Pedagogy in Action Workshop Series: Summer 2024

The schedule for the Summer 2024 Pedagogy in Action workshop series is included below. Descriptions of each workshop follow where you will also find links to the registration page for each workshop. Enrollment is ordinarily limited to 15 people, on a first-come, first-served basis. Many thanks to this year’s organizers!  

The Tatlock Fund for Strategic Faculty Development provides modest stipends for participants: $75 per day for half-day workshops; $150 per day for full-day workshops. We are not able to provide stipends for administrators or librarians on 12-month contracts.

June 3–4: Inclusive Course Design Institute

Offered by: Alexia Ferracuti, Director of Inclusive Pedagogy 

Dates and time: Monday, June 3, and Tuesday, June 4. 10 a.m.–2 p.m., with lunch provided. 

Location: LTRC, Room 122, Thompson Library 

Are you preparing to teach a new course? Do you need to revise or refresh a course you already teach, especially to make it more inclusive? Join the Inclusive Course Design Institute, a two-day intensive workshop in which you will be guided by Vassar’s Director of Inclusive Pedagogy to design or redesign a specific course as you look ahead to the upcoming academic year. Through a learner-centered framework known as “backward design” that advocates designing with the “end in mind,” you will be guided in the process of articulating clear goals for your course, designing assignments and activities that align with those goals, and integrating various inclusive teaching approaches that will help you create a supportive learning environment across the different aspects of your course.

June 5: Writing and Evaluating with Care: Constructive Ways for Engaging with Student Peer Review and Student Self-Evaluation

Organizer: Candy Martinez, Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latinx Studies

Date and Time: Wednesday, June 5, 10 a.m.–1 p.m., refreshments will be provided. 

Location: LTRC, Room 122, Thompson Library 

In the first part of this workshop, faculty will learn how to create a constructive environment for students to provide and receive peer feedback. They will identify the different modes of peer review (i.e., paired, small group, or full class participation). They will distinguish the various types of feedback given (i.e., formative, summative, additive, responsive, and effective). They will have the opportunity to evaluate a sample peer review rubric. Last, they will create a peer review rubric for a paper-based assignment. Faculty will exchange their peer review rubric with another faculty member.

In the second part of this workshop, faculty will learn about self-evaluative reflections. They will consider how students can measure their progress and writing development beyond the scope of a letter-based evaluation. Faculty will also learn how students may use self-evaluations for accountability purposes; that is, they will consider how evaluations could prompt students to think about the communities they are writing about. Self-evaluations guide students when they are writing about historically misrepresented communities, including but not limited to Indigenous communities.

June 10, 11, 12: Critical Community-Engaged Learning Pedagogy & Partnership-Building

Organizers: Elizabeth Cannon, Director; Jean Hinkley, Assistant Director; and Zoe Markwalter, Research and Program Associate, Office of Community Engaged Learning

Dates and times: Monday, June 10, and Tuesday, June 11, 10 a.m.–4 p.m., Wednesday, June 12, 12–7 p.m. Meals will be provided. 

Location: One of the following, TBA: Poughkeepsie Underwear Factory (8 N Cherry St, Poughkeepsie, NY), MASS Design (289 Main Street, Poughkeepsie, NY), or 488 Main Street (a Hudson River Housing property.)

This multi-day workshop will aim to create a learning community designed to foster greater awareness of critical community-engaged learning principles, pedagogical approaches, and best practices in building partnerships. Participants will explore how to cultivate equitable and asset-based relationships with community partners, engage in dialogue about the role of social justice education in community-engaged learning, and generate shared values around high-quality community-engaged learning and engaged scholarship.

Participants will learn more about the history of the service-learning movement within higher education, explore current best practices of critical community engagement, connect with OCEL community partner organizations, and generate ideas for how to develop authentic relationships with community partners that support community-identified projects.

The objectives for this workshop:

• Learn more about the community-engaged learning field’s history and pedagogical developments;
• Engage in critical dialogue around best practices that center critical theory, anti-racist and decolonization approaches in community engagement, disrupting power dynamics, and asset-based approaches to building partnerships;
• Deepen understanding of the epistemological approaches to community-based research and participatory-action research;
• Learn from and with OCEL community partners;
• Co-create a learning community and shared understandings of critical community-engaged learning:
  • Collaboratively co-create shared principles for critical community-engaged learning, pedagogy, and scholarship at Vassar;
  • Co-create action plans for strengthening the preceding objectives listed above.

June 13–14: Fostering Authentic Research and Research-based Writing Across the Curriculum 

Facilitator: Joseph Bizup, Associate Professor of English, Boston University

Organizers: Matt Schultz, Director of the Writing Center; Melanie Maksin, Head of Academic Engagement, Library; Gretchen Lieb, Humanities and Multidisciplinary Librarian; Elizabeth Salmon, Social Sciences Librarian

Date and time: Thursday, June 13, 9 a.m.–5 p.m., and Friday, June 14. 9 a.m.–3 p.m. Note: there will be pre-reading as part of this workshop. 

Location: LTRC, Room 122, Thompson Library 

This two-day workshop for faculty from across disciplines is an opportunity for participants to consider their current approaches to teaching and facilitating undergraduate research and research-based writing and to imagine ways of fostering authentic and rhetorically purposeful research and writing experiences among their students. Participants will explore best practices in research and research-based writing pedagogy; reflect on and converse with one another about their current approaches; plan concrete revisions to their courses, assignments, and teaching practices; and consider broader adjustments to curricular structures to support student research and research-based writing across all four years of the undergraduate curriculum. Students often cite experiences in doing independent research as among their most meaningful and guiding students through research-based projects has been identified as a high-impact educational practice. Yet many students struggle and flounder, especially when faced with larger independent projects, or even make educational choices to avoid the challenge of these projects. At the same time, some faculty have pared away research-based assignments because they have found students ill-prepared for these projects. This workshop will offer strategies and a framework that will aid with course design and effective evaluation, and ultimately provide better preparation and support for capstone projects.

By the end of the workshop, participants will have acquired a richer understanding of the pedagogical considerations involved in teaching research and research-based writing, as well as of the practical options available to them. They will also have created or revised at least one course, assignment, or teaching activity.

This workshop will be facilitated by Joseph Bizup, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Academic Programs and Policies and Associate Professor of English at Boston University. Dr. Bizup has taught and written on the pedagogy of research-based writing and previously directed writing programs at Yale and Columbia. His 2008 article “BEAM: A Rhetorical Vocabulary for Teaching Research-Based Writing” articulates the BEAM framework of characterizing sources in terms of how they are used by researchers/writers (Background, Exhibit, Argument, Method). Dr. Bizup and co-author William T. FitzGerald recently completed an extensive revision of The Craft of Research (Fifth Edition), forthcoming in July 2024.

August 19: Developing Vassar’s Peer Evaluation of Teaching Model 

Organizers: Megan Gall, Nancy Bisaha, Natalie Frank, Bruce Gillman, members of the subcommittee tasked with developing a model for the peer observation of teaching to be used in formal reviews of teaching effectiveness. 

Date and time: Monday, August 19, 9 a.m.–3 p.m. 

Location: The Aula 

In this workshop, we will develop, in collaboration with the faculty, a pilot model for peer observation of teaching for use in formal reviews of faculty teaching effectiveness. A subcommittee has been working on the large-scale framework for this pilot, exploring models at peer institutions, reading the literature, and developing a timeline and criteria for review. While we have a range of disciplines, career stages, and backgrounds represented on the sub-committee, a larger sample of the faculty population will enhance the development of a pilot. We will provide a few short readings in advance of the workshop that cover best practices, as well as initial timelines and materials developed by the subcommittee. The workshop will be structured in the following way:

The goals for individual workshop participants are to take an active role in shaping the evaluative process at Vassar, to reflect on their own teaching practices and the ways in which peer evaluation could enhance their teaching, and to imagine the kinds of feedback from peers that would be helpful to reflect on in their teaching portfolios. 

The collective goals are to develop a pilot model that: focuses on consensus criteria that provide evidence of quality teaching, allows for dialogue between the observer and the observed, creates opportunities for both the observer and observed to reflect on their teaching, and for both the observer and the observed to be exposed to new strategies and ideas in pedagogy.

August 21: Enhancing Student Motivation and Language Retention in the Classroom: Adapting Lessons with Task-based Language Teaching

Organizer: Liz Carter, Vassar Chinese & Japanese Department, joined by Lara Bryfonski, Georgetown University, Department of Linguistics

Date and time: Wednesday, August 21, 9 a.m.–4 p.m..

Location: Chicago Hall, LL 104

This one-day workshop will introduce the system of task-based language teaching (TBLT) and its benefits through a day-long session of collaborative lesson revision. A task-based language teaching (TBLT) approach prioritizes target language use, authentic resources, and a student-centered curriculum. Faculty will be asked to bring in a particular lesson, module, or activity they would like to work on and adapt it based on the principles of task-based language teaching, with attention to student learning outcomes and levels of proficiency. The workshop will be led by Lara Bryfonski, co-author of The Art and Science of Language Teaching, which was recently published by Cambridge University Press. 

The workshop will be divided into 3 parts: first participants will learn about TBLT, and practice identifying features of high-quality tasks in this framework by analyzing and critiquing exemplar tasks. Preliminary steps for TBLT implementation will be presented to showcase how participants can infuse their current pedagogical approach with task-based strategies and resources. In the second part, teachers will analyze the lesson, module, or activity they brought to the workshop through the lens of TBLT. Working collaboratively, they will identify areas where they can adapt or modify their activity to align with TBLT. In the third part, participants will reflect on the experience of modifying their lesson and share suggestions for modifying or adapting tasks to meet the needs of learners across a variety of teaching contexts.

August 22: Generative AI and Curriculum Design 

Organizer: Jamie Kelly, Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy 

Date and time: Thursday, August 22, 9:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

Location: Class of ’51 Reading Room, Thompson Library 

The release of ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, and other Generative AI platforms is driving a wave of concern about writing, academic integrity, and the future of college. Many faculty are worried about what these technologies mean for our assignments, our courses, and the prospects for student learning. In this workshop, we will gain experience using these tools, learn about their current abilities and limitations, discuss different approaches to course design, and hear about some ways that faculty have used AI in their courses. By the end of the workshop, faculty will better understand how these technologies work and be better equipped for teaching in an AI-infused environment.