February 2023

We offer help every semester for faculty who wish to reflect on successes and identify areas for meaningful yet manageable improvement in their courses. Small Group Instructional Feedback (SGIF) is a formative, mid-course check-in used for gathering information from students on their learning experience. This process, which is offered at many institutions nationally, is designed to foster dialogue between students and instructors, and to offer students a transparent and thoughtful but anonymous way to surface their concerns about a course. 

We recommend scheduling your SGIF session in the two weeks before Spring Break, if possible. 

Thank you to all who attended last week's open discussion, "Rethinking Learning in the Age of AI." Over 130 faculty and staff participated, and the concerns and ideas shared throughout the discussion are already informing our development of future support materials and programming. As we continue to work on these resources, if you have questions or issues that need immediate help, we invite you to come to our twice weekly virtual open office hours or email us any time at learninginnovation@duke.edu.

Summer Course Development Grants will support the development of graduate student-taught, undergraduate summer courses that fill curricular needs in departments and schools, will attract significant student enrollments, and will incorporate innovative pedagogies to provide flexible and engaging student learning experiences. Learn more and apply by Monday, February 6.

Learning Innovation has partnered with the Duke Climate Commitment to offer a new fellowship program to provide support and a peer learning community for faculty and other instructors who are interested in redesigning an existing course to substantively engage with issues of climate and sustainability, to be taught in Fall 2023 or Spring 2024. Learn more and apply by February 28.

All events are virtual and in Eastern time unless otherwise noted.

Understanding Language Difference and Student Writing

Friday, February 3 from 12 - 1 pm

A panel comprised of multilingual, first-year Duke students will share about their language backgrounds, their experiences with writing in English in U.S. academic contexts as compared to other languages/cultural contexts, and what they wish professors understood about multilingual students. Some students will also share the results of research they did in a Fall 2022 Writing 101 course on language difference and writing. The panel will conclude with a Q&A session and a more general discussion about how teachers might better respond to language difference and support multilingual students in their teaching. Register Now

Is Affirmative Action Fair? The Myth of Equity in College Admissions

Part of the "Academic Innovation for the Public Good" book discussion series sponsored by Stanford Digital Education and Trinity College

Wednesday, February 8 from 12 - 1 pm

‌In Is Affirmative Action Fair? The Myth of Equity in College Admissions, Natasha Warikoo argues that we should rethink college admissions, and walks readers through evidence suggesting the value of affirmative action. She offers ideas that education innovators can follow to develop new approaches to achieving diversity in higher education. Register Now

The 2023 Provost's Forum: Big Problems in Big Tech

Friday, February 17 from 9:45 am - 3 pm (IN PERSON)

The Provost’s Forum is an opportunity for students, faculty, and staff—as well as members of the broader Durham and North Carolina communities—to explore the core values of inquiry, expression, and community in an academic setting where those values are regularly tested by competing concerns. The 2023 Provost’s Forum will feature a keynote address by data scientist and Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. Register Now

Creative Inclusivity and Community-Building

Monday, February 20 from 1:30 - 3 pm

This virtual interactive workshop offers non-traditional arts and creative writing-based strategies for exploring and implementing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practices in your class, clinic, meeting or conference. Brief exercises focus on community building, deep listening, and creating safe spaces. We will play with concepts that help participants navigate sensitive topics and interpersonal or group conflicts. Finally, we will model simple games that explore and sensitize us to subtler inequities and biases. Register Now

A monthly series highlighting simple steps you can take to improve accessibility in your class.

RoboBraille is a service capable of automatically transforming documents into a variety of alternate formats for the visually and reading impaired. This service can help convert a variety of documents into 'tagged' PDF files to improve a document's level of accessibility. No automated service can make a PDF perfectly accessible, but the RoboBraille service will go through and add Tags as best it can to try to improve the document's level of accessibility. Supported file types you may upload include DOC, DOCX, PPT, JPEG and many more. 

See the Accessibility Quick Tips archive for more ways to make your teaching more accessible.