March 2025: Student preparedness (deadline February 21)

Potential topics

• Students’ (supposed) inability to focus on and comprehend college-level reading and what to do about it
• Ways to navigate the gulf between the most and least prepared students in a course to meet the needs of all
• The practical extent of student support: When and when is it not the teacher’s job?
• Addressing student misconceptions about college relative to their high school experience
• Acclimating students to college expectations
• Advising students who may not have what it takes to do well in their major

Potential topics

• Defining critical thinking—What do we mean when we talk about it?
• Activities and assignments that promote critical thinking
• How to evaluate critical thinking
• Critical thinking and generative AI (e.g., its potential as both a supplement to and a substitute for thinking)
• The purposes of critical thinking—To what ends are we cultivating it, and to what ends should we be doing so?

June 2024: Professional growth (deadline April 18)

Potential topics

• Teaching failures and how to grow from them
• The challenge of unlearning ineffective teaching practices
• Overcoming the expert blind spot
• How to approach student evaluations of teaching
• Your own learning experiences (in school or otherwise) and how these inform your understanding of your students’ learning