Define, Refine, & Shine workshops for Course Preparation
August 16, 17, and 22
One of the highlights of late summer, our annual Define, Refine, & Shine workshops invite faculty and staff to share their course preparation, class management, and student assessment wisdom with our peers. We time these workshops to match last minute design and refine needs for both returning and new instructors and to infuse inspiration and connections as we start our academic year. Sponsored by the Teaching & Learning Center, this year’s series takes place on Zoom and are recorded.
How to Engage Students and Manage Conflict in the Classroom
Skye Roper-Moses, Sociology
Click here for the recording.
Description: Facilitated by conflict resolution expert and Sociology Lecturer Skye Roper-Moses, this 90 minute workshop will walk us through helpful ways of engaging students to build community to create a better class environment. Using conflict resolution principles and strategies, we will learn and practice effective ways of listening to foster better understanding with students inside and outside the in person and virtual classrooms. We will also discuss addressing conflicts that occur during class interactions and provide strategies for responding.
Remembering & Forgetting the Syllabus:
Applying Recent Memory Research to Thoughtful Design & Presentation
Gina Rae Foster, Teaching & Learning Center
Click here for the recording.
Click here for a pdf of the Google jamboard.
Description: In this 90 minute workshop, we will examine and apply 7 recommendations from cognitive psychologist Michelle Miller’s Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology: Teaching, Learning, and the Science of Memory in a Wired World. We will work directly with our syllabi to find opportunities for revision and rethinking why and how our course design supports and conflicts with our students’ memory development and retention. Facilitated by Teaching & Learning Center Director Gina Rae Foster, the workshop is open to faculty from all disciplines at all levels of experience.
Grading students: Fair Classroom Assessment to Foster Student Learning
Maureen Allwood, Psychology, and Susan Opotow, Sociology
Click here for the recording.
Click here for the slides.
Click here for a pdf of resources.
Description: Grading students can be a source of challenge, conflict, and stress. This co-facilitated pre-term workshop on equitable assessment of student work will help faculty develop course requirements that facilitate student learning and success in John Jay College courses. It focuses on developing course assessments that invite students to grow throughout the semester via assignments that are meaningful for students and offer them skills that support their academic interests and goals. Facilitated by Psychology and Sociology Professors Maureen Allwood and Susan Opotow, this workshop is open to faculty from all disciplines and at all experience levels.
Past Events
Summer 2021
Define, Refine, and Shine workshops
Setting the Tone for Success with the Syllabus
Description: In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore how thoughtful choices in one’s syllabus—such as inclusive language, eye-catching formatting, and diverse readings—can jumpstart student success for the semester. Participants are encouraged to bring a current syllabus and together, we’ll explore how small edits to a syllabus can promote student agency, foster communication, and even make professors’ lives easier as the semester unfolds.
Click here for the recording and here for the workshop resources.
Equity & Assessment
Description: Designing for equity in assessment is a strategy that engages with students’ diverse identities and educational histories, epistemologies and current concerns. Participants will examine influences on assessment practices from teaching styles and syllabus requirements to disciplinary conventions and department and college-wide practices and explore strategies for equity in assessment that places students at the center. We will share resources, including a bibliography and examples of formative and summative assessment of student learning.
Click here for the slides and click here for the Jamboard.
Active Listening in Learning Spaces
Description: Our students often tell us that they want us to listen to what they are saying, with greater presence and patience. However, active listening can be challenging to balance with the content and skills needs of our courses. In this workshop, we will define and practice active listening skills that can be applied across modalities. We will listen to student voices, explore facilitation skills, practice wait time, and discuss how to listen effectively in the different kinds of learning spaces where we meet our students.
Click here for resources.
Spring/Fall 2020
Resilience and Working Minds
Description: This workshop is designed for those interested in discovering different ways of thinking and speaking about designing effective teaching and learning for traumatized minds and identifying the warning signs of learning minds under duress. The workshop offer insights into the areas of attention, memory, production, and performance as these relate to our students’ attaining and demonstrating learning through our courses. We will also look at ways of redesigning our assignments and strategies to address changes to traumatized minds that influence learning.
Click here for the recording and here for the workshop resources.
Caring vs. Care-taking Workshop
Description: Do we know how to care for our students rather than taking care of them? When our students approach us with news of difficult and often traumatic life events that affect their studies, as instructors we often feel compelled to help resolve these situations for them rather than helping guide our students towards greater self-efficacy and self-empowerment. In this workshop, SEEK Academic Counselor and Adjunct Faculty member Delmar Dualeh and TLC Director Gina Rae Foster shared principles and guidelines for choosing caring rather than care-taking roles with those we educate and mentor.
Click here for the recording and workshop resources.
Don’t Panic at the Deluge: Responding to Student Writing Using Digital Tools
Description: By their very nature, online courses often require more student writing than their face-to-face counterparts. While this offers students myriad ways to demonstrate their academic writing abilities, it also presents a challenge to instructors: namely, how to respond to all this work. This presentation discusses the many options faculty have when responding to student writing (one of which is no direct response at all) and then reviews the many tools faculty can use to provide online feedback including audio files, digital rubrics, synchronous conferences, comment boxes, multiple peer review commentary, and student self-reflection
Click here for the recording.
Creating a Framework for a Culturally Affirming, Inclusive and Anti-Racist Curriculum
Description: These podcasts are hosted by John Jay College of Criminal Justice Associate Provost Dara Byrne and Associate Provost Allison Pease to accompany the 2020-2021 process of creating a shared framework for a culturally affirming, inclusive, and anti-racist curriculum that serves all students aspiring to careers in criminal and social justice fields at our proud Hispanic and Minority-Serving college.
Click here for the recordings.
Faculty Resilience Week Spring 2021
Energy in Motion: Understanding How to Engage Your Energy for Sustainability
Facilitator: Stephanie Simpson, Counseling and Human Services
Description: The past year has brought with it many ups and downs. The uncertainty and unknowns can leave us feeling afraid, anxious, worried, and stressed which affect our motivation and wellbeing, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Emotions are “Energy in Motion,” and where our attention goes the energy flows. When we can get the energy moving again and align our mindset with our values, we are able to stay engaged, passionate, and resilient in all areas of our life.
Click here for the workshop resources.
Rewriting Assumptions with Creative Visualization
Facilitator: Gina Rae Foster, Teaching and Learning Center
Description: In addition to implicit biases, most of us carry implicit assumptions that limit our capacities to heal and grow. Fear and anxiety, grief, anger, and feelings of hopelessness can pervade our lives to the extent that these guide our decisions more than our conscious thoughts. One consistently successful intervention to counter and realign harmful assumptions has been creative visualization in the context of structured reflections. In this workshop, TLC Director, poet, and resiliency coach Gina Rae Foster will guide participants through identifying an implicit assumption they would like to change to more positive thinking and then to imagining and reimagining those changes and engaging in guided journaling to extend the transformations. Participants will be encouraged to work on their own and then to share safely with their peers following each step in the process. Please come prepared to write, create, and be positively present with a healing community.
Click here for the workshop resources.
Maintaining Your Equilibrium in Tumultuous Times
Facilitator: Peggilee Wupperman, Psychology
Description: As society gradually reopens, many people report experiencing continued—or heightened—stress, anxiety, and/or difficulties feeling connected with others. This workshop will include an introduction to basic mindfulness techniques designed to assist in addressing stress and improving a sense of connection. The workshop will include a series of short experiential exercises that can be tailored to target individual values, as well as strategies to help participants incorporate basic mindfulness practice into daily life.
Click here for the workshop resources.
Equity, Accessibility and Artificial Intelligence in Global Education
Recording here
The John Jay College Teaching and Learning Center & the Center for International Human Rights will be hosting an online panel discussion Thursday, March 24, 2022 on Equity, Accessibility and Artificial Intelligence in Global Education (rescheduled from earlier this year).
The concept of disability at the United Nations and elsewhere has shifted from one of a deficit-based medical model to one of social, economic and political rights that promotes fair and equitable access to all aspects of citizenship. Nonetheless there is a digital divide both in the US and globally – how can we ensure equitable access to digital technologies for persons with disabilities to help bridge this divide? Reflecting on the recent global agreement on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence adopted by all 193 Members states of UNESCO, this panel will specifically address questions relative to artificial intelligence and global education to include:
1) Persons with disabilities are more vulnerable globally due to climate change, pandemics (including COVID19), employment barriers and discrimination. What can educators do to be sensitive to these risks and to provide culturally responsive learning environments that promote racial, gender, and disability justice?
2) Artificial intelligence and machine learning show promise in many applications for persons with disabilities, but these carry a high risk of bias or design choices that exclude and disenfranchise persons with disabilities. What are some recommendations for increasing inclusivity in design as a fundamental human right?
3) What does ableism in the academy look like? For both professors and students? What are the ways online learning can help dismantle ableism? In what ways does it contribute to ableism? What might we learn from how other countries address these questions?
Moderator:
Marie-Michelle Strah, PhD, Online Faculty Fellow, Teaching and Learning Center, Visiting Scholar, Center for International Human Rights, Adjunct Professor, International Crime and Justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Panelists:
Maria Victoria Pérez-Ríos, PhD, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Antonia Levy, Associate Director of Faculty Development and Instructional Technology, CUNY School of Professional Studies
Vanessa Spina, Candidate, Bachelor’s of International Criminal Justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Transcript here
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