3rd-Floor Dining Room, The Knight Center

3rd-Floor Dining Room, The Knight Center

Welcoming Remarks
Holden Thorp (Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor For Academic Affairs; Rita Levi-Montalcini Distinguished University Professor)

Panel on Inclusive Teaching and Learning at Washington University
Adrienne D. Davis (Vice Provost; William M. Van Cleve Professor, School of Law)
Jennifer M. Kapczynski (Associate Professor, Germanic Languages & Literatures; co-Chair, Standing Committee on Facilitating Inclusive Classrooms Committee)
Beth Fisher (Director, Academic Services The Teaching Center; Lecturer in Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies)

iTeach 2016 Plenary Panel slides

Room 200, The Knight Center

Gina Frey  (Florence E. Moog Professor of STEM Education, Chemistry; Executive Director, The Teaching Center; co-Director, CIRCLE)

Applying Cognitive Science to Teaching slides

In recent years, instructors have begun to apply cognitive-science concepts such as “retrieval practice” to classroom teaching. This session will extend this discussion by focusing on teaching strategies informed by three additional areas of research in cognitive science: “interleaving”  topics; integrating visual and verbal information to help students connect, organize, and remember information; and resetting student attention.

Room 210, The Knight Center

Megan Daschbach (Lecturer, Chemistry)
Mairin Hynes (Lecturer, Physics)

Combining Active Learning with Lectures slides

One of the most common challenges of introductory courses involves combining a focus on teaching foundational content knowledge with opportunities for students to learn the critical-thinking skills they will need for a successful and fruitful undergraduate career. In this session, Megan and Mairin will draw on their experiences integrating “clicker questions” into General Chemistry and Physics I, respectively, to lead a discussion of strategies for combining lectures with interactive discussions and group-work in medium-to-large courses.

Collaborators:
William Buhro (Chemistry)
Regina Frey (Chemistry, The Teaching Center, CIRCLE)
Richard Loomis (Chemistry)
Jia Luo (Chemistry)
Gabriela Szteinberg (Chemistry)
The Center for Integrative Research on Cognition, Learning, and Education
The Teaching Center

Room 220, The Knight Center

Nancy Berg (Professor, Hebrew Language and Literature; Chair, Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures)

Making Group-Work Work slides

How can we incorporate small group-work into different disciplines and different class settings, whether a lecture, a language course, or a seminar? How can we better understand and address barriers to student participation? After a brief introduction outlining the goals, functions, and challenges of group-work—and an overview of current research—this session will focus on sharing best practices and learning from past experiences.

Room 211, The Knight Center

Barbara Baumgartner (Senior Lecturer and Associate Chair, Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies)
Robert Henke (Professor, Drama and Comparative Literature)

Washington University has recently opened a satellite campus at a medium-security prison in Pacific, Missouri. This session explores the challenges and opportunities involved in teaching a group of unconventional but extraordinary students.  Barbara, Margaret, and Robert will discuss specific strategies for teaching college courses in prison, as well as insights gained from this experience that can be transferred to teaching all Washington University students.

Collaborators:
Jami Ake (College of Arts and Sciences; Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities)
J. Claude Evans (Philosophy)
Carolyn Herman (College of Arts and Sciences)
William Whitaker (Performing Arts Department)

Room 220, The Knight Center

Nancy Berg (Professor, Hebrew Language and Literature; Chair, Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures)
Odis Johnson (Associate Professor, Education and Sociology; Associate Chair, Education)
Jill Stratton (Associate Dean of Undergraduate Residential Learning, Residential Life)

Identity-Literacy Course slides

Given the challenges we face locally, nationally, and globally, it is imperative that incoming students develop the skills needed to thrive socially and professionally in diverse communities. The new Identity Literacy course for first-year students was designed to create that experience and knowledge base. With support from the Office of the Provost, the course was piloted in Fall 2015. In this session, the presenters will share a preliminary evaluation of this effort to develop inclusive communities and future leaders through Washington University’s Identity Literacy course.

Course Developers:
LaTanya Buck (Center for Diversity & Inclusion)
Brian Carpenter (Psychological & Brain Sciences)
Adrienne Davis (Office of the Provost, School of Law)
Stephanie Kurtzman (Gephardt Institute for Civic/Community Engagement)
Katharine Pei (First-Year Center)
Jen Smith (College of Arts & Sciences, Earth and Planetary Sciences)
Jill Stratton (Residential Life)
Rebecca Wanzo (Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies)
Nancy Yang (Undergraduate student)

Instructors:
Nancy Berg (Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures)
Angela Brown (School of Medicine)
Dedric Carter (Office of the Provost; Engineering and Applied Science)
Shruti Desai (Residential Life)
Angineh Djavadghazaryans (Germanic Languages & Literatures)
Lerone Martin (Religion & Politics)
Erin McGlothlin (Germanic Languages & Literatures)
Trevor Sangrey (Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies)
Valronica Scales (Residential Life)
Kurt Thoroughman (Biomedical Engineering)

Room 210, The Knight Center

Michael Cahill (Research Scientist and Project Manager, CIRCLE)
Erin Solomon (AAU Project Manager, CIRCLE and The Teaching Center)

Evaluating Active Learning with Clickers slides

As the use of clickers and other active-learning techniques increases, it is important to assess and understand the effectiveness of these techniques. Over the past several years, we have analyzed the relationships among clicker activity and student performance and attitudes in a variety of courses at Washington University. This session will begin with a summary of preliminary results from this study and will include discussion of the implications of these results for teaching and learning.

Collaborators:

Cheryl Cohen (CIRCLE)
Regina Frey (Chemistry, CIRCLE, The Teaching Center)
Mark McDaniel (Psychological & Brain Sciences, CIRCLE)
Jiuqing Zhao (CIRCLE)
Additional faculty in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Psychological & Brain Sciences

Room 211, The Knight Center

Peter Kastor (Professor, History and American Culture Studies; Chair, History)
Jennifer Moore (GIS Outreach and Anthropology Librarian, University Libraries)
Lori Watt (Associate Professor, History and International & Area Studies; Director, East Asian Studies)
Bill Winston (GIS Analyst, University Libraries)

GIS (Geographic Information Systems) provides tools that instructors and students can use to describe, analyze, and make arguments about problems with spatial elements. This session will use examples from two courses (East Asia in the World and The Founding Fathers’ Government in an Electronic Age) to demonstrate how bringing spatial thinking and GIS into the classroom allows students to connect with a topic in new and meaningful ways.

Room 200, The Knight Center

Amanda Moore McBride, Moderator (Bettie Bofinger Brown Associate Professor, Brown School; Executive Director, Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement)
Jami Ake (Assistant Dean, College of Arts and Sciences; Senior Lecturer, Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities)
Bob Hansman (Associate Professor, Architecture)
Beth Martin (Senior Lecturer, Environmental Studies; Community Engagement Fellow, Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement)

Community-based teaching encompasses diverse pedagogies that share an initial focus on determining how the community will be connected to the learning objectives and course content. After this step, instructors can decide how to work with the community partner. This session will explore examples of three different community-partnership approaches, illustrating effective models for structuring community-based teaching: project-based partnership, sustained organizational partnership, and community immersion.

3rd-Floor Dining Room, The Knight Center

Room 200, The Knight Center

Mark Alford (Professor and Chair, Physics)
Kristen Naegle (Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering)

Understanding and Mitigating Stereotype Threat slides

Social psychology research has shown that people underperform, relative to their own abilities, when they feel at risk for confirming a negative stereotype about a group with which they identify. This phenomenon, known as “stereotype threat,” can affect anyone, depending on the context. In this session, faculty who participated in a year-long discussion of Claude Steele’s Whistling Vivaldi will lead an interactive discussion on what stereotype threat is, how it might affect our academic community, and what we can do to mitigate its effects.

(Participants are encouraged to read Whistling Vivaldi before the symposium, but doing so is not required for participation in this session.)

Collaborators:
Beth Fisher (The Teaching Center; Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies)
Regina Frey (The Teaching Center; Chemistry; CIRCLE)

Room 211, The Knight Center

Makiba Foster (Subject Librarian for American History, American Culture Studies, and Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, University Libraries)
Nadia Ghasedi (Head of the Visual Media Research Lab, University Libraries)
Sowande’ Mustakeem (Assistant Professor, History and African and African American Studies)

Creative Collaboration slides

This session highlights two recent collaborations between faculty and library staff that enabled students to create and engage with primary source materials, as well as to develop research skills. Sowande’ and Makiba will discuss training students in the sophomore seminar, Slavery and Memory in American Popular Culture, to conduct oral histories for inclusion in the Libraries’ Documenting Ferguson digital initiative. Nadia will discuss Professor Rebecca Wanzo’s course Spectacular Blackness: Race, Gender, and Visual Culture, which was held in the Libraries and required students to curate digital exhibits featuring Special Collections.

Additional Collaborators:
Shannon Davis (University Libraries)
Meredith Evans (University Libraries)
Sonya Rooney (University Libraries)

Room 220, The Knight Center

Michelle Repice (Assistant Director, Academic Services, The Teaching Center; Lecturer, American Culture Studies)
Gabriela Szteinberg (Project Coordinator for General Chemistry Supplemental Programs, Chemistry)

Best Practices in Peer Instruction slides

Best Practices in Peer Instruction handout

Many studies have shown that students working collaboratively learn and retain more than students working alone. Moreover, undergraduate students can become skilled facilitators of collaborative learning. In this session, we will present results from a study that utilizes discourse analysis to reveal common challenges, as well as best practices, in peer facilitation. Discussion will include how to help students learn to manage student personalities, keep the group moving forward together, and foster an environment that encourages group learning.

Collaborators:
Regina Frey (The Teaching Center; Chemistry; CIRCLE)
Stephen Meyerink (MA, Washington University, 2015)

Room 210, The Knight Center

Beth Fisher (Director of Academic Services, The Teaching Center; Lecturer in Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies)
Erin Solomon (AAU Project Manager, CIRCLE and The Teaching Center)

Visualization of Classroom-Observation Data slides

This session will provide an opportunity to learn about a new tool developed by The Teaching Center and CIRCLE to provide instructors with a “big-picture” view of an observed class in a chronological format that coheres with how we often plan for and visualize each class. Application of this tool, the Observation Protocol for Active Learning (OPAL), enables the production of a visual timeline displaying the observed sequence of instructional strategies and the simultaneous “ebbs and flows” of student participation and engagement. Participants will discuss the usefulness of the OPAL timeline for faculty who are reflecting on and refining their teaching.

Collaborators:
Regina Frey (The Teaching Center; Chemistry; CIRCLE)
Cheryl Cohen (CIRCLE)
Heather Corcoran (Design)
Denise Leonard (The Teaching Center)
Jia Luo (Chemistry)
Jacinta Mutambuki (The Teaching Center)
Santhi Pondugula (Medicine)
Additional faculty in Biology, Chemistry, CSE, Economics, EECE, Physics, Political Science, Psychological and Brain Sciences

Room 210, The Knight Center

Jan Duchek (Director, Cornerstone: The Center for Advanced Learning; Associate Professor, Psychological & Brain Sciences)
Jennifer Self (Counselor, Mental Health Services)

Identifying and Helping Students in Distress slides

In our roles as faculty, we are likely to encounter students experiencing distress—which could be caused by a variety of factors, from stress to emotional and mental health issues. This workshop is designed to help faculty identify students in distress and ensure that they are aware of a range of campus resources, including those at Cornerstone and Student Health Services. We will also discuss strategies for maintaining a balance between providing appropriate support (for example, by granting a request for an extension on an assignment deadline) while at the same time maintaining a fair learning environment and equitable expectations for all students.

Room 200, The Knight Center

Lorien Carter (Assistant Professor of Practice, Social Work)
Jenine K. Harris (Associate Professor, Public Health)

Two Active-Technology Teaching Strategies slides

This session will demonstrate two teaching strategies designed to increase student engagement and student-teacher interaction, and to assess student understanding of material in real-time. The flipped classroom uses lecture-capture technology to take knowledge transfer out of classroom time, allowing students and teachers to work together during class on application of new knowledge and skills. Interactive polling with clickers can increase participation by all students and allow faculty to understand the students’ grasp of course concepts, resulting in better real-time tailoring of course content.

Room 220, The Knight Center

Gina Frey  (Florence E. Moog Professor of STEM Education, Chemistry; Executive Director, The Teaching Center; co-Director, CIRCLE)

Fostering Inclusive Learning in Groups slides

Research has demonstrated that working collaboratively can lead to significant learning gains for students across the disciplines. In addition, the ability to work in teams effectively is highly valued in many professions. However, students’ participation in group work can be affected by a number of social factors, including the degree to which they perceive their contributions to be welcomed and respected by both the instructor and fellow students. In this session, we will discuss strategies for designing and facilitating group work that can foster full participation and help all students build collaboration and communication skills that are essential to working effectively across differences.

Room 211, The Knight Center

Anupam Basu (Postdoctoral Fellow, Humanities Digital Workshop)

Textual Analysis slides

After a brief survey of introductory text-analysis tools, this session will provide an opportunity to discuss how these tools can be useful for courses that are not exclusively focused on technology, and how they may be used to introduce computational and quantitative approaches in classrooms in which students have varying amounts of prior technical training. While these approaches have a potential to transform how we think about cultural, textual, and discourse analysis, they can present immense technical and conceptual challenges when we incorporate them into our teaching. This session will include discussion of strategies for tackling these challenges.

3rd-Floor Dining Room, The Knight Center

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