UW-Superior Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning News and Events

CETL Book Club on Stereotype Threats - "Whistling Vivaldi" Concludes April 29

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 21:40:00 +0000

Eri Fujieda (Social Inquiry and Assessment Office) and Mary Lee-Nichols (Educational Leadership) are co-facilitating the book club. Other members includeMaria Cuzzo (Human Behavior, Justice and Diversity; and CETL), Carol Knoble (International Programs), Olivia Seifert (Educational Leadership), and Emily Levings (CETL),

Whistling Vivaldi:

How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do

(Issues of Our Times)

by Claude Steele
W. W. Norton & Company, April 2011

Claude Steele is currently the I. James Quillen Dean for the School of Education at Stanford University. William Bowen wrote "this is an intellectual odyssey of the first order--- a true tour de force." The UW System Office of Professional Instructional Development (OPID) is encouraging each campus to offer a book club on this famous book to promote sensitive and serious dialogue about stereotype bias regarding our students---the set of expectations or assumptions we may have about our students and how those pervasive stereotypes can influence behavior and performance of both teacher and student. For those interested in inclusive excellence issues, this will be a great book club!

Each CETL Book Club member receives a complimentary copy of the featured book as well as engaging conversation with other interested colleagues. All educators, faculty and staff of all ranks, are welcome and encouraged to join a book club.

CETL requests that each member attend all scheduled meetings for the book club. At the conclusion of the book club, their reflections on the value of the book, as well as the book club experience, will be shared in the upcoming issue of the CETL Connections Newsletter.

One week left before April 26 deadline to apply for CETL Jumpstart Scholarship Funding

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:25:14 +0000

Twelve Faculty to Attend the 2013 OPID Spring Conference

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:22:43 +0000

Come to the YU Tuesday MAY 7 for First Year Seminar Spring 2013 EXPO

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 18:01:25 +0000

We encourage all current and potential UW-Superior students, faculty, staff and community members to visit with the First Year Seminar students, see their booths and presentations, and enjoy some cake and treats.

View the First Year Seminar offerings for Spring 2013 for a preview of the event and then mark your calendar so you don't miss out.

You can view videos of previous EXPOs but they don't compare to being there live and in action.

The First Year Seminar is designed for incoming freshmen as part of the First Year Experience program. Students are introduced to the liberal arts through active and collaborative learning, critical thinking, and reflective judgement.

Registration Ends April 1st for the Co-Curricular Unconference

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 22:32:01 +0000

Gamification Webinar - Tuesday March 12 1:00 pm

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 21:56:50 +0000

CETL invites you to participate in the Magna Online Seminar Gamificiation: Applying Game Principles to Your Teaching. This webinar is scheduled TODAY, March 12, 2013, at 1:00 p.m. in the CETL Seminar Room - Swenson 2074. Plan on joining your colleagues for this 60 minute webinar (1:00 until 2:00 p.m. central time).

Contact cetl@uwsuper.edu to have handout materials prepared for you for the webinar.

This webinar is intended for anyone who teaches. The principles that underpin successful games can be used to transform a college class even without a digital game or programming knowledge. You can use these principles in an analog class to create an educational experience that contains the best of both worlds: a game-based overlay without technical distractions.

For an overview of the webinar and its objectives, link on the title of the webinar above.

Reflective Judgment Webinar - Thursday February 21

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 21:56:50 +0000

Reflective Judgment: Teaching Students to Think Critically in a Time of Information Overload

Two showings of this webinar (originally broadcast on November 27, 2012) will be presented:

First showing: 12:00 noon - 1:30 p.m.
Second showing: 2:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.

Send an email to cetl@uwsuper.edu to reserve a place for this online seminar - include the time you would like to attend. Complimentary handouts produced by Innovative Educators will be provided to those who sign up for the webinar. Complimentary coffee and tea are available in the CETL Seminar Room.

For an overview of the webinar and its objectives, link on the title of the webinar above.

Eight faculty and staff conclude CETL Book Club featuring Ken Bain books

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 21:42:13 +0000

Seven faculty and staff from diverse campus units and disciplines have been engaged with Maria Cuzzo (Professor Legal Studies, Human Behavior, Justice and Diversity Department, and CETL Director) in discussing the work of Ken Bain. They include Eri Fujieda (Associate Professor of Sociology, Social Inquiry Department, and Coordinator of Assessment), Ann Miller (Assistant Dean of Students - Leadership Development, Campus Life), Carolyn Caffrey Gardner (Assistant Professor, Writing and Library Science Department), Lynn Goerdt (Assistant Professor of Social Work, Human Behavior, Justice and Diversity Department), RaLynn Schmalzried Schmidt, (Assistant Professor of Psychology, Human Behavior, Justice and Diversity Department), Allen Shepard, (Senior Lecturer of English, Writing and Library Science Department), and Carol Knoble (International Student Advisor and World Student Association Advisor, Office of International Programs).

Following are the two books to be discussed:

Ken Bain's recent book What the Best College Students Do (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, August 2012) and
his previous well-received book What the Best College Teachers Do (Harvard University Press, August 2004).

Ken Bain is currently the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of History and Urban Education at the University of the District of Columbia.

This club is scheduled to meet in the CETL Seminar Room in Swenson Hall - Room 2074 on the following four Tuesdays afternoons from 4:30 until 6:00 p.m.: February 12, February 19, February 26 and March 12, 2013.

Link to CETL Book Clubs for more opportunities this spring.

The Flipped Classroom

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 16:38:47 +0000

Rethink the design of your class

You can flip pancakes. You can flip burgers. How do you flip a class?

Send an email to cetl@uwsuper.edu to reserve a place for this online seminar. Complimentary handouts produced by Magna Online Seminars will be provided to those who sign up for the webinar. Complimentary coffee and tea are available in the CETL Seminar Room.

In a lecture-centered classroom, the instructor delivers content in class and then sends students home to complete homework. When you deliver informational content outside the classroom and then use class time to facilitate engagement and deeper learning-that's a flipped classroom.

Flipping learning, however, is about more than pre-class lectures. Effective flips involve two key elements.

First, you need to structure lesson plans to shift focus from content delivery to student engagement.

In many learning environments, the instructor directs the energy toward his or her lecture. Planning typically starts with the question "What am I going to talk about?" In a flipped environment, this structure is reversed. The instructor directs the energy toward his or her students. Planning starts with the question "What do the students need to do?" This fundamental shift changes the whole dynamic of the learning environment.

Second, you need to use your classroom skills effectively to help students transform inert content into mastered material.

By flipping the focus of the learning environment from "teacher centered" to "learner centered," you create an environment that engages students, enhances learning, and creates an exciting classroom atmosphere.

Moving from a lecture-based class to a flipped class requires a new set of skills. In order to do it well, you need to shift the way you design your class and implement your teaching strategies to ensure that the learning environment is successful.

The flip is more than just a fad. It's reinvigorating learning (and teaching) in thousands of classrooms. Discover how The Flipped Approach to a Learner-Centered Class can help make learning more fun and more effective for everyone involved. Join us for this helpful seminar.

Revised CETL Connections Newsletter, Issue 9, January 2013

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 14:58:50 +0000

CETL Team Selected for Travel and Presentations to Green Bay Conference

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 17:10:02 +0000

Three faculty members of the Department of Writing and Library Science will be presenting at the conference: Jamie White-Farnham (Assistant Professor), Carolyn Caffrey Gardner (Assistant Professor), and Julie Gard (Assistant Professor). In addition, Sakib Mahmud (Assistant Professor in the Department of Business and Economics) and Tara Kachgal (Assistant Professor in the Department of Communicating Arts) will be attending the conference. CETL will be providing transportation and lodging for this team to attend the conference.

The presentation to be given by UW-Superior's faculty is entitled Wikis, Blogs, and E-Portfolios: Digital Approaches to Public Writing. The faculty will share the work of assigning digital writing products in three different courses:

Jamie White-Farnham will link the needs of Basic Writing students with the benefits of writing digital genres such as wikis. Drawing on users' experience with Wikipedia, students articulate the audience, purpose, and design of the wiki article as a genre with a context and conventions distinct yet comparable to academic writing. Jamie will share students' wiki articles and reflections, asserting that writing digital genres empowers basic writers as communicators - and not only retrievers - of knowledge (Sundin, 2008).
Carolyn Caffrey Gardner will then describe a First Year Seminar blogging assignment between a Library Science class on technology and social movements and a Social Work class on social justice designed as a community building exercise. As authentic writing, blogging increases collaboration and fosters a learning community that extends beyond classroom walls. Carolyn will share students' blog posts and reflections.
Finally, Julie Gard will describe the e-portfolios students create in a general education Creative Writing course to present and integrate a semester's worth of reflective and creative writing, including craft analysis of published short stories and their own literary experiments. The e-portfolio provides novice and more experienced writers with a real-life forum for sharing their work and adds a layer of professionalism to their writing endeavors. In addition, the e-portfolio contains a comprehensive overview of student learning, allowing for efficient yet meaningful feedback and fair, accurate assessment.

The University of Green Bay's Center for Advancement in Teaching and Learning is hosting the Faculty Development Conference, with this year's theme Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age, featuring keynote speaker Gardner Campbell.

For more about the conference visit http://www.uwgb.edu/catl/conference/

First Year Seminar EXPO

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 15:31:22 +0000

View the First Year Seminar offerings for Fall 2012 for a preview of the event and then mark your calendar so you don't miss out.

You can view videos of previous EXPOs but they don't compare to being there live and in action.

Webinar on Reflective Judgment postponed

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 21:13:17 +0000

Reflective Judgment: Teaching Students to Think Critically in a Time of Information Overload

CETL will host a rerun of the above webinar. If you're interested in the topic and would like to attend with others, please email cetl@uwsuper.edu to let us know. We'll schedule a date and time convenient for those interested.

CETL will provide tea and coffee, as well as a short introduction, pauses during the webinar for discussion, and a followup discussion. All interested educators - faculty and staff - are invited. Just send an email of interest and CETL will coordinate the date and time with you and others.

Each day, Google users perform more than 2.9 billion searches. Wikipedia claims over 10 million articles in 253 languages. Today's students have greater access to information than ever before. As Keeling (2004) articulated in Learning Reconsidered: A Campus-Wide Focus on the Student Experience, "...knowledge is no longer a scarce - or stable - commodity. (It) is changing so rapidly that specific information may become obsolete before a student graduates and has the opportunity to apply it."

And while this vast quantity of often conflicting information should make students less confident in what they know and believe, it seems often to have the opposite effect. For many college students, highly dubious information passes as truth based only on the credibility of the Internet or some other source they believe to be authoritative. Most students lack the skills to evaluate the claims of these sources.

Despite decades of research, few teachers or practitioners can claim mastery in eliciting critical thinking or reflective judgment in others. This session will provide practical, hands-on activities to help participants gain the skills they need to enhance their own critical thinking and reflective judgment in order to improve these skills in their students in a variety of contexts.

Key Topics From an Experienced Presenter
Dr. Adam Peck serves as the Dean of Student Affairs at Stephen F. Austin State University (SFA) in Nacogdoches, Texas. He also serves as adjunct faculty in the graduate program for Student Affairs and in the department of Communication and Contemporary Culture at SFA. He has worked in higher education for over seventeen years. Adam writes and speaks frequently on topics as varied as cultivating creativity, critical thinking, and assessment methodologies.

Objectives of webinar "Reflective Judgment: Teaching Students to Think Critically In a Time of Information Overload" Participants will be able to:

Appreciate the value of reflective judgment as a learning outcome
Understand the role of educators in helping students to develop reflective judgment
Express improved confidence in their own critical thinking and reflective judgment
Articulate strategies for creating/adapting programs which promote reflective judgment
Identify methods of measuring/assessing reflective judgment

Who should attend

Faculty members and instructors
Faculty development staff
Campus educators

Information source for this event is from the Innovative Educators website http://www.innovativeeducators.org/product_p/230.htm

Sign Up Now for Dec. 4 Webinar on Digital Storytelling

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 21:13:17 +0000

CETL will provide tea and coffee, as well as a short introduction and follow-up discussion to the webinar. All applicants to CETL's Fall 2012 Your Digital Story program are encouraged to attend this webinar. Anyone interested is invited, but you need to sign up by emailing cetl@uwsuper.edu, to reserve your seating and handouts.

Social media has become a hot phrase in education as schools and teachers work to incorporate it into their curriculum and pedagogy. Now it's all too easy to tell students to post a quick reading response on the class page.

Try something better. Try something more complex and more effective. Make them tell the story of their knowledge.

Your students deserve ownership of their learning, and you can give it to them. When they create a story from their knowledge it becomes theirs, and when they post in a public forum they own their ideas. Learn how this exciting pedagogy works by joining Generate Deeper Learning through Digital Storytelling, a Magna Online Seminar on Tuesday, December 4, at 1 p.m. CST.

Digital storytelling involves students in creating a video story that expresses their understanding. The stories can be shared on social media sites for review and feedback from others. This seminar uses examples to demonstrate the fundamental pedagogy of student storytelling and how it can be applied to different fields. Your presenter will show you the steps to develop a digital storytelling lesson plan and how to implement that plan when teaching students. The seminar covers how to assess the outcomes of student storytelling while highlighting the free tools available for publishing stories.

Key Topics From an Experienced Presenter
John Orlando, Ph.D., has developed online programs at a number of universities and is a recognized expert in incorporating technology into teaching for improved educational outcomes. Generate Deeper Learning through Digital Storytelling will teach participants how to:

Harness the variety of uses digital storytelling offers your classroom
Establish a digital storytelling lesson plan
Command the tools for building and publishing digital stories
Use student digital stories as an assessment tool

Who should attend

Faculty members and instructors
Faculty development staff
Campus educators

Information source for this event is from the Magna Publications website http://www.magnapubs.com/catalog/generate-deeper-learning-through-digital-storytelling/

Nov 12 deadline for Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars Application to CETL

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 20:49:38 +0000