Tell Us What You Would Find Useful as We Plan CTL Programming for Next Year
This past year, the CTL has successfully organized programming on diverse topics including AI technology, support for faculty of color, and strategies for managing challenging conversations in the classroom. As we plan for our upcoming events, your feedback is important in shaping our future programming. Please fill out this anonymous brief FORM to share your suggestions for topics you’d like the CTL to explore. Whether it’s building on previous themes or venturing into new areas, your ideas will help ensure we continue to provide programming that meets your needs and enriches our collaborative community. We look forward to receiving your thoughtful suggestions. Thank you!
Teaching and Learning
Do Things You’re Bad At (Rachel Trousdale, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 6, 2024): How pushing yourself to learn skills outside of your comfort zone can improve your teaching.
Enhancing Learning Through Storytelling (Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel, Learning Scientists, June 6, 2024): Experiments finds that students with low prior knowledge of a topic benefitted most from learning from the text that embedded the education content into a story-like narrative whereas student with high prior knowledge benefitted most from being provided with the story-like narrative first followed by the expository content.
Can Guided Reading Teach Student to Become Better Readers? (Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 6, 2024: More strategies on improving students’ reading skills.
Should You Use Your Classroom as a Lab? (James M. Lang, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 3, 2024): Faculty members are swimming in useful research on teaching. But it’s vital to trust your own instincts, too.
Maximizing Learning Through High-Impact Practices (Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, June 3, 2024): Kris Wobbe, associate professor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry, explains why developing high-impact practices for students can benefit institutions on the “Academic Minute.” See, as well, More Project-Based Learning Is Better, an “Academic Minute” with Kimberly LeChasseur.
The Big Questions Faculty and Staff Are Thinking About Over the Summer (Rick Seltzer, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 3, 2024): Question from “How would escalating or spreading war impact America’s colleges and universities?” to “How do I adapt my teaching to account for AI?” What are YOUR big questions?
All Things AI
Lost in Translation? AI Adds Hope and Concern to Language Learning (Lauren Coffee, Inside Higher Ed, June 6, 2024): Foreign language classes have seen declines for years. AI could hasten – or help – it.
OpenAI Builds ChatGPT System for Colleges and Universities (Skylar Rispens, EdScoop, June 4, 2024): OpenAI announces a new version of ChatGPT build specifically for universities to deploy artificial intelligence to student, faculty, researchers and campus operations.
Campus Protests Continue
New Congressional Hearings:
House Republicans Threaten Colleges’ Federal Funding With New Investigations (Katherine Knott, Inside Higher Ed, June 4, 2024): Six House committees will probe 10 colleges’ responses to antisemitism. Critics say the investigations are largely a political exercise designed to help the GOP win back more power in November.
News of the ongoing student protests:
Stanford Students Arrested in Pro-Palestinian Protest That Took Over President’s Office (Joseph Ax, Reuters, June 5, 2024): More than a dozen people were arrested after pro-Palestinian student protesters barricaded themselves inside the office of the school president.
Here’s how the Pro-Palestine Protest at Pitt Ended Without Incident (Julia Felton and Ryan Deto, TribLive, June 4, 2024: Intervention by the region’s top two politicians helped end overnight a 30-hour occupation of part of the University of Pittsburgh’s campus by hundreds of pro-Palestine activists.
Police Arrest 80 Protesters at UC Santa Cruz After Tense Standoff (James Torrez and KTVU Staff, KTVU 2, May 31, 2024): The arrests on Friday afternoon capped a tense, but mostly nonviolent, dispersal of protesters that started at about 1 a.m. when police began shutting down the roads near the university entrances.
Further analysis, responses, and context:
The Harvard Corporation Tries to Kill Faculty Governance (Andrew Manuel Crespo and Kirsten Weld, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 5, 2024): What happened after the Harvard Corporation rejected the list of undergraduate degree candidates put forward by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Instead of Calling in Law Enforcement to Deal with Protesters, College Presidents Could Have Followed This Example (Eddie R. Cole, Time, June 4, 2024): During protests in the late 1960s and early 1970s, some presidents engaged with students, even if begrudgingly, in extended dialogue to end demonstrations, and challenged politicians’ negative characterizations of student protests.
UCLA Threatens to Withhold Degrees from Pro-Palestinian Student Protesters (Sam Levin, May 30, 2024): At least 55 students arrested in police raid on Gaza solidarity camp accused of flouting code of conduct and threatened with sanctions.
Free Speech and Academic Freedom
‘Is Our System of Free Speech Failing Us?’ (Jessica Blake, Inside Higher Ed, June 7, 2024): In a Q&A with Inside Higher Ed, Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, discusses the impact of the pro-Palestinian protest movement on campus speech.
U.C. Berkeley’s Leader, a Free Speech Champion, Has Advice for Today’s Students: Tone It Down (Kurt Streeter, New York Times, June 6, 2024): “Just because you have the right to say something doesn’t mean it’s right to say,” said Carol Christ, who is retiring as chancellor at the end of this month.
Speech Under the Shadow of Punishment (Jeannie Suk Gersen, New Yorker, June 3, 2024): For years, universities have been less inclined to protect speech and quicker to sanction it. After this spring’s protests, it will be difficult to turn back.
Can a State Really Control a Classroom? (Emma Pettit, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 31, 2024): An interview with Keith Whittington, author of You Can’t Teach That! The Battle Over University Classrooms (Polity Press).
The Battle Over College Speech Will Outlive the Encampments (Emily Bazelon and Charles Homans, New York times Magazine, May 29, 2024): For the first time since the Vietnam War, university demonstrations have led to a rethinking of who sets the terms for language in academia.
Extra Credit Reading
Liberal Arts Colleges Must Embed Career Services Throughout Campus Life (Adam Weinberg, Higher Ed Dive, May 28, 2024): Colleges should strive to teach students both how to think and to be career-ready when they graduate, the leader of Denison University argues.
Have Harvard Students Become More Progressive? I Used Data to Find Out (Julien Berman, The Harvard Crimson, n.d.): “Opinion sections at elite universities have gotten significantly more progressive, and they’ve outrun their nonelite counterparts.”
The Specter of ‘Indoctrination’ (Colin Dickey, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 5, 2024): How a military term became a culture-war shibboleth.
Almost Half of Adults Say the Importance of a College Degree has Declined (Laura Spitalniak, Higher Ed Drive, June 5, 2024): A new report from Pew found that just 1 in 4 adults say a four-year degree is a “very or extremely important” part of getting a well-paid job.
‘Manufacturing Backlash’ (Isaac Kamola, Inside Higher Ed, June 5, 2024): To understand the right-wing legislative attacks on higher education, follow the money.
Are We Doomed? Here’s How to Think About It (Rivka Galchen, New Yorker, June 3, 2024): Reports from a University of Chicago course in which guest experts gave weekly lectures on topics related to existential risk: nuclear annihilation, climate catastrophe, biothreats, misinformation, A.I.
Should Academic Institutions Boycott Israel? Two Scholars Debate (Flora Cassen and Ilan Pappé, Guardian, June 1, 2024): Is the academic component of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement against Israel fair?
Online Opportunities
The Center for Learning and Teaching at Forman Christian College, a GLAA member college located in Pakistan, has begun a free Online Research Methodology Course for faculty & post-grad students. The course began on June 3 and runs through July 31, 2024. You can find the schedule and description of the courses here. Registration is for each individual class, with the full list here. If you cannot attend the class when offered (Pakistan time is 9 hours ahead of ET), you will be sent PowerPoint slides, a recording, and resources of the session.
Have a short article or some news related to teaching and learning at your institution that you’d like to share with colleagues? Send your contribution along to us. Also, please email Colleen Monahan Smith (smith@glca.org) if you have colleagues who would like to receive this weekly report.
Steven Volk (steven.volk@oberlin.edu), Editor
GLCA/GLAA Consortium for Teaching and Learning
Co-Directors:
Lew Ludwig (ludwigl@denison.edu)
Colleen Monahan Smith (smith@glca.org)