The Active Learning Initiative (ALI) has awarded a new round of grants, helping 5 departments redesign courses to implement research-based active learning strategies and create sustainable improvements to undergraduate education at Cornell.
ALI is a collaborative effort: faculty work closely with ALI postdocs and experts from the Center for Teaching Innovation (CTI), and departments are…
Shanzai Ikhlas '24/Cornell University
Exploration of women and gender in the Middle East - acrylic
The ways instructors present social justice topics in the classroom provide a roadmap for how others see the world. Cornell’s Spanish courses have always focused on social and cultural issues, which are central to learning a language.
Having taught about migration before and taking inspiration from Cornell’s Grand Global Challenges and the Migrations initiative, Emilia Illana Mahiques and…
Serge Petchenyi/Cornell University
Darlene Campbell, senior lecturer in biology, works with students in class.
This fall, a new group of Innovative Teaching and Learning Award winners are beginning work on projects to enhance student learning environments across Cornell. Projects include active learning to build critical thinking in gateway courses, creating immersive online language activities, developing a course on landscape design to protect wildlife, and re-envisioning teaching and assessment methods…
Digital storytelling as a teaching strategy holds the promise of democratizing use of technology, empowering storytellers, and providing practice in digital literacy.
This fall, the Center for Teaching Innovation (CTI) is coordinating a community of practice featuring workshops led by faculty to explore digital storytelling methods.
“The community of practice sessions will bring interested…
Creating content is now so effortless in the age of Tik Tok, YouTube and emojis that it is easy to overlook the processes and meanings behind writing a message.
Athena Kirk, assistant professor, and Stephen Sansom, active learning postdoctoral associate, both in the Classics department in the College of Arts and Sciences, took a unique approach to exploring those processes and meanings, as…
Vida Maralani/Provided
Doug McKee, senior lecturer in economics, teaches his Applied Econometrics class via Zoom.
The shift to online teaching because of the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected learning, data shows, but students whose instructors had experience with online teaching tools – especially those in classes using structured peer interaction – performed better, according to a new Cornell study.
The researchers also found that the pandemic’s negative learning effects did not…
Online learning is still new to most instructors and students. Despite the fact that classes across Cornell and the globe have been taught online for years, only a small minority were accustomed to this learning format prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As instructors and students are still adjusting to the online format imposed on them at the outbreak of the pandemic a year ago, the Cornell…
An evolution lesson designed by graduate students for undergraduate non-majors that applies active learning techniques to teach speciation was published in CourseSource in August. (Speciation is the process by which new species are formed.) The co-authors, all students in Evidence-Based Teaching (BIOEE 7600), are in six fields across the sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and…
A project funded by a 2017 grant from the provost’s Active Learning Initiative has resulted in calculus students and instructors seeing academic benefits, and a path to more consistently active pedagogy. Steve Bennoun, active learning lecturer in mathematics and coordinator of the project, published the results of the transformation in a paper, “Establishing Consistent Active Learning in a…
Knowing what to study and having the necessary skills to succeed are students’ main course-related concerns early in introductory STEM classes, according to a new study co-led by Cornell researchers – findings that Cornell faculty are now working to address. The researchers surveyed students at three large Ph.D.-granting institutions to identify broad trends in course-related concerns, with an…
Doctoral students Sri Lakshmi Sravani Devarakonda and Cheyenne Peltier have been named winners of the 2019-20 Cornelia Ye Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. The award is given annually to two outstanding TAs – one domestic and one international – who have demonstrated dedication and excellence in their teaching responsibilities. The award includes a certificate and a $500 prize. “Their…
Serge Petchenyi/Cornell University
2021-22 Cornelia Ye Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award winner Zachary Grobe
The Center for Teaching Innovation (CTI), along with a committee made up of faculty and students, has selected doctoral students Janani Hariharan and Zachary Grobe as recipients of the 2021-22 Cornelia Ye outstanding teaching assistant award.
“Their commitment to interdisciplinary approaches and engaging all students in a welcoming environment made our two winners rise to the top of a…
