Fri, 09/22/2023
Peter Felten’s keynote message about building relationships through teaching found a receptive audience at this year’s Teaching Summit.
Felten, a professor of history and assistant provost for teaching and learning at Elon University, shared the stories of students who had made important connections with instructors and fellow students while at college. He used those stories to talk about the importance of humanity in teaching and about the vital role that community and connection make in
Tue, 08/22/2023
In a focus group before the pandemic, I heard some heart-wrenching stories from students.
One was from a young, Black woman who felt isolated and lonely. She mostly blamed herself, but the problems went far beyond her. At one point, she said: “There’s some small classes that I’m in and like, some of my teachers don’t know my name. I mean, they don’t know my name. And I just, I kind of feel uncomfortable, because it’s like, if there’s some kids gone but I’m in there, I just want them to know I’m here. I don’t know. It’s just the principle that counts me.”
Mon, 08/21/2023
Peter Felten issued a clear call to action at this year’s Teaching Summit: Connect with students and help them connect with one another.
Felten, executive director of the Center for Engaged Learning and assistant provost for Teaching and Learning at Elon University, delivered the keynote address at the Summit, which brought together over 300 University of Kansas faculty and instructional staff in Budig Hall on Aug. 17. The annual event was co-sponsored by the Center for Teaching Excellence, the Provost’s Office, and the KU Medical Center.
This year’s event aimed to underscore the significance of building strong relationships within the educational community, and Felten drew on his research on the impact of relationships on students' educational experiences in making a case for building community.
Mon, 08/14/2023
are sitting on the fence, wondering whether to jump into the land of generative AI, take a look at some recent news – and then jump. ...
Fri, 07/21/2023
raised widespread concern about the impact of generative artificial intelligence on undergraduate education. As we focus on undergraduate classes, though, we must not lose sight of the profound effect that generative AI is likely to have on graduate education. ...
Wed, 06/28/2023
Not surprisingly, tools for detecting material written by artificial intelligence have created as much confusion as clarity.
Students at several universities say they have been falsely accused of cheating, with accusations delaying graduation for some. Faculty members, chairs, and administrators have said they aren’t sure how to interpret or use the results of AI detectors.
Tue, 04/25/2023
has taken a heavy mental and emotional toll on faculty members and graduate teaching assistants. ...
Fri, 04/21/2023
a fine line between reliability and reality. On the one hand, it says its tool was “verified in a controlled lab environment” and renders scores with 98% confidence. On the other hand, it appears to have a margin of error of plus or minus 15 percentage points. ...
Thu, 03/09/2023
Martha Oakley couldn’t ignore the data. The statistics about student success in her discipline were damning, and the success rates elsewhere were just as troubling.
Oakley spoke to about 40 faculty and staff members last week at a CTE-sponsored session on using mastery-based grading to make STEM courses more equitable. The session was part of a CTE-led initiative financed by a $529,000 grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, with participants from KU working with faculty members from 13 other universities on reducing equity gaps in undergraduate science education.
Fri, 02/24/2023
In the world of linguistics, language is a treasure to be preserved and studied. And that's exactly what Phil Duncan and Allard Jongman set out to do with their independent studies class LING 496 in the Spring of 2022.
Thu, 02/16/2023
We often idealize a college campus as a place of ideas and personal growth, but we have to remember that danger can erupt without notice.
The shootings at Michigan State this week were, sickeningly, just the latest in string of killings over the past year that also involved students or faculty members from Virginia, Iowa State, and Arizona, according to Inside Higher Ed. At Idaho, a Ph.D. student has been charged with killing four undergraduates.
Mon, 02/06/2023
release late last year, ChatGPT has reverberated through the academic mind like an orchestral crescendo in a Strauss symphonic movement. It has amazing abilities, and even greater potential. Even so, it delivers many of its responses in a monotone reminiscent of HAL 9000, the rogue artificial intelligence system in 2001:...
Tue, 01/24/2023
evaluation is a great time for instructors to document the substantial intellectual work of teaching and for evaluators to put that work front and center of the review process. That approach takes a slightly different form than many instructors are used to, and at a CTE workshop last week we...
Fri, 01/20/2023
decade ago, the Associated Press began distributing articles written by an artificial intelligence platform. ...
Thu, 01/19/2023
KU CTE monthly newsletter. We asked ChatGPT to write a short welcome back to our colleagues and friends. We asked it to mention the fall semester and the rise of AI as a concern. Overall, we are impressed with the potential of the newest AI tools and look forward to...
Thu, 01/19/2023
When Kevin Mullinix, an associate professor and undergraduate director in Political Science, decided to change things up for a new course in the Fall of 2022, he had no idea how powerful it could be to give students creative freedom to express course concepts.