CTL

CTLgrads Learning Community (for graduate students): Access and Activism: Teaching Research Skills in the Undergraduate Classroom, Session 2
Understanding and practicing academic research is central to the work of any graduate student. Yet it is rarely explicitly an element of our pedagogy. Why is that? What’s lost when we overlook the radical potential of research in our teaching practice? What implicit assumptions shape our teaching of research skills, and how can a more capacious idea of research challenge these assumptions in support of students developing their own research practices for understanding themselves and the world?

Register here.

This Learning Community explores the pedagogical benefits to be gained from explicit reflection on how we teach research methods–broadly defined–in undergraduate courses. These two sessions will focus on two important elements of teaching research in the classroom that apply across disciplines and fields. In the first session, we will talk about access: how might our current (perhaps implicit) research pedagogies limit student access, or close off student experiences and knowledge? How can we teach research through a non-punitive methodology that builds on students’ existing abilities and empowers them to join an academic conversation? Our second session will focus on the larger stakes of teaching research skills. Why is it important for students to learn research skills? What relevance does it have for students’ lives? How can instructors resist the de-politicizing way in which research is typically taught to and understood by undergraduates? We’ll consider these questions, and more, in a Learning Community focused on both reflective discussion and practical teaching strategies. This Learning Community is designed and faciliated by Kevin Windhauser and Yarran Hominh, Senior Lead Teaching Fellows at the Center for Teaching and Learning.

This is the second session of a two-part Learning Community; Session 1 will convene Tuesday, March 9, 2021, 2:40-3:55pm. Attendance at both sessions is strongly encouraged. As a complement to these sessions, participants will be asked to complete self-guided, asynchronous materials online prior to each session. Additional information will be shared with registrants at least 2 weeks in advance of the session.

This session counts as a pedagogy workshop for the Teaching Development Program (TDP).

Columbia University makes every effort to accommodate individuals with disabilities. Contact CTLgrads@columbia.edu for accommodations. During this online event, CTL staff may take screenshots. For concerns, contact CTLgrads@columbia.edu.

This is a 2-part CIRTL workshop led Columbia graduate students for a national audience, and is an opportunity to join an national conversation around teaching and learning. To join this event, please register at the CIRTL workshop here: https://www.cirtl.net/events/943. Registration ends 3/5 for this event that runs on Friday 3/12 and 3/26.

It is no secret that stress, anxiety, and other mental health challenges are prevalent in higher education. In fact, in recent years, more students have reported experiencing negative academic impacts from stress than from the common cold and flu (c.f., NCHA, 2019). Yet the standard mental health policies we include in our syllabi often frame these experiences as something to be addressed solely outside of the classroom. This two-part workshop takes a different approach, recognizing that instructors and TAs have the power to support and prioritize students’ (and our own) physical and mental wellbeing in the classroom, and that doing so can foster student learning. This re-centering of health and wellbeing is crucial now more than ever, as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic intersect with and amplify pre-existing stressors for teachers and learners, including but not limited to anti-Black racism, political turmoil, and increasingly common climate disasters.

In this two-part workshop, participants will explore the relationships between mental and emotional health, the human body, and learning. Through a combination of asynchronous modules and synchronous workshop and discussion sessions, participants will frame the literature of mental health and bodily awareness in the classroom with their lived experience and leave with concrete methods of incorporating new insights into their own practice, with a particular focus on creating learning objectives and designing assessments that consider and support the whole student. These novel approaches will help students and teachers to experience more positive, rewarding, and healthy class spaces, and to support each other in working toward this vision.