Greetings and best wishes for a good start to your spring semester! Below please find information about new professional development events in the Faculty Hub.
Faculty Hub Book Talk: Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It with Dr. James Lang
Why are attention and focus so difficult and so important to effective learning? What is the impact of technology on attention spans? What role can teachers play in facilitating attention and reducing distraction in students? If these questions interest you, we invite you to join a Faculty Hub book talk by Dr. James Lang, author of Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It. To learn more, please see a series of articles by Lang in the Chronicle of Higher Education that cover some of the topics from this book.
Sign up here to join this book talk on Monday, February 15 from 3-4:15 p.m.
The first 40 people to register will receive a copy of the book through campus mail. If you are teaching remotely and are unable to come to campus, please indicate this on your registration form and provide your mailing address.
The Faculty Hub will also facilitate a discussion on Friday, February 19 from 9-9:45 a.m. to explore how we can employ some of Lang’s ideas in our teaching. As Lang’s book was written just prior to COVID-19, we want to explore how to facilitate student attention and focus in our new teaching modes. No registration is required for the follow-up session which will use this Zoom link.
A Faculty Hub Working Group on Alternative Assessments is a new opportunity to discuss specifications grading, portfolio grading, oral exams, ungrading, student self-evaluation, and other alternative assessments of learning. If you’ve ever considered implementing an alternative form of assessment in one or more of your classes, or if you’re doing so now, please consider joining with other faculty for regular discussions this semester to share ideas and resources, promising practices, and pitfalls. Meetings will be held over Zoom at mutually convenient times, and the group will determine the frequency of meetings (but probably no more than once a month). Contact Libby Gruner at egruner@richmond.edu by Friday, January 22, for more information or to join the group.
Please join us for the Faculty Hub’s Morning Blend sessions: (1) Social Annotation on Thursday, January 21 at 1 p.m. and Friday, January 22 at 9 a.m. and (2) Active Learning: Peer to Peer Thursday, January 28 at 1 p.m. and Fri January 29 at 9 a.m. Grab a cup of coffee or tea and join us for a short presentation (10-15 minutes), a takeaway document (tip sheet), and an informal open discussion on each topic. All Morning Blend meetings will use this Zoom URL, no registration required.