The Post

Helping Your Students Improve Vital Study Behaviors
September 6, 2017
Academic Complex 220
2:30-3:25 p.m.

Would you like your students to complete more of your assigned reading? Would you like them to better understand the reading? Would you like your students to be more engaged in class and take better notes? Would you like them to more actively participate in class discussions and activities? Would you like students to perform better on your tests? If so, attend this interactive workshop to learn strategies to help your students improve study behaviors essential to success in your courses. Participants will be invited to share strategies they have found successful. This workshop is especially relevant for faculty who teach first-year students.

Helping Your Students Improve Vital Study Behaviors
September 7, 2017
Academic Complex 220
4-5 p.m.

Would you like your students to complete more of your assigned reading? Would you like them to better understand the reading? Would you like your students to be more engaged in class and take better notes? Would you like them to more actively participate in class discussions and activities? Would you like students to perform better on your tests? If so, attend this interactive workshop to learn strategies to help your students improve study behaviors essential to success in your courses. Participants will be invited to share strategies they have found successful. This workshop is especially relevant for faculty who teach first-year students.

Backward Design Workshop
September 12, 2017
VINI 305
2:10-3:40 p.m.

NU’s Dr. Paul Vermette conducts a hands-on workshop in Backward Design, a somewhat contemporary approach to organizing and planning curriculum and/or lessons. Simply put, it forces a focus on the real goals, objectives (SLO), and learning targets as both the assessment of instruction AND the starting point for planning. While this seems to be a very simple and practical practice that instructors are actually doing already, it is far rarer than most of us assume.

This workshop seeks to help participants develop a personalized working approach that integrates the most effective aspects of Backward Design into their own teaching. Moreover, there is general agreement (from cognitive science) about the process by which “deep understanding” occurs in diverse learners and this process will be included as a central component of the session. In effect, participants will be using Backward Design to construct effective instruction that meets clearly stated objectives of their courses.

By the end of the session, participants will:

1. Explain the major steps of Backward Design as applied to a specific piece of content that s/he teaches;
2. Design multiple instructional pathways and practices that would help students learn and meet specific objectives;
3. Explain their new plans in terms of the scholarly evidence supporting the learning process.

Helping Your Students Increase their Vocabulary Proficiency
September 13, 2017
Academic Complex 220
2:30-3:25 p.m.

Many students enter college with a limited vocabulary. The most common reasons are limited pleasure reading and limited direct vocabulary instruction in high school. This can pose significant obstacles for some students: they may not fully understand your required readings, things you say in class, and your test questions. Words that we might take for granted – such as ambivalent, unprecedented, hierarchy, latent, alleviate, affluent, correlation, tenuous, ominous, arbitrary, and refute – may be unfamiliar to some students, especially first-year students. This workshop will provide suggestions for helping students increase their college-level vocabulary without creating much additional work on your part. Some discipline-specific word lists will be provided.

Helping Your Students Increase their Vocabulary Proficiency
September 14, 2017
Academic Complex 220
4-5 p.m.

Many students enter college with a limited vocabulary. The most common reasons are limited pleasure reading and limited direct vocabulary instruction in high school. This can pose significant obstacles for some students: they may not fully understand your required readings, things you say in class, and your test questions. Words that we might take for granted – such as ambivalent, unprecedented, hierarchy, latent, alleviate, affluent, correlation, tenuous, ominous, arbitrary, and refute – may be unfamiliar to some students, especially first-year students. This workshop will provide suggestions for helping students increase their college-level vocabulary without creating much additional work on your part. Some discipline-specific word lists will be provided.