Presentations

How can instructors respond effectively to the variety of student needs that arise in the aftermath of an incident of community violence? What do students want, expect, and find helpful from their instructors after a tragedy? In this presentation, we discuss existing guidance on this topic and make preliminary recommendations based on early findings from a survey about student perceptions of instructor responses to the tragedy that occurred at UVA on November 13, 2022.

The first week of class introduces students to instructors and their pedagogy through the syllabus. The role of the syllabus is to communicate to students information regarding grades, assignments, and course policies. A "perfect" syllabus should be one that provides students with the highest level of transparency from instructors and their expectations in the classroom. This presentation aims to explain the analysis of various syllabi and explore different factors such as course size, instructor gender, and field of study and the effects these have on how transparent instructors are in their syllabus.

This presentation will illustrate how to use one-sentence writing assignments to help transform students’ relationship to writing. Because of their brevity, one-sentence assignments can be written and shared in class, and they reveal a lot about what students do or don’t understand about the course material at hand. Better still, students claim to find them fun, and many of the sentences they write reveal their creativity, insight, and eloquence. The presenter will share examples of these assignments, discuss some highly engaging student sentences, and suggest ways to make use of one-sentence assignments in any course in the curriculum.

This presentation shares an assignment from my first-year writing course: the "writing manual for your future self." I'll analyze the way that designing and implementing this final project helped me learn how to execute some fundamental principles of equitable course design. I’ll break down the practical and theoretical assignment design to pinpoint specific practices that prioritized belonging, authenticity, and flexibility. I’ll also share some brilliant student work created in response to the assignment. The project itself might be adapted into many courses, and comparing the two versions yields tangible examples of how to promote equity through practical, specific choices.

Reflective practices, the thoughtful consideration of experiences, are increasingly advocated for in academia and comprise important parts of professional reviews. The advantages of reflective practices are numerous and include direct benefits to practitioners and indirect benefits to their students. The literature concerning reflective practices has conflicting terminology and complex studies which prevent the adoption of reflection. As such, this session serves as a primer for educators beginning reflective practices. It describes the benefits to educators, different modalities of reflection, and examines some of the challenges that educators may encounter.

Inquiry-based learning is an approach to a course that asks students to learn through pursuing specific lines of inquiry. This teaching approach focuses on asking students questions between class meetings, then having students present their solutions in class. This style is prone to a specific challenge; students may present incorrect solutions or get stuck when presenting, which can lead to negative associations with the course. In this presentation, I'll demonstrate how to scaffold inquiry-based learning to help highlight the brilliance of student work and help them build resilience by reinforcing good habits and addressing patters of error in pre-meetings with student presenters.

The "heads-and-hearts hypothesis" proposes that two key elements are required to design and implement STEM courses that reduce, eliminate, or reverse outcome gaps: deliberate practice and a culture of inclusion. In this presentation, we will explore evidentiary support for the hypothesis as we share a holistic classroom intervention designed to cultivate and promote a culture of inclusion while simultaneously attending to student achievement of content goals.