Teachers on Teaching Presentation Series
Teachers on Teaching is a faculty presentation series in which RIT faculty share the emerging teaching and learning practices they are using at RIT.
Past Presentations
Kate Wright
Associate Professor, Thomas H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences
Kate Wright, associate professor of biotechnology and molecular bioscience and 2016 recipient of the Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching, discussed "Effective, Reflective Teaching: What Data Tells Us About Active-Engagement Learning."
There is no recording of this presentation.
Amos Scully
Associate Professor, CIAS
Mary Golden
Program Chair, Interior Design, CIAS
For the past three years, the Industrial Design program in the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences has started each Spring semester with T-Minus 151, a multi-day event in which mixed-year student teams develop a product design for an industry client, working under an all-consuming deadline. The project concept has been so successful that other departments within CIAS have developed similar multi-day challenges for their students.
At our next Teachers on Teaching, Associate Professor Amos Scully will talk about the genesis and development of T-Minus 151. He will be joined by Mary Golden, Chair of the Interior Design program, who will explain how her program adapted the original concept for a different group of students.
T minus (151 hours of Industrial Design) from Alex Freeman on Vimeo.
Rachel Silvestrini
Kate Gleason Associate Professor, Industrial and Systems Engineering Department
Rachel Silvestrini used data collected from (grades and student access of material) myCourses in conjunction with demographic and prerequisite data to generate mathematical models that could be used to predict student success in her classes. Some models created provided useful information regarding student behavior and performance. There are not generalizable results, but the methods are generalizable can could be useful for instructors. This work was supported by a Provost’s Learning Innovation Grant.
Sabrina Weiss
Visiting Assistant Professor, College of Liberal Arts
How can teachers guide discussions about issues like sexual harassment, transgender bathrooms, Gamergate, and Hurricane Katrina…without tipping the classroom into a conflagration?
Sabrina Weiss will share her methods and techniques for facilitating engaging class discussions, with an emphasis on proactive planning and understanding where students are coming from. She will share assignment examples and discussion protocols.
Sabrina Weiss is a Visiting Assistant Professor in RIT's department of Science, Technology and Society. Her expertise lies in research and analysis of interdisciplinary policy issues related to science and technology, with a focus in biological and medical science areas.
Mike Johansson
Senior Lecturer, School of Communication
Mike Johansson uses a variety of social media tools in his courses. Whether text-based tools like blogs and Twitter, or image-based tools like Pinterest and Vine, each environment presents a new set of opportunities and challenges when used in teaching. Mike will discuss these challenges, as well as his strategy for evaluating new tools as they become available.
Mike is a senior lecturer in the School of Communication. He spent 20+ years in various capacities for media companies in New Zealand, Australia, Britain and the United States before joining the Department of Communication in 2009. Among his achievements in the business world: He won two fellowships to the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, FL (for publication design and media ethics studies), was one of 12 UC Berkeley Digital Journalism Fellows in 2003, and in 2004 founded insider, a free weekly for 20-somethings in Rochester. He teaches, speaks and writes about social media, public relations and advertising copywriting.
Lawrence Torcello
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy
No society can be or remain healthy without well informed citizens. In order to be well informed, citizens must be able to think critically. Reasoned skepticism plays a crucial role in clear thinking, but it can be bypassed, and when it is, our attempts to think critically devolve into cynicism. This talk is about the difference between skepticism and cynicism, about the moral stakes of their difference, and about how we can support practices of reasoned skepticism. In it, I will discuss how instructors can utilize techniques from critical thinking pedagogy to guide students through controversial topics.
Teachers on Teaching Applied Critical Thinking (ACT)—a joint effort from the Eugene H. Fram Chair in Applied Critical Thinking and the Innovative Learning Institute—is a series that focuses on the development and discussion of best practices in the teaching of applied critical thinking.
Jennifer Schneider
Professor, College of Applied Science & Technology
The great Dr. Seuss had it right, we all have a lot of thinks. Teaching students to think critically is a challenge for both the professor and the student, and is especially daunting when you're just trying to get through the required learning outcomes and content. This interactive presentation will give participants practical strategies for the integration of applied critical thinking into courses, especially those pesky program related courses.
Topics include:
- What is applied critical thinking at RIT, and why should I care?
- When teaching problem solving is not enough, and what else you can use without wanting to throw yourself off a cliff!
- Where is the fun? Not all critical thinking is serious!
Dr. Jennifer Schneider was recently appointed the Eugene H. Fram Chair in Applied Critical Thinking. She is a full professor in the College of Applied Science and Technology.
Keri Barone
Senior Lecturer, School of Communication
In an extension of her earlier talk (which you can see below), Keri Barone, Senior Lecturer in RIT’s School of Communication, shares her strategies for setting expectations with online students, and for keeping them engaged, while maintaining a high level of efficiency and managing time effectively.
Jennifer Briggs
Lecturer, NTID
Kellie Grasman
Adjunct Instructor, KGCOE
Video and audio creation tools continue to play a significant role in online learning by affording faculty and students, alike, the ability to convey information and interact in more personalized ways. With these modes of delivery, the added nuances of facial expression, body language, and the subtleties in voiced and signed communications can help enhance and reinforce meaning.
RIT faculty Jennifer Briggs and Kellie Grasman shared their unique applications of a tool called, VoiceThread. VoiceThread is a multi-media tool that allows users to both share and comment on content in a variety of ways using video, audio, and text. Jennifer and Kellie demonstrated how they’ve used this tool in their respective online courses to establish a connection with their students, deliver content, foster community, and facilitate online, student presentations.
Keri Barone
Senior Lecturer, School of Communication
Teaching in the online mode requires shifts in teaching strategies. From navigating the online learning environment, to adjusting instructional design and teaching practices, there are many considerations that successful teachers take into account when planning to teach online.
Keri Barone, Senior Lecturer in RIT’s School of Communication, shares her strategies for setting expectations with online students, and for keeping them engaged, while maintaining a high level of efficiency and managing time effectively.