VCU CTE - What's New

September 2009
EDUCAUSE Top Learning and Teaching Challenges
The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative Top Teaching and Learning Challenges Project is a higher education community effort designed to identify issues related to teaching and learning with technology, and to assemble resources that can help to address them. This session will engage participants in a discussion of these key challenges, and consider ways VCU might respond to them.
Date: Friday, September 4

Facilitating Difficult Dialogues
Have you ever left a class period thinking, "that discussion didn't go very well." or "Wow, if only I could get my colleagues to have such an enlightened conversation?" Have you ever avoided difficult but important discussions because you were afraid that you wouldn't be able to manage the discussion? Come and join us as we talk about our trials, tribulations, and triumphs.
Date: Friday, September 11

New Opportunities for Presenting and Visualizing Information
The visual presentation of information drives much of the activity in educational settings. For better or worse, slideware tools like PowerPoint, are often the dominant format for presentations. This brown bag session will invite faculty members to share their best practices and worst nightmares for delivering presentations. Participants will also be introduced to some new web-based presentation tools, and asked to consider ways these tools might impact teaching practice and engage learners.
Date: Friday, September 18

Learning-Centered Teaching at VCU:Reflections and Ruminations
Now that many of us have integrated some aspect of learning centered teaching into our practice, what changes have we experienced in our teaching, in our students' learning, or are we just losing our time, minds and sleep? Join us as we reflect on the past couple of years at VCU.
Date: Friday, September 25

October 2009
Exploring Open Courseware: Issues and Questions
OpenCourseWare is a term applied to course materials created by universities and shared freely with the world via the internet. Current examples include the MIT OpenCourseWare Project, Open Yale Courses, iTunesU and course videos on university YouTube channels. How are open access course materials impacting traditional notions of education? What advantages / disadvantages are presented by an
open education model? Please join us to discuss these and other questions.
Date: Friday, October 2

Rethinking How We Teach Science
Content? Understanding? Facts? Application? How do you teach in a discipline that places equal value on facts and the application of those facts? Join us and share your experiences in teaching science for understanding and application.
Date: Friday, October 9

Twitter: Does It Have A Place In Education?
Twitter is an increasingly popular social networking / communication tool which allows users to post brief (up to 140 characters) messages. It has begun to gain appeal in a range of contexts including politics, journalism, business and education. This session will feature a panel of VCU faculty and staff who will share their varied uses of Twitter. Join us to participate in conversation about the possible advantages and disadvantages of using Twitter in education.
Date: Friday, October 16

Scholarly Teaching
How do you make decisions about course design and/or revision? How do you make decisions about your own professional development? Join us for a conversation about what's worked and what hasn't. Together, we can learn to make more informed decisions about course design, pedagogy, teaching / learning styles and context.
Date: Friday, October 23

What Is Online Learning?
What is online learning? How does this differ from learning online? How is teaching being re-conceptualized as a result? With an estimated four million college students taking at least one online course this year, and forty-four states (including Virginia) now having significant online programs in their K-12 systems these questions beg fresh consideration for higher education. This brown bag session invites faculty members to discuss the current impact of the web on their courses, share ideas for online program development, and consider possible advantages and disadvantages afforded by teaching and learning online.
Date: Friday, October 30

November 2009
Classroom Impression Management
You know you are a great teacher. Why aren't your student evaluations showing it? Might it be the impression you've left on your students or what they've read on that famous professor-rating website? Join us and share your experiences in how you've managed your classroom and created a positive attitude toward you and your subject.
Date: Friday, November 6

Smartphones in Education
A recent study by Pew Internet noted the continued rise in use of Smartphones to access the internet for information (nearly 40% of cell phone users access the web with a phone). The implications of mobile computing practices for education are only just beginning to be understood. Join us for this session as several VCU faculty members share their experiences using smartphones in their teaching.
Date: Friday, November 13

Improvisational Teaching
What do you do when your lesson plan flops? How can you take advantage of "teaching moments" when they arise serendipitously? What do you do when your backup plan doesn't work? We think you'd agree that there is both an art and a science to teaching and learning. Join us and share your best improvisational teaching moments so that we can learn from each other.
Date: Friday, Nov. 20

December 2009
Blackboard: The Next Generation
There is little doubt that learning management systems (LMS), like Blackboard, provide a convenient and consistent means to support web-based delivery of courses. Indeed, with an estimated 80% market share, Blackboard has become a default expectation on many college and university campuses. With its Project Next Generation upgrade, Blackboard heralds the integration of many web 2.0 features and a media rich course environment. What is the potential impact of these changes for faculty? Is there an implied pedagogy in LMS tools like Blackboard? Is the traditional LMS viewed as a learning space by faculty and students? Join us to engage with these and other questions about how the use of Blackboard shapes teaching and learning.
Date: Friday, December 4

Registration for specific brown bag lunches can be done at http://tinyurl.com/ksx2eb

Brown Bag Fall 09.pdf