This Week for Graduate Students: Looking for Confidential Feedback? Request a Teaching Observation!

by | Nov 9, 2020

Featured Offerings

Teaching Observations

Are you looking for confidential feedback on your teaching? It’s not too late to request a teaching observation! The CTL offers formative observations with trained peer consultants who can help you think through your course goals, your teaching observation experience, and your future teaching. CTL Teaching Observations are confidential and evidence-based, developed to support you in your teaching practices.

CTL Teaching Observations count towards completion of the Teaching Development Program for graduate students.

Call for Submissions: Voices of Hybrid and Online Teaching and Learning

Columbia graduate students are invited to submit their perspectives and experiences on hybrid/HyFlex or online teaching and learning during the pandemic. Submissions can be text-based, audio, or short video recordings. The CTL would like to highlight the amazing work that instructors and students are doing to adapt and succeed during this unprecedented academic year. We hope that by sharing our experiences with one another, we may be informed and inspired in our own practice. 

The CTL will feature submissions on the CTL website, spotlight in weekly newsletters and social media campaigns, and showcase during the 2021 Celebration of Teaching and Learning. We invite a first round of submissions now through November 20, 2020, though submissions will be accepted on an ongoing basis throughout the academic year.

CTLgrads Journal Club

This week’s CTLgrads Journal Club will be offered in a HyFlex format! This means you can join us either in person in Chandler 402 (with protective face coverings) or virtually via Zoom.

We are hosting this session in the HyFlex modality in order to showcase the HyFlex learning environment and the spaces available at Columbia to teach in this modality. At this session, we will continue our conversation about the impacts of online and physical spaces on student learning and apply our readings to the experience of participating in a HyFlex session. 

Participants are expected to have read the following papers in order to contribute to and learn from the journal club’s discussions: 

  • Choi, H., Merriënboer, J., and Paas, F. (2014). Effects of the physical environment on cognitive load and learning: Toward a new model of cognitive load. Educational Psychology Review 26, 225-254.
  • Beatty, B.J. (2019). Teaching a Hybrid-Flexible Course: The Faculty Experience in HyFlex. In B. J. Beatty (Ed.), Hybrid-Flexible Course Design. Open Scholars Press.

Date: Tuesday, November 10
Time: 1:10–2:25 PM
Location: Chandler 402 (with protective face coverings) or virtually via Zoom.

LTF Event: How to Teach Undergrads Academic Writing

Academic writing is one of the most important parts of a historian’s profession and an important element of his/her teaching. Yet, we pay little attention to teaching our students writing. This event will start a discussion about investing more effort in teaching academic writing and engaging students in the process of creating a written piece. It will provide TAs strategies for taking control of teaching undergraduates academic writing, for example through scaffolding low-stakes assessments, assigning peer review, paper drafts, and annotated bibliographies.

This event will be led by Aleksandra Jakubczak, Lead Teaching Fellow in History. To attend, please email Aleksandra (aaj2147@columbia.edu).

Date: Friday, November 13
Time: 12:00–1:15PM