December 15, 2021: End of the Semester Self Care and Celebration
In our last Lunch and Learn Session of this semester, we invite you all to join us to share your best self-care technique as well as to practice a few with us. You can stay for as long or as little as you want. You can also just take this time to “lounge and learn”. Bring a friend, grab a blanket or pillow to be comfortable, brew a cup of tea. Perhaps have a few index cards and a pen for notes to write down some of your new ideas and practices. Let’s celebrate the end of the semester and play some mindfulness games as well!
Facilitated by the GTA TLC
December 1, 2021: Five Highly Effective Teaching Practices You Can Use Now
In this session, April Athnos will provide five teaching practices that any instructor or teaching assistant can incorporate into their courses now. These best practices will enhance the transparency and engagement with students while working intentionally toward the learning objectives of your courses. In addition to providing an overview of these practices, April will give examples of how she integrated them into her teaching.
Presenter Bio: April Athnos is a doctoral candidate studying Environmental and Resource Economics in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics. Her research agendas include economics pedagogy, water policy evaluation, and consumer food preferences for environmental attributes. Her teaching experience includes four semesters as a TA and seven semesters as instructor of record. Most recently she taught EEM 255: Ecological Economics, which she redesigned for asynchronous online delivery in response to the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic. She aspires to employ the legitimate peripheral participation model to incorporate undergraduate research experiences into her future teaching endeavors.
November 17, 2021: Best Practices in Trauma Informed Teaching
Undergraduate and graduate students at MSU come to us with very diverse backgrounds and experiences that impact their preparation and learning. Adversity and other experiences, including the current pandemic impact student engagement with learning and faculty. This workshop will explore an understanding of universal approaches that are trauma informed and support student engagement. Principles of trauma informed work as well as best practices for trauma informed teaching will be explored and discussed.
Presenter Bio: Cheryl Williams-Hecksel is on the faculty of the MSU School of Social Work. Cheryl is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and has been with the School of Social Work since 2006. Prior to joining the faculty at MSU, she has spent more than 25 years in clinical and administrative roles in public and private child welfare and mental health agencies. She is the coordinator of the School’s Evidence Based Trauma Treatment Certificate. She is also involved in MSU’s work with the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute where she serves as coordinator of the University Partnerships team. Her work also includes consultation with social service agencies around their capacity to trauma informed. She is also one of the founders of the Trauma Services and Training Network at MSU, a collaborative grass roots effort of University faculty, staff and students to work towards creating a trauma informed University. Within this work, she is cofacilitator of a Learning Community that engages those in the MSU community that are working within their units and roles to implement trauma informed principles into their work.
November 3, 2021: Apprenticing into the Academy: Communities of Practice and Learning as Participation
When you work as a TA while completing your graduate studies, do you have the sense that the work you are doing now resembles and will prepare you for your future teaching responsibilities in a university context? We usually think of learning as mastery of content or skills, but all learning is really participation and identity construction (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). Ideally, working as a teaching assistant ought to be apprenticing you into the role of a teaching professor. In this session, we will identify some of the reasons why the job of a teaching assistant does not always involve a learning process that aligns with your professional goals, and we will discuss strategies for tapping into your communities of practice to promote your own learning (McDonald & Cater-Steel, 2017). The session itself will also model ways of promoting interaction in online learning contexts.
Presenter Bio: Amanda Lanier (Ph.D., Georgia State University) is an applied linguist and language teacher educator who focuses on social and cultural aspects of language learning, teacher cognition, and technology in language teaching and learning. She began her career teaching English as a foreign and second language, and she has worked with teachers of 20 other languages and language varieties. Through her role as instructor and director in a fully online graduate program, MSU’s MA in Foreign Language Teaching (https://maflt.cal.msu.edu), Dr. Lanier has designed a dozen online graduate courses on topics including pedagogical methods, intercultural competence, language acquisition theories, and program development and administration, and she has also become an advocate for online learning and teaching. Learn more, find teacher resources, and read brief articles at https://alanier.msu.domains.
Completing the Circle Listening Session
Wednesday, October 20, 2021, noon to 1:00 pm
During Part I of the Small Changes – BIG Difference Makers: Strategies That Inspire Faculty and Student Success Learn at Lunch Session, the premise that higher education cannot increase student success without focusing on faculty/instructor success was suggested. Strategies, resources, tools that GTAs can easily integrate into their teaching practices were shared. We have completed only a portion of the circle. If we are going to impact student learning and success, we believe it is necessary and important to listen to you. You are invited to share 1) what you need as a GTA to support your teaching and learning, 2) what you imagine faculty and student success might look like and steps we might take to operationalize our visions, 3) other thoughts to help ensure your success along with your students’ success. We value, appreciate, and recognize your scholarship, expertise, and your gifts as we consider how we might optimize educator and student success. All are welcome to share their thoughts and/or listen as we, together, continue to complete the circle.
Facilitator Bio: All of the roles Mary Beth has held during her 40 years working at MSU are linked to her passion to help all students be successful as they navigate the exciting but often overwhelming college experience. Her current work in the College of Arts and Letters focuses on facilitating the integration of academic and student affairs in the College of Arts & Letters to create a seamless student experience across curricular and co-curricular opportunities. In addition to her student learning, student success, and faculty success work, Mary Beth enjoys teaching First Year Writing for the Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures Department. Her research interests include how students learn; curriculum and purpose development; mindset science; social psychological interventions and student achievement; how dignity and empathy impact teaching, learning, student and faculty success.
October 6, 2021: Turning a Lecture Hall into a Classroom: Best Practices for Engaging Students in Large Enrollment Classes
We will share the format we have developed to convert our lecture halls into active classrooms, both online and in-person. Our goal is to provide more opportunities for students to practice applying the concepts they are learning and get feedback on their work during each class meeting. We use a variety of technologies to reach this goal, and a very well organized D2L site. We will share all of this and provide a snapshot of a "week in the life" of our students.
Facilitator Bio: Dr. Kirstin Parkin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. She is also a FAST Steering Committee member, FAST Mentor, and a passionate instructor.
September 22, 2021: Identities and the Culturally Responsive Educator: Strategies and Applications
This session will provide a background into the concept of culturally responsive teaching (CRT) and how an instructor’s personal identity impacts how they approach their practice and interact with students. Next, we will discuss strategies to facilitate the application of CRT in classrooms settings and conclude with reviewing any questions attendees may have.
Facilitator bio: Oyesola Oluwafunmilayo Ayeni is a 5th year Doctoral student in the Ecological/Community Psychology program at Michigan State University. Funmi’s area of research focuses on the development, implementation, and evaluation of culturally appropriate interventions for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence from diverse backgrounds. In her teaching, Funmi applies culturally relevant strategies to provide quality instruction to students while ensuring equity and inclusion.
September 8, 2021: Small Changes, BIG Difference Makers: Strategies That Inspire Educators and Student Success
During this session you will have an opportunity to learn about strategies, resources, tools [including those suggested by students and some created by instructors] that GTAs can easily, and with minimal time, integrate into their teaching practices. In addition to learning about small changes you can make that have the potential to powerfully impact student learning and instructor success, you will be invited to share what you need as a GTA to support your teaching to help ensure your success along with your students’ success.
Facilitated by Mary Beth Heeder, Sr. Consultant and Project Manager for Student Learning and Success, Office of the Associate Provost of Undergraduate Education
Facilitator Bio: All of the roles Mary Beth has held during her 39 years working at MSU are linked to her passion to help all students be successful as they navigate the exciting but often overwhelming college experience. Her current work in the Office of the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education focuses on faculty and student success, educator professional development, and strategic process improvement. In addition to her student success work, Mary Beth enjoys teaching; she has taught First Year Writing for the Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures Department.
August 25, 2021: GTA TLC Virtual Kick-off Session
In this session new GTAs have the opportunity to connect with experienced GTAs about teaching, and can ask them anything about their journey, get some teaching tips, and learn about best practices.
Facilitated by GTA Teaching and Learning Community (GTA TLC)
January 20, 2021: Engaging Students Through Technology Tools
Teaching remotely requires new tools and platforms to engage students. In this session the GTA TLC will discuss technology tools such as Padlet, Kahoot, Zoom Annotate and Flipgrid. We invite everyone who wants to learn more about these tools or who has used these before to share best practices in implementing these engagement tools.
Facilitated by Hima Rawal, Stefanie Baier and the GTA Teaching Learning Community (GTA TLC)
February 3, 2021: Making Learning Experiences High Impact
Michigan Universities are part of the Liberal Education and the American Promise Initiative which aims at empowering individuals in higher education to prepare students in dealing with complexity, diversity, and change. In this session we will learn how the 8 key elements of High Impact Practices can enhance your teaching to help students succeed.
Facilitated by Stefanie Baier, Curriculum Developer at the MSU Graduate School
February 17, 2021: Introduction to Undergraduate Mentoring
Many graduate students work very closely with undergraduates as instructors and often become their informal or formal mentors. In this session we will discuss some ways of establishing a successful mentor-mentee relationship using boundaries, contracts, goal sheets and more. We invite everyone who is trying to learn more about UG mentoring as well as those who have established successful mentoring relationships to share their practices.
Facilitated by Stefanie Baier, Curriculum Development Director, Graduate School
March 3, 2021: Mindset & Empathy in the College Classroom
Although empathy and mindset are attracting attention among educators because of their potential to change students’ behaviors, how they learn, and how students and instructors relate to one another, they are often overlooked as instructors think about their teaching pedagogy and practices. During this session we will consider research and share stories, tools, and strategies that can be used to move empathy and mindset from the sidelines to the front and center of our work.
Facilitated by Mary Beth Heeder, Office of the Associate Provost of UG Education
Facilitator Bio: All of the roles Mary Beth has held during her 39 years working at MSU are linked to her passion to help all students be successful as they navigate the exciting but often overwhelming college experience. Her current work in the Office of the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education focuses on faculty and student success, educator professional development, and strategic process improvement. In addition to her student success work, Mary Beth enjoys teaching; she has taught First Year Writing for the Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures Department.
March 17, 2021: Difficulties Students Face when Taking Classes Remotely
This session will be a conversation and discussion about challenges students face when taking classes remotely, as well as how these can be addressed successfully.
Facilitated by the GTA Teaching & Learning Community (GTA TLC)
March 31, 2021: Metacognitive Strategies to Increase Student Learning
In this session we will be discussing a chapter from Saundra McGuire’s book “Teach Students How to Learn” book. You will receive the reading about a week in advance.
Facilitated by the GTA Teaching Learning Community
April 14, 2021: Applying Theories of Motivation in the Classroom
As instructors we are always looking for ways to motivate students. In this session we are discussing how we can apply theories of motivation in our teaching to increase student engagement and enthusiasm about learning.
Facilitated by the GTA TLC
May 5, 2021: Spring Conference on Teaching, Learning, and Student Success (Academic Advancement Network)
TLC During a Pandemic: Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) Build A Community Through Sharing Teaching Practices
In this presentation, we shared our virtual community, the GTA TLC (Teaching Learning Community), which afforded GTAs the opportunity to connect across disciplines and physical distance to share best practices, tools, technologies, methods, and ways of effective teaching.
Presented by Stefanie Baier, Hima Rawal, Seth Hunt, and Rosanne Renauer
May 12, 2021: Rethinking Syllabi for Remote and In-person Classes
Syllabi are considered the recipe for success for students. Therefore, it is important to be aware about using clear and inclusive syllabus language to help students of all backgrounds succeed, as well as to communicate expectations and a culture of care.
Facilitated by Hima Rawal, Stefanie Baier and the GTA Teaching & Learning Community
May 26, 2021 Recognizing Mental Health Challenges in Students: Using Kognito as a Tool to Start the Conversation
Addressing mental health is very important for our own well-being. It is also helpful to learn how to acknowledge and recognize students’ mental health challenges to navigate college success and overall personal wellness. For this purpose, we are going to discuss how to use Kognito as a tool to start the conversations about mental health and resources on campus. Together, we will explore Kognito, an online conversation simulation MSU has adopted.
Facilitated by GTA Teaching & Learning Community
June 9, 2021 Writing Your Diversity Statement
Many jobs, especially academic positions, ask students to submit a “diversity statement” with their application materials. Many job seekers, unfortunately, treat such a document as an afterthought, when in fact it is a powerful opportunity to talk about your goals, values, and the kind of faculty member or academic leader you aspire to be. In this session, Kayon Hall (HALE) will walk you through the process of understanding what is expected in a strong diversity statement and help you clarify the values you will highlight in your own diversity statement. At the end of this session, you will have a draft document that you can confidently refine, knowing it represents you well.
Facilitated by Kayon Hall (HALE)
Presenter Bio: Kayon Hall is a PhD candidate in HALE program. Kayon’s research focuses on DEI, and anti-black racism in higher education. Her current work examines the intersection of race and immigration status. Prior to MSU, Kayon worked eight years as an administrator in student affairs, including serving as Associate Director of Career Planning and Employer and Graduate Relations at the College of Wooster.
June 23, 2021 Using #iteachmsu to Share Best Practices in Teaching & Learning
In this session we will introduce everyone to the GTA TLC page on the #iteachmsu platform. We will discuss how GTAs can use #iteachmsu to share any content, best practices in teaching and learning, and create a community platform that leverages the funds of knowledge GTAs constantly co-construct over time. We will discuss different modalities as well as articles, playlists, and videos to share on the #iteachmsu platform.
Facilitated by GTA Teaching & Learning Community and Makena Neal
July 21, 2021 Creating Electronic Portfolios
In this workshop, participants will explore platforms available to build their e-portfolio, especially to highlight their Certification in College Teaching. They will walk through simple steps of an e-portfolio platform and start drafting their own to expand on or to fine-tune what they have already created.
Facilitated by Stefanie Baier and Siba El Dallal
