Dear Colleagues,

Are you interested in improving the quality of your lecturing?

Listen to the podcast by Todd Zakrajsek: https://teachinginhighered.com/podcast/dynamic-lecturing/

Dr. Zakrajsek, an Associate Professor of Family Medicine at UNC Chapel Hill, has recently written the book:

Dynamic Lecturing: Research-Based Strategies to Enhance Lecture Effectiveness (The Excellent Teacher Series)
by Christine Harrington and Todd Zakrajsek.

Consider taking 30 minutes to listen to this podcast to get some new ideas to improve your lecturing.

Questions or comments?

Best regards,

Jim O’Connor
Director

Dear Colleagues,

July 1st marks the beginning of a new academic year. I’m challenging each of you to improve your teaching by choosing one new technique, tactic, strategy or assignment that will lead to increased student engagement and student learning.
If there is anyway I, or any of the CILT Center Fellows, can be of assistance to you, please feel free to contact me by responding to this email. I will be happy to meet with you to discuss ways to improve teaching, student learning, and engagement.

There are many joys of teaching, three being: (1) teaching is a lifelong learning experience; (2) teaching is transformational, you are changing lives; and (3) you never know where your influence will stop.

Let’s have a great 2018-19 academic year.

Questions or comments?

Jim O’Connor
Director

The Chronicle of Higher Education publishes a weekly newsletter focusing on effective teaching in Higher Education, entitled “Welcome to Teaching”.

Here is an example of one article that may be of interest to you, which focuses on Activating Students’ Curiosity:

https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-One-Teaching-Expert/243609

Comments or questions?

Jim O’Connor
Director

One of the important aspects of cognitive processing is attention. Obviously, if we do not initially attend to a stimulus (such as a lecture, powerpoint or other course information) that information will not even make it into short-term memory, let alone move into longterm memory for future retrieval.

Here is a link to an article from UC Berkeley’s Center for Teaching written by Dr. Rita-Marie Conrad.

https://teaching.berkeley.edu/news/paying-or-gaining-who%E2%80%99s-responsible-attention

Feel free to send comments or questions.

Jim O’Connor
Director

Provost Alden forwarded this timely article to me this morning, which I found to contain numerous evidence-based suggestions for improving pedagogy.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Traditional-Teaching-May/243339

As we move from BlackBoard to Canvas, rather than just transferring materials from one student learning platform to another, consider trying out some new practices, such as
those included in this article.

Questions or comments? Feel free to contact me.

Thanks for taking the 10 minutes to read this important document.

Jim O’Connor
Director

TUC and TUN Colleagues,

Are you using innovative and effective teaching strategies in your teaching?

If so, the Center for Innovative Learning and Teaching would like to share what you are doing with your colleagues across both Western Division campuses, as well as throughout the TCUS.

If you feel you have something that you would like to share, please reach out to me so we can discuss how best to do this.

Thanks so much.

Jim O’Connor
Director