by James Mixon, Department of History Ask most any faculty member, and they will tell you in one way or another that they care deeply about their teaching. Most will also tell you that they are always looking for or thinking of ways to improve and to address many of the common problems we all […]
by Bryce Speed, Department of Art and Art History As an art professor, I find that most of my teaching experiences involve active and experiential learning, mainly due to the hands-on nature of making and critiquing art. Simply through the sheer nature of creative practices students are experiencing and solving problems unique to their conceptual […]
Read Moreabout Reflections on the Teaching Professor Conference
by Nathan Loewen, Department of Religious Studies “An ePortfolio is not an ePortfolio is not an ePortfolio” is what Kathleen Yancey told us at a portfolio workshop hosted by UA’s Office of Institutional Effectiveness. Dr. Yancey said this shortly after asking everyone in the room to adopt a student’s perspective in evaluating example scenarios for ePortfolios. […]
Read Moreabout Some Workshops on ePortfolios Showed Me What I Missed in my Course Design Process
by Paul Fess, Department of English Last month I had the opportunity to attend the annual HASTAC conference through the generous support of the Arts & Sciences Dean’s Office and the Department of English Similar to Nathan Loewen’s description of his experience at this conference, I found it to be an enlightening, refreshing event, comprised […]
Read Moreabout HASTAC Recap: The Role of Archives in Instruction
The 2017 HASTAC conference was nothing short of amazing, in my humble opinion. The acronym stands for Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory, which is based on the proposal that “today’s new, global forms of communication and online learning are so complex and potentially so revolutionary that they demand a new alliance of […]
Read Moreabout One Best of All Possible Teaching and Learning Conferences
Deborah Keene created a “teaching hub” for the Department of Geological Sciences, where faculty can share slides, syllabi, test questions and more. Now everyone can search and find what they need for their classes, and they get an inside look into how other faculty teach. […]
The Teaching Happy Hour is an opportunity for A&S faculty and instructors to gather in an informal setting and share their ideas and strategies for the classroom. This year, the theme was “My Worst Hour Happy Hour,” and to enter the happy hour room, faculty had to describe their worst hour teaching and what they did […]
Read Moreabout “My Worst Hour Happy Hour”: The Highlight Reel
by Isabelle Drewelow, Department of Modern Languages and Classics Thinking about SOIs inevitably brings to mind the title The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Some comments are quite constructive and useful, prompting a self-reflection on learning tasks and in some cases a complete redesign of a task. For me these comments are great, helping me […]
Erik Peterson, Department of History Over twenty ago, I was sweltering through another agonizing day of my “Classical Literature Through Film” course that met in a non-air conditioned, glazed brick room that vaguely smelled of old cigars. It was my first film course, yet I realized soon and was reminded often, that this was a […]
The Teaching Hub advisory board got together this fall to discuss course evaluation strategies. Faculty may wish to better determine whether or not to make changes in their courses that would help students learn more effectively. The conversation began quite humorously when we shared our experiences of the discursive comments section in the Student Opinions of Instruction […]
