Daniel Bergman, Department of Mathematics In January 2020, I attended my first Joint Mathematics Meetings, the single biggest math conference in the world. The conference lasted five full days and took place in the spacious Colorado Convention Center in downtown...
Matthew Mahavongtrakul

Call for DTEI Graduate Fellows
The Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation (DTEI), in collaboration with the Graduate Division, is pleased to announce a call for DTEI Graduate Fellows for Summer 2020. DTEI Graduate Fellows will work with faculty to develop high quality remote courses for the...
Lilly Conference on Teaching for Active and Engaged Learning – San Diego, 2020
Katie Cox, Department of Anthropology In late February 2020 - just before the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the shutdown of university campuses and shelter-in-place orders around the world - I had the opportunity to attend a Lilly Conference in San Diego. The Lilly...
Learning with Commercial Games
Reginald T. Gardner, Department of Informatics How Videogames Teach Videogames often use reward and punishment systems, grading systems, soft resets, and other techniques to push players towards learning specific skills in order to proceed in their games. The most...
Should Music be Used in the Classroom to Help Students Learn?
Michelle E. Zuñiga, Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy To engage students, instructors have adopted a multitude of innovative learning activities. These activities include group work, flipped classroom, think, pair, share, and many more. Rarely, however,...
Promoting Student Agency and Learning Through Specifications Grading
Chris Woods, Department of Chemistry The current grading paradigm has been seldom challenged for a long time, and for many, leaves much to be desired. The assignment of grades can be a cause of trepidation for many educators. Many students feel that they do not earn a...
Preparing the Environmental Professionals of the Future: Backwards Design in Environmental Studies
Paroma Wagle, Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy Learning about sustainability, climate change, and environmental justice, the ‘wicked problems’ of the environment, is absolutely crucial for students, as they will not only go on maybe select careers in...
Taking Modern Pedogogy into the Large Classroom
Marc Sprague-Piercy, Department of Molecular Biology & Biochemistry The current thinking in pedagogy is moving away from the traditional classroom model. In the traditional classroom for large classes of undergraduates there is a clear plan. The students are given...
Adding the EPIC to Education
Emily M. Slonecker, M.A, Department of Psychological Science What is your first thought when you hear the word “icebreaker”? If your first thought is the sound of 200 students groaning in unison, you just might be an educator. There is growing body of evidence to...
How to Evaluate Individual Work Within a Group Project; Group-Individual Projects May Help!
Negin Sattari, Department of Cognitive Sciences Group Versus Individual Project Often students’ faces announce dissatisfaction when a group project is proposed during the first session of the class as a part of the final examination. The complaints are mainly coming...