Graduate Student Teaching Support

As part of our commitment to supporting graduate student instructors to develop as inclusive educators, the CTL has partnered with PDPA to create digital badges on teaching topics in PDPA’s PhD Progression platform. Each badge includes readings, videos, and reflection questions to guide and support your self-paced learning on topics such as the significance of social identities on teaching and learning, and research-based strategies for engaging all students.   

Conversations on Inclusive Pedagogy: Workshops on PhD Progression Badges

This fall, we are inviting graduate students to discuss the materials they encounter in select PhD Progression digital badges in the inclusive teaching pathway (Level 2) in conversations with their peers, lightly facilitated by Jean Otsuki, Associate Director of the CTL. Each session will correspond with a specific badge in the pathway (i.e., “Instructor Identities”). In our time together, we will briefly review key concepts introduced by the badge, but participants will be expected to have completed the work for that badge on their own prior to attending the session. 

You do not need to have completed the Level 1 teaching badges in order to work on the Level 2 teaching badges.

Workshop 1: Reflecting on Instructor Identities – 10/6 (Th), 11-12:15 pm EDT (Zoom)

Growing as an inclusive educator involves increasing self-awareness and engaging with diverse perspectives. Come deepen your understanding of the significance of instructor identities by hearing how others’ identities inform their experiences as teachers and learners.  Register here.

Prior to the workshop, please complete at least these activities from the Reflecting on Instructor Identities badge: 

Note: You will need to complete all of the materials included in the badge and submit the completion survey to earn the PhD Progression digital credential.

Workshop 2: Reflecting on Student Identities – 10/18 (Tuesday), 9:30-10:45 am EDT (Zoom)

Come discuss the impacts students holding marginalized identities might experience in the classroom and strategize with peers about the role instructors can play in perpetuating and mitigating those challenges. Register here.

Prior to the workshop, please complete at least this activity from the Reflecting on Student Identities badge:

  • Watch the two “embodied case studies” featuring the University of Michigan’s CRLT Players, who use “theatrical case studies to highlight the ways that lived experiences in higher education differ based on social identities and existing systemic inequities.” 

Note: You will need to complete all of the materials included in the badge and submit the completion survey to earn the PhD Progression digital credential.

Using Metacognition in the Classroom to Increase Student Community and Learning

This graduate student workshop will be led by Christina Michaud, Master Lecturer and Associate Director of ELL Writing in the CAS Writing Program, and Melanie Smith, Senior Lecturer in the CAS Writing Program.

Short, ungraded creative reflective writings and other metacognitive exercises benefit both students and instructors without adding to the burden of grading: we learn more about students’ anxieties, help form teams or study groups based on commonalities, and hear directly from students about the kinds of support that would be useful. In this one-hour workshop, participants will explore strategies for prompting students to reflect on their learning, address their fears of failure as students and writers, and assess themselves and their peers.

Register for the workshop.

Learning Community on Inclusive Teaching

The CTL invites graduate students to join a Learning Community on inclusive teaching. Over 10 weeks, participants will reflect on the significance of instructors’ and students’ social identities in the teaching and learning context and explore evidence-based pedagogical strategies and course design principles that support student engagement and belonging across difference. The Learning Community will have a synchronous and asynchronous component: participants will meet in synchronous Zoom sessions every two weeks for discussions that will build on their asynchronous participation in Cornell’s massive open online course (MOOC), “Teaching & Learning in the Diverse Classroom” (TLDC), an introductory course designed for educators teaching in the American college classroom.  

Check back in early January 2023 for more details, including registration information.

Graduate Teaching Blog

Welcome to the Graduate Teaching Blog! This blog is a space created for graduate students, by graduate students, for us to share answers to common teaching questions. In these pages, you will find suggestions for innovative, evidence-based teaching strategies presented in the context of our own graduate teaching experiences. We hope these posts enrich your teaching practice!

Graduate Assistants

The Graduate Assistants program is designed to help participants develop as educators and peer mentors through research-based practice and reflective interdisciplinary conversations about pedagogy.  Grad Assistants will how to teach more inclusively through reflective interdisciplinary conversations and help the CTL to share evidence-based strategies for engaging all students with fellow graduate student instructors during the 2021-22 academic year.  

More information, including instructions for how to apply, is available on the Graduate Assistants page.

Learning Analysis Polls

The CTL offers Learning Analysis Polls (LAPs) to graduate students serving as instructors of record.  LAPs are a way for instructors to gather feedback from their students about how the course is going mid-semester, while they still have time to make adjustments to their teaching, and to process and prioritize that feedback with the help of a CTL consultant.  Read more about the LAP procedure here.   

Scheduling LAPs is dependent on CTL staff availability.  

Graduate students leading their own course in the spring ’22 semester can request a LAP.