By CITAL Guest blogger: Kelly Helm, Associate Professor, Kinesiology As the semester begins to wind down and the holiday season begins to ramp up, stress can become an overwhelming obstacle which can prevent us from getting grading done or enjoying our time away from work as well. Stress A particular type of stress known as […]
Category: 2015
Do Good Course Evaluations Mean You Are a Good Teacher?
BY: Allison M. Hunt, Assistant Director of Instructional Technology Why is teacher effectiveness so important? I think the obvious answer is that the measure, in part, determines one’s future in academe (i.e. promotion and tenure). Accreditors are also scrutinizing the ability of institutions to provide evidence to show whether students are actually learning what instructors […]
…with a little help from your friends
Classroom Observations by Jen Gregory and Cynthia Rutz Teaching can be an isolating activity. It is hard to know whether things you are trying in the classroom are working well or not. Would you like some friendly feedback on your teaching? CITAL’s Directors of Faculty Development and Instructional Design are available to observe faculty who […]
Community-Based Learning at Valparaiso University: Achievements and Opportunities
CITAL Guest Blogger: Elizabeth Lynn, Director of the Institute for Leadership and Service If you read university press releases, you may have noticed that Valparaiso University consistently earns a spot on the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll. In 2013 Valpo even received distinction, an honor conferred on only 100 institutions nationwide that year–and […]
Effective Online Teaching – Best Practices
By: Allison Hunt One might think that effective online teaching might involve a high level of tech savviness or the ability to entertain students with videos where your focus is allure rather than the content of the course. Effective online teaching is actually more simple and more doable than this, and the practices listed here […]
Free Alternatives to Textbooks: Open Educational Resources
CITAL Guest Blogger: Jon Bull, Assistant Professor of Library Services and Scholarly Communication Services Librarian This academic year has still just begun, but many of us have already turned to next semester and beyond to develop curricula and to secure the resources that we will need for upcoming classes. However, those resources can be expensive […]
The Times of Life
By CITAL Guest blogger: Dorothy Bass, Director, Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith As we head into the busiest season of the year, we asked guest blogger Dorothy Bass to reflect with us about the times of our life. So many of us yearn for lives that are balanced, but […]
Incorporating Experiential Learning into the Classroom
By CITAL Guest blogger: Amanda Zelechoski, Assistant Professor, Psychology Guest blogger Amanda Zelechoski participated in a VU faculty panel discussion at CITAL’s recent Symposium on the Science of Learning. Here she shares some of the ways that she creates a learner-centered classroom. Each semester, I try to ask myself, instead of telling the students about […]
Preventing Faculty Burnout
Preventing Faculty Burnout CITAL Guest Blogger: Stewart Cooper, Director of Counseling Services and Professor of Psychology The concept of burnout was developed in early 1980s. The term attempts to capture an array of symptoms that are a serious health and organizational problem beyond the normal experience of stress at work. Maslach and her colleagues came […]
Mid-term Student Feedback
by Jen Gregory, Director of Instructional Design If you’re like most people, when you eat a meal at a restaurant you appreciate the waiter or waitress coming by and checking on your soon after you’ve received your meal and probably again about half way through. Maybe you forgot to ask for a condiment or they […]