Author: Andrew Bell

Transitions
From the digging up of tulip bulbs to the reduced density of yellow dust on everything outdoors, there are plenty of signs that spring term is ending. As we transition from the academic year to summer, I’m remembering the past few weeks of celebratory events, from inauguration activities to research symposia and retirement parties, with the accomplishments of students, faculty, and staff continually recognized and celebrated. Each event marked a transition and provided a necessary pause for reflection and the creation of new memories.

One of the most memorable events of my spring term also served as a timely reminder of why we do what we do as faculty. This year, I was honored to attend the end-of-year celebration of the Department of Theatre and Dance – a wonderfully entertaining and memorable evening that included a costumed coronavirus (Johann Stegmeir) chasing a classroom teacher dressed in full personal protective gear (Anne Van Gelder), accompanied by pursuit and escape music and lighting! Interspersed with departmental awards and costume changes with comedic skits (Johann and Anne), several graduating students gave memorable and heartwarming speeches about their experiences at UR, describing the guidance, education, sense of community, and developmental support they experienced along the way. It was a poignant reminder, as we find all across campus, of who we are when we chant “we are…UR” – we are a caring and committed group of talented artists and scholars who can, alone and together, have remarkable impact on students’ lives. Messaging like this about the positive experiences of our students occurs throughout the year, but it becomes more meaningful when we hear it from the students who are themselves in transition, and reflecting on their last four years—the students who will graduate next weekend.

Sometimes we don’t hear those messages clearly, though, as we are in the midst of our own transitions, or are too busy to reflect. It can be helpful, then, to remember that these transitions are part of the academic year cycle and to try to find the necessary time to reflect, to remember, and even, if necessary, to re-boot.

Unfortunately, re-booting isn’t as simple as selecting the “restart” button on your computer when it becomes stuck or frozen. Re-booting is going to be a series of actions over time to address pace, routines, and priorities. Some delays may occur until prior commitments are resolved but, when the time is right, re-booting allows greater intentionality and better integration of well-being into our lives. Re-booting is a necessary practice to avoid errors and malfunction when you finally re-start your computer. Likewise, a re-boot seems particularly important in the transition to summer 2022 and we encourage you to reach out to the Faculty Hub as part of your re-boot when the time is right for you. Some of the opportunities in this newsletter may speak to your interests and we always welcome your feedback about supporting teaching and scholarship when the time is right for you.

Best wishes for your transition to summer,

Linda Boland
Associate Provost for Faculty, Director of the Teaching and Scholarship Hub, and Professor of Biology

Read the full newsletter here to catch up on upcoming events and check out some useful resources.

A big part of what we do in the Faculty Hub is encouraging and facilitating faculty learning together. This month, we wrap up some of our semester-based and academic year-based faculty cohorts including those focusing on inclusive pedagogy (two groups this year!), digital pedagogy (one each semester), and professional development for early career faculty. These are just some of the groups that meet regularly with and within the Faculty Hub. Faculty who have participated in the cohorts will be present to connect with other faculty at the upcoming Celebration of Teaching on Thursday, April 14 at 3:30 p.m. We invite all instructors to join the festivities! RSVP here. Please also let us know if you have a small group that we can help support. For example, some faculty have been gathering in the Faculty Hub to write together. More information about writing space is available in this newsletter. Also, a small group has been gathering from time to time over the past two academic years, to explore alternative assessment practices, including ungrading – a process that capitalizes on the benefits of formative feedback to guide learning and with adherence to a growth mindset. To understand why some faculty find this to be a transformational teaching and learning experience, please see Libby Gruner’s article in The Conversation and reach out to the Faculty Hub if you would like to learn more! In these and other activities, our goal has been to facilitate faculty-faculty learning and community building while also offering individualized faculty professional development support. In this month’s newsletter, we invite you to explore the opportunities and services we offer; as always, please reach out to us if you have unmet needs that we can discuss with you.

The Faculty Hub Team

Read the full newsletter here to catch up on upcoming events and check out some useful resources.

March has long been a favorite month of mine, partly because of the excitement of March Madness, the NCAA’s marketing term for the final tournament that crowns championship teams in men’s and women’s basketball. March Madness is the pageantry of a three-week event of “one-and-done” games with non-stop media coverage. The “madness” is the amazing, last-second winning shots, the underdogs sometimes coming out on top, and the incredible individual performances and teamwork. It is, despite all the analytics and prognostications, a period of unpredictability, and it repeatedly exposes raw human emotions, from extreme exhilaration to intense disappointment.

Madness was also a subject of study of the late neurologist Oliver Sacks (1933-2015), a passionate optimist and humanist who turned clinical case studies into narratives that reflect underlying positive aspects of the human condition. Sacks’s stories about madness juxtaposed disturbances of the mind with features that many would consider desirable, such as explosive energy and creativity. His writings remind us that we experience positive and negative at the same time: successes alongside disappointments, winning shots as well as the ones that don’t make it.

The time period after spring break has always felt like madness to me as we begin a sprint to the finish with numerous projects to supervise, theses to review, letters of recommendation to write, and celebrations to attend. This year, I want the madness of March to retain a sense of optimism so that we appreciate how hard we have worked individually and collectively and how far we have come. Shining moments for students will abound and there will also be many opportunities to recognize the achievements of the faculty in the next two months. Beginning with the annual Faculty Accomplishments Reception this week and including a new Celebration of Teaching next month, congratulatory events remain important for supporting one another. Beyond the culminating works we will celebrate, we also recognize that the shining moments surface daily in all of the ways that faculty work impacts others – on the stage, in classrooms, studios, and labs, and for those who read, view, or experience our work. As the semester continues, the Faculty Hub hopes to learn more about the sources of your explosive energy and creativity and ways that we can support you as you continually grow as a teacher and scholar. Our March newsletter highlights some of the opportunities we are offering, and we look forward to helping you navigate the madness!

Linda Boland
Associate Provost for Faculty, Director of the Teaching and Scholarship Hub, and Professor of Biology

Read the full newsletter here to catch up on upcoming events and check out some useful resources.

Welcome to February, that short, bleak, month into which we pack the celebration of two presidents, four hundred years of Black History, and the hearts and flowers of romantic love. It’s the longest stretch of the semester without a break, and if you began the semester already tired, as I did, it may all just seem like too much.

The Faculty Hub held two sessions on sustainable teaching recently, and we listened as we also discussed recovering our joy and purpose, boundary-setting, and finding efficiencies. What we heard is what you probably already know: that the past five semesters have both created and exposed enormous challenges to our conventional teaching practices. We simply cannot go on as before and be either equitable or sustainable.

So we invite you to think with us as we focus this month on the twin challenges—and promises—of equity and sustainability. On February 11, we welcome Dr. Bedelia Richards, founder of RaceTalk LLC and Associate Professor of Sociology, for a facilitated conversation on creating an inclusive environment in the classroom. Learn more and register here. Dr. Richards draws on her research and teaching practice to offer sustainable and effective practices for building trust and supporting all students, especially those with marginalized identities. We are also happy to welcome Dr. Janelle Peifer, Assistant Professor of Psychology, as our newest Faculty Hub Associate. You can read more about Dr. Peifer elsewhere in this newsletter; she’ll be working with us to facilitate conversations on building affective capacity for avoiding and dealing with microaggressions. Both faculty and students have been asking for these conversations and we are delighted to be able to offer them.

We also invite you to continue to think with us about how to make our own practices more sustainable. Whether that’s “bundling” Zoom appointments and working from home sometimes to avoid a commute, or streamlining assessments and feedback to be both more timely and more efficient, we’d love to talk about solutions that work. You may also find some of them in our Morning Blend archive—a sustainable approach to faculty development, with 10-15 minute recorded presentations and tip sheets on a variety of topics for you to access on your own time. (Or, of course, join us live on Thursday at 9 am (over Zoom) or Friday at 10:30 in the Hub for the newest offerings!)

Finally, sustainability is a matter of equity: we cannot serve our students if we don’t take care of ourselves, and of the environment around us. And our students deserve to see us setting boundaries and taking care, so that they, too, learn these important skills for themselves. I hope we can work together, not only during this short month but every month, to raise our awareness of how sustainability and equity are linked—to slow down, take a deep breath, and focus on what really matters.

Libby Gruner
Coordinator for Faculty Development in Teaching, Faculty Hub, and Professor of English 

Read the full newsletter here to catch up on upcoming events and check out some useful resources.

Faculty Hub Associate: 

The Faculty Hub invites applications for a one-semester position as Faculty Hub Associate to work closely with Faculty Hub staff in creating and facilitating a series of workshops and/or discussions on a focused topic related to inclusive pedagogy. If you have an expertise or interest in specific topics related to ensuring inclusive classroom environments, we invite your application to serve as a Faculty Hub Associate for the spring semester of 2022. In this pilot program for a one-semester appointment, the Faculty Hub Associate will receive a stipend of $2,000 upon completion of the work.   

Eligibility and Time Commitment: 

We invite applications from all University of Richmond tenured faculty or non-tenure track faculty with similar teaching experience (minimum six years) who have expertise to advance faculty professional development in one or more of the following areas:  universal design for learning, facilitating difficult conversations in the classroom, anti-racist pedagogy, avoiding or handling microaggressions in the classroom. 

The Faculty Hub Associate will be expected to: 

• • • Work with Faculty Hub staff to plan, develop, and facilitate three or four one-hour discussions in faculty-facing workshops or conversations during Spring 2022. 
    • Produce an additional deliverable for the Faculty Hub, such as a brief video, podcast, blog post, case study for discussion, or other resource to guide faculty development.  
    • Commit to regular planning sessions with Faculty Hub staff during Spring 2022.  

Application Instructions: 

Applicants should complete this brief application and upload their CV as part of the application process. 

Deadline: 

The application deadline is December 8, 2021. We will schedule brief interviews with applicants to assess the potential impact of the proposed work, the ability to complete the work in one semester, and the opportunity of the work to expand faculty development opportunities in the Faculty Hub. 

 

When I started teaching in the Biology Department, I was enthusiastic to incorporate active learning with data into my classroom. My ideal activities asked students to use data and graphs to draw conclusions from studies that tested biological principles. Unfortunately, I kept running into student discomfort with very basic data skills such as organizing, summarizing, and graphing that resulted in short activities becoming lengthy and frustrating. To help students acquire data literacy skills, I started scaffolding data tutorials into most of my classes alongside biology concepts.

While this worked well, I wanted more time to engage students in thinking deeply about the presentation of data in biology and society. And I was anxious to advance my own knowledge, as my graduate training was not keeping pace with the tools now used by many in my field. I decided to invest more time in using Program R and learning pedagogical approaches for building student enthusiasm for coding. I just needed a nudge of confidence and support, and the pilot year of the Faculty Hub Associates program came at the perfect time to explore approaches for teaching data literacy at UR.

As I learned from the experiences of others, I’ve collected and curated materials for low stakes ways to build data skills in students across disciplines. Some of my favorite resources include:

• • • Engaging students with graphs and data presentation in the media
      • What’s Going On in This Graph? from the NYT
      • Figure of the Day from QUBES
  • • Examples and case studies from Calling Bullshit
      • Also see the tips sheet from the Faculty Hub Book Club
  • • Emphasizing fundamentals in data management and Excel
      • Data organization lessons from Data Carpentry
      • Spreadsheet tutorials from HHMI BioInteractive
  • • Having students use data to reflect on their habits using the Dear Data project
      • Example class assignment
  • • Taking a game break in class (or at home!) with Charty Party
      • The All Ages edition can be purchased, borrowed from the Faculty Hub, or I adapted a virtual versionthat can be played in Jamboards or Google Slides

Initiatives in Data Analytics and Data Science highlight the investment on campus for building student data skills. These include the quantitative data literacy general education requirement, the proposed interdisciplinary Data Science & Statistics Minor, strengths in Digital Humanities and Spatial Analysis, and the recent purchase of a high-performance computing cluster and webserver. Courses that build student skills in programming and data analysis are already available across disciplines, and these initiatives strengthen the programs and resources that prepare students for a data-rich world.

For biology students, the increasing availability of environmental and public health data makes learning skills in exploration and visualization vital. My colleague Angie Hilliker and I developed a new upper-level biology course to address this need called Data Visualization and Communication for Biologists (syllabus).

As we explored topics in data visualization, we introduced students to Tableau and Program R and it was the first time either of us taught with these tools. While it was great to give students exposure to multiple platforms, doing both well was hard and we’ll likely shift more towards Program R when we offer the course again. There are pros and cons for including Program R in undergrad biology courses due to the time needed to develop confidence and independence with coding and it really helped to have an entire course focused on these skills. Our students were highly enthusiastic about learning data skills, and reported valuing the tools they learned for their future careers.

Thank you to the Faculty Hub for supporting my exploration of new skills and pedagogy. Despite being mostly virtual, I really valued spending time at the Hub with Linda Boland, Ryan Brazell, Kylie Korsnack, Andrew Bell, and Jane Bise as well as fellow Hub Associates Libby Gruner and Kristine Nolin. I explored several other new teaching approaches during my time in the Hub, including social annotation tools to increase student engagement and accountability with course readings (Perusall was a game changer for having students show up to class having done the reading). I am grateful for the support of the Biology Department and chair Krista Stenger for developing a new course and especially to Angie Hilliker for teaching with me.

The Faculty Hub will be holding open houses in our new space on August 23-27 at 10 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Stop by for a tour and informal conversation with your colleagues about the return to in-person teaching! (Note that the 2:30 p.m. session will not be offered on August 26. Please join us for the Grand Opening at 4 p.m. instead.)

The Faculty Hub is located on the third floor of Boatwright Library. Direct elevator access is available on the first floor of the Boatwright Library Administrative Wing, across from Room 022. No reservations are necessary.

Even though I had a relatively “easy” pandemic, my body is feeling the effects of the past year. While I stayed intentional about exercise, I also found myself sitting far more than I did in my pre-pandemic life, when I might have stood and paced about a classroom, walked across campus for a meeting, or even stood at my desk. While I fashioned a standing desk in my home office, I quickly discovered that it didn’t work well for Zoom teaching, which required me to stay put a little more than I like to while standing.

So I sat. And that sitting has taken a toll, and my right hip, especially, requires attention. Daily home PT and a monthly massage are now on my required maintenance schedule (and, yes, I am over 60, thanks for asking!).

But as I was on the massage table the other day, I realized that therapeutic massage is a good metaphor for the kind of pedagogy we may need to practice on our return. Because—much as some of us might wish it[1]—this will not be a return to normal. We will all have sore spots. Some will have injuries, both visible and hidden. And attending to one spot may trigger an unexpected response in another, just as sometimes my massage therapist simply holds my head and my shoulders and even hips respond.

Some painful areas will require work—and here, too, the massage therapy metaphor seems apt. Not every injury can be addressed by direct attention or deep tissue massage. Some require a lighter touch. Sometimes just acknowledging the pain and the fact that it may affect performance will go a long way toward healing. Ignoring and denying the pain, and trying to use the muscles as we always have, will cause greater damage—rest, hydration, and gentle attention are far more likely to lead to healing. [Note: I am neither a doctor nor a trained massage therapist. Deploy metaphors literally at your own risk.]

What might this mean for the classroom, and for our own return, though?

I think there are two sets of responses. First are the things that are sort of like home PT: the things we can do ourselves, though they do require attention. Second are the ones that are more like therapeutic massage or PT on-site (take your pick of metaphor): things that require the attention of an expert, but that we can learn to do with some help.

So, for the first, we need to start just by paying attention: to our bodies, our feelings, and the feelings of our students. Some of our students have never been on campus before. Some finished out high school remotely. Some got sick—I had more than one Covid-19 case among my own students, and at least one is still struggling with long Covid symptoms. What accommodations might those students need? What might we?

Paying attention, checking in mindfully with ourselves and our students, will give us a baseline to work from. Perhaps the syllabus accommodations that we made last year should continue going forward, for example. I learned in one class that reducing the number of texts we read did not reduce learning outcomes, because the students had more time to read, reflect, and write. Maybe we need to check in more frequently with students, whether that’s simply through low-stakes assignments that keep them engaged with the material between classes, or actual emails and invitations to office hours. I know, too, that I’ll be keeping my Zoom office hours to supplement in-person ones, as they offer a low bar to entry for many students who are nervous about entering my office. But we may especially benefit from attending to trauma-informed pedagogy strategies, including transparency (talking about what we’ve all been through), mindfulness (remembering why we’re here, and taking time to focus and breathe), and inclusiveness (incorporating strategies that center student learning needs).

So that brings us to the second kind of response—the massage, as it were. At the Faculty Hub, we’ve spent the summer talking about our return. We’ve got a lovely new space to share with you, and we are eager to support faculty in the return to whatever the new normal looks like. We can consult with you on anything I’ve mentioned above, of course (except massage—though we do have campus resources for that!). We will also have some specific programs that may be of particular interest as we negotiate our return:

• • Syllabus Workshop, August 17, 1:00 – 2:15 (in person); repeated August 18, 10:30 – 11:45 am (over Zoom). Bring a syllabus you want to work on and come to discuss strategies for revising/updating your syllabus for inclusion and accessibility.
    • • Register for In-person Workshop (capped at 20 participants)
      • Register for Zoom Workshop (no registration cap)
  • Teaching Squares, ongoing program during fall 2021. An opportunity for groups of faculty to engage in mutual peer observation, to examine their own teaching in the context of new approaches observed, and to reflect on how the teaching positively affects student engagement.
  • Facilitated Course Assessment, ongoing. This is a new service that we are offering, in which Faculty Hub staff will survey your students and facilitate small group discussions with them to assess how particular pedagogical strategies are going, or to obtain mid-course feedback. The discussions will be confidential and formative, to assess student perceptions of their learning motivation, sense of belonging, or other topics relevant to your own pedagogy.
  • Faculty Hub Conversations, ongoing. This year we will continue our practice of co-facilitating discussions of topics of concern to faculty, including providing feedback on written work, facilitating class discussions, working with this year’s first-year students, etc. Let us know if there’s a topic you’d like us to host.

Please also make sure to stop by the open houses we’ll be holding during August (weekdays at 10 and 2:30, August 19-27)—during that week, we’ll hold informal conversations about the return after our morning open houses on August 20, 23, 25, and 27, so come for the open house and stick around for the conversation. Please also plan to come to our grand opening on August 26 to meet, greet, and explore the new space. I’m also listing a few articles below, including those linked in this piece, as potential resources. We look forward to working with you, to getting those knots out, and to defining a new normal that is accessible to all.

[1] As scholars of color and disability advocates too numerous to mention (but here are details from a few) have pointed out, “normal” was not necessarily equitable or accessible. We need to do better than normal.

Resources:

(Note that a number of these articles came out before the pandemic, which in some cases merely highlighted existing issues and inequities in our practices. Not every article is applicable to every situation, but this list offers a range of suggestions for our return that may spark some interest for you.)

One Way to Show Students You Care—And Why You Might Want to Try It (Becky Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Ed, August 29, 2018)

Students Struggling with Mental Health Often Confide in Professors. They Want More Guidance on How to Help. (Audrey Williams June, Chronicle of Higher Ed, May 17, 2021)

A Pedagogy of Kindness (Catherine Denial, Hybrid Pedagogy, August 15, 2019)

Pedagogy of Healing: Bearing Witness to Trauma and Resilience (Mays Imad, Inside Higher Ed, July 8, 2021)

Dead Ideas: Reflections for Post-Pandemic Learning (Soulaymane Kachani, Catherine Ross, and Amanda Irvin, Inside Higher Ed, June 16, 2021)

More Pandemic Consequences for Underrepresented Students (Greta Anderson, Inside Higher Ed, September 16, 2020)

Back to ‘Normal’ Isn’t Good Enough (Daniel E. Dawes and Brian C. Castrucci, STAT, February 10, 2021)

As Colleges Strive for a Return to Normal, Students with Disabilities Say, ‘No, Thanks’ (Serena Puang, Chronicle of Higher Ed, May 11, 2021)

Returning to ‘Normal’ is Really a Return to Ignorance (Torrey Trust, Times Higher Education, June 20, 2021)

Greetings and happy new year from the Faculty Hub!

Below is a list of our schedule for January – please follow the links for registration information.  Sessions with the same title are duplicate sessions (#1, #2, etc). 

Wed., Jan. 6

Conversation: Student Workload (1st offering)

Across the country, students have expressed concern that the shift to remote learning has coincided with a substantial increase in workload. Is this the case or are instructors simply distributing and assessing coursework differently? If the latter, how can we help students adjust to and manage new or different workflows? Please join faculty from across campus to engage in informal conversation around this topic. Consider reading “The Strange Case of the Exploding Student Workload” prior to joining this session.

Time: 10-10:50 a.m.

Register: Conversation: Student Workload #1

 Panel: Alternative Assessment Methods

Are you planning to use or considering an alternative assessment method such as oral exams, student self-assessments, “ungrading,” or portfolio grading in your spring courses? This 50-min panel will feature short presentations (5-7 min) by Della Dumbaugh (Mathematics), Jan French (Anthropology), and Chris Miller (Political Science) followed by Q&A and open discussion on these alternative assessment methods. This panel will be moderated by Libby Gruner (Faculty Hub Associate, English).

Time: 2-2:50 p.m.

Register: Panel: Alternative Assessment Methods

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Thurs., Jan. 7

Conversation: Course Design

Do you want an opportunity to reflect on the alignment between your course objectives, assessments, and course activities? Do you want to get feedback from others as you finalize your course design plans for the spring? Join us for this conversation to receive a few resources related to “backwards course design” and to have an opportunity to engage with faculty colleagues from across campus in an informal conversation about your course design process.

Time: 10-10:50 a.m.

Register: Conversation: Course Design

Morning Blend: Bb Course Organization

Do you have questions about how to organize your course materials in Blackboard? Join the Faculty Hub for Morning Blend on Blackboard Course Organization. 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 discussion on strategies for organizing your course materials in Blackboard.

Time: 1-1:45 p.m.  (yes, this is an afternoon option–it’s morning somewhere!)

Zoom: Morning Blend Zoom room  (No registration required)

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Fri., Jan. 8

Morning Blend: Bb Course Organization

We will offer a second session of Morning Blend on Friday morning.

Time: 9-9:45 a.m.

Zoom: Morning Blend Zoom room  (No registration required)

Workshop: Blended Classroom Experience #1

Do you want to experiment with blended learning before the spring semester begins? This workshop is designed to give faculty the opportunity to experience the blended classroom from multiple perspectives: remote learner, in-class learner, and in-class instructor. During this 90-minute session, each instructor will facilitate a brief 15-minute lecture, learning activity, and/or discussion. Then, remote and in-class learners will have the opportunity to provide feedback and reflections on their experiences. While the number of remote learners is not limited, we must cap the number of in-class learners to 10 and in-class instructors to 3.

Note: Priority registration for this initial session will be given to new or returning faculty who did not teach in-person last semester.  This workshop is also offered on January 14 and 15.

Time: 10:30-12 p.m.

Register:  Workshop: Blended Classroom Experience #1

Panel: Alternative Assessment Projects

Are you planning to use or considering an alternative assessment project such as podcasts, digital projects, or group projects? This 50-min panel will feature short presentations (5-7 min) by Dan Chen (Political Science), Melissa Freilich (Theatre & Dance), and Caroline Weist (Language, Literatures & Cultures) followed by Q&A and open discussion on these types of final projects.

Time: 1-1:50 p.m.

Register: Panel: Alternative Assessment Projects

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Mon., Jan. 11

Workshop: Inclusive Pedagogy – Transparency

How can we use the concept of transparency to design more inclusive learning environments for our students? In this workshop, we will explore three teaching areas – the learning environment, the design of assignments, and grading practices – through the lens of transparency. Drawing from both research on inclusive teaching and the practical experiences of one another, we will work together to identify concrete strategies and tools for building more transparency into each respective area of our teaching. This 75-minute workshop will include time for participants to get feedback from colleagues on a teaching approach or artifact. Participants are encouraged to come to the workshop with a course policy, assignment description, or a grading approach in mind that they would like to make more transparent.

Time: 11-12:15pm

Register: Workshop: Transparent Teaching

Conversation: Student Workload (2^nd offering)

We will offer a second opportunity to engage in dialogue about helping students manage and/or adjust to the workloads associated with remote and blended learning. See description above or click the registration link below for full details.

Time: 1-1:50 p.m.

Register: Conversation: Student Workload #2

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Tues., Jan. 12

Panel: Tips for Engaging Students on Zoom

Is it possible to adapt videoconferencing technology to promote student engagement in learning? Having now used Zoom for teaching in online and blended coursed, we have found several ways to promote student engagement and inclusive teaching. Our tips will be shared with plenty of time for participants to ask questions or share their own tips! Panelists include Linda Boland, (Faculty Hub, Biology), Jessica Erickson, (Associate Dean for Faculty Development, Law) and special guest panelist, Claire Howell Major, Professor of Higher Education Administration at the University of Alabama and author of several books, including Teaching Online: A Guide to Theory, Research, and Practice.

Time: 11-11:50 a.m.

Register:  Panel: Zoom Pedagogy

 Panel: Social Annotation

Are you planning to use or considering whether to integrate social annotation into your spring courses?  This 50-min panel will feature short presentations (5-10 min) by Kristine Grayson (Faculty Hub Associate, Biology) and Libby Gruner (Faculty Hub Associate, English) followed by Q&A and open discussion. The panelists will discuss how/why they incorporated social annotation into their pedagogy with examples from Perusall and Hypothes.is.

Time: 2-2:50 p.m.

Register: Panel: Social Annotation

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Wed., Jan. 13

Faculty Hub Institute: Data Visualizations in R

Click on the registration link to learn more about this multi-session, all-day faculty development opportunity.

Time: All Day

Register: Institute: Data Visualizations in R

Panel:  Making Use of an Imperfect Tool—Using Your SEI Results to Improve Your Teaching

University-administered student evaluations of instruction (SEIs) are imperfect tools.  As instructors, how can we re-frame our SEIs as formative?  Are there strategies for working with SEIs that can make them a useful professional development tool?  This 50-minute panel will feature brief presentations by Carthene Bazemore-Walker (Assistant Dean for Diversity, Inclusivity, and Thriving, A & S), Don Forsyth (Jepson School of Leadership), and Joe Ben Hoyle (Accounting, Robins School of Business), with time for Q & A on how to make use of your SEIs.  Moderated by Linda Boland (Faculty Hub, Biology).

Time:  10-10:50 a.m.

Register: Panel: Making Use of an Imperfect Tool

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Thurs., Jan. 14

Panel: Collaborative Documents

Are you planning to use or want to learn more about using collaborative documents to engage students in your blended or remote courses? This 50-min panel will feature short presentations (5-10 min) by Saif Mekhari (Economics) and Fernando Otalora-Luna (Biology) followed by Q&A and open discussion. These panelists will discuss how/why they incorporated collaborative documents into their pedagogy and how their approach impacted student learning.

Time: 10-10:50 a.m.

Register: Panel: Collaborative Documents

Morning Blend: First Day

How do you approach the first day of a blended or remote class? Do you have strategies to share for cultivating community, connection, and curiosity on the first day? Join the Faculty Hub for our next session of Morning Blend: First Day. 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 strategies for approaching the first day of class.

Time: 1-1:45 p.m.

Zoom: Morning Blend Zoom room  (No registration required)

Workshop: Blended Classroom Experiences #2

We will offer a second session of the Blended Classroom Experience. See description from January 8 (above) or click the registration link below for full details.

Time: 2-3:30 p.m.

Register:  Blended Classroom Experience #2

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Fri., Jan. 15

Morning Blend: First Day

We will offer a second session of Morning Blend on Friday morning (see above for full details).

Time: 9-9:45 a.m.

Zoom: Morning Blend Zoom room  (No registration required)

Faculty Hub Workshop: Blended Classroom Experiences #3

We will offer a third session of the Blended Classroom Experience. See description from January 8 (above) or click the registration link below for full details.

Time: 10:30-noon

Register: Blended Classroom Experience #3