The Official Blog of UCAT

Upcoming Conference: Today's Student Veterans

2012-02-28T11:18:00.002-05:00

Filmmaker Kyle Hausmann-Stokes

By Mike Carrell, Ohio State's Veterans Resource Analyst

What do you think of when you hear “Student-Veteran,” or “Military Student?” Do you have military and veteran students in your class, or seeking services from your office? How do you know? Does it make a difference? What needs might they have? How could you help them, and where should you refer them?

These students have often been described as Non-Traditional students, but “more of;” i.e. more of them:

are over 25 or over 30
are married
have children
may experience Post-Traumatic Stress
use federal aid
have been deployed than was typical of military members in the past

Over 2 million men & women served in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past 11 years, and now many of them are coming home and attending college. In our great state of Ohio, they join previous veterans to number 890,000 state residents with military service—all eligible for some education benefits. OSU’s student veteran population is growing quickly to now almost 1800!

The number of Ohio State students using the Post-9/11 GI Bill for Higher Education has grown 900% from Fall 2009 to Fall 2011, and more growth is expected in the next 10-15 years. Ohio State, like all universities, has been challenged by this rapid expansion. Add the 1800 students to the more than 1000 OSU faculty & staff that are veterans, and you probably teach, or work with, a Veteran—you just might not know it!

There is help to understand--The University Center for the Advancement of Teaching, along with Student Life, Undergraduate Education, Veterans' Affairs, and OSU’s student organization Vets4Vets, invite you to a one day conference on “Today’s Student Veteran: Creating a Supportive Educational Environment” on March 5^th at the Ohio Union.

The conference will feature nationally renowned filmmaker Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, OSU’s InterACT acclaimed production on student-veterans, and a panel of Ohio State Student Veterans describing their transition back to college and civilian life from the military. Breakout panels on Teaching Student-Veterans, Today’s Veteran, and Suicide Prevention will also be offered.

The cost is only $10 and includes a catered lunch! Please sign up before March 2^nd at: http://ucat.osu.edu/participate/ucat_events/veterans/

UCAT'S Monthly Book Giveaway Starts TODAY!

2012-02-21T10:40:00.001-05:00

Starting today, UCAT will be giving away a favorite book about teaching each month!

The first book you can win is Team Teaching: Across the Disciplines, Across the Academy, edited by Kathryn M. Plank, UCAT’s very own associate director.

Description from the publisher:
For those considering adopting team teaching, or interested in reviewing their own practice, this book offers an overview of this pedagogy, its challenges and rewards, and a rich range of examples in which teachers present and reflect upon their approaches. This book provides insight into the impact of team teaching on student learning and on faculty development. It also addresses the challenges, both pedagogical an administrative, that need to be addressed for team teaching to be effective.

There are many ways to enter. To find out how, log in below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

UCAT's Communicating with Your International TA Event Coverage in The Lantern

2012-01-25T09:56:00.006-05:00

Yesterday, OSU's student news paper The Lantern ran story about a recent event that UCAT instructional consultant Laurie Maynell co-facilitated: "Strategies for Communicating Effectively with Your International TA." This event was part of OSU's 2011-2012 Undergraduate Colloquium Series whose central theme this year is "Immigration, Identity, and Citizenship."

You can read The Lantern's article here.

Workshop Reflection: Teacher Identity and Student Expectations

2012-01-10T08:38:00.008-05:00

By Lindsay Bernhagen

On November 10, UCAT and DISCO (the Diversity and Identity Studies Collective at OSU) co-sponsored a workshop titled “Teacher Identity and Student Expectations: How does who we are affect what happens in our classes?” The event was attended by about 20 GTAs and faculty members, each of whom was presented with a chance to reflect on and share how their identity has shaped the way they are perceived and approached by their students.

In order to create an inviting, open space for conversation in which ideas could be freely exchanged among the participants, we used the “World Café” facilitation technique. We began our first round by asking the five small groups of participants to introduce why they chose to come to the event and then to share a story from their own experience about identity in the classroom. Each table then chose one story to share.

In rounds two and three the participants moved to different tables to talk with new people while sharing their responses to some research findings on how teacher identity shapes students’ experiences and sharing strategies they’ve tried in their own classes. Finally, as a large group, we brainstormed additional resources that could help us respond to some of the challenges that the group identified throughout the session.

During each round, the groups were asked to jot down notes on a large piece of paper in order to capture their conversation. These notes, as well as those taken by facilitators during the session, were then typed up and “harvested,” or sorted into pseudo-concept maps a few days later by some of the participants. In the pictures below, you can see some snapshots from the results from the harvest and get a sense of the how different faculty and graduate students are experiencing identity in their classrooms at Ohio State.

Question 1: What brought you here today?

Question 2: What about the research findings surprised you? What sounded familiar to you?

Question 3: What are some strategies that you’ve tried in your own classrooms?

Question 4: What additional resources would you like to see to help you navigate some of the challenges you face in the classroom?

What themes, patterns, and connections do you notice? What do you find familiar? What do you find surprising?

To read more about some of the research that inspired this event, see our earlier blog post, "The Classroom Is Not Neutral."

Using Student Feedback to Help Your Teaching and Get You Published

2011-12-05T11:40:00.006-05:00

By Tom Koontz, Professor in the School of Environmental and Natural Resources

As a newly hired assistant professor in Ohio State’s School of Environment and Natural Resources, I turned to UCAT (formerly the Faculty & TA Development office) for inspiration and advice about my teaching. I became a big fan of student feedback, thanks to classroom visits by Li Tang and Kathryn Plank for SGIDs (small group instructional diagnostics) and a survey instrument I give to students at the end of each quarter.

After many years of soliciting and using feedback, Kathryn and I discussed the fact that we had accumulated a large dataset across diverse courses. This became a great opportunity to contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning. The latest issue of the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching includes a peer-reviewed article that Kathryn and I co-authored.

The article, “Can Reading Questions Foster Active Learning? A Study of Six College Courses,” describes my use of structured reading questions to encourage students to complete assigned readings before class, and to promote active learning. We linked the reading questions to Svinicki’s (1991) six principles of active learning and found that students valued the questions especially for two of those principles: identifying what information is important, and connecting the reading to prior knowledge. Nearly 60 % of students reported completing assigned readings at least 75 % of the time, and over half rated the question sets as “very helpful” for their learning, the highest point on a 5-point scale. I have found the reading questions to be great for sparking in-class discussion, both because they encourage students to read and thus be able to discuss the content, and because they can be posed in class. I have found this to be a versatile pedagogical tool across undergraduate and graduate courses in topics such as natural resources policy, research methods, ecosystem management, and public policy theory.

For sample reading questions that link to Svinicki’s principles of active learning, see the article at: http://celt.muohio.edu/ject/fetch.php?id=506.*

*The download of the article pdf only works from Ohio State campus IP addresses.

2011 POD Conference: Supporting Adjunct Faculty

2011-11-09T12:09:00.004-05:00

by Lindsay Bernhagen

Nationwide, adjunct faculty made up about 50% of the professoriate in 2009, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. The ratio is lower at OSU, about 43%, at OSU, but adjuncts still make up a significant portion of our teaching labor pool. In 2010, Ohio State employed 2,226 “auxiliary” faculty compared to 2,982 regular (that is, excluding clinical and research appointments) tenure-track faculty. There is no question that the number of adjunct faculty teaching at colleges and universities around the country are on the rise.

At the recent annual POD Conference, I attended a session designed to help faculty developers better serve this growing population of adjunct faculty. Adjunct faculty, we were reminded, have many of the same needs as tenure-track faculty and teaching assistants, including access to professional development activities, and the ability to be a part of a community.

Adjunct faculty face a number of challenges that tenure-track faculty and even teaching assistants don’t necessarily have to consider. For example,

adjuncts typically teach a much heavier course load than TAs or tenure-track faculty.

Many find that, because they are generally paid significantly less than their tenure-track counterparts, they must taken on work at multiple institutions, cobbling together several adjunct appointments to make a livable wage.

Adjuncts are frequently hired at the last minute—sometimes only a day before a term starts—resulting in a distinctive and disturbing lack of job security or even predictability.

When they arrive on campus, they may or may not find that they are “oriented” with the same thoroughness and care as other populations.

Adjuncts may or may not be included in the departmental community: some get invited to faculty or departmental meetings, but many do not.

Though, at many universities, they take on the majority of teaching responsibility, they are often left to ascertain how their course fits into the curriculum without much guidance.

They may not have access to—or even be aware of—resources that they need, such as information technology offices, services provided by the library, or even adequate office space.

Indeed, many adjunct faculty function in a “liminal” space where they are both inside and outside their employing departments and/or institution(s).

Here at the University Center for the Advancement of teaching, all of our events are open to adjunct faculty, tenure-track faculty, and graduate students alike. We hope that we can provide a place where many different voices can contribute. To register for our events, click here. If you have a suggestion for how we can better serve our adjunct faculty, please contact us at ucat@osu.edu.

2011 POD Conference: Mutual Mentoring

2011-11-08T17:18:00.000-05:00

by Teresa Johnson

We often think of mentoring as a process where the mentor has more experience or holds a higher professional position than the mentee. This typically creates a traditional teacher/student type of relationship where the mentor teaches and the mentee learns. Last week at the POD Network annual conference (read our previous post about POD here), I learned of a different type of mentoring where the learning and the teaching goes in both directions. It is called Mutual Mentoring or Peer Mentoring.

This type of mentoring is not intended to replace the need for a more experienced mentor. Indeed a peer mentor is meant to benefit both members through mutual development of both parties, through information sharing, career strategizing, job-related feedback, emotional support, and friendship. After hearing the presenters talk about their personal experience with mutual mentoring, I think that having a peer mentor in an academic setting might be valuable to all of us, whether the mentoring is focused on teaching, research, or all aspects of an academic life.

Entering into a mutual mentorship can be approached in much the same way as a more traditional mentoring relationship, with one important difference. Before identifying a mutual mentor, think about not only what you want from a mentor, but also what you have to offer as a mentor.

As you think choosing a peer mentor, it may seem natural to ask someone who is a colleague in your department or unit. While having a peer mentor who really understands your work environment and knows what you do every day can seem enticing, it can also be beneficial to have someone who thinks about things from a different point of view and who has some professional distance. The leaders of the conference session discussed how their different personalities and positions across the country, created a nice framework for their peer mentoring relationship.

Other aspects to consider when choosing a mentor that were mentioned in the presentation were gender, values, attitudes and beliefs, age, complimentarity of knowledge, skills, and abilities, ability to be reflective and willingness to commit time to the mentoring relationship.
Once two of you have agreed to enter a mutual mentorship, it is important to have an open discussion about the scope of your proposed relationship including the following topics:

The intentionality of the relationship – how formal should the relationship be?
What goals do each of the parties have for the mentor relationship?
How and when you will meet?

A peer mentor can add a whole new dimension to your support structure as you move through your career in academia. If you are interested in learning more about mentoring in general, or mutual mentoring specifically, please feel free to contact UCAT at ucat@osu.edu.

2011 POD Conference: A Lesson in Collegiality

2011-11-03T10:22:00.000-04:00


"At POD, collegiality flows like wine." Image courtesy of GoogleImages

By Glene Mynhardt

Being involved in a teaching center means that you naturally get exposed to many other centers, initiatives, and institutions that care just as much as we at UCAT do about teaching and the development of their faculty and graduate teachers.

POD (Professional and Organizational Development) is one of those organizational acronyms that floats around UCAT often, but the scope of its mission wasn’t evident until I was granted the opportunity to attend the 2011 POD conference in Atlanta, Georgia at the end of October. In short, POD is an organization that exists for the purpose of providing teaching support for faculty and TAs around the world. The members of POD are a mix of administrators, teaching consultants, and faculty – and this year I got to be a part of POD as a graduate student.

I have been to many discipline-specific conferences, which are always enjoyable, bustling, and usually exhausting, with talks of new discoveries in the field. POD was no different, but there was a very unfamiliar feeling of collegiality in the air. Of the 700-plus attendees, I made friends from Japan and Granada, and even got an opportunity to network with neighbors from the University of Michigan! I was able to share what it means to be passionate about teaching, and it wasn’t considered strange as it often can be at conferences that are focused on disciplinary research. From one day to the next people whom I had met only once before knew my name, my background, and my goals. It was amazing.
During one of the sessions at POD we shared projects happening in teaching centers all around the world – each with the goal of enhancing TA development in teaching and professional development. I was in awe not only because Powerpoints, unpublished data, and new techniques that might be guarded like the Mona Lisa in other disciplines were readily being shared, but also because this sort of collaboration and openness was expected!

At POD, collegiality flows like wine. (As a telling example, one of the things I thought most provocative and inspiring was a humorous warning that so-called PODers “Participate or Die (POD!)!”) I will take the lesson that collegiality does not have to be rare or strange with me wherever I go. I am a graduate student, but I am also a teacher and a researcher who often adopts a territoriality not uncommon in the sciences, and POD helped me to better appreciate the benefits of intellectual and professional collaboration.

If you would like to know more about what POD does, click here.

Using Writing to Enhance Discussion

2011-10-10T16:25:00.001-04:00

Connecting class discussion to writing can help you focus
your goals for students' engagement.
Photo by foreverdigital

The following tips about using writing to enhance discussion are brought to you by the Writing Across the Curriculum program, part of the Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing at The Ohio State University.

How do I facilitate productive and active participation in the classroom? How do I connect classroom engagement to the writing that students are doing outside of class?

Some instructors get fired up for classroom discussion and engagement; they see participation in the classroom as a way of expanding how students might think about a certain issue or interpret a certain text. Some instructors might approach the topic of classroom engagement with a bit of trepidation; they worry about what might happen if students aren’t participating and a conversation grinds to a halt, or what might happen if students get locked into a heated debate about a controversial topic. Connecting class discussion to writing can help you focus your goals for students’ engagement. Efficiently linking classroom engagement and writing will be even more important as we adjust to teaching shorter classes after the semester conversion!

Tomorrow: Begin and end your class with a few minutes of free-writing to help students ground themselves in the classroom and collect their thoughts.

Tomorrow, try beginning your class by giving students five minutes to write about the reading that is due that day or a problem or issue relevant to class. This will give them time to “shift gears” and focus on being in the classroom, and it will also give them something concrete to build on in class participation. Having students write at the end of class can help them to pull together their thinking over the period, to begin to consider issues you will cover in subsequent sessions, and to connect discussion to longer term projects. Furthermore, if you have a chance to collect their writing, you can have a really rich picture of what students are thinking and how they are learning. You don’t even need to grade these reflections.

Point out that writing of any kind is a good way to organize one’s thoughts, and that discussion and lecture will help build on the ideas from the free writing exercise. Free writing can be particularly effective when you direct students’ thinking toward a particular question or problem, and when you explicitly connect the writing students do to the following discussion or activity.

Next Week: Develop group work and discussion activities that ask students to practice the writing and thinking skills they will need for their formal writing assignments.

Divide the class into groups and create activities that encourage students to practice the same skills they will use in their writing in an interactive way. Ask groups to write responses to these questions and post them to a discussion board or read them aloud in class.

For example, an instructor in the social sciences might ask students to establish an operationalizable thesis to address a broad issue or question. Later, groups could brainstorm potential confounding variables for other groups’ theses, and those groups could revise their theses to better account for those variables.

An instructor in the humanities might have students construct an analytical thesis statement based on a text that the class has read and analyzed. Student groups could then reread for textual evidence that both supports and complicates or contradicts the thesis, revising as they discover and integrate new evidence from the text.

In the sciences, an instructor might pull data from an existing study and ask groups to discuss and write up the conclusions one might draw from the data. Groups might then read the original research and compare and evaluate their conclusions with those from the existing research report.

Instructors can emphasize that students should listen to every group members’ position and, through collaborative dialogue, agree upon a thesis and supporting evidence. Having students practice short, informal collaborative writing can help them see writing as a process that comes directly from collaborative engagement. It also provides an opportunity for students to discuss how integral collaboration is to the research and knowledge-making process.

Continue reading at the Writing Across the Curriculum blog to find tips about implementing this initiative next quarter and in semesters.

The 2011 Teaching Orientation @ Ohio State

2011-09-27T11:50:00.000-04:00

Participants engage in group discussion during
Introduction to Teaching and Learning.

by Jennie Williams

Each year, UCAT offers a three-day orientation for graduate teaching associates who are either new to The Ohio State University or new to their teaching assignment for the coming academic year. The orientation is designed to reduce anxieties, provide some techniques and strategies for effective teaching, and suggest resources for further assistance.

This year's orientation was held September 13, 14, and 15. We had 445 participants in attendance, representing 64 departments from across campus.

Of those who pre-registered with us:

85 were international students
205 came to us with no teaching experience
51 had taught at Ohio State
101 had taught at another college or university
123 had teaching experience outside of higher education

Our Teaching Resource Fair taught GTAs about the teaching
support they can find through various units on our campus.

Our participants commented on their evaluations:

"It was great to have dedicated, structured, but flexible time with experienced TA’s."

"Taught me to think of the teacher I want to be and the atmosphere I want to create."

"I will be using most of this information next week!"

"Straight to the point with good examples of what we could encounter in the future."

"…as an international student, definitely helped with what to expect will be different."

To learn more, visit the Teaching Orientation website.

To see more pictures, visit our Facebook page.

If you attended the orientation, please leave us a comment that describes a highlight of your experience!

The Value of Awkward Silence: Increasing Wait Time in the Classroom

2011-08-22T11:05:00.001-04:00

Increasing wait time after asking a question in your class
helps students practice critical thinking skills.
Photo by: goto10

by Lindsay Bernhagen

By now, most instructors are familiar with the value of actively involving students in class through asking questions. But it can feel awkward or even frustrating when questions posed to a classroom full of students are met with nothing but crickets. A first impulse may be to just cold call a student and hope for the best or for the instructor to provide the answer her- or himself.

There is another option, though, and it involves a simple strategy with potentially huge payoffs. This other option is simply to wait. Let those crickets chirp for at least three (but up to even ten!) seconds, and see what happens.

Over 40 years ago, Mary Bud Rowe pioneered the notion that "wait time" – a name she gave to the length of time between when a teacher asks a question and when a student hazards an answer—was an integral variable in the overall quality of student responses and thus of student learning.

Rowe showed that after asking discussion questions of their students, most instructors (from elementary school through college) waited less than one second before calling on a student for a response or providing the answer themselves. Robert Stahl expanded Rowe’s concept, recommending three second gaps at multiple points during a class period—not just during question and answer activities.

Students need time to identify and put into practice the critical thinking tools they are being asked to hone in class before composing thoughtful and coherent verbal contributions. Extending “wait time” provides them with a chance to do just that.

In fact, Rowe, as well as subsequent researchers, found that the length of student responses tends to increase at least threefold. Student responses tended to be more substantive, including more thorough argumentation and less mimicry of what the instructor had already stated. On top of all that, increased wait time appears to be directly related to increased student motivation!

Instructors benefit from increasing wait time as well. Having more time allows instructors to better strategize how to incorporate student responses, and provides an opportunity to develop higher-level questions. Research shows that the combined benefit of increased wait time and higher cognitive questions is greater than the benefit of either of these alone.

This simple strategy—slowly counting to three while waiting out an “awkward silence”—is one of the easiest and most effective ways to allow chirping crickets to transform into churning wheels.

"What's In a Name?": Helping Our Growing Chinese Student Population Feel Welcome

2011-08-15T11:35:00.004-04:00

The number of Chinese students studying at American
colleges and universities is increasing at a stunning rate.

by Jennie Williams

"A colleague of mine was about to meet with a new faculty member from China, so he asked me to teach him the pronunciation of her name. After the meeting, he came into my office and described to me how impressed and pleased she looked at hearing her name spoken accurately." -University staff

"My Chinese students tell me when other professors can pronounce their names correctly: 'He can say my name!' Their faces light up." -ESL teacher

America continues to be the prime destination for international scholars. As reported in Business Week, our country hosted 691,000 international students in the 2009-10 academic year – 26% more than in the previous decade. Of these students, the highest percentage came from China, and according to the Institute of International Education, the number of Chinese students attending our colleges and universities is increasing at a stunning rate. In 2009-10, nearly 128,000 Chinese students studied in the United States, which is an increase of 30% from the previous year.

And not only that, but more and more of these Chinese international students are coming not as graduate students, but as freshmen. Peggy Blumenthal, executive vice president of the Institute of International Education, told the New York Times that the booming Chinese economy in conjunction with its one-child policy are contributing to this change: “I think one factor is the great number of Chinese families with disposable income, two working parents and only one child, and a determination to invest their money to make sure that child receives the best education possible.”

The Ohio State University is not exempt from this influx of Chinese scholars. In a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, China, university president Gordon Gee announced that Ohio State ranks 14^th in the country for the number of international students it hosts, “with the greatest number of students – more than 1,200 – coming from China.”

As Ohio State professors, instructors, and GTAs see their rosters becoming increasingly international, they are also faced with a need to help these students adapt and feel comfortable in their classrooms. As the above quotations illustrate, a teacher’s ability to pronounce a student’s name correctly can do a lot to make him or her feel welcome in a foreign classroom.

To assist teachers with this particular challenge, UCAT will host a workshop called “Pronouncing Chinese Names” on Wednesday, September 28 from 2:30–4 p.m. Felice Marcus, Associate Director of the American English and Culture Program at Miami University in Oxford, OH, will facilitate this program with help from two students whose native language is Chinese.

For more information on this event and to register, please visit our website.

Registration for Autumn Events on Teaching Is Now Open!

2011-07-29T13:44:00.001-04:00

Registration is now open for the Autumn 2011 Events on Teaching sponsored by UCAT!

We are proud to continue bringing you a quarter full of workshops that cover a wide array of teaching-related issues from student learning to suicide prevention training.

To kick off the quarter, Felice Marcus, Associate Director of the American English and Culture Program at Miami University in Oxford, OH will give faculty and GTAs a tutorial on Pronouncing Chinese Names. With the help of two students whose native language is Chinese, she will also answer such questions as: What identity issues are behind their using American names? Do the students embrace English names to feel more culturally integrated? Or do they feel compelled to go by a different name to be more accepted and for the convenience of teachers and classmates? Should we be using their native or American name?

Additionally, Bob Eckhart from the School of Teaching and Learning, in conjunction with Laurie Maynell from UCAT, will discuss personal disclosure in the classroom in their October 7 presentation, To Share or Not to Share: Telling Students about Illnesses, Personal Beliefs, and Other Experiences. Read Bob's essay, in the Academy of Teaching's annual publication, Talking About Teaching, that inspires this discussion.

We also continue to bring you the ever-popular Preparing for an Academic Job Search series for those who are preparing to enter the academic job market, and if you haven't already taken a Course Design Institute, don't forget to apply for the upcoming Autumn Quarter or Winter Break offerings. They fill up quickly!

Visit our website to see what else we have to offer and to register. We look forward to working with you!

The Classroom is Not Neutral: Faculty Diversity and Teaching

2011-07-12T11:14:00.003-04:00

Research shows that students have different expectations of
female professors than they do for male professors.
Photo by Andrew Feinberg

by Lindsay Bernhagen

“I always have higher expectations for female instructors than male instructors. And, yeah, when they don’t meet them it’s a let down. And if it’s a male instructor I tend to blow it off and say, ‘Well, that’s typical…’ I mean, I don’t expect my male instructors to be as caring or concerned as I expect my female instructors to be. Whether that’s good or a bad thing to be going on in my head, it’s just a real thing. And I think it’s pretty universal.”

This quote, taken from a student interviewed for a 2004 report conducted by the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Teaching and Learning, suggests that helming a successful classroom comprises more than just a command of the subject matter, proficient presentation and communication skills, and patience. While there are many ways that we can develop as teachers, the ways our identities affect our classroom experiences often remain under-analyzed.

In a meritocratic culture, we tend to believe that sufficient energy devoted to the development of teaching skills should unequivocally result in successful and even easy classroom management. However, not every professor can be guaranteed that this will be enough.

For example, in the research referenced above, Diane B. Kardia and Mary C. Wright cite two studies done by the University of Michigan faculty in the late 1990s—one that looked at the experiences of both white women and women of color, and one that surveyed undergraduates’ perceptions of female and male instructors.

Of the female faculty surveyed, 82% reported frequent encounters with students who questioned their authority both in and out of the classroom. Students candidly confirmed these female faculty’s experiences—83% of those interviewed admitted holding different standards for female versus male teachers, with higher expectations being held for females.

Exacerbating the problem, women faculty report that the additional efforts they must put forth to address these challenges are frequently dismissed (if recognized at all) by administrators and fellow faculty members. Continued lack of awareness of the specific challenges faced by female instructors is all the more difficult to counter given the continued (though improving) underrepresentation of women in faculty positions at Ohio State and beyond (see the 2010 Status Report on Women at The Ohio State University).

It is of utmost importance that we all seek to recognize the multiple identities that bare on our experiences as instructors, and that we maintain open and attentive dialogue about the experiences of all faculty members. In addition to one-on-one consultations at UCAT, our public events also provide excellent platforms for such conversations. Find out more here.

Sources

Kardia, D.B. and M.C. Wright (2004). “Instructor Identity: The Impact of Gender and Race on Faculty Experiences with Teaching.” CRLT Occasional Papers, No. 19. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.

Status Report on Women at The Ohio State University (2010). The President’s Council on Women and The Women’s Place. Columbus: The Ohio State University.

Course Design Institute Turns Professor on Her Head

2011-06-23T13:59:00.001-04:00

Jackie Miller is an Associate Professor in the
Statistics department at Ohio State.

A recent alumna of our Course Design Institute published a blog post with the Digital Union about her experience.

I was recently part of the University Center for the Advancement of Teaching’s (UCAT) Course Design Institute (CDI) along with 4 peers from across the university. Laurie Maynell and Teresa Johnson from UCAT were our fearless leaders.

You know, I have been teaching for 17 years (if we don’t count tutoring and do count 6 years in graduate school), and I have never scratched my head as much as I did during the 5 weeks of the CDI. Okay, there may not have been actual head scratching, but there was a lot of pondering. Why is it that in 17 years of teaching, including 4 years of coursework in graduate school, I was never taught to design a course? The simple answer is that there was no such course. I took fantastic courses in both Statistics and Education and had excellent opportunities as a student pursuing a One-of-a-Kind PhD in Statistics Education. The Course Design Institutes began in 2009, and the one I took was the 14th offering of the Institute. If you have not taken it yet, I urge you to consider it. Here is a link to UCAT’s events page.

How was I turned on my head? First, we talked about the idea of backward design. One good source for this is Wiggins, Grant, and McTighe. “What is Backward Design?,” in Understanding by Design. 1st edition, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall, 2001, pp. 7-19. We had to think about the goals of our course and the (measurable) objectives that go with these course goals. This is easier said than done! But, by defining our goals and objectives (day 1), we could think about designing the assignments (day 2) that would lead us to those goals. Once we had our goal-based assignments designed, we could develop criteria for evaluation (day 3). On day 4, we organized our content and planned the learning of that content. Finally (day 5), we spoke about assessing our courses and shared what we had with others.

Continue reading >>>

Learning Communities Celebrate Teaching, Collaboration, and Discovery

2011-06-06T14:18:00.003-04:00

by Glené Mynhardt

On Thursday, May 26, 2011, a diverse group of Ohio State faculty, staff, and graduate teaching associates joined together for the Ohio State Teaching Enhancement Program (OSTEP) reception and poster session.

As a graduate student, I couldn’t have wished for a better morning. The spring reception began with a buffet-style breakfast, and 45 participants were gathered around posters, excitedly discussing projects that they had worked on during the past year. President Gordon Gee spoke, recognizing the fellows for their participation in one of OSTEP's learning communities.

I was thrilled to attend the festivities, but more so because I had the opportunity to serve as one of seven OSTEP Graduate Teaching Fellows (GTFs), one of four learning communities currently co-sponsored by UCAT.

The original intent of the OSTEP program was to create, facilitate, and disseminate learning communities at Ohio State, and since its inception, close to 300 fellows have participated in 28 different, and several ongoing, communities that vary by topic and vision. Depending on the scope or disciplinary vision of each project, learning communities create a structured, usually highly interdisciplinary platform for fellows to discuss, create, and support various aspects of teaching.

This year’s honored learning communities included the Mid-Career & Senior Faculty Learning Community, Graduate Teaching Fellows Program, Faculty and Advisor Learning Community, and the Faculty Learning Community on Sustainability Across the Curriculum.

In the words of President Gee, "Great teaching…is not to be found in the first minutes or days of trying, but in a lifetime of learning and living and honing." Each learning community devoted the last year working on various projects to do just that - learning by collaboration, living by example as great teachers, and honing on their vision to create effective and productive communities that support teaching.

UCAT would like to congratulate each of these fantastic learning communities for their hard work and service to Ohio State and to the teaching community as a whole

If you are interested in learning more about OSTEP and its learning communities, please click here.

Members of the 2010-11 Mid-Career and Senior Faculty Learning Community
with President Gee

Participants enjoying breakfast

2010-11 Graduate Teaching Fellows with President Gee

Designing a Course for May Term: Things to Consider

2011-05-19T09:51:00.004-04:00

by Laurie Maynell

UCAT’s Roundtable Series on May Session continued Wednesday with a discussion about Course Design facilitated by UCAT Director, Alan Kalish. While the same basic course design principles apply to any course, a term of shorter length with more hours spent per day has characteristics different from a semester-long course. The average OSU May term will consist of only 18 days of instruction, with no reading day prior to final exams.

Following Faculty Rule 3335-8-24, as well as the Quarter to Semester Conversion Guide (available here), a three-credit hour course consists of 3 x 750 minutes of structured academic time (e.g. class time), for a total of 2,250 minutes or 37.5 hours. Across 18 days, this results in 2 hours and 5 minutes in class per day.

The guidelines assume that twice the amount of time is spent outside of class as in class, so the student registering for a 3-credit course in May is looking at a (minimum) 6-hour and 15-minute daily time commitment.

Students are limited to 3 credit hours during May Session and will likely not take more than one class, so their attention will not be split among several different classes.

Just how much change can you effect in your students in 18 days? The answer to this will depend on the type of material you are teaching. In other words, will students need time to mull over or work with a concept in order to truly integrate it, or is the concept something that they will be comfortable with after a day?

It is beneficial to structure the class time such that you control where student attention is focused, and provide students with opportunities to engage with the material in various ways. In a basic learning situation, there are three elements:

•the student encounters new information

•the student processes the information, practices in appropriate ways and demonstrates understanding/mastery

•the instructor assesses student achievement

If your students can encounter new information for the first time outside of class (e.g. by reading and answering questions about the reading or completing short exercises), you can spend your time together in class letting students process the information in appropriate ways, while you are there to observe and guide them.

If you have questions about designing your May Session course, please contact us at ucat@osu.edu or 614-292-3644. Also, our next Course Design Institute takes place August 8-12, 2011 in the Younkin Success Center. You can read more about the Institutes and register here.

Academy of Teaching Mini-Conference

2011-05-13T18:34:00.000-04:00

On Friday, May 6, 2011, the Academy of Teaching hosted the Fifth Annual Mini-Conference on Excellence in Teaching, in partnership with UCAT. This year's theme was "Globalizing the Curriculum," and presenters from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds shared the ways in which they are incorporating international elements into their teaching and administration at The Ohio State University.

For a detailed agenda, session descriptions, and presenter biographies, visit the Academy of Teaching website.


Jennie Babcock from the College of Social Work co-presented "Internationalizing Majors and Minors: A Pilot Project." This was one of four major presentations at the conference.

Participants enjoyed an international buffet catered by
Creative Cuisine, featuring menu selections from our
Gatetway countries.

The School of Music provided international musical entertainment
during lunch. Here, Raag Mishra Kafi plays the sitar.

Four members of the Slavic Chorus prepare to take the stage.

The African Drumming Ensemble performed "Wart Hog #3."

Dr. Richard Blatti presented Dr. Brian Joseph
with the Founder's Award.

Members of the Executive Council of the Academy of Teaching
posed with Dr. Joseph (front). L-R Caroline Breitenberger,
Rick Blatti, Wayne Carlson, Mohamed Yousif, and
Joe Donnermeyer.

Dr. Brian Joseph Receives Academy of Teaching Founder's Award

2011-05-02T14:03:00.009-04:00

Members of the Academy of Teaching, colleagues, and students honor Dr. Brian Joseph
with the 2011 Academy of Teaching Founder's Award.

by Spencer Robinson

On Monday, April 18, 2011, I had the chance to ambush Dr. Brian Joseph in his classroom together with an entourage consisting of members of the Academy of Teaching, the Department of Linguistics, and UCAT. The reason for this event was to announce to Dr. Joseph that he had been selected as the recipient of the Founder’s Award, an honor given by the Executive Council of the Academy of Teaching to a member of the campus community in order to “recognize distinguished service in furthering the mission of the Academy.”

As the website states, “The Founder’s Award is named for OSU President E. Gordon Gee, who, on April 4, 1992, announced his intent to form an academy of faculty who were past recipients of the Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching (AADT), the most prestigious award for teaching at Ohio State.” The award was instituted in 2008 and presented to President Gee. Dr. Joseph is its second recipient.

Dr. Joseph is a Distinguished Professor who teaches in the Departments of Linguistics and Slavic and East European Languages and Literature. In addition to receiving this award, Dr. Joseph was awarded the OSU Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1995, the University Distinguished Scholar Award in 2001, and the University Distinguished Service Award in 2002. He truly represents the best in teaching, research, and service here at OSU.

On a more personal note, I have had the opportunity to take several classes from Dr. Joseph and also associate with him on a regular basis. I have seen his efforts to teach his students and nurture them in their own endeavors. I have also benefited from his knowledge and helpful direction in my own research. Therefore, I commend the Executive Council on making such a worthy and outstanding selection.

For those wishing to be in attendance when Dr. Joseph formally receives the Founder’s Award, the ceremony will take place on Friday, May 6 during the Fifth Annual Mini-Conference on Excellence in Teaching sponsored by the Academy of Teaching. For more information on the conference or to register for it, please go to its home page.

The Citation Project

2011-04-20T11:10:00.005-04:00

by Jerry Nelms

I spent the latter part of last week at the 2011 Conference on College Composition and Communication. CCCC, a constituent group of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), is the premiere conference for scholars and teachers of college writing and rhetorical communication. It was started in 1950, after a group of first-year writing teachers had met the year before to express their collective dissatisfaction with the teaching of first-year composition and to explore ways of improving that teaching.

I’ve been a regular attendee of CCCC since 1990, and I found last week’s conference to be especially informative and provocative, including some interesting reports of empirical research and scholarship on student citation patterns and on how students make arguments in the sciences, as well as presentations on numerous other topics and issues in understanding writing and literacy and the teaching of writing.

There were several panels devoted to reporting on and discussing the preliminary findings of The Citation Project, a multi-institutional research effort to determine how students actually use source materials when writing. The research team includes 21 participating and contributing researchers, primarily from Eastern U.S. universities and colleges. The team is led by two principal researchers: Rebecca Moore Howard of Syracuse University (well-known author of articles and books on plagiarism and what’s called “patchwriting”) and Sandra Jamieson of Drew University.

The researchers coded 164 first-year composition research papers for four “means” of source incorporation: direct copying/quoting; paraphrasing, summarizing, and patchwriting. (Patchwriting is a kind of paraphrasing plagiarism that is typically unintended. In most cases, the writer is an outsider trying to write like an insider, like a member of the discourse community that she or he is addressing. The writer becomes so absorbed in adopting the language and conventions of that community and sounding like its members that she or he does not adequately monitor use of the source material and inadvertently plagiarizes.)

The preliminary findings of the Citation Project’s research are disheartening. Researchers found that the students in the study rarely summarized (9%). Many did paraphrase (31%), leading to some patchwriting (16%), but most students relied heavily on quotation, and typically constructing a text by simply stringing quoted material from different sources together, one after the other. Howard and Jamieson called this “quote mining,” and concluded that there was a lot of evidence of a lack of student engagement with the source material.

We probably ought to note that the research methodology of the Citation Project needs some tinkering. Howard and Jamieson admitted that they had discovered what amounted to some halo effect in the data—that is, coding that was too charitable (e.g., coding a citation as summary when it was primarily paraphrase). This, of course, suggests that the findings might end up being even more disappointing. Perhaps more worrisome was the researchers’ failure to mention any tests for inter-rater reliability in the research, their failure to discuss how the coders were trained to insure consistency in coding, and their failure to take into account the variety of assignment prompts that produced the various texts that were coded. After all, some prompts might actually ask for “quote mining” as an exercise in selecting appropriate material to quote.

That said, the Citation Project’s preliminary findings were provocative. Back in the 1990s, I gave several CCCC presentations identifying what I saw as a need to explicitly help students learn not only how to summarize but how to synthesize source material—that is, how to bring together source material on the same topic and summarize together (synthesize) what the various sources say on that same topic.

In my teaching of advanced composition students (mostly juniors and seniors from many different disciplines), I had found that students misunderstood what “summarize” actually meant. They associated “summary” only with a summarizing of one source and thus, tended to exclusively employ what I called a “source-by-source” approach to summarizing source material. Once I got them to understand that summary meant summarizing what is known about the subject matter, not what just what each individual source says, they began producing literature reviews that employed much more cognitively and textually sophisticated source syntheses, literature reviews that were organized around themes rather than individual sources.

The Citation Project researchers also found that students typically referenced a source only once, that more than half of the sources they used were five pages in length or shorter, and that students typically referred to material appearing in the first three pages of the source. The overall conclusion is that students do not engage with the source material they use for their writing assignments. And, I think, the implication for instructors across campus is that students don’t automatically know how to summarize (and synthesize) sources, and therefore, it behooves us all for faculty of every discipline to take time to talk with students about how their disciplines employ source material, because research in writing in the disciplines has shown that, in fact, different disciplines tend reference sources in different ways.

For more on the Citation Project, visit their website at http://citationproject.net/.

For more information about the Conference on College Composition and Communication, go to http://www.ncte.org/cccc.

How Learning Works

2011-02-18T15:36:00.003-05:00


Co-author Michele DiPietro will visit Ohio State on March 7.

by Sharon Ross

During the past few months, several book groups on campus have been reading the new 2010 book How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching.

In the book, the authors discuss many of the pieces that influence students' ability to learn effectively in our classes. The seven principles they outline are these:

1. Students' prior knowledge can help or hinder learning.

2. How students organize knowledge influences how they learn and apply what they know.

3. Students' motivation determines, directs, and sustains what they do to learn.

4. To develop mastery, students must acquire component skills, practice integrating them, and know when to apply what they have learned.

5. Goal-directed practice coupled with targeted feedback enhances the quality of students' learning.

6. Students' current level of development interacts with the social, emotional, and intellectual climate of the course to impact learning.

7. To become self-directed learners, students must learn to monitor and adjust their approaches to learning.

For each of the seven principles introduced, the authors also provide an eminently readable background in research findings that illustrate and support how that principle influences learning. In light of these principles, the authors go on to introduce a number of ways--both general and specific--that we as instructors can help our students to become more effective learners, for example by helping students to find ways in which to organize the new information they are learning, by providing timely and appropriately couched feedback, and by creating an inclusive and encouraging class climate.

I have enjoyed participating in one of these book groups with other members of the UCAT staff. Of course, like you, we all think about teaching and learning a lot. Even so, every one of us has found new ideas as well as new ways of framing old ideas. I'm looking forward both to finding out how my new awareness can help me to improve as a teacher and to implementing some of the techniques suggested in the book.

I strongly recommend that you consider adding How Learning Works to that ever-growing pile of books on your nightstand that you intend to read some day soon. You're certain not only to deepen your understanding of your students' learning process, but also to pick up some practical and easy-to-implement tips on how to better foster the learning that happens in your own courses.

A more festive way to begin learning about the ideas presented in the book–and to mingle with others at Ohio State who are interested in "smart teaching"–is to attend a presentation by one of the book's authors, Dr. Michele Di Pietro, which UCAT will be hosting on Monday March 7th. More details about the event can be found on the UCAT home page. We hope that you will be able to join us!

What’s Working Well In Your Class? Ask Your Students

2011-02-01T09:48:00.002-05:00

Go right to the source and find out from your student
how well they are learning in your course.
Image: Flickr - Illinois Springfield

by Jennie Williams

What’s working well in your class to help students learn? One way to discover the answer to this question is to go right to the source: your students. After all, they are daily participants in your classes. They are the direct source of information on their own learning. If you are interested in gathering student feedback, UCAT can help you do so in a unique and comprehensive way by conducting a Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID).

What is a SGID?

A SGID is a way to gather rich, contextualized information about your course and your teaching through an in-class focus group interview, facilitated by a UCAT instructional consultant. After having an initial consultation with the facilitator to learn what you would like to discover through the SGID experience, you will schedule 20 minutes on a usual class day to step out of the room and allow the facilitator to become a “research tool” for you. The facilitator will ask your students to have small group discussions about three questions related to their learning in your course. Then, the facilitator will pull the smaller groups back into a full class discussion to summarize and clarify their feedback.

After the SGID, you will meet with your facilitator again to receive and review the data he or she collected for you – written feedback from the students’ small group discussions, and the facilitator’s impartial summary of the large group discussion. Together, you will work to interpret the comments to help you decide how you would like to address the student feedback with your class. SGIDs are normally conducted mid-term so that you have the opportunity to react to the information you’ve gathered and apply it to the remainder of the quarter, in whatever ways you see fit.

Why choose a SGID?

A SGID provides a much fuller picture of student feedback than an SEI or other written evaluation likely would. The facilitator is able to put the students’ answers into context by asking follow-up questions and gathering illustrative examples, give you an idea of how many class members agree with a particular piece of feedback, and explain the tone in which comments were made. Students may also help each other to put their own feedback into context by responding to one another’s comments (e.g., if one student complains about the amount of reading, others might respond that the amount is on par with what should be expected of them).

Moreover, SGIDs frequently result in better instructor-student communication and a greater sense of community in the classroom. Students are often impressed that the instructor took the time to ask for their feedback in a detailed manner, and in return, they respond with insightful, eloquent, and articulate answers.

If you are interested in pursuing a SGID, email UCAT to set up an appointment with an instructional consultant to determine whether a SGID would be a useful tool for you and your class.

Plagiarism: More Than Just A Matter of Discipline

2011-01-27T12:21:00.004-05:00

"Many acts of plagiarism can be attributed to
much more than student laziness."
Image: Flickr - Mr_Stein

by Lindsay Bernhagen

Plagiarism is a perpetual concern in university classrooms. For both instructors and students, plagiarism often has negative consequences beyond the disciplinary sanctions imposed by the Committee on Academic Misconduct.

For example, when faced with an incidence of plagiarism, instructors may feel they have failed to earn the respect of their students. A student who has plagiarized may not have developed the skills that the course was supposed to foster, and has further denied herself an opportunity to learn.

Though plagiarism can adversely affect teaching and learning in a variety of ways, it is a problem for which there are few obvious solutions beyond telling students not to do it or they will face severe punishment. When instructors take on a punitive -- or even paranoid -- role, they tend to lose faith in student integrity and consequently minimize opportunities for creativity and learning.

There are, of course, instances of plagiarism that result solely from a student’s attempt to find an easy way out. However, many acts of plagiarism can be attributed to much more than student laziness. In many cases, students struggle to understand the purpose of working with source material and thus are unable to effectively integrate other voices and ideas with their own. In fact, merely handing out citation guidelines and reminding students that they should not cheat can give them the impression that their ideas are not worth hearing. This can limit learning opportunities by instilling fear and conservatism in the writing process.

Thinking about plagiarism in terms of institutional and disciplinary practices can help instructors to better prevent misconduct while simultaneously facilitating a more comprehensive learning experience for students. Often, integrating a more productive conversation about disciplinary conventions into the classroom is as simple as having a conversation about “why” sources are cited instead of just “how” they are used.

Instructors can also develop low-stakes activities and assignments that teach students how and why to use other sources to situate them within a critical scholarly dialogue and to enhance the effectiveness of their own voices. This will not only result in a lower number of plagiarism cases, but also in more nuanced critical thinking on the part of students.

If you are interested in learning more about preventing plagiarism in your classes, come to “Plagiarism, Ethics, and Writing,” co-sponsored by the Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing, on Tuesday, February 1. Register today at ucat.osu.edu.

UCAT’s College Teaching Series Proves Practical and Interactive

2011-01-24T16:12:00.003-05:00

Participants were engaged as the
"Developing Effective Presentation Skills"
facilitator modeled the skills he was teaching.

by Spencer Robinson

On January 20, 2011, I had the chance to attend a workshop offered by the University Center for the Advancement of Teaching (UCAT) entitled “Developing Effective Presentation Skills.” This 90-minute workshop was aimed at helping instructors at OSU develop good strategies for planning and presenting material during class.

Upon arriving at the workshop, I learned that potential disaster was lurking that day. The technology in the room was not cooperating. Not a great beginning for a class on effective presentation, right?

However, instead of letting the uncooperative audio hinder the workshop, the facilitator used effective class discussion and presentation skills to engage the audience and teach about ways to present more effectively. A situation that could have derailed the entire presentation turned into an intriguing and informative session as the presenter modeled what he was teaching.

I found that this pattern of demonstrating how to be an effective presenter – and not just telling the audience – flowed through the entire session. For example, through his own organization, the facilitator demonstrated to participants how to present material using a structure that facilitates learning.

The biggest lesson that I took away from the presentation was to be yourself as you teach. You don’t need to be funny or always wear a tie if that isn’t your style of teaching. If you want your students to learn, find meaningful ways to engage them that are within your comfort zone. I personally want more of my humor and my passion for teaching to play a bigger part in my teaching.

If you are interested in finding ways to improve aspects of your teaching as well as learning how to implement them, I recommend attending the workshops in the College Teaching Series offered each quarter. The next one, “Facilitating Class Discussion,” is scheduled for Thursday, January 27. You can register at ucat.osu.edu.

I’ll be there, learning how to create significant learning experiences in my classroom as well as looking for how the presenters turn near disasters into excellent teaching.

Network with Us!

2010-12-28T10:15:00.000-05:00

The following advertisement will be running in an upcoming edition of OnCampus. Check out all the ways you can connect with UCAT online!

How Can You Reach Students in Mental Distress?

2010-11-30T16:26:00.002-05:00

Screen Shot from the Faculty At-Risk Training

Results of the 2009 National Health Assessment by the American College Health Association show that over 30% of Ohio State students report feeling so depressed it is difficult for them to function, and 7% say they have seriously considered suicide in the past year.

There have been more than 40 student deaths by suicide at The Ohio State University over the last decade.

You may see students who are struggling with mental distress on a regular basis in your classes. Perhaps you could be the person to reach out and point those students toward the help they need. UCAT is offering three opportunities for you to learn how to recognize signs of distress and have conversations with students that may successfully encourage them to get assistance.

Attend the Suicide Prevention Training workshop on Tuesday, January 11 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m to learn about causes and symptoms of mental distress, as well as techniques and methods for approaching students who you suspect are at risk. To register for this or other winter events, click here.

The Faculty At-Risk Training allows you the opportunity to practice identifying and conversing with virtual at-risk students in a hands-on, trial-and-error simulation. This online training takes less than an hour and can be completed in the comfort of your own home or office. Visit http://ucat.osu.edu/at-risk.html for more information and to take advantage of this valuable opportunity.

InterACT and UCAT will co-sponsor an interactive theatre workshop on Monday, February 21 from 3:30 - 5:00 p.m. At this workshop, "Identifying and Assisting At-Risk Students," student actors will perform sketches to demonstrate how distressed students might behave, and participants will discuss ways we could help these students. A follow-up discussion will explore ways we might be able to help such students. To register for this or other winter events, click here.

Do not underestimate the power you have to make a difference. By taking one or more of these opportunities to learn more about students in distress, you could save a student's life.

A Webinar to Address Cyber-Bullying

2010-11-22T13:04:00.000-05:00

Cyber-bullying is a damaging phenomenon that has impacted students on college campuses. From derogatory Facebook posts to harassing text messages, are you aware of the student bullying that takes place via technology and social media?

The Office of Student Judicial Affairs (along with UCAT and the Office of Student Life) is presenting a webinar called Cyber-Bullying on Campus: Preparation, Prevention, and Policies. The webinar will be shown on Wednesday, December 8, from 2–3:30 p.m. in room 300 of the Younkin Success Center. Take this free opportunity to learn about cyber-bullying from conduct, legal, and counseling perspectives, and to discuss practical ways the issue can be addressed at Ohio State.

For more information and to register, visit http://ucat.osu.edu/bullying.html.

InterACT's "When We Unintentionally Exclude" Explores Issues of Inclusion in the Classroom

2010-11-19T10:48:00.000-05:00

"Professor Graham" addresses her statistics class
in an interactive theatre workshop

On November 16, 2010, UCAT co-sponsored an interactive theatre workshop called "When We Unintentionally Exclude."

The workshop began with a skit written and performed by the students in the InterACT Theatre Project for Social Change, directed by Robin Post. The theme of the skit was ways in which teachers might use language or create assignments that unintentionally single students out or leave them feeling as though they don't belong. Specifically, the workshop addressed such issues as the effects of derogatory language, "passing" as a member of a social group, and examples or assignments that focus solely on the social norm.

After the presentation, the audience asked the characters questions about their actions and thoughts about the issues at hand. The group worked to draw implications for how to be more conscious of including all students when teaching. Examples of topics that were raised include the intention vs. consequences of one's words, the responsibility of a teacher to be aware of how language or examples affect students, body language that might point to a student's discomfort, and the ways in which students' experiences outside class might affect their perception of what happens in class.

UCAT and InterACT will co-sponsor another interactive theatre workshop on Monday, February 21 from 3:30–5:30 p.m.

For resources about the topics of exclusion and inclusion in the classroom environment, visit: Our Diigo Group

Video clips from "When We Unintentionally Exclude":
"Exclusive Assignment"
"Passing"

Congratulations, Professors Boehm and Donnermeyer!

2010-11-18T10:17:00.001-05:00

Professor Joe Donnermeyer

Professor Mike Boehm

Michael J. Boehm and Joseph F. Donnermeyer, award-winning professors at The Ohio State University, were recognized for outstanding teaching at the November 14 annual meeting of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. Professor Boehm received a 2010 National Teaching Award, while Professor Donnermeyer brought home a 2010 North Central Regional Teaching Award. Both are members of the Ohio State University Academy of Teaching.

The staff at UCAT would like to congratulate these two exceptional teachers and thank them for their commitment to educational excellence!

For more information on these professors and their awards, please read this news release from the OSU Extension.