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Seminars for Faculty (Fall 2009)


CRLT’s seminars provide a forum for faculty to explore topics in teaching with colleagues from across campus. Each term, CRLT offers seminars on a variety of topics. All seminars are interactive, solidly grounded in the research on teaching and learning, and designed to offer practical suggestions that faculty can incorporate into their classrooms.

To register for ANY programs below, click here.

For Engineering programs at CRLT North click here.

CRLT is prepared to provide necessary physical accommodations for seminar participants with advance notice. Please call CRLT at 764-0505.


Best Practices and Innovative Approaches


CRLT Seminar Room, 1013 Palmer Commons

R1220 Ross Business School

G634 Haven Hall

Multicultural Teaching


Great Lakes Room North, 4th floor, Palmer Commons

Research Talk


CRLT Seminar Room, 1013 Palmer Commons


Best Practices and Innovative Approaches

Teaching in, with, and about Museums:
Engaging Students in Materially Different Ways

Wednesday, September 23, 12:00-2:00 p.m.
CRLT Seminar Room, 1013 Palmer Commons

Modest lunch provided.

This luncheon session provides ideas, examples, and collaborative possibilities to enhance pedagogy in a range of disciplines. The session will include brief presentations from faculty and from museum educators. The ideas will be provocative and useful, whether one wants to create a module or course assignment, or whether one wants to design an entire course around museum collections and exhibits. In addition, participants will receive an overview of the events and lectures planned for the 2009-2010 LSA Museum Theme Year, along with information on University Museums including the lesser known. This workshop is presented by CRLT as part of the LSA Theme Year.

Carla Sinopoli, Anthropology and Curator and Director, Museum of Anthropology
Lynn Anderson, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Molecular, Cellar and Developmental Biology
David Doris, Art History and Afroamerican and African Studies
Kristin Hass, Program in American Culture and Women’s Studies
Christi Merrill, Comparative Literature and Asian Languages and Cultures
Lisa Young, Anthropology

Click Here to Register

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Big Class, Small Feel: Uncommon Teaching Using Commonplace Technologies

Thursday, October 8, 11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m.
CRLT Seminar Room, 1013 Palmer Commons

For more than a decade Barry Fishman has utilized the latest technologies to enliven his teaching and foster greater ownership and engagement for his students in the School of Education and School of Information. In this session, Dr. Fishman will demonstrate how he uses a range of commonplace technology tools -- including cell phones, wikis, video conferencing, screen sharing, and other interactive tools -- to create a "small class" feel, even in his 70+ student undergraduate lecture classes. Participants are encouraged to bring their own laptops and cell phones to this CRLT seminar. There is likely to be at least one idea/tool you will consider using right away in your own teaching.

Barry Fishman, Associate Professor, School of Education and School of Information

Click Here to Register

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Fundamentals of Effective Lecturing

Thursday, October 22, 3:00-5:00 p.m.
R1220 Ross School of Business

PDF of PPT Slides
Please note that URLs in the PDF need to be copied and pasted into your browser window.

This seminar, designed for instructors who want to improve their basic lecture skills, focuses on three challenges inherent in lecturing: gaining attention, increasing comprehension, and maintaining engagement. Material is presented in an interactive lecturing format that allows for demonstration of selected techniques.

In preparation for the lecturing workshop, please bring slides or an outline for a lecture you would like to revise -- or a topic and a few main points for a future lecture or presentation. The workshop will be most helpful if you have content to work with.

Anne Harrington, Director, Ross School of Business Instructional Development Program

Click Here to Register

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Teaching Graduate Students in the Humanities

Thursday, November 12, 2:00-4:00 p.m.
G634 Haven Hall

This session focuses on specific strategies for teaching graduate seminars, with opportunity for discussion with panelists and other colleagues. The strategies emphasize using seminars to cultivate professional exchange among students, to deepen discussion, and to circumvent “grandstanding” and other unfortunate behaviors that can dominate graduate seminars. Helmut Puff will discuss co-teaching strategies that develop collegial discourse among students, and that model collegial exchange. Maria Cotera will discuss strategies for having graduate students present material that shifts them from “shredding” key texts to engaging them in a more scholarly manner.

Helmut Puff, Associate Professor, History and Germanic Languages and Literatures
Maria Cotera, Director, Latina/o Studies; Associate Professor of American Culture, Latina/o Studies, & Women's Studies

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Multicultural Teaching

CRLT Players: (dis)Ability in the Classroom

Monday, October 26, 3:30-5:30 p.m.
Great Lakes North, 4th floor, Palmer Commons

In this sketch, the CRLT Players depict an instructor and students struggling with many issues, stereotypes, and dynamics surrounding visible and hidden disabilities in the classroom. Following the performance, the participants are invited to dialogue with the characters, who then repeat the sketch while incorporating audience suggestions.

Jeffrey Steiger and the CRLT Players

Click Here to Register

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Research Talk

From Ignorant Certainty to Intelligent Confusion:  Intellectual Development in College Students

Wednesday, November 11, 2:30-4:00 p.m.
CRLT Seminar Room, 1013 Palmer Commons

PDF of PPT Slides

Faculty members and GSIs sometimes express their impatience at dealing with students who respond to complex topics in simple, unidimensional ways, or who don’t seem to grasp the role of evidence when asked to support a point of view. Students, too, get impatient with instructors who won’t give them “the right answer.” This presentation will provide a way of understanding these responses by looking at differences in underlying assumptions about knowledge and knowing, and how the recognition of intelligent confusion can be seen as a developmental step toward making well-reasoned reflective judgments.

Patricia M. King, Professor of Higher Education, Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education

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