Hello Colleagues,
I hope that everyone is doing well in the home-stretch of the fall semester.
Thanks for all the presenters for the fall workshops which focused on High-Impact practices and for those faculty and staff who attended the workshops. Recordings of all three workshops are available on the CTL Blackboard site.
Please mark your calendar for a virtual Spring Forum on January 23, 2023. More information about the workshop themes will be forthcoming from VP Tammi Simpson's Office of Community and Inclusivity.
Finally, I want to thank Kerri Easterbrook, the outgoing GA for the CTL. Kerri has been a constant source of support and inspiration to me as I took over this position from Dean April Boulton. Her eye for detail, professionalism, and enthusiasm has made the CTL, and especially this newsletter, an even better resource for our Hood community. Kerri has graciously agreed to train the incoming CTL GA, Caleb Shank, who is pursing a Master’s degree in Humanities. Welcome to Caleb, who will be officially starting as GA of the CTL in January 2023.
"Ph.D.’s are ostensibly smart, and yet many seem incapable of understanding the spatiotemporal limits of trying to squeeze months of writing into weeks of vacation time — but it also continues to idealize a toxic and unhealthy “always-working” mentality that contributes to burnout. So let’s try something different. I have three strategies for how to wrangle time for your writing and research during a busy week of teaching." Click here to read these three basic approaches to help you write while teaching.
"Some say (quiet quitting) is just denouncing hustle culture and setting boundaries for yourself. ... Or is it a slippery slope? No one wants to attend (or send a child to) a college where faculty and staff are disengaged and doing the bare minimum, right? ... If we adopt this idea that quiet quitting stands in opposition to OCB (organizational citizenship behavior), then yes, it threatens higher education's reputation and its very mission." Read more here about the potential causes and impacts of "quiet quitting" on higher education.
"I always found that it takes far more time to grade bad papers than good. I would give far more feedback to the bad papers. But then, students would seldom actually read it. Even if they did, it would typically have little impact. But when I started letting students revise and resubmit work, they were much more likely to read and incorporate my feedback. Best of all, it made grading easier in the long run." Click here to keep reading.
"The students failing introductory STEM are taking other courses across the university in which they are successful. ...So why do the same students struggle more in STEM? Part of the problem, McKay says, is that in many of these courses, performance depends on a handful of high-stakes exams. Those are “inauthentic assessments,” he says, unconnected to the way college graduates will conduct their work in science or beyond it." Keep reading here.
"These experiences exemplify what can happen when colleges hire Black faculty without confronting systemic inequities: New faculty members find themselves isolated, undermined, and gaslit. In fact, the cross-currents of diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring initiatives and unchecked institutional bias make some scholars wonder if academe actually wants faculty of color. Black women, in particular, face hurdles to achieving tenure that often go unacknowledged." Read more here.
"Traditional methods of assessing student learning favor those students that reside in well-resourced school districts while leaving low-income students at a substantial disadvantage. These grading systems also encourage students to focus on their grades rather than on their learning. In this episode, Judith Littlejohn, Meghanne Freivald, and Katelyn Prager join us to discuss a variety of social justice assessment techniques that can help to create a more equitable environment in which all students can be successful." Click here to listen to episode 261 of the Tea for Teaching podcast.
"If everyone did their fair share of NPTs (non-promotable tasks), faculty members would have equal opportunities for success, but right now, women handle a disproportionate share of those tasks. Research on the use of faculty time consistently shows that women spend more time on committees and on advising undergraduates than men do, and in turn have less time for research. ... How does women’s heavier burden of NPTs affect how they allocate their time?" Click here to keep reading.
Do you have a question about technology or teaching? Send an email to CTL@hood.edu, and on every Friday, we'll answer the question most broadly applicable across departments. When you email your question, let us know if you'd like to remain anonymous, use a fun sign-off moniker of your choosing (akin to the Dear Abby column), or list your name. All questions welcomed!
The Center for Teaching & Learning
Email: CTL@hood.edu
Website: www.hood.edu/CTL
Location: Hood College, Rosemont Avenue, Frederick, MD, USA
Phone: (301) 663-3131
