teaching arts lunches Archive
spring 2012
Fall 2011
spring 2011
fall 2010
Fall 2012
September 14
A New Approach to Teaching Math for Engineers and Scientists
Gary Felder (Physics)
Kenny Felder
Many science and engineering curricula, including physics and engineering at Smith, require a "math methods" course that briefly covers a large grab-bag of math topics useful to engineering and science students. Unfortunately, spending a week on an unfamiliar math topic with no physical context and then being asked to recall it a year later when you need it for another class is not always a successful strategy. We are developing a new approach in which students work through exercises where they solve physical problems and uncover the need for mathematical techniques, are guided through their own discovery of the math, and then apply the techniques to physical problems. Our conjecture, supported by educational and cognitive research, is that their later recall will benefit both from learning the material in the type of physical context where they will need it, and from developing the ideas themselves through active-learning exercises. These exercises will form part of a new math methods textbook that we expect to publish in two years. We would strongly welcome ideas and feedback from anyone interested in the engineering and science curriculum or in the general educational issue of transfer of learning from one course to another.
September 21
Optional Department Teaching Discussions
September 28
Informal Teaching Discussion and Potential Teaching Circle Meeting Time
October 5
Assessing Student Learning in the Chemistry Major: the pHunger Games
Betsy Jamieson (Chemistry)
Dave Gorin (Chemistry)
Carrie Read (Chemistry)
We will describe our pilot implementation of the "pHunger Games", an examination given to graduating seniors to assess learning in the chemistry major. Designed to test specific learning outcomes, our assessment required students to referee a research manuscript by providing written feedback on the presented experimental design, data analysis, and conclusions.
October 19
Teaching Social Justice, Activism, and New Media on Otelia Cromwell Day
Lisa Armstrong (Study of Women & Gender)
Kevin Rozario (American Studies)
The theme for this year’s Otelia Cromwell Day is "Social Justice, Activism, and New Media." We will detail the presentations, workshops, and events offered for students and (exclusively) for faculty. We will also talk about how digital media is transforming the political imaginations, commitments, and activities of students today.
October 26 - CAMPUS CENTER CARROLL ROOM
Informal Teaching Discussion and Potential Teaching Circle Meeting Time
November 2 - FORD HALL 240
Blending Online Learning and Liberal-Arts Classroom Interaction
Jennifer Spohrer (Bryn Mawr College)
Nicholas Horton (Mathematics & Statistics)
Bryn Mawr and Smith Colleges are part of a consortium funded by the Next Generation Learning Challenge with the goal of introducing open-source courseware modules into traditional courses to improve course and college completion. The project aims to assess if targeted use of this technology, blended with the traditional intimate classroom setting, will free up time for more in-depth coverage of complex material and create a more engaged learning environment. We will briefly introduce some of the open-source courseware modules that are available, as well as providing an overview of Massively Online Open Courses (MOOC's) and discuss their relevance at selective residential colleges.
November 9
Psychology Assessment Update
Patty DiBartolo (Psychology)
Measuring student learning is a daunting task. What are the possible concerns and opportunities emerging from a department's attempts to capture student knowledge within its discipline? A Teaching Arts Lunch last year described the work of some faculty in the Psychology Department to develop a tool assessing disciplinary knowledge, especially related to research methods, within our student majors. The pilot tool we created is an open-ended assessment that measures transfer and application of disciplinary knowledge aligned with our collective learning goals. We will provide an update on our work, sharing pilot findings from students assessed at various stages of our curriculum (from students taking our introductory course to majors nominated as the "best" in our department), describing how these data have begun to shape our understanding of student learning and subsequent revision of our curriculum. With this update, we will once again discuss the possibilities and pitfalls of our work and invite faculty discussion focused on the essential question of how best to measure what students know.
November 16
What is it Like Being a Smith Student Today? How are we preparing our students to enter the Knowledge Age?
Kevin Shea (Director, Sherrerd Center for Teaching & Learning)
Come join us for an open-ended discussion about teaching strategies that enable our students to ask and address important questions. We will begin the session by watching a TEDx talk by Michael Wesch, Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, entitled "From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able". We will then see how Wesch’s ideas resonate with what we are currently doing at Smith and how his ideas could transform our teaching in the future.
Michael Wesch TEDx Presentation: From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-Able
Discussion Questions
What is it Like Being a Student at Smith Today?
November 30
Informal Teaching Discussion and Potential Teaching Circle Meeting Time
December 7 - CONFERENCE CENTER OAK ROOM
Teaching with the Museum
Maggie Lind (Museum of Art)
Ann Musser (Museum of Art)
Join staff from the Smith College Museum of Art to learn more about incorporating visual material across the curriculum, with tips for encouraging close-looking and observation. We will engage in our own guided looking session with a work of art and talk about ways to discover the relevant connections to your own course topics within SCMA’s collection of approximately 25,000 objects.
spring 2012
January 27
Interpreting the New Course Evaluations
Nancy Whittier (Sociology)
This Teaching Arts Lunch will focus on how to interpret the new course evaluations, particularly the qualitative portion. Bring your questions, bring your evaluations if you like, and we'll talk about how to make sense of the comments, look at examples, and consider how to summarize them.
February 3, 2012
Student Perspective on Classroom Discussion
Barbara Brehm-Curtis (Exercise and Sport Studies)
Floyd Cheung (English)
Jessica Bacal (Center for Work & Life)
When the Center for Work & Life advertised a workshop designed to help students feel more comfortable speaking in class, fifty students registered. During this presentation, we will share what we learned from reviewing current research on this topic and talking to students who attended the workshop. We will then facilitate a conversation about strategies that you have used to encourage students' speaking and engagement in class.
Cognitive Restructuring Exercise by Patty DiBartolo
GROUPTHINK: The Brainstorming Myth by Jonah Lehrer
The New Yorker, January 30, 2012
What's the Problem With Quiet Students? Anyone? Anyone? by Mary M. Reda
The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 5, 2010
Shyness: Evolutionary Tactic? by Susan Cain
The New York Times, June 25, 2011
February 24
Transitioning to a Workshop Format in Introductory Physics
Joyce Palmer-Fortune (Physics)
Gary Felder (Physics)
Over the next two years Smith Physics will be doing away with separate labs and lectures in Introductory Physics, moving to an integrated model where students go back and forth between doing experiments, discussing the results, and solving problems. We will discuss our plans for making this transition and the open questions we are still working on in that process.
March 9
Mind in the Making
Ellen Galinsky, President and Co-Founder, Families and Work Institute
For almost a decade, Ellen Galinksy worked with top researchers from across the country, filming their experiments and studying their results about how we learn best. In her acclaimed book, Mind in the Making (Harper Collins 2010), she identifies seven life skills that are essential to success in school, in the workforce and in life. They are: focus and self control, perspective taking, communicating, making connections, critical thinking, taking on challenges, and self-directed engaged learning. In this presentation, Ellen will discuss her research and how it may be applied to work with college students.
March 30
Smith College Alumnae Outcomes
Cate Rowen (Institutional Research)
Minh Ly (Institutional Research)
What happens to our students after they graduate? What jobs do they hold? Do they complete advanced degrees? How do they compare to alumnae from peer institutions? What do they think about their Smith experience? Minh Ly and Cate Rowen from Institutional Research will present findings from Smith's alumnae survey, followed by a discussion about what we measure and what really matters in life after Smith.
April 6
Contemplative Pedagogy in Higher Education
Bernadine Mellis (Film Studies)
Jennifer Cannon (UMass)
For thousands of years, people have practiced mindfulness meditation to reduce suffering and cultivate peace. Contemporary Western research reveals that mindfulness also enhances learning and attention. Many educational institutions, including UCLA, Stanford, UCSF, and PENN have embraced mindfulness as an educational intervention by introducing it into their curricula and conducting research in the field. Bernadine Mellis, Five College Visiting Artist in Film & Video Production and Jennifer Cannon, PhD Candidate at UMASS, will introduce some of the basic ideas behind contemplative pedagogy. They will also lead participants in brief contemplative practices designed for the classroom.
What Are Contemplative Practices?
The Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education (ACHME)
April 20
Mentoring Underrepresented Students
Gita Bosch, Academic & Educational Consultant
A key to student success is mentoring. This is especially true for underrepresented minority (URM) students who may not have the social structure that provides role models and intellectual and emotional supports that students need to succeed. Mentoring can provide this infrastructure and fill in gaps in knowledge and access to available resources which many URM students need. Peer mentoring is critical for student success, but it has to be supported with faculty mentoring for optimal effectiveness. Many non-minority faculty are wary about taking on the role of mentor for URM students. This is usually not because they do not want to but rather it is usually because they are concerned that they do not know how. The discussion will focus on how faculty mentors can overcome the barriers and gain awareness, insight and strategies on mentoring URM students to increase the chances for their future success professionally and personally.
Science Mentoring: Strongest Advocate, Strongest Critic - A Guide to Mentoring
nature.com, July 2, 2012
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Fall 2011
September 23
Collaborative Online Writing Assignments
Richard Olivo (Biological Sciences)
Collaborative writing assignments, where students draft and edit a document collectively, can increase the amount of writing in a course without increasing the amount of grading. We will discuss the practicalities of working with two online collaborative environments, PBWorks (a wiki) and Google Docs. We will also hear about how Smith students reacted to working in assigned teams – Richard Olivo, Biological Sciences and Neuroscience, Smith College; and former Associate Director, Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University
Olivo, R. F. Collaborative Online Writing Assignments to Foster Active Learning. Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education, 2012. 11(1): A82-A89.
Oakley, Barbara et al. Turning Student Groups into Effective Teams. Journal of Student Centered Learning, 2004 2, (1): 9-34.
North, South, East, and West: Compass Points
An Exercise in Understanding Preferences in Group Work
October 7
The Bechtel Environmental Classroom at the Ada & Archibald MacLeish Field Station: What can a building teach you?
Reid Bertone-Johnson (Center for the Environment)
October 21
The CMU Open Learning Initiative and Smith: Integrating pedagogies and technologies
Nick Horton (Mathematics and Statistics)
TED Talks - Salman Khan:
Let's Use Video to Reinvent Education
Project Mosaic
Bryn Mawr Next Generation Learning
October 28
Skyping the French: A weekly intercultural conversation with a school in Paris
Christiane Metral (French Studies)
November 4
The Sherrerd Center for Teaching and Learning: Our first two years and plans for the future
Kevin Shea (Sherrerd Center Director, Chemistry)
November 18
Assessment of Deep Learning in the Methods of Psychological Science
Patty DiBartolo (Psychology)
December 2
Teaching Circles: Finding kindred spirits to support your work in the classroom
Borjana Mikic (Engineering)
Susan Van Dyne (Study of Women and Gender)
One of the main tenets of the Sherrerd Center for Teaching and Learning is the notion that teaching is always a work in a progress, and is always improvable. When we consider new approaches to our work in the classroom, however, the barriers to adopting new pedagogical strategies can often seem formidable. Teaching Circles provide an opportunity for faculty to learn from colleagues who are exploring similar pedagogical themes or approaches by engaging with one another in conversation about shared interests. In this Teaching Arts Lunch, Susan and Borjana will discuss two on-going Teaching Circles: one related to teaching with the archives, the other related to creativity and design. Although the focus of these two groups is quite different, we will explore several common themes as we invite you to join the conversation.
Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
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Spring 2011
March 4
Beyond Access: How Jacobson Center Services Develop Autonomous Learning
Julio Alves (Jacobson Center)
Gail Thomas (Jacobson Center)
March 11
Ability Matters: Students with Learning Disabilities Talk with Us about Teaching Strategies That Work
Laura Rauscher (Disability Services)
March 25
Liberal Arts Advising: A Report from the First Year Pilot
Kate Queeney (Chemistry)
April 1
Mobile Technology: A Survey of Applications for Teaching and Learning
Tom Laughner (Educational Technology Services)
Nat Fortune (Physics)
April 8
Transfer Maps: Identifying Transferable Knowledge and Skills from a Capstone Course
Susannah Howe (Engineering)
Mary Moriarty (Engineering)
April 15
The Value (and Privilege) of One-on-One Teaching in the Performing Arts
Judith Gordon (Music) and Friends
April 22
Supporting Good Classroom Talk Using Knowledge Forum
Patty DiBartolo (Psychology)
Glenn Ellis (Engineering)
Randy Frost (Psychology)
Al Rudnitsky (Education & Child Study)
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FALL 2010
September 17
What's New With Smith's Educational Technology Services (ETS) Group?
Tom Laughner (Education Technology Services)
Aisha Gabriel (Education Technology Services)
September 24
Active Learning
Richard Felder
Rebecca Brent
Active Learning: An Introduction (PDF)
October1
Achieving Excellence in Math, Engineering and Science: The AEMES Program
Peter de Villiers (Psychology)
Adam Hall (Biological Sciences)
Kate Queeney (Chemistry)
October 22
Report on Critical Thinking Assessment Test
Minh Ly (Institutional Research)
October 29
Educational Inequalities and Impacts on Entering Smith Students
Tina Wildhagen (Sociology)
November 5, 2010
Updates From Conferences on Teaching and Learning
Joyce Fortune (Physics)
Beth Powell (Psychology)
Kevin Shea (Sherrerd Center Director, Chemistry)
Teaching Arts Luncheon (PDF)
There's No "Laughter" in School (PPT)
November 19
Incorporating Current Topics in Classes: Gulf Oil Spill Teaching Circle
Drew Guswa (Engineering)
Teaching Arts Luncheon (PDF)
December 3
Helping Underserved Students Succeed at Smith. Perspectives from the Founder of the Pathways to College Program
Judith Berry Griffin, Woodrow Wilson Fellow
