Center for Teaching and Learning at UT Dallas

The American Association of University Professors now has a chapter at UT Dallas.

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Here are some guidelines to consider as you decide what will work for your context.

Five Tips for Writing Academic Integrity Statements in the Age of AI As educators and students grapple with what is allowed when using generative AI (GenAI) tools, I have compiled five tips to help you design or redesign academic integrity statements for your syllabus, assignments, exams, and course activities.

High Impact Practices can transform learning for more students when faculty implement them as course assignments, i.e., what students think about and do to learn. But without assessment documenting their impact they are not High Impact Practices, they are just Practices.

Elevating High Impact Teaching Through Continuous Improvement High Impact Practices (HIPs) help first-year students engage in deep-level approaches to learning that allow for increased retention, integration, and transfer of knowledge.

9 things Dylan Wiliam wishes he had known when he started teaching.

The 9 things every teacher should know We have more evidence about what works in the classroom than ever before, but how much of that knowledge is in the hands of teachers? Educationalist Dylan Wiliam outlines the essential information he wishes he’d had when he started out in schools - gleaned from some of the world’s top academics

I strongly recommend this resource to all faculty and TAs in the UT Dallas community. This could be an energizing read over the coming winter break.

How about a FREE 500+ page ebook titled "What Scholars and Teachers Want You to Know About Why and How to Apply the Science of Learning in Your Academic Setting" https://www.dropbox.com/s/9835wun1r44eo6g/itow.pdf?dl=0 Here's a sample of the table of contents

3️⃣ implications of rose shine ‘s 7th principle:
1. Set high expectations
2. Modify lesson plans in response to students’ progress
3. Make student successes explicit

Rosenshine's seventh Principle of Instruction: Obtain a high success rate Striving for an 80% success rate ensures your students are learning effectively, but also shows that they are challenged in their learning.

What do science educators have to say about competitive grading systems? Here is a perspective from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology:

Curbing the malpractice of curved grades and high-stakes exams Melanie M. Cooper and Mike Klymkowsky urge their fellow faculty members to abandon unnecessary obstacles to inclusion and consider new ways of evaluating their students’ learning.

New from Josh Eyler:

Danger: Curve Ahead — Teachers Going Gradeless Grades serve as mirrors for the structural inequities that are woven into the fabric of our educational systems. Often used for the twin purposes of comparison and competition, grades are drivers of injustice. Josh Eyler shares an excerpt from his forthcoming book dealing with one of the biggest per

A timely topic as we are about to begin a new semester:

Bridging the Gap: Overcoming Barriers in Higher Ed for Students with Disabilities including Neurodivergent Learners We are responsible for creating courses and learning spaces that embrace the rich diversity of our students.

Here is something to consider as you prepare your syllabi. Should attendance and participation be graded directly or indirectly?

Should class participation be graded in college? The pandemic laid bare course policies and practices that disadvantage some students. Now, some say that professors should cool it with awarding participation points.

What should be the purpose of grades? How can we get back to it?

Where grading went wrong--and how to make it better In their new book, Off the Mark: How Grades, Ratings, and Rankings Undermine Learning (but Don’t Have To) (Harvard University Press), Jack Schneider, an education professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and Ethan L. Hutt, an education...

Revise and resubmit is part of academic life for faculty, so why not for students? It takes time, but making time for learning is our purpose.

This article is worth reading both for its content and for the many useful links at the end. See in particular the guidance for developing course policies for generative AI and for understanding students’ resistance to active learning.

What Does It Take to Elevate Good Teaching? A Lot. Readers share their opinions on whether colleges value teaching — and what needs to change.

In providing accommodations, we need more communication and less suspicion. Where possible, implement typical accommodations proactively for the benefit of the whole class. Just as with using closed captions or a microphone automatically, before anyone asks, proactive universal accommodations free the instructor and students to focus on other things.

By Katie Rose Guest Pryal
JULY 3, 2023

Advice | Neurodivergent Students Need Flexibility, Not Our Frustration In negotiating accommodations, we need more communication and less suspicion.

Whose mindset should be our concern? Students’ or instructor’s?

Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Does Developing a Growth Mindset Help Students Learn? How does the mind work—and especially, how does it learn? Teachers’ instructional decisions are based on a mix of theories learned in teacher education, trial and error, craft knowledge, and gut instinct. Such knowledge often serves us well, but is there anything sturdier to rely on?

When students try to figure out “what works” for studying, they often use ineffective and inefficient strategies. Dan Willingham explains what they should do instead.

Opinion | There Are Better Ways to Study That Will Last You a Lifetime If we really want lifelong learners, there is much more we need to do.

Q&A: Daniel Willingham on How to Fix Your Study Strategies The psychologist and author of 'Outsmart Your Brain' explains what's wrong with the way students study.

Check this out—free book!

Society for the Teaching of Psychology - In Their Own Words Feedback regarding the editorial content of this book or any of its chapters should be directed toward the individual authors. Contact information will be provided at the end of each chapter. Feedback regarding technical matters of formatting or accessibility of this text via the online environment....

Can’t endorse this, but it may be worth a look.

On-the-fly Assessment Strategies for the Active Learning Classroom Learn on-the-fly assessment strategies for the active classroom in this Magna Publications online seminar. Get access on our site now.

How do we entice students to learn what they might not immediately realize is relevant, useful, fascinating, or beautiful? Michelle Miller has some ideas you might find relevant, useful, fascinating, and perhaps even beautiful.

Motivating Students: Highlights from Minds Online | Faculty Focus Clearly there are things that teachers can do that work with some reliability, but why and how they motivate are vexingly complex. There is much to be learned about motivation.

Does it seem sometimes like your students do not understand how to learn? Or they never learned what it means to study effectively? Dan Willingham’s book for students will be published this month. Check out this free webinar on the topic for strategies to help your students.

The January Lecture: Surprising Strategies for Succeeding in College Hear effective strategies for learning from lectures, reading complex texts, and evaluating whether you’ve mastered the material.

Disability as a Valuable Form of Diversity, Not a Deficit - Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning This article will explore how educators can move away from this kind of pathological approach to better help autistic students succeed academically.

Dan Willingham is on TikTok with advice for students.

Daniel_Willingham on TikTok

Materials from our teaching philosophy workshop will be shared in the CTL Teaching Resources course in eLearning. Here is a little something extra
:

Does Your Teaching-Learning Philosophy Align with Your Teaching? | Faculty Focus At the beginning of a career, most of us don’t think much about the philosophy that guides our teaching.

While we’re on the topic of rigor and the importance of avoiding TOXIC rigor, here is a new piece by Katie Rose Guest Pryal highlighting how attempts to enforce rigidity are particularly harmful to disabled students.

When ‘Rigor’ Targets Disabled Students Punitive attendance policies and inflexible deadlines make students’ lives needlessly difficult.

We've said this before, and it is worth saying again. Supporting students' sense of belonging, acknowledging the multiple conflicting obligations they have outside of your class and creating a course structure that allows for that, and adopting a warm and welcoming tone are all strategies that help students meet your high academic standards. We are not helping students when we lower expectations for academic achievement. We can help them succeed by keeping both standards and flexibility high. Structure and deadlines can help both students and faculty, but thinking about how and why can help us to avoid rigor for rigor's sake.

4 Strategies to Warm Teaching While Maintaining High Expectations Todd Zakrajsek, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Key Statement: Showing support and compassion to students while maintaining high expectations is the model of a "warm" classroom where students will excel. Keywords: Warm Teaching, High Expectations, High Standards, Student Success Intr...

We are thrilled to share the news that TWO faculty members from UT Dallas received the 2022 UT System Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award. They are Dr. Salena Brody, Professor of Instruction in BBS, and Dr. Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki, Professor in NSM. Campuses are allowed to nominate only two faculty members, and only 14 awards were given across the entire UT System, which includes both academic and medical campuses. Only 7 awards were given to academic campuses. Please join us in congratulating these extraordinary educators for this well-deserved recognition.

UT Regents announce 2022 Outstanding Teacher Awards AUSTIN – Texas – The University of Texas System Board of Regents named 14 educators at UT institutions among its 2022 Outstanding Teachers. Recipients will each receive a medallion and a check for $25,000 in recognition of their contributions to student success and learning. They will be formall...

A reminder to please join us for the first Teach-In event of the 2022-2023 year! Our discussion on "Equity in the Classroom" will take place virtually on Teams at 12 p.m. on September 23, 2022. See eLearning or your email for the Teams link.