The Faculty-led Inquiry into Reflective and Scholarly Teaching program, formerly known as the Peer Review of Teaching Project, will celebrate 30 years of improving student learning through evidence-based and reflective teaching practices on March 28. Registration is available online.
Executive Vice Chancellor Mark Button will introduce the day, and there will a review of the history of the program with Senior Associate Vice Chancellor and Dean of Undergraduate Education, Amy Goodburn. Eve Brank and Jody Kellas, the current FIRST leaders, will discuss the present program and its future.
FIRST is a professional development program providing a model for how you can document, assess, and make visible your teaching and your students’ learning. Even if you value and support excellence in teaching, it is often difficult to capture the intellectual work of your teaching in a form that can be conveyed easily to others. This year-long program supports faculty in documenting learning through workshops, writing retreats, small group discussions with peers, and general discussions about pedagogy.
During the upcoming symposium, you’ll have the chance to attend three breakout sessions highlighting fundamental aspects of evidence-based teaching:
- Backward Design with Ajai Ammachathram, Yulia Levchenko: In this hands-on session, participants will focus on aligning learning objectives, assessments, and teaching activities. Working with peers and facilitators, participants will practice the backward design process by selecting a key learning outcome and systematically planning how to teach and assess it effectively.
- Student Learning as Data with Renee McFee, Amy Ort: This workshop guides participants through framing their teaching as a research project by developing specific questions about student learning in their courses. Participants will craft research questions and hypotheses about student learning, identify appropriate data collection methods, and determine relevant evidence they could gather to investigate their questions systematically.
- Scholarship of Teaching and Learning with Judith Turk, Ash Mitchell: In this introduction to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, participants will explore how to transform their teaching questions into rigorous research projects that contribute to pedagogical knowledge in their field. Through structured brainstorming activities, participants will begin developing their own SoTL project ideas while learning about key principles of educational research design and implementation.
Other highlights of the symposium include the ever-popular speed sessions, where instructors share an impactful practice in five minutes, as well as learning how program participation impacts tenure, promotion, curricular changes, and teaching awards.
Speed Sessions
These five-minute speed sessions will be given by FIRST alumni:
- Brandi Sigmon – Attendance
- Sabine Zempleni – Getting students to talk in class
- Kathy Castle – Reducing student anxiety
- Tyler White – Discussing politics in the classroom
- Vishnu Reddi – Dealing with student emails
- Ruth Woiwode – AI in the classroom
Learn more about the upcoming symposium and register.
More details at: https://go.unl.edu/FIRST30