Research-Based Teaching Series (RBTS)

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Lisa Diehl

Small Teaching Online: Incremental approaches to improving online instruction 

Small teaching is a phrase coined by James M. Lang to describe an incremental approach to improving our instruction. Darby Flowers joins forces with Lang to also address online teaching. They explain how minor modifications to our teaching can have a major impact on student learning. In this session you will learn some of the small teaching strategies that have worked and discuss small teaching concepts. By making slight changes to your online class activities, there is a significant improvement in student engagement. 

Zoom

Wednesday, March 1, 2023

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Ana Pozzi Harris

Applied learning: LEAP and HIP assignment models for the arts and humanities 

Applied learning is a LEAP (Liberal Education and America’s Promise) essential learning outcome. In this workshop, you will join in discussion about three assignments in which applied learning is integrated with High Impact Practices (HIPs), such as final projects (or scaled-down versions of capstone projects), e-portfolios, collaborative projects, and community-based learning. These assignments are suitable for arts and humanities courses—especially art history, music history, theater history, film history, literature history, and modern language courses. 

 Zoom

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Yi Deng, Laurel Wei

Incorporating Modern China into Global Courses 

Inspired by their participation in the East-West Center’s 2021 summer institute, Dr. Deng and Dr. Wei discuss their respective strategies in teaching global courses related to China. Dr. Deng will introduce a high-impact practice integrating Chinese art, film, and philosophy to undergraduate research for PHIL2200. Dr. Wei will discuss active learning strategies for POLS 2401, which aim at effectively achieving the dual learning objectives of content and language acquisition through a simulation and a creative research project. 

 Zoom

Wednesday, November 3, 2021

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Clayton Teem

Case Study Methods to Improve Student Learning

Case studies are used in many fields to enhance knowledge and application of subject matter. Yet, research suggests that many students do not learn as much from case studies because the students lack enough of an internal framework to understand the important points and detect meaningful data patterns; that is, students are relatively novice learners working towards a greater mastery of course material from professors who are comparative experts. This presentation will review some techniques to help students expand their understanding derived from case studies, e.g., “talking aloud,” visual illustration of essential vs non-essential information, and using small team discussion forums.  

Zoom

Wednesday, February 2, 2022

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Ana Pozzi Harris

Fostering Diversity and Inclusion in the Classroom Through the Discussion of Visual Culture 

Modeling a classroom activity applicable for all academic levels, this workshop will demonstrate the potential of using art images and images of visual culture to introduce discussions about diversity and inclusion as part of course content. Images used represent forms of identity, affirmation, social protest, and awareness about issues of the present day. The learning outcomes of this activity are for participants to connect learned information with their own social experiences of race and gender, and to collaborate with other participants to enrich their multicultural perspective.

 Zoom

Wednesday, March 2, 2022

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Danielle Hartsfield, Royce Dansby-Sparks

Supporting First-Year Students: Successes and Challenges of a New Mentorship Program

The Mentorship Affinity Group project is a new program aimed at facilitating informal mentor/mentee relationships between first-year Honors students and faculty. Workshop participants will learn 1) how the Mentorship Affinity Group program was implemented, 2) and the program’s successes and challenges. The workshop will be informative to faculty, staff, and administrators who wish to increase faculty/student interaction, which could yield positive outcomes such as greater retention rates, academic achievement, and increased collaboration on research and creative activities.

Zoom

Monday, October 5, 2020

12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Kimberly Davidson, Sarah Williams

Service Learning Projects to Support Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in Online Courses 

Students in online or hybrid courses can sometimes feel isolated from lack of real-world interactions. Service learning projects can help students feel more connected. In this workshop, we will present elements of service learning projects, their underlying pedagogical theories, and results of research we conducted examining the effects of incorporating culturally responsive pedagogy into a senior service learning project. Additionally, we will offer suggestions and resources for successfully including service learning project assignments, coupled with culturally responsive pedagogy, in online or hybrid courses. Finally, we will consider possible challenges to implementation in virtual environments and propose strategies to address them.   

 Zoom

Monday, November 2, 2020 

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Ralph Hale,
Valerie Surrett

Collaborative Student Projects Across Classrooms and Disciplines: How to Foster Academic Skills Through Shared Experience 

Cross-disciplinary student projects are effective in transforming student attitudes, incentivizing hard work, and enhancing learning. This spring, Memory students were divided into “research teams” that designed futuristic memory replacement systems (MRS), and English students were divided into “journalism teams” that wrote editorials about the MRSs, translating science for a general audience. The project underscored the necessity of developing partnerships and communication channels across disciplines. Students demonstrated awareness of real-world implications of academic work and viewed their projects from outside their disciplines. This workshop will focus on development of academic skills and how these benefits are possible in many cross-disciplinary pairings. 

Zoom

Monday, February 1, 2021

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Miriam Moore

Re-imagining Asynchronous Discussions: Thinking Outside the PPR (Prompt, Post, Reply) Box 

What’s happening in the online discussions in your classes? Are students checking off participation boxes, showing off, proving that they read the text, or cheerleading perfunctory comments from classmates? Or are they having intellectual fun: grappling with, challenging, extending, refining, or applying course concepts? In this workshop, we will probe the possibilities (and some limitations) for enhancing learning through asynchronous discussions, focusing on design choices that encourage exploration, reflection, and growth in disciplinary literacy. After a brief overview of relevant research and a theoretical framework from applied linguistics, we will focus the remainder of the session on developing or revising prompts, instructions, and grading criteria for asynchronous discussion forums. 

 Zoom

Monday, March 1, 2021

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Lisa Diehl

Blended (Hybrid) Course Learning and Teaching in Action 

In this presentation, I explore the design, delivery, implementation, benefits, and challenges of a blended English composition course and British Literature survey course taught in the fall 2019 semester at UNG. As a Senior Lecturer at UNG, I will share my first experience of designing and teaching freshmen and upper level students in a blended course environment. I focus on the flexibility and pace, access and modeling, peer relationships and community, clear communication and feedback, and the challenges of time management and self-discipline. I share specific examples of lessons, discussions, assignments designed by me as well as student examples and responses to the blended classroom environment.

Zoom

Monday, October 7, 2019

12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Renee Bricker, Victoria Hightower, Tamara Spike

Serious Gaming, Serious Learning

“Serious gaming” in the classroom is growing in popularity. Serious games can take many forms: computer games, board games, puzzles, etc. This presentation will focus on role-playing games and simulations. Within these games, students take on roles informed by historical sources and/or current events. There is no fixed script, no predetermined outcome. Students are guided by the philosophical and intellectual beliefs of the people they have been assigned to play, and seek to achieve their goals in papers, speeches, other kinds of public presentations, or subrosa alliances and other machinations. Gamification of difficult, complex, real-world situations reinforces concepts, creates greater engagement, and provides multiple means of approaching course material as well as develops skills in speaking, writing, critical thinking, problem solving, leadership, and teamwork.

*Blue Ridge rooms are not available.

Cumming 246

Dahlonega Hansford 312

Gainesville Dunlap-Mathis 137

Oconee SRC 581

Monday, November 4, 2019

12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Carl Ohrenberg

Critical Reading and the Use of Lecture Outlines in Teaching Freshmen Classes

Critical Reading is an essential skill for our students, yet we often spend little time on helping them develop it. The way one reads a particular text varies widely depending on content and audience and students often lack the skill set to read certain types of writing. To address this, lecture outlines have been developed for use with teaching General Chemistry courses to college freshmen. These outlines represent a first step in developing critical reading skills in the sciences and provide a template for students to incorporate textbook reading with in class material. They are designed to help the students organize the content, as well as, engage the textbook on their own. This presentation will introduce the concept of the lecture outlines and explore their effectiveness in teaching General Chemistry.

*Blue Ridge rooms are not available.

Cumming 246

Dahlonega Hansford 312

Gainesville Dunlap-Mathis 137

Oconee SRC 581

Monday, February 3, 2020

12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

William Black

Teaching Ethics Across Disciplines

Many of us believe teaching ethics is important, but how do we know if we are making progress? The ARBC instrument (Action Research into Business Conduct) provides a measuring tool that can be used to diagnose current levels of perceptions about ethics, or used as a pretest / posttest evaluation of whether ethics instruction is effective. ARBC is a free online tool, created at the University of North Georgia that can support action research efforts to improve ethics instruction. The scenarios it asks participants to evaluate are drawn from common everyday situations that may have ethical implications. ARBC can be useful in contexts beyond business courses, for example in confirming assurance of learning measurements of progress towards ethics awareness goals. 

This session will illustrate how to use ARBC in ethics assessment, and provide examples of ongoing research that is being conducted using ARBC. 

*Blue Ridge rooms are not available.

Cumming 246

Dahlonega Hansford 312

Gainesville Dunlap-Mathis 137

Oconee SRC 581

Monday, March 2, 2020

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Sheila Schulte

International Communication in the Classroom
How do we can we best assist non-native speakers of English in the classroom setting?  This session is devoted to sharing model practices to ensure a positive learning environment for a diverse student body. After a basic review of intercultural communication theory, there will be a panel discussion with UNG international students, followed by an open discussion.

*Blue Ridge rooms are not available.

Cumming 246

Dahlonega Hansford 312

Gainesville Dunlap-Mathis 137

Oconee SRC 581

Monday, December 3, 2018

12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Donna Gessell

Heightened Critical Thinking: Requiring a Prospectus and Annotated Bibliography in the Research Paper Process

The workshop details the prospectus and annotated bibliography assignment, which has long proven a best practice for guiding students to engage in their own learning during the research paper process. Goals for workshop participants are twofold: to understand how the assignment is valuable to enhance student learning and to try it out in their own disciplines. Participants will be provided with copies of the assignment. Then we will relate it to each of the criteria in the AAC&U Critical Thinking VALUE rubric, pairing each of the five criteria in the rubric with a question in the prospectus assignment. During the discussion we will link to the stages in the writing process, detailing how every stage of the process—including brainstorming, research, and planning, which are included in this assignment—can be taught, but that the writing stage cannot be taught, making the assignment an even more valuable tool for promoting engaged student learning. To shape the revision stage, we will discuss how the prospectus can be rearranged; and we will discuss why the editing stage should be postponed. To complete the discussion of the writing process, we will explore the rhetorical principles of audience, purpose, and occasion and how they affect the publishing stage, but must be considered early on. I will share feedback about the assignment from my students, who are at various levels of writing. In addition to discussion and question and answer, audience involvement will include brainstorming how the assignment can be used in different disciplines with and without adaption. Finally, all participants will have the opportunity to try out the prospectus assignment to start engaging in their own academic project or one that they are considering for their students. Association of American Colleges and Universities. (2009). Critical Thinking VALUE Rubric. Retrieved from: https://www.aacu.org/value/rubrics/critical-thinking

*Blue ridge rooms are not available.

Cumming 246

Dahlonega Hansford 312

Gainesville Dunlap-Mathis 5105

Oconee SRC 581

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m

Lisa Diehl

Teaching Social Justice in the Writing Composition Classroom: Rising Up!

This session will address one of the major goals of a liberal arts education: to enhance the individual’s capacity for critically assessing the quality of one’s own thinking and how it may impact others. I will introduce and explain how I integrated social justice into an English writing class. This approach to composition empowers students to gain a more comprehensive understanding of poverty, privilege, race, and social status through the perspective of others and allows them to examine their own thinking as well. This lesson plan is designed to build comprehension skills through engagement with multiple forms of media, as well as develop and strengthen critical thinking skills that promote analysis and reflection to improve communication skills and enhance leadership characteristics needed to successfully engage with a global society. I asked students to write reflections about specific social justice issues based on readings and class discussions. Students also completed in-class activities, which helped them become more aware of social justice issues which affect them and other Americans. Students demonstrated awareness and verification that justice issues are relevant, important and are not easily resolved. They also noted their own self-awareness of prejudices and stereotypes, which they had never considered. A liberal arts education at university must include learning that empowers students and prepares them to deal with complexity, diversity, and change. It provides students with broad knowledge of the wider world as well as in-depth study in a specific area of interest. A liberal arts education helps students develop a sense of social responsibility, as well as strong and transferable intellectual and practical skills such as communication, analytical and problem-solving skills, and a demonstrated ability to apply knowledge and skills in real-world settings.

Blue Ridge 107

Cumming 262

Dahlonega Hansford 312

Gainesville Nesbitt 5105

Oconee SRC 564

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m

Minsu Kim

What Happens When Students Read and Write Mathematics?

Students often struggle to express their thinking processes, especially in courses focused on quantitative content. You’ll learn in this session how help students to be active learners and develop their quantitative skills through math writing.

Blue Ridge 107

Cumming 262

Dahlonega Hansford 312

Gainesville Nesbitt 5105

Oconee SRC 564

Monday, September 11, 2017
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Smoothing the Transition: Helping Your Freshmen Adjust to College Work
Led by Steve Pearson, Assistant Professor of English

Digital Natives Lost in the Forest of Google
Led by Austina Jordan, Associate Professor of Library Science/Collection Management Librarian

Wednesday, February 21, 2018
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Cooperative Discussions for Critical Thinking
Led by Danielle Hartsfield, Assistant Professor of Literacy and Elementary Education

Best Practices for Significant Learning in the Flipped Classroom
Led by Sarah Formica, Associate Professor of Physics

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Effectively Engaging Undergraduates in the Analysis of Primary Literature

Literature is an Ally: Reading War in the Classroom and Community

Kristin Kelly, Associate Professor of English, discusses “Talking Service," a national reading and discussion program for servicemen and servicewomen coming back to civilian life from the warzone. Kelly's talk will help faculty will deepen their understanding of the veteran student experience and garner resources to create effective learning environments for veterans.

Statistics: It's Not Just for STEM Anymore!

This statistics workshop, presented by Gina Reed, Professor of Mathematics, is designed to support the research of all faculty and will provide important methods and tools for conducting quantitative research in the classroom.

Everyone Can Teach Writing: Three Constructs to Engage Students in Deep Learning

Jim Shimkus and Anita Turlington will explain the three constructs as high-impact teaching practices that enhance student learning and development. These practices are helpful not only for those teachers whose specialty is writing instruction, but also teachers in any discipline who are interested in strategies that enhance student learning and engagement.

Wednesday, February 1, 2017
12 p.m. - 1 p.m.

Effectively Responding to Student Writing

Matthew Boedy, Molly Daniel, Jim Shimkus will teach on how to be a more effective and efficient giver of feedback to your students on their writing. This workshop will look at research-based practices in composition studies to aid feedback. Professors will receive a great handy worksheet and information on campus resources can assist this process.

Is Blended Learning a Viable Option?

Presented by Jennifer Schneider, Professor of Accounting. Motivating students to engage in the course material earlier, having accessibility to videos and other online resources, requiring completion of pre-requisite assignments, and holding students accountable for their own learning are various methods to reverse the traditional learning process. This workshop will discuss whether blended learning is a viable option in modern classrooms.

FYC as Part of First-Year Experience

J. Stephen Pearson, Professor of English, will present retention issues that can be addressed in the First Year Dr. Composition (FYC) classroom and will ask faculty to brainstorm solutions. Obstacles with research, not understanding expectations, retention problems, and students’ backgrounds are all obstacles that students face. Because all of these issues can be addressed, and hopefully prevented, by faculty, this presentation will ask participants to consider ways to deal with them within the FYC curriculum.