December 2, 2021
Colleagues,
Congratulations on being so near to the end of fall term! We feel such admiration for all that you have done to support students through UO’s return to campus and to build lively, meaningful occasions for them to learn and grow.
The University Senate’s CIET Committee is experimenting with longer open windows for Student Experience Surveys to see if this positively impacts response rates. This term, the surveys are open until 8 a.m. on Monday, December 6. Please remind your students to take their surveys and that their feedback matters to you—with no grade holds in place, no negative incentives exist for students to complete these surveys. Now we all play a role in creating a culture of reflection and feedback for students.
Read analyses from the Academic Data Analytics team of what students say in these surveys related to inclusiveness and accessibility.
Inviting Letters of Interest for New, Stipended Teaching Groups
TEP and the Office of the Provost invite brief letters of interest from faculty who wish to participate in either of two upcoming “mini” CAITs—Communities Accelerating the Impact of Teaching—that will work to strengthen a culture of and capacity for inclusive, anti-oppressive teaching at UO. (Unlike typical CAITs, which meet for a year, these will only meet across winter and spring 2022. Participation comes with a $500 stipend plus OPE.)
Trauma-Informed Pedagogy CAIT
Led by Anita Chari
Provost Teaching Fellow, Associate Professor of Political Science
Fellows will engage in focused training in trauma-informed pedagogy and be part of building broader awareness of trauma-informed practices at UO by bringing the work that they cultivate in the CAIT back to their units. Faculty from all disciplines, units, and schools are welcome to apply. Learn more and apply.
Difference, Inequality, & Agency CAIT
Led by Alison Gash
Provost Teaching Fellow, Associate Professor of Political Science
Fellows will build community around and consider the impact of UO’s two-year-old United States: Difference, Inequality, and Agency course requirement. We will discuss which practices have been most meaningful in developing the specific knowledge and skills DIA courses target. And we’ll identify how a changing, and in many ways deeply traumatizing, national context creates additional pressures as well as opportunities for teaching and learning. We’ll ask how the pedagogy of these courses accounts for differences in students’ contexts, abilities, and experiences—making them (ideally) models of inclusive and anti-oppressive teaching at UO. Learn more and apply.
Hypothesis & Perusall Now Available in Canvas
UO has implemented new collaborative annotation tools Hypothesis and Perusall. Learn more about using social annotation to make reading active, visible, and social—helping students to engage more deeply with readings, with ideas, with each other, and with you. See also the Canvas How-to-Guides for providing step-by-step instructions for both tools, and please feel free to contact UO Online at uoonline@uoregon.edu to discuss how the tools may work in your course design.
Student Resources, Referrals
As you and your students draw coursework to a close, we remind you that the Tutoring and Academic Engagement Center is here for your students, including supporting them in exam preparation, final papers, and finishing work to clear incomplete grades. Counseling Services prioritizes calls from instructors who are thinking about how to support students with mental health concerns. And the Office of the Dean of Students triages a range of concerns about students submitted through their online form, helping to connect students to an array of supports.
Looking toward Winter...
Pedagogy Course
UGST 609: Engaged Pedagogy
Instructor: Jason Schreiner, TEP Associate Director
Wednesdays, winter term, noon to 1:50 p.m.
Registration and logistics
In this two-credit graduate seminar we explore the theory and practice of engaged pedagogy, a practice of teaching and learning that challenges instructors and students to participate mutually in a community of learning, to think critically and constructively through collective inquiry, and to produce shared knowledge that empowers and transforms. We’ll ground our work in principles of inclusive, engaged, and research-informed teaching and use touchstones in the scholarship of teaching and learning to design practical teaching methods and tools. The assignments and activities of the course will help students develop professional teaching materials and complete requirements for TEP’s Graduate Teaching Initiative (GTI).
Student Success Toolkit
Students are adjusting to the opportunities and challenges of in-person learning. Consider helping them this winter term by adopting some of the teaching strategies and ready-made assignments in the Student Success Toolkit. Assignments designed to help students develop effective study habits, metacognition, time management skills, and knowledge of university support services, are available in files you can upload directly to Canvas, then tailor to your course.
Winter Invitations
Science Teaching Journal Club: What Inclusive Instructors Do
Thursdays, 9 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.
LISB 217 or via Zoom: https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/369256082
Learn more
UO defines excellent teaching as professional, inclusive, engaged, and research-informed. But what does it mean to be inclusive and how can we achieve it in practice? Please join the Science Teaching Journal Club this winter as we read and discuss What Inclusive Instructors Do: Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching, by T. M. Addy, D. Dube, K. A. Mitchell, and M. E SoRelle. The book is packed with research-supported principles for inclusive teaching and examples of how faculty from a wide range of disciplines have implemented and adapted them in their own teaching. All are welcome.
Hard copies of the book are available through online booksellers and the UO library has it in ebook form.
Teaching Towards Access Reading Group
Thursdays, 11 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.
Hosted on Zoom: https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/96616757718
Register here
Are all students able to access the learning that happens in our classes? What would it mean to be, as the Accessible Education Center says, “informed by and responsive to the diverse characteristics and experiences of students with disabilities and variations of ability”?
The Teaching Towards Access Reading Group invites you to explore questions around designing for access in a friendly, collegial group. We will read and discuss articles and book excerpts, and discussions will provide an opportunity to approach issues around disability and access with curiosity and care, and as co-learners. All UO community members are welcome. Feel free to join us every week, or to just drop in for selected conversations. Our first meeting will discuss the new Practitioner Guide: Accessibility, which centers UO student voices. Learn more.