After another successful series last academic year, Lunch and Learn – Conversations on Teaching, returns for 2024-2025. These casual discussions over lunch spotlight experienced faculty sharing innovative teaching practices and demonstrating how others might implement similar strategies.
Upcoming Sessions
Lunch and Do: AI Prompt Engineering for Instructors
Learn how to use large language models (e.g., ChatGPT, Co-Pilot, Claude) to help with common teaching tasks including: writing test and homework questions, generating images, writing learning objectives. Attendees will have a chance to apply these prompts to their own courses during the workshop – and eat a delicious lunch!
Presented by Mike Reese, Associate Dean and Director, Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation
When: February 20, 2025, 12:00PM-1:30PM
Where: In-person, Levering Great Hall
Past sessions
Applying the CTEI Canvas Formatting Toolkit: Tabs, Accordions, and Headers, Oh my!
Join the CTEI Instructional Technology Team to learn how to insert tabs, headings, accordions, and other lay-out functionality into your spring 2025 Canvas classroom.
Continuous Improvement: Maintaining Engagement in the Classroom as an Instructor
How do you continuously improve as a classroom instructor? How do you maintain engagement with teaching and learning in the midst of several competing priorities, both personal and professional?
Hear from experienced instructors about the ways they continually engage with the classroom environment and sustain their commitment to teaching and learning.
Panelists:
- Belinda Chen, Assistant Professor of Medicine; Director, Faculty Development Programs in Curriculum Development; School of Medicine
- Anicia Timberlake, Assistant Professor, Musicology; the Peabody Institute
- Lisa Wright, Lecturer, University Writing Program; the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences
(Read summary of this discussion on the Innovative Instructor blog.)
Lunch and Learn: Using Storytelling Frameworks to Drive Learner Engagement
The Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation and the Teaching Academy invite you to a Lunch and Learn session on Using Storytelling Frameworks to Drive Learner Engagement from noon to 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, October 8.
As the cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham said stories are “psychologically privileged”: “There is something inherent in the story format that makes them easy to understand and remember.”
Join Brian Klaas Instructor and Associate Director of Technology for the Bloomberg School of Public Health, for an exciting and high-energy workshop about incorporating storytelling techniques into your instruction, and learn how to leverage the “memorability” of stories to support your learning goals!
Classroom Showcase with Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools
Would you like to see about some very cool uses of Generative AI in classrooms around Hopkins? Come to this Lunch and Learn and hear all about them, see some of the classroom products, and find out how you can start using these tools in your teaching practice.
Active Learning Techniques: Advice and Guidance from Experienced Faculty
What is Active Learning? How do you implement it? What are activities that support it? How can you become an Active Learning practitioner in a short period of time?
Broadly defined, active learning requires “students to construct knowledge, integrate knew knowledge with prior knowledge, and organize information in their memory,” as Amedee Martella, a cognitive scientist, describes it in a recent article for The Chronicle of Education.
But what does that look like in the classroom? (If you have students do pair or group work, then you’re probably already doing it.) And does it require a complete course re-design? (The majority of time, no; minor shifts can be enough.)
The Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation and the Teaching Academy invite you to a Lunch and Learn session on Active Learning on Tuesday, March 12 from 12 – 1:30 pm. Hear from experienced faculty about how they use active learning approaches in their classrooms and walk away with activities that you can implement during your next course session.
Canvas Show and Tell: Share and Learn About Engaging and Effective Uses of Canvas
Join instructional colleagues for a show-and-tell highlighting interesting uses of Canvas one year after implementation. Great examples, concrete take-aways, and easily implementable features and designs will all be part of the conversation. Alison Papadakis, Teaching Professor and Director of Clinical Psychological Studies in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, will host the discussion.
Generative AI: Teaching Uses, Learning Curves, and Classroom Guidelines
How are faculty using generative AI tools in the classroom? What guidelines and recommendations do we have for AI use in the classroom, from both a pedagogical perspective and policy perspective? What are we learning about its implications as we look to integrate AI tools into our teaching practices? Join us for a discussion with panelists from The Krieger School, the School of Medicine, and Carey Business School about their use of AI and contribute your thoughts about potential classroom policies for AI.
Moderator: Caroline Egan, CTEI Project Manager
Panel:
- Sean Tackett, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
- Carly Schnitzel, JHU University Writing Program
- Jun Fang, Carey Teaching and Learning Center
Getting Started with Community-Based Learning with the Center for Social Concern
Moderator: Luisa De Guzman, Assistant Director, Engaged Scholarship in the Center for Social Concern
Faculty Panel:
- Dr. Jasmine Blanks Jones, Executive Director, Center for Social Concern and Lecturer, Program in Racism, Immigration, and Scholarship
- Alissa Burkholder Murphy, Lecturer, Whiting School of Engineering
- Dr. Anne Elizabeth-Brodsky, Associate Teaching Professor and Assistant Director, University Writing Program
- Dr. Victoria Harms, DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor, History
Luisa De Guzman of the Center for Social Concern will moderate a panel discussion with faculty members who have implemented community-based learning in their courses. They will talk about they got started, the best ways to partner with community members or organizations, and offer general advice for instructors interested in integrating community-based learning into their courses.
First-Year Seminars: Faculty Reflections & Emerging Best Practices
Moderator: Aliza Watters, Senior Lecturer, Assistant Dean, and Director of First-Year Seminars
Faculty Panel:
- Chris Celenza, Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Professor of History and Classics
- FYS: Books, Authenticity, and Truth
- Lilliana Mason, SNF Agora Institute, Associate Professor of Political Science
- FYS: The Psychology of Mass Politics in the U.S.
- Bill Egginton, Decker Professor in the Humanities and Director, Alexander Grass Humanities Institute
- FYS: Poets, Physicists and Philosophers
- Marisa O’Connor, Associate Teaching Professor, University Writing Program
- FYS: Is a Corporation a Person?
The First-Year Seminars (FYS) were established in order to take first-year students “straight to the heart” of what Hopkins does: “discuss big ideas, explore new concepts, and develop novel solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.” The FYS program was fully launched in Fall 2022 as a requirement for all in-coming Hopkins undergraduates in the Krieger School. Aliza Watters, the Director of the FYS program, will moderate a faculty panel discussion and open Q & A about faculty experiences teaching FYS and emerging best practices for these foundational seminars. Come discuss lessons learned that can inform your own teaching or to hear more about the FYS.
Re-engaging Students for the Fall Semester – A Faculty Follow-up Discussion
The return to in-person teaching last year brought with it a high degree of uncertainty for students and faculty. Professors reported that stress, fatigue, and anxiety contributed to higher levels of student disengagement, disconnection, and languishing than in pre-pandemic courses. Homewood faculty gathered together in August to discuss their observations of student disengagement and brainstorm strategies to proactively address their concerns.
At faculty request, the Center for Teaching Excellence & Innovation (CTEI) is scheduling a follow-up event for faculty to discuss how things are progressing this fall, new issues or concerns they want to share, and describe helpful strategies or solutions they implemented. Please join your colleagues for some light refreshments in the Garrett Room (CTEI offices) or online.
Moderated by Amy Brusini, Senior Instructional Designer, Center for Teaching Excellence & Innovation
(Read summary of this discussion on the Innovative Instructor blog.)
Case Studies from Canvas Pilot
A limited number of faculty piloted Canvas during the spring semester to help the University prepare for the migration from Blackboard. Come learn about their experience and ask them questions about Canvas.
Moderated by Brian Cole, Associate Director, Center for Teaching Excellence & Innovation with faculty case studies from Dan Naiman, AMS, Allon Brann, History, and Amanda Hilliard, Center for Leadership Education
Evaluating Teaching Effectiveness
The Second Commission on Undergraduate Education report recommended, “establishing a new system for the assessment of teaching.” The Provost charged an ad hoc Committee on Evaluation of Faculty Teaching to develop a report submitted to the Homewood Academic Council based on community input and research on teaching evaluation practices used at other colleges. This is the first in a series of conversations with Homewood faculty to occur during the spring semester. Come share your thoughts and brainstorm methods for improving how we evaluate teaching.
Moderated by members of the ad hoc Committee on Evaluation of Faculty Teaching.
(Read summary of this discussion on the Innovative Instructor blog.)
Inclusive Teaching Strategies
In this session we will discuss the importance of inclusive pedagogy and how to incorporate inclusive teaching strategies into the classroom. Come share your thoughts, ask questions, or just listen.
Presented by Karen Fleming, Professor, Biophysics, KSAS; and Mike Reese, Associate Teaching Professor, Sociology, KSAS, Associate Dean, Libraries and Director, Center for Teaching Excellence & Innovation
(Read a summary of this session on the Innovative Instructor Blog.)
Moving from Blackboard to Canvas
The University launched a comprehensive review process to identify a replacement for our current version of Blackboard. The University has concluded and the University announced Canvas to Replace Blackboard as University’s Primary Learning Management System (LMS). In this session, we will discuss the steps to complete the LMS migration from Blackboard to Canvas by Fall 2022.
Presented by Brian Cole, Associate Director, Center for Teaching Excellence & Innovation, KSAS/WSE
(Read a summary of this session on the Innovative Instructor Blog.)