From the CRLT Blog

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Preparing to Teach During the 2024 Election
Wed, 09/04/2024

I Voted stickers on white surface

CRLT and the Edward Ginsberg Center are partnering to offer programming and resources for instructors teaching during the 2024 election through the Promoting Democracy Teaching Series. As part of this collaboration, we are refreshing our guidance from recent presidential elections. While many of the strategies in our earlier entries remain as best practices, this updated piece also reflects our ongoing efforts on the topic, adapted for the current political environment.


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May 13-17: Hot Topics in Equity-focused Teaching @ Michigan, May Series
Thu, 03/28/2024
Now in its eighth year, this annual series of workshops is open to all U-M instructors. Each workshop offers opportunities to engage with colleagues from across the university and to think through a range of timely equity-focused teaching questions, challenges, and strategies. You are welcome to register for one or all of the workshops in this one-week series. Sessions are free and open to U-M instructors in any field. 
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Engaging Students by Integrating Career Development into Your Course
Mon, 10/02/2023

students working

Guest Author: Paul Barron, LSA Opportunity Hub

We’re heading towards that point in the semester where students’ engagement may wane as they juggle competing deadlines and responsibilities. While it can help to revisit the syllabus and remind students of upcoming deadlines, another way to promote engagement is to address a topic they’re stressing about: looking for jobs and internships. This blog post offers a range of ways that instructors can help students identify links between their courses and their future careers. For more ideas, and to spend time considering approaches to engaging students in your course by connecting it to their career exploration, register for this CRLT workshop: Engaging Students by Integrating Career Development Into Your CourseFriday, October 27, from 12:00 pm - 02:00 pm (lunch provided).


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Equity-Focused Teaching at Michigan: Investigating our Practices
Mon, 04/17/2023

students studyingAt CRLT we continue to develop our understanding of equity-focused teaching as an ongoing process of learning from doing, reflecting on our impact, and critically investigating our practices. This year’s Equity-focused Teaching at Michigan May Series aims to foster critical reflective practices as a central component of Equity-focused Teaching. Using the lens of “practice” means we can think critically about the patterns of inequity and power that take shape in often subtle yet impactful ways through our actions over time. Critical reflection is the work of actively examining and unpacking these patterns, using our experiences as evidence, in dialogue with others’ perspectives and knowledge.


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Reframing Rigor to Promote Equity in Teaching and Learning
Fri, 02/24/2023

students studyingIn scientific research, rigor refers to the level of care and precision used in the design, execution, and interpretation of experiments and studies. For example, the National Institute of Health (NIH), a major funding source for medical and biological sciences, requires grant applications and progress reports to adhere to a strict standard of rigor. In this setting, scientific rigor is defined as: “the strict application of the scientific method to ensure unbiased and well-controlled experimental design, methodology, analysis, interpretation and reporting of results.” While this definition is STEM specific, descriptions of rigor in other disciplines also focus on thoughtfully executing one’s work, ensuring it is grounded in scholarship, and examining one’s biases in analysis and interpretation (e.g., see Gill & Gill, 2020; Langtree, Birks, & Biedermann, 2019; and Riggs & Büchler, 2007).

How might we conceptualize rigor in a college teaching setting? At a minimum, it would involve thoughtfully chosen, clearly laid out learning goals, targeted assessments of those goals, and learning activities designed for students to reach those goals, independent of student demographic or background. The design and implementation of a rigorous course would be grounded in the scholarship of teaching and learning for the discipline. Additionally, an indicator of rigor would measure how many students (and by how much) have pushed the boundaries of their knowledge, skills, and attitudes in order to meet the course objectives.


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ChatGPT: Implications for Teaching and Student Learning
Mon, 01/09/2023
ChatGPT interface screenshot

Recently, the artificial intelligence app ChatGPT has been making headlines in the higher education media and beyond. Some have taken an alarmist approach, such as a recent Atlantic piece titled “The College Essay Is Dead.” Others have been more sanguine, examining the limitations of the app as well as offering suggestions for how it can inform student learning and writing. Below is an FAQ about ChatGPT that includes links to useful resources.


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Structuring Classroom Discussions About Elections
Tue, 10/11/2022

voting stickers

This midterm election season brings an important opportunity for students and instructors to connect classroom learning to the value of civic engagement. Developments in law and politics at the national level have highlighted the particular importance of state and local civic engagement.

The Center for Research on Learning and Teaching works with instructors to think through approaches to incorporating discussion of the midterm election and its links to civic engagement into their courses, as well as strategies for responding in the moment when these issues arise.

Encouraging students to engage in the US democratic process is a non-partisan activity

This post shares highlights from resources curated for faculty and staff to not only encourage voter engagement, but also to support the development of students’ habits of democracy before and after the upcoming election. Regardless of citizenship status, domestic and international students benefit from understanding how democracy works.


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Teaching in Fall 2022: Balancing Flexibility and Accountability
Mon, 08/22/2022

Instuctor and studentsOver the past two years, instructors across the university have learned a great deal about ways to build flexibility into their courses, a core principle of equitable teaching. We know that students have benefitted from this approach to course elements such as absences and deadlines.

As we move into the Fall 2022 semester, we are hearing a range of approaches to flexibility. For some instructors, this reflects a long-standing commitment to allowing students multiple ways to navigate their course and demonstrate learning. Others, especially those teaching large courses, have reported that student expectations for flexibility around course modality, grading, and attendance have become unmanageable for them and seem to have led to student disengagement as well.

So, what do you do this fall?


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2022 Equity-focused Teaching @ Michigan Series
Mon, 03/28/2022

Image removed.It has been one year since CRLT has broadened its lens to center equity in our teaching and learning frameworks.
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“Help: My students are overwhelmed, and so am I!”
Tue, 11/16/2021

Guest Author: Joy Pehlke, Wolverine Wellness

Wolverine Wellness eight stages of wellnessA common theme we are hearing from instructors across campus is the level of stress they and their students are experiencing this term. To offer context about the current moment and suggestions for navigating it, we have asked Joy Pehlke, Health Educator and Wellness Coach at University Health Service and Lecturer in LSA, to write this guest blog post.

My role at Wolverine Wellness allows me to witness the student experience in multiple ways: through one-on-one wellness coaching conversations, well-being presentations, and discussions in my class, ALA 240: Living Well in College and Beyond. Many students, staff, and faculty hoped that things would get easier once we could go back to some sense of “normalcy.”  Instead, a common theme has emerged. We are struggling with the tension of wishing things would get easier and finding they’ve only become more complicated. We are seeing higher levels of stress and anxiety, and it has become clear that pre-existing issues on campus (burnout, overwhelm, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, racism, loneliness, etc.) have only been amplified by the pandemic. And these aren’t just student issues. Instructors are impacted, too.


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