Faculty Luncheon Seminar Series, Spring 2008
12:15-1:30 in the Center for Teaching and Learning
Suite 540, 10 Park Place Building

For registrations email ctl@gsu.edu

Reading evaluations:
Are student evaluations useful tools to the assessment of teaching? If so, for whom are they useful: For the faculty member? For those evaluating the faculty member? And assuming they are of value, what is the most productive way to read them? Finally, what role should evaluations play in hiring and promotion?
Wednesday, January 23

Academic freedom:
What are faculty members free to say in their classrooms? What should they be free to say? On what grounds might faculty expression be rightly limited? For instance, are certain topics best ignored from a pedagogical perspective - even where faculty members are legally entitled to discuss them? And to what extent are faculty members responsible for acknowledging the sources of their lectures?
Tuesday, January 29

Scholarship of teaching and learning:
Do you have teaching strategies or classroom experiences that you would like to explore as part of your academic research? The aim of this session is to bring faculty together to share strategies and techniques in the scholarship of teaching and learning. This may also be an opportunity to meet potential collaborators, i.e., those with similar interests or with complementary theoretical or methodological skills.
Thursday, February 14

Teaching non-majors:
Do students taking courses outside their areas of focus present a unique set of pedagogical challenges? If so, what different strategies might faculty employ in teaching these non-majors? In particular, are there effective ways to accommodate both majors and non-majors in the same class?
Thursday, February 28

Race in the classroom:
GSU has a racially diverse student body. In what ways does this diversity affect the classroom? Can it be a help? Can it be a problem? Is it a factor to ignore - approaching students from a colorblind perspective - or one on which to focus? If the latter, how might faculty focus on race?
Tuesday, March 11

The class from hell:
What do you do when, with five long weeks to go, you realize that you have the class from hell - one you dread walking into? What did you do? What made it the class from hell? Was it the disruptive student? Was it you?
Thursday, March 27

New faculty:
This seminar will provide those finishing their first year at GSU a chance to reflect on that year. Possible topics might include: What special challenges did our student body present? How much time did class preparation take? Did you find a reasonable balance between teaching and research responsibilities? How might you approach next year differently?
Wednesday, April 9

Testing:
What methods of assessing are best suited to different types of learning? What methods are uniquely ill-suited? Are your methods for assessing student performance in line with the objectives you set for your course? To what extent - as finals approach - have you thought about these issues?
Tuesday, April 22