Recent Q&A with Center for Teaching & Learning Founding Director Kirk Ambrose
The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) serves all campus educators interested in improving teaching and learning. This includes tenured and tenure-track faculty, teaching professors, instructors, graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and staff. Our core activities include promoting inclusive and evidence-based practices, building assessment capacity for faculty and departments, and supporting effective teaching irrespective of modality.
Where does CTL sit today relative to the vision outlined in Academic Futures?
Academic Futures envisioned the CTL as a centralized, community space dedicated to advancing the teaching mission of the university. We take that charge seriously and are proud to work with educators from every school and college, as well as other campus partners. We regard teaching less as an isolated activity than as a deeply collaborative enterprise.
This works on a number of levels: Teachers collaborate with their students to advance learning. Teachers collaborate with one another to share effective practices. And our center serves as a space that collaborates with units and specialists from across campus to support educators in achieving their goals.
Virtually every day, I hear faculty and staff laughing in our offices. That signals to me that folks are connecting with the joy of teaching and learning.
How can faculty use CTL to learn about and use AI?
CTL has established a dedicated to exploring the implications for artificial intelligence for higher education. We also have developed an online AI resource for faculty, which we will continue to expand and develop. In May, we will hold an AI workshop for faculty to engage in this technology; a call for applications will go out soon.
What does CTL have planned that is energizing and helpful to faculty?
Many faculty find this to be an extremely challenging time to be an educator. Later this month, we will host a to discuss issues such as faculty burnout and increasing student engagement. This fall, we plan to roll out an online course for faculty addressing the topic of wellness in the classroom for our students and for educators. This course was developed by experts from our Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, with the input of faculty focus groups.
More generally, we plan to expand and deepen collaborative projects with faculty groups to make meaningful and sustainable changes. This past fall, in partnership with OIT, we convened a faculty working group that made recommendations for promising practices in Canvas gradebook. With Continuing Education, the Digital Accessibility Office and OIT, we recently convened a group to develop an optional template for Canvas. The goal is to decrease faculty prep time and provide a format that makes it easier for our students to navigate across their multiple courses.
With a divided political climate and an upcoming presidential election, how can CTL help faculty handle political discussions in the classroom?
This fall, we plan to host panel discussions on how to facilitate challenging conversations in the classroom. With the help of experts from across our campus, we developed a guide for fostering respectful dialogue in the classroom. We invite anyone interested in an individual consultation on this or any other teaching-related topic.