3rd-Floor Dining Room, The Knight Center

3rd-Floor Dining Room, The Knight Center

Welcoming Remarks

Beth Fisher (Director, Academic Services, The Teaching Center; Lecturer in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies)
Holden Thorp (Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs; Rita Levi-Montalcini Distinguished University Professor)

Plenary

Barriers and Breakthroughs:  Social-Psychological Interventions to Support Student Success

Mary Murphy (Associate Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Associate Vice Provost for Student Diversity and Inclusion, Indiana University)

Social-psychological research has identified several barriers to fostering and maintaining student motivation and performance, including implicit bias and stereotype threat. However, recent research suggests that brief exercises designed to change how students think or feel in school can raise students’ achievement over months and years. For instance, “growth-mindset” interventions that teach students that intelligence isn’t fixed but, instead, can grow like a muscle, can raise college students’ achievement months into the future. Social-belonging interventions that give students confidence that they belong in school can raise at-risk students’ grade-point-average as long as three years into the future. These interventions are not magic. Instead, they address core psychological concerns students’ experience in school, which can prevent students from taking advantage of learning resources. This talk will review the barriers and breakthroughs identified by this research, focusing on how these interventions can be adapted by educators and implemented at scale in university and teaching settings to benefit students’ motivation, learning, and achievement.

Room 200

Jia Luo (Lecturer, Chemistry)
Dan Moran (Professor, Biomedical Engineering)
Corinna Treitel (Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, History)
Kathy Weston-Hafer (Teaching Professor, Biology)
Patricia Widder (Senior Lecturer, Biomedical Engineering)

With the support of the Office of the Provost, in January 2017 an Inclusive Teaching and Learning (ITL) faculty fellowship was launched by The Teaching Center to facilitate the development and implementation of inclusive-teaching approaches. The first group of ITL fellows are designing an inclusive-syllabus template with the goal of welcoming students into introductory courses (and into the discipline) and providing clear answers to students’ frequently asked questions about the course, in a similar format across different disciplines. The ITL fellows will present the template and describe the pilot implementation of the template in fall 2017, including insights from preliminary responses by students.

Collaborator: Beth Fisher, The Teaching Center

Room 210

Kris Helbling (Subject Librarian, University Libraries)
A. J. Robinson (Subject Librarian, University Libraries)

As more and more texts are consumed in digital formats, has analytical reading become a casualty? This session explores comprehension strategies–such as annotation and collaborative analysis–that you can share with students to help them learn to read analytically on a screen.

Room 220

Erin Solomon (Research Scientist and Project Manager, Center for Integrative Research on Cognition, Learning, and Education, CIRCLE)

How do STEM instructors implement active learning with clickers? In this session, we describe a study of how  Washington University faculty have used clicker-based active learning in their classrooms over a two-year period, emphasizing the procedures they used and how they situated the activities within their class sessions. Using a mixed-method approach, the researchers categorized instructors into four implementation styles based on quantitative observation data, and conducted qualitative interviews with the instructors to further understand why they used these styles.

Collaborators: Michelle Repice (The Career Center); Jacinta Mutambuki (The Teaching Center); Denise Leonard (The Teaching Center); Cheryl Cohen (Veterans Administration Information Resource Center); Jia Luo  (Chemistry); Gina Frey (CIRCLE, Chemistry)

Room 211

Angela Fink (Project Manager & Research Scientist, CIRCLE)

A growing body of research suggests that social-psychological interventions can boost the achievement of students who are under-prepared for college-level coursework or who belong to groups historically under-represented in higher education. We examine the logic behind one such approach, a “growth-mindset” intervention, and present experimental evidence showing its impact on under-represented students in the first semester of General Chemistry at Washington University. Angela will open the floor for discussion about how the “growth-mindset” framework might be incorporated into different courses and where it might offer the greatest benefits.

Collaborators: Mike Cahill (CIRCLE); Arielle Hoffman (CIRCLE); Mark McDaniel (CIRCLE); Gina Frey (CIRCLE, Chemistry)

With thanks to the General Chemistry instructors for their support of this project: Bill Buhro, Megan Daschbach, Rich Loomis, Jia Luo, and Gaby Szteinberg.

Room 200  [Please note: this session is FULL; please register for another session at this time.]

Tim Bono (Lecturer, Psychological & Brain Sciences; Assistant Dean for Assessment & Analytics, Arts & Sciences)

Helping students persevere through challenging coursework involves more than teaching them the rudiments of a problem set or term paper. This presentation outlines psychological research centered on the nature of resilience and self-esteem in the face of adversity. We will address impediments to the “growth mindset” among Washington University students and discuss strategies instructors can use to overcome these impediments to foster resilience.

Room 210

Ty Davisson (Director, Emergency Management)
Chet Hunter (Assistant Director, Emergency Management, Danforth Campus)
Ryan Nicholls (Assistant Director, Emergency Management, Medical Campus)

This session will explore the dynamic natural and human-caused hazards that impact faculty, staff, and students at Washington University and the importance of being prepared to respond in the classroom. Ty, Chet, and Ryan  will discuss specific roles in emergencies, as well as strategies that can help you be better prepared to lead and direct students during a crisis.

Room 220

Denise Leonard (Associate Director, Academic Services, The Teaching Center)

In this session, participants will learn strategies for integrating active-learning activities with student-response systems, or clickers.  Topics will include the benefits of using clickers in the classroom, as well as best practices for combining clicker questions with other methods–such as lecture, discussions, and group work.

Room 211

Peter Monahan (Interim Director, The College Writing Program; Literacy Assessment Coordinator)
Matthew Shipe (Lecturer and Director of Advanced Writing, English Department)

We assume our students’ writing will improve between matriculation and graduation, but measuring that improvement is a complicated endeavor. For over a decade, the University Assessment Committee has been collecting, assessing, and comparing writing by first-year and fourth-year students. The results give us a better picture of what Wash U students do well or poorly, as well as their default strategies for composition. After presenting key features of the university’s assessment methods, Peter and Matthew will lead a discussion of how the assessment results can inform approaches to improving student writing across the disciplines.

Collaborators: Heidi Kolk (University Assessment and American Culture Studies), Dustin Iler (The College Writing Program), Erika Conti (Romance Languages and Literatures)

3rd-Floor Dining Room, The Knight Center

Room 200 [Please note: this session is FULL; please register for another session at this time.]

Beth Fisher (Director, Academic Services, The Teaching Center and Lecturer in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies)
Meg Gregory (Assistant Director, Academic Services, The Teaching Center)

One of the most widely shared goals across the disciplines is to teach our students to think critically. But how do we define critical thinking and how do we teach it? This interactive session will provide an opportunity for participants to refine their understanding of what constitutes critical thinking as it relates to their respective disciplines, as well as to discuss effective approaches for teaching students to improve their critical-thinking skills.

Room 210

Carl Craver (Professor, Philosophy and Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology)

Carl will describe his experiences working with a team of undergraduates, graduate students, post-docs, and staff in Digital Humanities to mine online databases for information about the history of neuroimaging. He will describe the project, including how the team was assembled and the resources he has used. Carl will also illustrate how his students are learning to use network-analysis software to make novel discoveries about the history of science at the same time that they are gaining marketable skills in an area of humanities research that will become increasingly important in the future.

Room 211

Janie Brennan (Lecturer, Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering)

Many of us remember following a litany of step-by-step laboratory instructions in our undergraduate courses, the purpose ostensibly being to teach us laboratory skills and technical knowledge. How many of us then entered a research laboratory or workplace only to be stumped on how to begin to solve a real experimental problem? Using the redevelopment of a senior-level chemical engineering lab course as a case study, this session discusses methods for incorporating team roles, grading with rubrics, and emphasizing critical thinking and skill building in lab courses.

Collaborator: Erin Solomon (CIRCLE)

Room 220

Douglas Char (Professor, Emergency Medicine)
Steve Taff (Associate Professor, Occupational Therapy and Medicine)

Regardless of health-provider intentions, miscommunication and a lack of cultural understanding can contribute to poor health outcomes and decreased compliance with care and therapy. Research suggests that providing culturally competent care may decrease health disparities and increase positive health outcomes for all patients. This session details the results of a systematic literature review of instructional methods used in teaching concepts related to diversity, inclusion, and cultural competence in healthcare-professions education. Potential future implications for curriculum and instruction will also be discussed.

Collaborator: Melissa Brottman (Occupational Therapy)

Room 200

Jacinta Mutambuki (STEM Education Research Associate, The Teaching Center)

Metacognition is often defined as “thinking about one’s thinking,” including both the processes we use and our awareness of our ability to plan, monitor, and assess our understanding – all key ingredients for effective learning. The literature indicates that we are not always good at assessing our own learning and judging our performance. This session will focus on specific classroom strategies and activities to increase students’ metacognitive awareness, so that they may become more effective learners.

Room 210

Purvi Patel (Assistant Director, Center for Diversity and Inclusion)
Christi Smith (Assistant Dean and Senior Scholar, Inclusion and Engagement, Center for Diversity and Inclusion)

Students who experience bias on campus may turn to a faculty member for help and support. This engaging workshop will help faculty members understand the ways in which Washington University students experience bias and will provide strategies for supporting students who look to faculty members for help in these challenging situations.

Room 211

Douglas Dowd (Professor of Art and American Culture Studies; Director, D. B. Dowd Modern Graphic History Library)
Heidi Kolk (Associate Director of American Culture Studies, Assistant Director, University Assessment, Lecturer in American Cultural Studies and English Literature)

Contemporary students are eager for experiences that go beyond reading texts, and tomorrow’s academicians will be expected to integrate fluently diverse cultural matter into course materials. This session will provide a workshop experience in close reading and looking, drawing on the resources of the Department of Special Collections in Washington University Libraries. Participants will i) engage objects and images as evidence and ii) explore communities of production and reception.

Room 220

Steve Taff (Associate Professor, Occupational Therapy and Medicine)

Initiated as part of the Provost’s “Bring Your Own Idea” program, the Cross-Campus Educational Research Group (C2ERG) serves as a scholarly teaching forum for faculty from the Danforth and Medical campuses. This group discusses a variety of educational strategies and innovations, and it explores how these could be studied in multidisciplinary contexts to determine factors that positively impact student engagement, motivation, and learning. In this session, the presenters will lead a conversation about the groups’ history, structure and process, as well as discuss implications for the scholarship of teaching and learning as a collaborative, university-wide effort.

Collaborator: Gina Frey (CIRCLE, Department of Chemistry)

3rd-Floor Dining Room, The Knight Center

To win an attendance prize, participants must be present at the reception when winners’ names are drawn.