Celebrating “What Works” in creating engaging learning experiences

When we talk about exciting and impactful teaching, without seeing what the teaching actually looks like, it can be easy to get lost in a jumble of educational jargon.

Sharing engaging and creative teaching experiences and how they impact students in a course is the goal of the Center for Teaching Innovation's "What Works: Creating Engaging Learning Experiences," a teaching showcase featuring faculty presentations and poster sessions.

"What Works" will be held from 1-4 p.m. Oct. 1 in Rm. G10, Biotechnology Building, with an additional poster session from 4-5 p.m. The event is open to Cornell faculty, teaching staff and postdoctoral scholars and associates. Registration is recommended but not required, and attendees are invited to come for just one session, or stay for the whole event, according to their interests and schedules.

"The genesis of the 'What Works' series approach is to help faculty learn tried and tested teaching methods directly from other colleagues," said Rob Vanderlan, CTI's executive director. "This year's theme spotlights how faculty have found creative ways to engage students in meaningful learning, which has always been central to a Cornell education, but is even more important now."

This fall's "What Works" has grown substantially from the series' previous versions, which focused on specific teaching tips, such as how to use classroom polling to engage students.

This year's showcase features instead four faculty presentations that will demonstrate engaged learning approaches in fields as diverse as physics, Jewish studies, Asian studies and human centered design.

During the presentations, faculty will share real-world, engaging activities they've used for specific projects and courses. Each 35-minute time slot will also include a Q&A session and time for conversation, to explore how the presented ideas may be adaptable to courses in participants' disciplines.

The event will also celebrate and recognize three faculty whose use of Canvas has positively impacted the student learning experience, as part of CTI's new Canvas Course Spotlight program.

"What Works" will then conclude with a poster session featuring seven projects from eight faculty across four Cornell colleges.

Faculty presentations will include:

Jan Burzlaff: "What AI Can't Read: Ambiguities and Silences." Burzlaff, a postdoctoral fellow in the Jewish Studies Program in the College of Arts & Sciences (A&S), will share how he created parallel assignments - one using AI, and the other not - to conduct ethical listening of Jewish Holocaust survivor testimony and investigate the differences between human and AI interpretations. Burzlaff in part developed his published paper "Fragments, not prompts: five principles for writing history in the age of AI" from his experience teaching the class.

Eriko Akamatsu: "Stepping Through the Screen: A VR Journey to Rikuzentakata." As part of a larger assignment, Akamatsu, a senior lecturer in the Department of Asian Studies (A&S), has her Japanese language students use immersive learning to visit a village impacted by the 2011 tsunami that hit Japan. Students first watch a documentary of the tsunami and meet with its filmmakers, then use the virtual reality program Wander to witness the village's progress rebuilding in the nearly 15 years since the tsunami.

Rhonda Gilmore: "From Student to Designer: An Experiential Classroom Project." Gilmore, a senior lecturer emeritus in the Department of Human Centered Design in the College of Human Ecology, will discuss activities related to her recent project with students in her studio design course. In it, teams of students tackled redesigning Cornell's six "least-best" classroom spaces, some of which were more than 100 years old. Students took into consideration several factors, including accessibility, maintenance and facilities, ambience, and more, in order to create spaces that encourage, rather than inhibit, student learning.

Natasha Holmes: "Making Science Relatable: A Physics Experience for Non-Majors." Holmes, the Ann S. Bowers Associate Professor in the Department of Physics (A&S), will share three activities from her "Physics for Non-Science Majors" course, designed for students who may never take another physics course. Holmes' assignments are open-medium, meaning students can complete their work using a format they prefer. For example, they can think about science denial through a "Flat Earth" assignment; examine "Who Does Physics" by learning about two physicists, one from before 1970 and one after, to see how representation in the field has changed; or form teams to debate large international projects being discussed in the physics world at the time they take the course.

Poster showcase session:

Posters will be available to view beginning at 1 p.m., with a dedicated poster session from 4-5 p.m., in which faculty and CTI instructional designers will be on hand to talk about the projects and answer questions. Some presentations include samples of student work, and attendees will be able to try the VR activities firsthand.

Each poster represents a real-world case study with strategies implemented by Cornell faculty, and include suggestions for how the activities can be adapted for other courses. A longer form of each poster will be published as a case study that will then live permanently on CTI's website, to highlight the faculty's innovative strategies more in-depth and expand on ideas and tips for how to adapt them to fit other courses.

The overarching goal of the "What Works" event is to share ideas and start conversations about teaching and learning, particularly how to think about creating learning experiences that will stay with students long after they graduate.

"Cornell students come here for four years and take many courses," Vanderlan said. "But which ones are they still going to be talking about in five, ten, twenty years, and how do we catalyze those learning memories?"