News from CTL

Eyes on Teaching is an annual campus-wide event hosted by the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Provost’s Teaching Fellows that highlights the benefits of non-evaluative peer observation and cross-disciplinary conversations. For two days each February, the doors to many of UT Austin’s classrooms are opened for a group of faculty, staff, and graduate student visitors to observe one class session.

Next week the Center for Teaching and Learning is hosting the Big XII Teaching and Learning Conference, and one of our fabulous keynotes is Thomas J. Tobin. I first had the fortunate opportunity to meet Tom during an Educause course he taught on Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

Since that time, Tom has modeled for me, as he does for countless others, how to effectively and innovatively implement UDL in higher education.

This summer, we are pleased to welcome two visiting scholars who will be working on projects related to recent initiatives in the CTL.

This summer, the Center for Teaching and Learning is pleased to host the Big 12 Teaching and Learning conference on the campus of UT-Austin.  We recently had the opportunity to interview one of our keynote speakers, Adashima Oyo, on topics related to higher education issues and graduate student professional development.

How do support sophomore or second-year students and how do we identify areas that need additional support at the institutional level?  The CTL had the opportunity to interview Dr. Barbara Tobolowsky at the University of Texas at Arlington and talk about her book, "Helping Sophomores Succeed."  From 2002-2009, Dr. Tobolowsky was the Associate Director at the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, which is focused on student success into and through higher education.

As part of their curriculum redesign effort, the College of Pharmacy is confronting several 6-hour “monster courses.” Until now, the courses have been chunked by topic and taught by groups of expert faculty--a challenge to coordinate--and students who fail a single unit must retake the entire course. Separating these 6-credit beasts into a series of shorter courses, as short as 3 weeks and worth as little as 1 credit, will allow students to more efficiently receive credit specifically for what they've mastered.