The University-Wide (U-Wide) Teaching Conference is an opportunity for Cornell graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and teaching assistants to learn how to make teaching more fun and engaging. The conference provides an opportunity for networking and interdisciplinary discussions on teaching with faculty and colleagues from across campus.
Who can attend?
The U-Wide is open to Cornell graduate students, teaching assistants, postdoctoral fellows, and the Future Faculty and Academic Careers community.
Plenary session: Engaging students in a large classroom environment
Bruce Monger Stephen H. Weiss Provost’s Teaching Fellow & Senior Lecturer
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Making a strong personal connection with students is an important part of good teaching, but this can be a challenge in a large classroom environment. Bruce Monger will share his experience with connecting to students in the large oceanography class that he teaches in Bailey Hall.
11:05 - 11:50 a.m.
Concurrent session 1
11:55 a.m. - 12:55 p.m.
Engaging Your Students in the Humanities/Social Sciences Courses
Do you teach in the humanities or social sciences? This workshop will explore active learning techniques that you can incorporate into your class.
Engaging Your Students in STEM Courses
How do we engage students in our STEM courses? This session will cover active learning strategies that you can adopt to create more engaging STEM learning environments.
Lunch
1:00 - 1:40 p.m.
Concurrent session 2
1:45 - 2:45 p.m.
Engaging Students with Technology
Want to make the most of available technology? This workshop explores a variety of tools including polls, interactive discussions, and gamefied learning software to enhance your teaching.
How Do You Facilitate A Robust Discussion?
This workshop helps you design classroom discussions that help students effectively engage with the materials and their classmates.
What Can You Do If Your Students Are Struggling?
Often TAs are the first to recognize students who are struggling in their classes. Participants will discuss specific teaching and learning methods to support their students.
Concluding remarks
2:50 - 2:55 p.m.
Microteaching
This session is an opportunity to practice teaching strategies and techniques, receive verbal and written feedback from your peers, and evaluate your own teaching to improve your teaching skills. You will need to be prepared to give a 3-5-minute teaching sample to a small group of workshop participants (4-6 people). Consider explaining a basic concept or process from your field.
