On March 23, NYU Arts & Science hosted its sixth Teaching Innovation Awards Virtual Conference. Begun during the pandemic as a way of sharing the amazing work happening in remote and hybrid classroom spaces across our school, the conference has earned a reputation in the NYU community as a showcase of inspiring and accessible pedagogical innovation.
This year, 14 faculty members from across the disciplines presented innovative projects from a wide range of instructional contexts, from large lectures to small seminars. A prominent theme among the presentations was an emphasis on helping students understand the portability and vitality of the skills they are learning in their courses. In projects such as applying research methods from the sciences to humanities topics; using American Sign Language to help Chemistry students understand 3D bonds in lab courses; learning ancient calligraphy methods to understand how they shaped content; or learning how to communicate the richness of an archive through multimedia pathways, the winners showed new ways to prepare our students for a world that will look very different than the one today.
Winning projects also included those from instructors who are studying the effectiveness of these new methods, using new ways to for example measure student interaction in group work or in their assignment responses.
There will be a separate panel in September featuring five additional winners whose projects involve innovative ways of engaging generative AI, particularly products created using Chat GPT, in their teaching. More information on that event coming soon!
Handouts with details from all of the projects can be found here. A recording of the event will also be added to the main event page.