What role do grades play in learning? Susan D. Blum’s text Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead) encourages instructors to consider the above question. This scholar, in addition to countless others, is a part of a recent movement that seeks to de-emphasize grades attributed to student work in an effort […]
Spring 2024 Teaching to Engage Cohort Shoutouts
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 […]
Check out Tim Schaffer’s post on SoTL on the NYU Faculty Forum Blog
Timothy Schaffer’s recent recent post on the NYU Faculty Forum blog highlights the practice of “documenting your teaching” and argues it is an entry point to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) that is accessible for most faculty members. Whether or not they are doing SoTL, getting into the practice of documenting and telling […]
Welcome to the Office of Teaching Excellence & Innovation: Starting Our Second Decade with a New Name
Ten years ago the NYU Arts & Science Office of Educational Technology was launched with the goal of advancing innovations in teaching and learning by offering instructional design services and educational technology enhancements to all faculty. Over the ensuing decade, the Office has fostered the growth of major innovative teaching initiatives across Arts & Science, […]
Brightspace Course Management – How to Use Template Sites
Thoughtful course design in the Learning Management System, in our case Brightspace, can ensure a smooth student experience and empower student learning. While we may be tempted to think that this is key to student success only for online courses, as per the guidance in the OLC’s Online Scorecard Quality Checklist, the design and management […]
Teaching Innovation Awards
We’re happy to announce that the office is currently accepting proposals for this year’s Teaching Innovation Awards. We’re excited to celebrate the high impact work of A&S faculty, especially as it relates to enriching student learning. Further, we fully support faculty work as each award contributes $1,000 to an instructor’s research account. Past year’s winners […]
Generative AI Updates – Live Syllabus and Faculty Development Resources
As we begin another semester and set expectations with our students, it’s important to include our expectations for generative AI use in our syllabi and initial course discussions. Your approach is dependent upon your context, including your discipline, course, student cohort, or the learning outcomes you have set for a particular assignment. For some, generative […]
Getting Ready for the Spring 2024 Semester
Getting started for each new semester often feels like an opportunity for a refresh! That’s one of the many unique things about working in higher education; we have built in resets at start of each new fall, spring, and summer terms. As you take a step back and consider how you might prepare for the […]
Making Accessible Video Content
Do you use video content in your courses? Many instructors do! Videos can make for invaluable resources to recap important concepts/terms from a lecture, cultivate additional student engagement, and facilitate active learning. Research on active learning in particular has shown to not only enable students to achieve learning goals, but also contributes to an increased […]
Faculty Development Opportunity – Getting Started with Generative AI Course
Generative AI continues to fill headlines and occupy conference agendas and, although the landscape of education continuously evolves, the impact of generative AI seems to be causing a particular shock for institutions. In an effort to provide faculty with the foundational knowledge they need to begin exploring the limitations and possibilities of such tools in […]