Archive | Teaching and Learning
More Teaching, Less Grading
Follow the (Student) Leader: How Students Can Be the Best Teachers
Nonviolence in Theory and Practice
The Nonviolence in Theory and Practice FIG is an interdisciplinary group of full-time and part-time faculty that encourages conversation around peaceful conflict resolution. We share scholarship, creativity, contemplative practice, and activism regarding current political issues as they relate to curriculum. We are interested in bringing discussion into action.
Coordinators: Florence Homolka (English)
Culture, Women’s Stories, and Creativity in STEM
This Faculty Interest Group (FIG) stems from the Carnegie sabbatical and National Mathematics Centre/Federal University of Akure, Nigeria Project of Professor Nkechi Agwu. Moreover, it is geared towards supporting faculty interested in indigenous African knowledge systems to engage in research, curriculum development, teaching – research, and assessment related to science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) of indigenous Africans.
To that end, interested faculty will collaborate on writing research-based articles for publication in peer-reviewed journals, soliciting for grant funding to support their research within this FIG, and to facilitate workshops that will provide professional development to faculty interested in using curriculum developed to teach various courses at the Borough of Manhattan Community College or elsewhere using pedagogy based on culture, women’s stories and Creativity in STEM.
The FIG is open to all faculty and meets every third Wednesday of the month from 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm.
Coordinators: Nkechi Agwu, Thierry Agbotouedo, and Emmanuel Paki (Mathematics)
BMCC Open Teaching Week
Spring 2024 dates TBD
Celebrating a culture of openness in teaching and learning
Join CETLS, the BMCC Library, and E-Learning for a week of:
Open Classrooms
Opening our classrooms for visits from other BMCC faculty provides space for pedagogical community and conversation. All BMCC faculty are invited to open their online or face-to-face classes during the week of March 20.
Curious about what happens in other classes? Visiting a colleague’s class is an opportunity to learn about teaching in different classroom settings across disciplines.
Open Educational Resources
Interested in freshening up your course materials and saving students money? More than 250 BMCC faculty have redesigned their courses using open educational resources (OER) and other no-cost materials. At Ditch the Textbook, you’ll hear about colleagues’ inspiring work in engaging students and revitalizing their classes by leaving the textbook behind.
Open Pedagogy
Looking for new ways to engage students? Open pedagogy gives learners agency over their learning, and engages learners in constructing knowledge and sharing their creations beyond the classroom. Find out how your colleagues are incorporating open practices such as ungrading in their classes.
Open Platforms
Open platforms provide a foundation for open practices by creating spaces for collaboration, hosting OERs, and showcasing student work. Find out about OpenLab, a new open platform available to the entire BMCC community.
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Forum
- Have you ever thought about how your discipline-specific research skills could be applied to doing research on your own teaching?
- Are you interested in using a deliberate, systematic approach to improve your students’ learning?
- Do you want to share insights about teaching and learning with colleagues across disciplines, and build on each other’s ideas?
BMCC’s annual Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Forum is an opportunity for BMCC faculty to share their SoTL work with the BMCC community. The forum is organized by CETLS and the BMCC Teaching Academy, with support from the Office of Academic Affairs.
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) involves “the deliberate, systematic, and reflective use of research methods to develop and implement teaching practices that advance the learning experiences and outcomes of students and teachers (Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning).” A key part of SoTL is the process of sharing findings and engaging in discussion with one’s peers.
Teaching and Learning
BMCC Teaching Collaboratory
The Teaching Collaboratory (or CoLab for short) provides BMCC faculty from across disciplines with opportunities to explore teaching and learning in collaborative and supportive ways. The CoLab consists of three interrelated programs: Peer Teaching Consultations, the Teaching Fellows program, and the SoTL Fellows program.
In the Peer Teaching Consultations program, full-time and adjunct faculty can invite a classroom visit from a consulting teacher trained in nonjudgmental reflection and feedback. The pair will then meet to talk about the visit and about teaching and learning more broadly.
In the Teaching Fellows program, participants work in small cross-disciplinary groups, including one senior faculty member who facilitates group activities. Group members observe one another’s classes and exchange descriptive, non-judgmental feedback in order to enhance awareness of their teaching and their students’ learning. Building on these insights, participants experiment with small changes in their teaching to better meet the diverse needs of their students. At the end of the program, teaching fellows have the option of continuing in the SoTL Fellows program.
In the SoTL Fellows program, participants engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) through classroom research based on their own teaching. SoTL fellows meet regularly in small groups, becoming members of a community of faculty engaged in classroom research.
