A total of 64 current and aspiring instructors have completed the Teaching to Engage Seminar, one of the Office of Teaching Excellence and Innovation’s faculty development offerings, since its first cohort of graduate students participated in the fall of 2022.This three-week intensive course provides a fully asynchronous experience, allowing instructors to discuss research-based pedagogy, experiment with and compare educational technology and its potential for online and in-person instruction, and gain a hands-on perspective as an online student.
During the most recent Spring 2024 cohort, several students used the fundamental teaching practices of low-stakes quizzing and chunking content to facilitate student learning in their final course project course design.
Bita Mousavi, PhD Candidate in History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies program, utilizes a low-stakes quiz with auto-published results in Brightspace to assess students’ mastery of the content. This reinforces learning, provides crucial feedback to students about their current level of understanding and informs the instructor of potential pinch points or concepts that may need to be revisited.
Emma Quinn, a dual graduate student with the Irish and Irish American studies at NYU and Long Island University’s Library Information Science program, designed a Voicethread presentation as an interactive alternative to a faculty lecture that aims to help students explore the constructed and contextual nature of authority. Voicethread is an effective tool for embedding questions in learning materials and encouraging collaborative discourse among students in an online learning environment.
We are also delighted to share that some of our graduates have utilized the skills they gained during the course in their academic and professional work beyond their studies at NYU.
One a Teaching to Engage graduate shared:
“Since taking this course, I have been hired at the University of Connecticut, Stamford, New York City College of Technology (City Tech), and Laguardia Community College as a member of the adjunct faculty. At UConn, I have taught 100% remotely and 50% (hybrid) courses. At City Tech I have taught exclusively remote classes. I have deployed many of the skills I learned in our teaching to engage class including but not limited to the use of Perusall for all reading assignments and the use of video introductions and discussion boards. I am really grateful for the Teaching to Engage class as I am sure it aided me in securing these positions.” A Ph.D. Candidate with the IFA
The A&S Office of Teaching Excellence and Innovation provides detailed guides that students used to explore various educational technology tools. If you’re interested in replicating these types of learning exercises, here are those same resources:
To learn more or reserve a spot in our next cohort, email us at asteaching@nyu.edu.