It’s time for interested faculty to apply for one of the UO Summer Teaching Institute’s stipended ($1K) pathways: Teaching about Difference and Inequality, Teaching Online, Mixed Modalities, and Designing New Approaches to Assessment. The 2021 Institute is July 12-16 and will be hosted remotely. Applications are due Monday, May 17 [extended deadline]. This opportunity is for both tenure-related and career faculty.
Time commitment: Participants have ~3.5 hours/day in scheduled workshops and meetings, along with time for reflection and course building. Optional additional sessions will be offered throughout the week. Days begin at 10 a.m. and conclude by 5 p.m.
Learn about the pathways and apply.
Celebrating the Online Course Initiative
The Online Course Initiative (OCI) launched in Summer 2020 with the short-term goal of creating well-designed courses to meet immediate student need during the COVID-19 crisis. During the three terms of the initiative, 120 faculty developed 105 unique courses offered in 167 new online sections across 6 schools/colleges, enrolling almost 12,000 students (64.1% of registered undergraduates). In addition to the achievement, the OCI reached longer-term goals of expanding UO’s online portfolio and investing in UO’s teaching culture and curricular innovation. Learn more about faculty’s efforts.
Student Support
In winter 2021, UO was one of 12 colleges and universities that participated in a pilot study of faculty that was administered by Healthy Minds Network. The study was grounded in the idea that higher education faculty are increasingly involved in responding to student mental health concerns. Here is the summary report: The Role of Faculty in Student Mental Health. A few key findings:
- 87% of faculty respondents believe that student mental health has “worsened” or “significantly worsened” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- 73% would welcome additional professional development on the topic of student mental health.
- 21% of faculty agree that supporting students in mental and emotional distress has taken a toll on their own mental health.
University Counseling Services provides clinical services to students and consultations for faculty and staff about how to support students.
Wellbeing-related teaching ideas, information about referring students to a range of supports, and resources for instructors’ own wellbeing are available here.
Academic Support
The Tutoring and Academic Engagement Center (TAEC) offers a range of free resources to support students through midterms and beyond: tutoring in math, writing, language and science courses, individual consultations with full-time Learning Specialists, and study strategy workshops.
UO’s Success in Online Learning toolkit offers students online modules they can access at any time to sharpen their study skills. Visit https://engage.uoregon.edu to see all that is available. Want to know which resources might align best with your course? Call (541) 346-3226 or email engage@uoregon.edu to connect with TAEC staff.
Zoom Upgrade for Students
Information Services recently upgraded student Zoom accounts to provide most of the features that faculty and staff already enjoy. This eliminates the 40-minute limit on student-hosted group meetings and allows any student to serve as an alternative host for your Zoom classes. All students can now host Zoom meetings of unlimited length with up to 300 participants. Students won’t be allowed to save recordings to the Zoom cloud.
For help with Zoom, students can submit a Zoom support ticket or contact the Technology Service Desk at livehelp.uoregon.edu or 541-346-4357.
Invitations
Discussion Lab: Discovery and Action Dialogue
Friday, April 30, 2-2:40 p.m.
Register here.
Discovery and Action Dialogue (DAD) is a discussion structure that supports applying the local knowledge of a group to solving a persistent problem. Liberating Structures notes that the DAD structure can “Engage frontline people in finding solutions to thorny challenges; discover tacit and latent behaviors and practices that are positively deviant from the norm; and generate changes that are sustained because they are discovered and invented by the people doing the work, rather than imported and imposed.” This structure supports deeper collaborative learning and is relevant for classes of any size in any discipline.
Popup Workshops
‘Live Edit’ Sessions to Improve Student Writing
Monday, May 3, 3-3:40 p.m.
Register here.
Developing students’ written communication is a key goal for many instructors and for the university as a whole. Yet the path toward that goal can be slow and frustrating (both for students and instructors). In this quick “popup” workshop, Mike Murashige, CoDaC’s Writing Consultant, will introduce instructors to the “live edit,” a 30-60 minute session which allows instructors to engage in a dialogue about revision rather than simply providing students with a “to do” list to improve their writing. Meant sometimes to supplement, other times to entirely replace traditional commenting, it gives writers greater access to the process of making their writing better.
NEW: Engaging Students with Annotations and Infographics
Wednesday, May 5, 2-2:30 p.m.
Register here.
To engage students in remote learning, many instructors turned to new, creative practices, many of which can carry forward as we transition back to in-person classrooms. In this quick “popup” workshop, Katy Brundan, Senior Instructor of Comparative Literature, will introduce two creative tools—real-time annotation and infographics—that engage students in collaborative research and critical analysis.
Reading and Demonstration Group Drop-Ins
Learning from Pandemic Teaching Experiences
hosted by the Science Teaching Journal Club
Thursdays at 9 a.m.
Drop in via Zoom: https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/369256082
See our schedule of readings and demonstrations.
Next week (May 6) marks the beginning of a series of teaching demonstrations. Physics faculty member and 2021 Williams Fellow Raghu Parthasarathy will demonstrate a lesson from and discuss his approach to Core Education science courses.
‘Research-Informed’ Reading Group: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Online Courses
Wednesdays at 9:00 a.m.
Drop in via Zoom: https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/94975804093
See our schedule of readings.
Join the reading group next week (May 5) to discuss ways to humanize your courses.
Excellence in Universal Design Award
The Accessible Education Center invites Excellence in Universal Design Award nominations of faculty who’ve developed flexible curricula and instruction to ensure equity and access for all learners. The award recipient will receive $1000. The definition of excellence in universal design can be viewed on AEC’s Universal Design for Learning page. Click here to submit a nomination by May 3.
Consultations
TEP and UO Online are here to support you in your teaching. Request an individual consultation.
Recent Comments