Students’ participation and engagement are key measures not only of motivation, but they also provide a way to formatively evaluate and summatively assess their learning. Facilitating participation and understanding engagement comes with some particular challenges in online/hybrid courses. This workshop will provide a space for participants to think through what participation can mean in an …
Category: In the Classroom
Activating Linguistic Diversity in the Classroom
CUNY’s classrooms are famously diverse, a reality reflected in the vast number of languages spoken by undergraduate students. Have you thought about how this language diversity will impact your teaching, and specifically how they how language dynamics impact classroom communication? How do we as instructors (especially international students and non-native English speakers) address the politics …
Teaching Labs and Pandemic STEM Teaching
COVID-19 has significantly altered the way we live, teach, and learn. For those of us in STEM fields, this often meant developing creative approaches to teaching labs effectively under socially distanced circumstances. You may be spending lots of time trying to develop effective teaching aids, including lecture sheets, adjusting your approaches from direct use of …
Practicing Ritual as a Way to Build Community in the Classroom
The workshop I have organized, “Practicing Ritual as a Way to Build Community in the Classroom,” will highlight the usefulness of practicing ritual by engaging participants in reflective activities. Building community is more difficult during these times, and this workshop will highlight how ritual can deepen connection in the classroom and work to improve student …
Close Looking
What can the pedagogy of “close looking” offer to classes both inside and outside of the humanities? Join the TLC to explore visual pedagogy and visual thinking strategies in a workshop on how CUNY instructors can use close looking across the disciplines. Though close looking strategies originated in the visual arts, they can help all …
Incorporating Cultural Content in the Language Classroom
Many language instructors enter the classroom for the first time without knowledge of language acquisition principles. They are often asked to design their classes based on a textbook that doesn’t speak to students’ experiences and fails to appeal directly to them. New instructors often feel pressured to teach following a grammar-oriented approach that seems to …
Expanding your Pedagogical Toolkit
Looking for new and creative instructional practices to enliven your classroom? Interested in learning new ways to structure your students’ engagement with course materials? Energetic class discussions can help connect emerging thinking to the reading students are doing. A supportive classroom community can reduce anxiety about learning, and create space for reflection and intellectual engagement. …
Getting Comfortable with Public Speaking
Some people consider public speaking scarier than death. It also happens to be something that we must do regularly in the academy, including in our roles as instructors. Whatever our level of mastery in our academic discipline, how we say things and the particular contexts in which we speak impact the efficacy and clarity of …
Improv for Academics
Does the thought of being in front of a classroom cause you anxiety? Are you looking for ways to help your students be less nervous and more comfortable in the classroom? This workshop will draw principles and exercises from improvisational theater to explore strategies for working with and calming the nerves that often accompany public …
Communicating Through Questions
We ask our students questions on our syllabi, in classroom discussions, in brief hallway encounters, on their essay assignments and exams. Too often, though, questions we ask in class seek only to assess content comprehension and miss the full potential of questioning as a pedagogical tool. Probing, thoughtful questions can help students develop their critical …
