PTF Impacts
Provost's Teaching Fellows have made lasting impacts in their departments, colleges and schools, all of the University of Texas, and even the broader scholarship of teaching and learning. Through both individual initiatives and university-wide programs, PTFs continue to serve as catalysts for positive change and further our campus culture of teaching and learning.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6Bringing Introductory Astronomy to a Broad Audience via Web-based Instruction
In 2024, I piloted a new web-based version of Astronomy 301 (Introductory to Astronomy), and taught it a second time in 2025. I attempted to include best practices for active learning, which was a challenge in this environment.
Teaching Climate Change Canvas Module
A campus-wide faculty learning community constructed a canvas sandbox website where we could share materials related to climate change, with annotations, with the broader UT community. We collected our groups materials, and tried to organize them in a useful way. This includes lectures, activities, quizzes, projects, pre/post tests, etc. We organize both by learning objective, and by course. Our website is now live. A publication on pre/post survey results is being prepared.
Rigorously Compassionate Syllabi Website
To learn more about the Rigorously Compassionate initiative at UT Austin, which focuses on combining empathy with academic excellence, visit their website:
Rigorously Compassionate Program
Teaching Teamwork Canvas Course
This is a Canvas page that contains videos, short assignments, and teaching notes for instructors in any discipline who would like to teach their undergraduates how to work together effectively in teams. The videos and assignments are student-facing and come with instructor guides on how to implement them in various classes. Completed video modules as well as supporting assignments can be found on Canvas
Please contact Dr. Holland to be added to the course.
University Writing Center Resources
D'Arcy Randall's PTF Initiative created a collaboration between the Cockrell School of Engineering and The University Writing Center to create resources and consultant trainings to better support STEM students in technical writing projects and assignments. As a result of the Initiative's work and findings, a number of STEM-specific UWC resources have been created and/or revised, which can be found on the UWC website.
FromthePage, Crowdsourced Digital Archiving (UT Libraries Instance)
As part of his PTF Initiative, Adam Rabinowitz developed two UT resources for crowd-sourcing humanities archival and historical work and student “citizen science:" FromthePage (partnered with UT Libraries) and Nanosourcer (a Canvas plugin). UT’s customized FromthePage instance is permanently supported by UT Libraries, publicly available, and has nearly 1000 users working on over a dozen different archival collections.