For Faculty & Instructors
A primary aim of the CCTL is to foster discussion and reflection among faculty and instructors on both the enduring and emerging features of the teaching and learning landscape. As that landscape shifts, or as perennial challenges take on new significance, our approach is to draw on the perspectives, experiences, and innovations of the University’s teaching community, and to inform those discussions with current pedagogical thinking. Grading, for example, is an enduring practice that has seen renewed attention, as faculty and instructors rethink how to evaluate and provide feedback on student learning, fostered by Exploratory Teaching Groups on mastery-based grading in math and on specifications grading across the University. And an emerging challenge, of course, is AI, which has been addressed in numerous CCTL venues, including in our recently launched series for undergraduates on the science of learning. The CCTL continues to explore, with faculty and instructors, the pedagogical implications of AI tools, often in department-based discussions, which can be requested on our website.
As we look ahead to the rest of the academic year, we welcome faculty and instructors to continue to join us and their colleagues for more engaging pedagogical discussions. Our Winter Quarter reading group, on Rachel Gable’s The Hidden Curriculum, a study of the experiences of first-generation students on elite college campuses, is currently open for registration. An ETG on building teaching-focused mentoring relationships will launch in January. And we look forward to welcoming John Warner, an expert on writing and author of the forthcoming book, More Than Words: How to Think about Writing in the Age of AI, to our Spring Pedagogy Symposium on May 9th. And, as always, we invite faculty and instructors to make an appointment with a member of our team to discuss anything related to their teaching, or to arrange for a facilitated discussion or workshop within your department.
In the meantime, we wish you a restful and festive break!
For Graduate Students
The CCTL Graduate Fellows have been hard at work supporting teaching and learning at the University! This fall, teams of Fellows facilitated the Fundamentals of Teaching Series workshops for graduate instructors across the Divisions, providing introductory pedagogical skills training to over 25 graduate student TAs and instructors. Fellows served as Teaching Mentors for the CCTL’s flagship Course Design and College Teaching course, providing valuable feedback on course design projects and microteaching sessions. Fellows also addressed the needs of educators on campus through their individual projects, including a panel discussion and mini-workshop, “Teaching Every Student: A Panel on Queerness and Pedagogy,” facilitating the microteaching sessions for graduate student instructors in Mathematics, a workshop on mentorship in STEM, and an upcoming event on creative assessment strategies. Look out for more ways to be involved in the graduate student pedagogy community in the Winter Quarter!