CETLI Events Calendar

Asking students to complete assignments that will be seen by audiences outside the classroom often encourages students to invest themselves in their academic work and think more creatively about it. In this session, Heather Sharkey from Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Deborah Thomas from Anthropology will open a discussion of ways to design public-facing […]

Graduate seminars do many things: introduce students to a field and how to be scholars and professionals in the field, provide students with the tools to follow their own interests as well as give students entry to an entirely new set of interests, lenses and questions.  In this session, Melissa Sanchez of English and Gender […]

Creative projects can allow students to explore course content in ways that encourage both analysis and imagination, excitement and insight. In this session Loren Goldman from Political Science and Grace Saunders Johnson from Africana Studies will start the discussion of how to design and implement such projects, considering how we can develop assignments that enable […]

This session will consider ways of assessing students that get away from high-stakes exams and better reflect the learning we expect of our students. Vijay Balasubramanian of Physics and Rob Ghrist of Math and Electrical and Systems Engineering will open this discussion of alternatives to exams, by exploring options that they have considered and how […]

This session focuses on how to make lectures more active and intellectually engaging for students. Allyson Mackey of Psychology and Rupa Pillai of Asian American Studies will facilitate this discussion of ways to incorporate active moments into lectures in order to encourage students to think, reset their attention and practice with material so they can […]

Audio assignments, such as podcasts, can help students think in new ways about what they are learning and about the audience for their work. In this session Jim English of English and Andi Johnson of History and Sociology of Science will ask us to consider why we might assign audio projects, how to do so […]

This conversation will allow faculty to talk through their concerns about ChatGPT, a new AI platform that can generate and revise text and code. Will such platforms enable students to complete assignments at the push of a button, and make such cheating harder to detect? Do instructors need to change their assignments? How drastically? Alternatively, […]

With last year’s return to in-person classes, some students – as attendance demonstrated – were uncertain about why it mattered whether they physically attended. In this conversation, facilitated by Cam Grey of Classical Studies and Josh Klein, we will consider why being present matters, how we explain that to students, and how we encourage ongoing […]

Across areas of study, we are increasingly considering ways to empower students to think with data. In this conversation, Bhuvnesh Jain of Physics and Matt Levendusky, of Political Science will start a discussion on how to introduce data science to undergraduates and how to integrate the study of data meaningfully into a range of undergraduate […]

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED. Through writing we often come to more nuanced and complicated ideas as well as better approaches to problem solving. This conversation, led by Henry Townser of Math and Elly Truitt of History and Sociology of Science, will discuss the ways in which we can connect writing and thinking for our […]

ChatGPT has instructors rethinking their assignments – whether to address concerns around academic integrity, to help students learn new skills that prepare them for the future, to use the tool to open time for different kinds of thinking, or all three. Kate Dorsch, of History and Sociology of Science and John Paul MacDuffie of Management […]

In this session Michele Margolis of Political Science and Robyn Sanderson of Physics and Astronomy will use their ideas about their syllabuses to start a conversation about how to prepare for the fall by creating a syllabus for your class that engages students, excites them for the class, and makes clear to them what they […]

Being in class together is valuable for student learning, but after the pandemic instructors have reported that students are coming to class less and that by mid-semester as many as half the students in lectures are not coming.  This session will explore ways to help students see the value of class, set expectations for why […]

What we do on the first day of class matters for how the rest of the semester unfolds. It is an opportunity to introduce yourself and your course design, provide students with a glimpse of your teaching style, and communicate your expectations. This session will explore ways to make you and your students feel at […]

How can you set firm deadlines but still work with students who need some flexibility? In this conversation Sarah Kagan of Nursing and Marc Meredith of Political Science will talk about how they try to balance the challenges students sometimes encounter with the need for some firm deadlines to keep students on track.

Mentors of doctoral students must both give students enough structure to complete their dissertations and learn particular skills, and support them as they find their own scholarly voices and interests. In this session Chenoa Flippen of Sociology and Daniel Levinthal of Management will begin the conversation by thinking about how to strike a balance between […]

Class participation is often a nebulous concept for students. While faculty often encourage and grade participation, students can be unsure what is expected of them. Sarah Gronningsater and Wendy Roth will begin this conversation with concrete ideas for helping students participate in ways that will help them learn and setting expectations so that students know […]

In this discussion of clinical teaching, Nadia Bennett of the Perelman School of Medicine and Olivia Sheridan of the School of Dental Medicine will start a conversation on how to make feedback meaningful for clinical students, how to give feedback in front of patients, and other times and means of providing students with feedback to […]

Controversial issues are often central to what we want to teach. But many of us find such dialogues risky, as discussion can become so heated students don’t learn or, alternatively, students won’t talk at all out of fear of saying something wrong or insensitive. Murali Balaji of Annenberg and Amy Hillier of Social Policy and […]

This session will bring together faculty to share ideas about ways to include discussions of the climate emergency in their classes, whether the topic of the course addresses climate or not. Barri Gold of English and Farah Hussain of the Perelman School of Medicine will initiate the conversation by talking about how they incorporated climate […]

It sounds obvious, that we want students to develop their thinking during class time, but in practice many of our students do not understand what kinds of thinking we are asking of them. In this session, Katrin Hinrichs of Veterinary Medicine and James Petersson of Chemistry will talk about how they’ve been able to use […]

Giving students support for regular practice with the skills and concepts of a course,  can help them feel more prepared for exams and midterms because students continue learning throughout the semester. To start this session, Tom Mallouk of Chemistry and Loretta Sernekos of Nursing will share concrete strategies for getting students engaged with course materials […]

Instructors have been concerned by the rise in student anxiety since the pandemic but are unsure how to address it. In this session, Dennis Flores from Nursing and Peter Struck from Classics will begin this conversation by explaining how they have worked to reduce student anxiety while maintaining high standards for student learning. 

Case studies and thought experiments are common methods for getting students in professional schools to think in more nuanced ways about ethical questions. Brian Berkey from Wharton’s Legal Studies and Business Ethics department and Dominic Sisti from PSOM’s Medical Ethics and Health Policy department will start this interactive session with examples of what and how […]

Students at Penn are bright and capable but they come to class with a wide variety of different experiences and expectations. Masao Sako of Physics and Emma Hart of History will start this conversation by describing how they design courses to make sure students who come in with different strengths can all thrive. 

How can instructors create a classroom where students can investigate controversial topics in a way that is free and open? How do instructors make sure students can consider all sides of an argument and multiple perspectives? In this discussion, Sigal Ben-Porath from GSE and Ben Nathans from History will begin by talking about their experiences […]

How can instructors use generative AI in ways that help students learn (rather than allow students to take shortcuts)? This conversation will start with Amanda Bettencourt of Nursing and Sonny Tambe of OID talking about how they have used generative AI to improve student learning and promote more interaction with course materials and skills. 

Instructors often assign students reading as a way to get students ready for class.  Students, however, sometimes are not sure what role the readings play in class. To begin this conversation, Michael Kane from Economics and Paul Saint-Amour from English will talk about how they motivate students to do the reading and help students understand […]

Faculty teaching co-listed undergraduate and graduate classes face the challenge of designing a class for students who have different preparation, different expertise and different motivations for taking the course.  This conversation will feature Mona Merling from Math and Donovan Schaefer from Religious Studies who will share how they create classes that support learning for both […]