Small Teaching

Small Teaching: kleine, aber wirksame Veränderungen für Lehrveranstaltungen

Kleiner Eingriff, große Wirkung—so lautet das Konzept von Small Teaching (Lang, 2019; Flower und Lang, 2021). Anstatt alles auf den Kopf zu stellen, kann man die Lehre effektiver—und ohne großen Zeitaufwand--durch kleine Schritte verbessern. In dieser Reihe von kurzen Workshops bekommen Sie Tipps und Tricks rund um aktive Lehre und sammeln Ideen, die sofort in die eigene Lehre umgesetzt werden können. Die Workshops können beliebig besucht werden und sind für das Zertifikat in Hochschuldidaktik anrechenbar.

Thursday, April 13

Even in so-called normal circumstances, teaching is a caring profession, putting professionals at increased risk for burnout. Burnout is now defined as a combination of all three traits:

·         feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion

·         increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job [and]

·         reduced professional efficacy (Maslach and Leiter 2021)

In this workshop, we will discuss the implications of burnout and strategies for addressing it drawing on new research from Rebecca Pope-Ruark’s Unraveling Faculty Burnout (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022). We will begin with a self-assessment exercise and end with pathways for mitigating a common problem with structural roots.

Thursday, April 20

How can you help foster a sense of belonging in your students? We will discuss concrete strategies you can implement right away to help promote student success in your courses. Topics we will cover include approaches to valuing student assets, naming good work, providing high structure, and normalizing help-seeking behaviors.

Thursday, May 4

War is by definition traumatic. And this has dramatic impacts on teaching and learning. Studies show  trauma-responses severely limit learning, trust, and relationships. Yet research also shows that trauma-informed approaches to teaching and learning can improve outcomes for both teachers and learners. Trauma-informed teaching is valued-based, offering faculty a set of principles from which to articulate practices. We will discuss these values, including safety, transparency, equity, collaboration, and agency, based on the research and practice of Professor Kirk Anderson and licensed therapist Rebecca Anderson at Dickinson College. Workshop participants will reflect on the values they already implement in their teaching and share strategies with each other to help address potential gaps. 

 Thursday, June 1

An important task of teaching is to impart knowledge. Students need a basic command of key concepts in order to put theory into practice as professionals. How can teachers actively and sustainably convey foundational knowledge in order to prepare students for disciplinary problem-solving? We will learn strategies for building student knowledge in a targeted way, including fostering the habits of mind valued in your field.

Thursday, June 8

Scholars explore problems with no single, clear answer. How can you invite students to do the same? In this workshop we will introduce the concept of “threshold concepts” (Meyer and Land, 2016) to identify concepts and methods that may be strange, counter-intuitive, and uncomfortable to newcomers to your field. We will then discuss techniques for designing class activities and assignments that encourage students to practice these ways of knowing and doing in their writing and in class.

Thursday, June 15

The headlines are full of doomsday predictions about the fate of student writing in the age of ChatGPT. This workshop flips the question from what can AI do to what and why do I want my students to write? We will discuss the current limits of artificial intelligence to abstract meaning and to feel meaningful to readers, as well as the ways in which KI-produced texts obscure the social contexts of their sources. How can we make our writing assignments more meaningful to students? How do we build communities of trust in the classroom? How might KI invite us to think more deeply about the teaching of information literacy, including the ethical implications of knowledge and its construction? How do we empower students to use—or not use—KI tools with discernment?

Thursday, July 13

Writing-intensive teaching is good teaching-- as numerous studies have shown. Students learn much more deeply when they write. Indeed, writing is a tool for thinking—for acquiring, integrating, discovering, and communicating new knowledge. However, the design and supervision of writing assignments are crucial. What are some "best practices" in developing writing assignments across the disciplines? What do students need to acquire writing skills? We draw on practical ideas from writing research to make writing assignments interactive, meaningful, and clear—without increasing your workload. Feel free to bring a writing assignment (or idea) that you would like to reflect on and improve during the hour.

Thursday, July 20

Learning to communicate well is a lifelong process. Research shows that the single most important thing you can do as an instructor is to design meaningful assignments. Doing so is more effective and takes considerably less time than assigning more writing. In this seminar, we will unpack meaningful assignment design, drawing on research to learn more about the kinds of assignments students find meaningful and how those assignments contribute to learning. We will then discuss practical strategies for putting this learning to use in our own seminars.

Thursday, July 27

Rubrics are an effective tool for making your grading criteria clear. However, many other strategies exist. These approaches received renewed attention during the pandemic amidst pedagogical experiments to foster inclusivity, reduce stress, and motivate students online. In this short workshop, you will learn three popular new approaches to grading: specifications grading (in which students receive pass/fail grades), ungrading (in which students help set the evaluation criteria for their work), and contract grading (in which the writing process, not the product, is rewarded with a grade). We will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of each, including how the approaches are put to use in different disciplines. Leave with at least one idea you can incorporate into your grading practices.