Spring 2024 Events
Quests start with Questions: Engaging Students with the Question Formulation Technique
Imagine a classroom where every student is participating and engaged! Imagine a classroom filled with the voices of students working with each other, questioning, being curious, and problem solving together. The Question Formulation Technique is a method for engaging every learner to have a voice and create the conversations about course content that they want to join. In this interactive session, we will lean about the method and practice of the Question Formulation Technique, which was developed by the Right Question Institute in Cambridge, MA. We will go through each step of the method and explore implications for practice in your classes, labs, or clinics.
Inclusive Teaching Seminar: “Engaging in Difficult Conversations”
Teaching and learning in 2024 has brought new challenges to conversations about diversity, equity, inclusion, and identity. Oftentimes, we are collectively experiencing criticism for both "doing too much" and "not doing enough" when it comes to engaging in difficult conversations. What are we to do? Join this interactive and practical workshop with Dr. Liza Talusan, author of The Identity Conscious Educator, to explore how identity informs and impacts our teaching and learning environments and how to build effective strategies for navigating these tensions in our professional and personal spaces.
Large lecture: Ungrading a large physics class
The Department of Physics & Astronomy redesigned Physics 11 to center issues of equity and inclusion in Fall 2023. Come learn how instructors Hugh Gallagher and Miguel Vasquez-Vega emphasized collaborative work and incorporated ideas from ungrading — such as creating opportunities for students to generate their own course goals and begin to evaluate their own performance and that of peers -- in their large lecture-based course. After hearing about their approach, you will have time to consider how it might apply to your teaching context.
This is an in person event, and lunch will be served. However, the presentation portion of the event will be live streamed from 12:15-1pm.
Play Space with AI
Join Dr. Ethan Danahy and ETS/CELT staff in a play space for hands-on exploration of AI – the best way to learn! This session will begin with a fellow faculty member demonstrating some of the ways that he has experimented with AI in his teaching. Then, each participant will be encouraged to create something themselves using generative artificial intelligence. For example, you could experiment with example prompts and adapt them to your own course, re-imagine an assignment or activity using AI, use AI to create a case study or student discussion, and more!
No experience necessary. Hands on support will be provided from ETS & CELT’s
Planning for Important and Sometimes Challenging Classroom Conversations: A Workshop in Two Parts
Part One: Building Proactive Capacities for Important Classroom Conversations
We will share the value of being proactive and offer steps that can lay the foundation for productive classroom conversations. You will experience selected approaches for setting up conversations, take away a few dialogic tools you can use in your classroom, and have some resources to support you in this work.
Part Two: Responding in the moment to challenging classroom conversations
You will gain confidence by learning some effective strategies to de-escalate and address situations that are potentially heated, have the potential to cause harm, or disrupt learning. We will engage you in understanding how to tune into your own reactions as well as your students’ reactions, and develop a plan for how you might respond in the moment and later.
Play Space with AI
Join Dr. Ethan Danahy and ETS/CELT staff in a play space for hands-on exploration of AI – the best way to learn! This session will begin with a fellow faculty member demonstrating some of the ways that he has experimented with AI in his teaching. Then, each participant will be encouraged to create something themselves using generative artificial intelligence. For example, you could experiment with example prompts and adapt them to your own course, re-imagine an assignment or activity using AI, use AI to create a case study or student discussion, and more!
No experience necessary. Hands on support will be provided from ETS & CELT’s
Researching AI in the Classroom: A lunchtime conversation with IRLI & CELT
In this session facilitated by CELT & IRLI, let’s take a scholarly approach to experimenting with AI in our teaching and our students’ learning. Come share what you are doing, what you’re excited about, what you’re curious about, and/or what challenges you are experiencing. During the session we will collaboratively explore potential avenues of inquiry and dissemination across the disciplines at Tufts, identify potential research opportunities, structures and sources of support to help you move your ideas forward.
Lunch will be served for those attending in person.
Quests start with Questions: Engaging Students with the Question Formulation Technique Workshop #2
Responding in the Moment to Challenging Classroom Conversations
Please join us for this open consultative session to share ideas, resources, and approaches to navigating difficult conversations in classrooms and other learning spaces across Tufts.
This has been a challenging year on campus and faculty have had to manage difficult conversations in class about domestic and political topics, and evocative course content. Faculty and students have dealt with class disruptions and the breakdown of relationships in many spaces across Tufts. Responding to faculty needs, this workshop is an open and supportive consultation and process session for faculty who would like to continue this work, further build capacity and approaches for response, and for those who were unable to attend the series.