Peerceptiv is a new peer review, group formation, and team member evaluation tool available in NYU’s Brightspace. If you currently use or are interested in using peer review exercises as part of your instruction, Peerceptiv can help you set up the workflow. It can be configured to automatically assign students to review X number of […]
What is OER?
According to the Creative Commons Wiki, OER, or Open Educational Resources, are “teaching, learning, and research materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.” To simultaneously offset cost to students and take advantage of the wealth of credible learning […]
Why is Transparency Important in Teaching?
Dr. Mary-Ann Winkelmes defines Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) as, “an educational framework for engaging [instructors] and students in communicating together about how students are learning, how they can apply their learning in real-world situations in their lives after college, and why instructors manipulate the students’ learning experiences in the specific ways they choose.” […]
A Hybrid Approach to Alternative Grading
As Generative AI continues to present a challenge for traditional teaching and learning practices, many faculty are expressing curiosity about alternative grading, a term that includes several forms of assessment (such as contract grading or standards-based grading) where course grades are determined by students’ effort over time rather than by their performance on individual assessments. […]
New Publication: How Contract Grading Impacts Student Writing
A new article co-authored by Nate Mickelson (Expository Writing Program) and Timothy Schaffer (A&S Office of Teaching Excellence and Innovation) has just been published in College Teaching! The study, titled “How Does the Use of Contract Grading Affect the Quality of Student Writing?: A Comparative Study of Essays from First-Year Writing Courses,” examines the effects […]
What is Interleaving?
Originally coined by cognitive psychologists Robert A. Bjork and Nate Kornell, interleaving is an instructional approach of that involves mixing different concepts. This is in comparison to a more traditional instructional approach (referred to as, “blocking”) that may require students master one concept before moving onto the next. Research on interleaving suggests that using this […]
Hands-On Gen AI Workshops For Faculty Feb. 28, March 3 & 4
Do you want to see for yourself the most common ways your students are using generative AI—to summarize assigned texts, to edit or translate their written work, and to generate ideas for assignments? Do you want to test out generative AI’s capabilities and think critically about its potential uses and shortcomings with colleagues? Our office […]
Small Ways to Get to Know Your Students
The spring semester quickly approaches, as it always seems to do. Here is a quick reminder about some small ways you can get to know your students and begin creating a welcoming learning environment. Learn your students’ names and pronouns – and use them! It may seem obvious, but learning the name pronunciation and pronouns […]
Student Support Resources to Get Through Finals
Now that we are back from Thanksgiving break, finals are looming and our students, hopefully, will already have a study plan in place. This is likely not the case for plenty of our students and we know from our own experiences that prioritizing tasks and following an effective time management strategy is difficult. We can […]
Teaching Squares Returns for Spring 2025
Our office is excited to be partnering with the College of Arts & Science’s Academic Affairs team for a second year to offer the Teaching Squares peer observation opportunity in Spring 2025. Teaching Squares is a non-evaluative, informal peer observation program that has been used for more than two decades at many different types of […]