2017-2018 Workshops
Spring 2018 Workshops
It’s a fact: students increasingly understand their world as it is mediated by technologies like cell phones, tablets, and social media platforms. But is it also true that these technologies are making our students more distracted in the classroom? Participants in this workshop will 1) learn about recent scholarship on digital distraction in the college classroom; 2) discuss the potential benefits and limitations of some high-, low- and no-tech interventions to increase student engagement; and 3) workshop how to create more meaningful learning experiences for tech-savvy students.
Discussion is an incredible opportunity for students to practice argumentation, learn about varying viewpoints, and discover the skills and languages common to a field or discipline. However class discussion can also be fraught with challenges for both ourselves and our students, including everything from scary silences to out-and-out incivility. This workshop introduced faculty and instructional staff to learner-centered principles and strategies that encourage deeper, more productive, and more inclusive classroom and online discussions.
Active learning has many documented benefits both for students and instructors. Moreover, there is increasing evidence that it disproportionately benefits women and students of color in STEM fields. However, the empirical evidence for this disproportionate benefit doesn’t explain why it happens, nor does it guarantee that all students will benefit from active learning. Active learning is difficult to do well and sometimes it can have detrimental effects on students if we’re not careful. So, we should aim not just for active learning, but learning that is both active and inclusive. This workshop is a collaborative work session where participants work together to share, create, and discuss practical strategies for making active learning more intentionally inclusive.
STEM faculty from the Claremont Colleges will share about the collaborative community projects that have resulted from integrating community engagement into their teaching. Come to learn and share strategies for incorporating community engagement into your own STEM courses. Lunch will be served. This event is being co-sponsored by Pitzer College’s Community Engagement Center, Teaching and Learning Committee, and the CTL.
Are you going to be working with a undergraduates on a research project this summer? Join in conversation with other faculty about strategies for clearly conveying expectations to students, managing teams with disparate experience levels, helping students have meaningful research experiences while moving forward on your own scholarship, and other topics.
Fall 2017 Workshops
The first week of class is an excellent opportunity to set the right tone, motivate students, and build an inclusive, welcoming and supportive environment for learning. However, with all of the chaos of those first days it is also an opportunity we too often miss. In this two-hour workshop, we will consider these ideas and approaches for creating a more welcoming, inclusive, and motivating classroom for your students and yourself.
Psychologist Derald Wing Sue defines microaggressions as “brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership.” Examples of microaggressions in the classroom might include situations in which someone assumes that a person fits a stereotype based on their identity, asks a person to speak on behalf of their race, or ignores the contributions of a group of people during a discussion. In this workshop, we discuss some ways to effectively deal with microaggressions so as to create a compassionate classroom environment that gives all students a voice and makes them feel included.
College classrooms are really laboratories where faculty are doing research to investigate intriguing student learning questions and solve complex teaching problems. Increasingly, we are recognizing that this type of classroom research, known as the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), is a valuable resource for improving higher education as a whole. In this luncheon workshop, we discuss the basics of SoTL research and offered brainstorming and collaboration time for participants to begin their own SoTL project.
A panel of faculty and student affairs professionals who work with first-generation Claremont Colleges undergraduate students share with us what faculty and staff need to know about this this group of students and how best to support them.
Video: https://youtu.be/iCWoMZjXjpo (Thanks to the CMC Media Tech Team!)
Handout with resources for and about first-generation students at the Claremont Colleges
Faculty feedback on student work has the potential to encourage and challenge learners, but also to frustrate and create mistrust. In this workshop we discuss ways to provide “wise feedback” on a variety of assignments that enables student learning and encourages equity and trust. Facilitators and participants discuss feedback on assignments from a range of disciplines, including STEM disciplines
Are you assigning a research paper in an upcoming spring semester course? Do you find that your students struggle to produce good research-based assignments? Research assignments can be difficult to design well because they have to foster both the mastery of a subject area and the development of critical thinking, analytical, evaluative, and writing skills. In this workshop, we explore common pitfalls in research assignment design and learn some strategies for enhancing student learning through research assignments, such as how to be more transparent about how students’ research abilities will be evaluated and how to contextualize your assigned sources within the disciplinary area.