have you ever wondered how CRLT is able to offer individual consultations for anyone teaching at U-M, including hundreds of GSIs? We couldn't do it without our team of Graduate Student Instructional Consultants (GSICs). The GSICs are U-M graduate students, current and former GSIs representing a broad range of fields, who consult with GSIs across campus on teaching and learning. They also often facilitate workshops and contribute to our new GSI training programs. CRLT is currently recruiting new GSICs, and we invite any graduate student passionate about learning and teaching to apply. The program is an excellent professional development experience for GSICs, who participate in a learning community and receive continuing training on pedagogy. GSICs have shared that the program helps them to be better teachers themselves and helps prepare them for a range of careers, in and out of academe.
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| disruptED: The Impact of High Tech on Higher Ed Mon, 01/28/2013 A provocative essay in The Ann by U-M business professor Scott Moore analyzes the disruptive impact of internet technology on higher education and asks, "Will the Wolverines remain the leaders?" According to Moore, the traditional model of education is shifting, and students will have far more choices as to how (and where) they learn. He predicts a future where education is a partnership between .edu, .com, and .org, where credit hours are replaced by certificates earned via competency exams, and where an increasing number of educational experiences happen away from campus. To remain leaders and the best in such a future, the university and faculty must experiment with emerging educational methods and technologies, and adopt those that foster transformative educational experiences that are relevant for students, parents, and future employers.
As Moore points out in his article, CRLT is partnering with faculty and administrators to develop creative approaches that will enable U-M to navigate this changing landscape. For example, an experiment with new educational technology now in progress at U-M focuses on incorporating Online Collaboration Tools (OCTs) in and out of classrooms. As the campus began widespread use of Google Apps for collaboration over the past year, CRLT gathered early adopters to share ideas about how to best use these tools for education. To help spread innovations far and wide, CRLT distributed an Occasional Paper on the topic and organized a Provost’s Seminar on Teaching last November, both of which featured U-M faculty who had successfully used blogs, wikis, and other tools to promote student reflection, to facilitate collaborative authorship, to improve student teamwork, and more. Scott Moore was one of the featured speakers at the Provost’s Seminar, where he described how his students’ blog posts reached an audience of over 40,000 readers--the kind of transformative experience that makes a U-M education relevant in a changing higher ed landscape.
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| Messages of Hope for Our Students Wed, 01/23/2013 This afternoon, U-M's Counseling & Psychiatric Services (CAPS) will bring together the campus community in a show of support for students in severe distress. As part of CAPS's "Messages of Hope" suicide prevention project, they are inviting all of us to participate in writing messages that communicate hope and encourage resilience in students experiencing a mental health crisis. CAPS has already gathered hundreds of inspiring student-to-student messages that can be viewed in their Facebook photo album. The goal of "Tile Day" is to collect at least 1,000 new handwritten Messages of Hope to be displayed in the CAPS office. As teachers, we are often among the first to see signs that a student is struggling. U-M instructors are lucky to have a range of excellent resources to which they can refer students when they need additional support or mental health services. The CAPS website offers guidance for faculty and staff, including suggestions for reaching out to students you're concerned about to connect them with appropriate campus resources. Teachers can play an important role in supporting the mental health and well-being of our students. Today we can focus our energies on giving hope to students in the greatest moment of crisis by participating in this suicide prevention effort. Here are the details for Tile Day:
You can learn more about the Messages of Hope project on the CAPS website. Read more |
| Pedagogies for Understanding Race Fri, 01/18/2013 This term's LSA Theme Semester on "Understanding Race" provides opportunities for U-M instructors across campus to engage their students in productive exploration of questions about race. In connection with the Theme Semester, CRLT is sponsoring a panel later this month on "Pedagogies for Understanding Race." Four U-M faculty members from a range of LSA departments will share insights they have gained from their experiences teaching courses focused on critical approaches to race. The panelists include:
Participants will also hear from organizers of the Theme Semester with more information about the rich array of events, exhibits, and performances taking place across campus throughout the semester. We encourage instructors to spread the news among their students so they can take full advantage of the Theme Semester as a broad learning opportunity taking place both in and out of classrooms. Follow this link for the full calendar of events. The "Pedagogies for Understanding Race" session will take place Tuesday, January 29, 2pm-4pm in Palmer Commons. For full details, including registration information, click here. Read more |
| Good Reads: On Professors as Great Teachers Fri, 01/11/2013 Have you ever had to refute that negative stereotype of university professors as poor teachers who only care about their research? A new book by And for some remarkable examples of University of Michigan professors who are innovative and passionate about undergraduate teaching, see our Friday Profiles series. Or look around: they're all over campus. Read more |
| Preparing for Winter Term: Creating Inclusive Classrooms Mon, 01/07/2013 Getting ready to meet your Winter Term classes? As you gear up for a new semester, it's a great time to make sure you're keeping a broad range of students in mind. CRLT provides many resources to help you effectively teach diverse students, no matter what your area of specialization. One of our "Preparing to Teach" resources, this page on Creating Inclusive Classrooms offers concrete guidance on several aspects of inclusive teaching, including:
For additional resources to support your teaching of U-M's diverse student body, you can visit our Teaching for Equity and Inclusion page. The printed version of our GSI Guidebook--distributed to everyone who attends one of our GSI Teaching Orientations and available to U-M instructors upon request--also contains helpful guidance on these issues, including the chapter "Diversity and Inclusion in the Classroom" from Barbara Gross Davis's book Tools for Teaching. More general resources to help you finalize your Winter Term plans can be found on our Preparing to Teach page (under the "Resources and Publications" menu above). Read more |
| Intercampus Mentorship: A Day at Oberlin College Fri, 01/04/2013 In recent months, we have been featuring stories by past participants in the Rackham-CRLT Intercampus Mentorship Program. [Edit 5/13/16: The mentorship program ended in 2016, but that need not prevent graduate students and postdocs from setting up highly beneficial mentoring relationships on their own.] In this post, U-M Psychology Ph.D. student Katy Goldey describes her visit to a nearby liberal arts college, which was funded by the program. Her story speaks to the range of experiences a single campus visit might entail and gives a glimpse into the kinds of conversations with college faculty that the Intercampus Mentorship Program makes possible. The program is open to any U-M graduate student or postdoc.  In Fall 2011 I spent a day at Oberlin College as part of the Rackham-CRLT Intercampus Mentorship Program. My interest in the program stemmed from my own experience as an undergraduate student at a liberal arts college (Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX) and my eventual goal to become a professor at a teaching-focused university. I chose Dr. Jan Thornton as my mentor because of our shared interests in hormones and behavior, and Jan enthusiastically agreed to meet with me for a very full day at Oberlin.Read more |
| Spotlight on CRLT Resources: Internationalizing the Curriculum Wed, 12/19/2012
CRLT has created web resources to support U-M instructors as they develop new ways to internationalize the curriculum, including those who are considering applying for the new grants. Here’s what you can find when you click on the “Internationalization” button on our home page.
As always, CRLT can also provide consultations to faculty members seeking to innovate or improve their teaching. Read more |
| Friday Profile: Thurnau Professor Brian Porter-Szűcs Fri, 12/14/2012 When a professor receives a standing ovation from his students at the semester's end, he must be doing something right. And something rare as well: in the words of one student of Thurnau Professor of History Brian Porter-Szűcs, “the much deserved standing ovation was something I have never seen before or since.” Porter-Szűcs certainly doesn’t win his students’ acclaim by taking on obviously popular topics. His courses on the history of Poland and the development of the Catholic Church, for instance, focus on subject matter about which many students report having had no prior interest or knowledge. And his courses often treat grim and difficult themes such as the effects of war and the moral complexities of major European social struggles.
They do also admit, though, that he is an extraordinarily engaging speaker. Read more |
| Improving Student Learning: Lessons from U-M Professor Bill Gehring Fri, 12/07/2012 “I studied really hard for the exam and felt like I knew the material, but I did poorly.” Have you ever heard something like this from your students? Do you wonder how you might prevent such experiences? In a November Student Learning and Analytics at Michigan (SLAM) series lecture, Thurnau Professor of Psychology Bill Gehring explains how he has integrated key findings from the science of learning into his teaching in order to help students study more effectively and improve their course performance.
If you haven't been able to attend the SLAM series talks but want to learn more about the ongoing conversation at U-M about using student data to enhance learning, this video is a great place to start. Professor Gehring's topics in this hour-long talk include: Read more |
Catharine Hoffman Beyer and her colleagues at the University of Washington provides research to back up what many of us already know from experience: most professors care deeply about teaching and continuously work hard on improving it. You can learn more about Inside the Undergraduate Teaching Experience (SUNY Press) from this
In line with U-M’s mission to develop internationally engaged and globally competent students, the Provost recently announced a new CRLT Grant for Internationalizing the Curriculum.
But as both students and colleagues report, Porter-Szűcs is beloved for his remarkable commitment to taking undergraduates seriously as intellectual interlocutors and key members of the History department’s academic community. In his undergraduate classes, he engages students as fellow thinkers by giving them primary documents along with a range of historical interpretations—often arguments with which he fundamentally disagrees—and asking them to come to their own conclusions. He uses class blogs to facilitate their interactions with one another’s analyses. And he inspires students to pursue their intellectual passions beyond the bounds of the classroom. Under his guidance as the department's first Director of Undergraduate Studies, the once-moribund History Club has grown into a vibrant intellectual community for undergraduate concentrators. And under his mentorship, a steady stream of students have proceeded to post-graduate study, many of whom who say they would never had thought of themselves as scholars before taking one of his courses. In short, students stand up and applaud Porter-Szűcs not because he entertains them but because he respects them as thinkers.
