The Center for Teaching & Learning

‘Tis the season for counting. We’re tallying our students’ overall points; we’re adding up attendance at events and comparing it to the amount of falafel we purchased; we’re finishing a draft of an analysis of everything this school is and does and submitting it to some faraway accrediting body. I’m recording the number of information literacy instruction sessions I’ve taught this semester, as if that number holds some kind of magical significance that justifies my existence at my workplace. In the classroom or the library or any number of offices on campus where “value” is hard to quantify, we're still beholden to numbers. All that counting can make the important work, the human work, feel far away and alien.

And we exist in a dual position of counting: sometimes the grader, sometimes the graded. I won’t give advice on grading practices--this December, at least, I'm in the catbird seat of the library where, although there's plenty of counting, there are no grades to be had. But for those of you in the thick of it, I see you. And in this season of counting, I hope all you reviewers out there are erring on the side of generosity, kindness, and growth--not just for your students, but for yourselves, too.

As always, you’ll find absolute gems from our faculty and staff colleagues in this newsletter: articles about technology and AI literacy and the work of building a class alongside a student. If you’re feeling like a wrung-out dishrag at this point in the semester, that’s okay–I get it!--but pin this email for later because there’s lots in here you won’t want to miss.

Finally, I want to extend my deep thanks to all the folks who made the CTL feel like an exciting and vibrant community this semester. I got into teaching and librarianship because learning is the best, isn't it? I’ve been really inspired by this group, and I can’t wait to see what we cook up in 2025. For those of you who haven't been able to make it to a CTL event this year, come see us next semester--according to my calculations, I always order a little too much food.

The Academic Innovation Grant funds innovative projects that are designed to support specific strategic initiatives related to teaching and learning. Former Academic Innovation Grant recipients have created libraries of instructional videos, collaborated with students to create course materials, and developed unique ways to engage students who are learning remotely.

Successful applicants will receive a stipend of up to $2500 in sponsorship of a their project. Review the 2025-2026 Academic Innovation Grant RFP for more details. The application deadline is March 24, 2025.

IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework)—recognized by the red and blue logo —is used to share, present, and interact with digital content in a standardized and accessible way. This set of standards facilitates academic research, cultural heritage preservation, and public engagement by allowing users to explore diverse accredited resources1 from multiple collections in a unified, interactive environment, such as Mirador, Universal Viewer or OpenSeaDragon. IIIF also supports advanced features like deep zoom, comparisons, and multilingual metadata, enhancing accessibility and usability for global audiences.

Here are some examples of how IIIF collections are used in education. For instance, Professor Chien-Ling Liu Zeleny, a historian of medicine at UCLA, created a project-based course exploring topics like anatomy, pathology, epidemics, Germ Theory, public health, and alternative medicine. Students in her course examined the evolution of modern medical knowledge and practices from the 16th century onward, using both comparative and transnational approaches. A key component of their exploration involved engaging with patent medicine trade cards, accessible via the following link:

https://www.library.ucla.edu/collections/explore/patent-medicine-trade-cards/

Professor Christopher Gilman, Digital Curriculum Program Coordinator at UCLA, has partnered with the Getty Research Institute to create hands-on learning activities involving translation and comparative visual analysis based on the Florentine Codex, for K-12 and undergraduate students. I believe this to be of utmost importance because during the colonization of Mexico, many codices—books created by indigenous peoples—were destroyed. Fortunately, one richly illustrated manuscript containing approximately 2,500 images and an extensive encyclopedia of Nahua culture survived. This document is available with translations in both Spanish and English at the following link:

https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/

At the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, at Princeton University, Senior Educational Technologist, Ben Johnston, is working alongside Professor Hamza Zafer—who specializes in the languages and literatures of the Red Sea world from the 6th to the 16th century—to teach Gə'əz language (also known as classical Ethiopic), from Ethiopic manuscripts in IIIF format. A preliminary task in this course consists of students identifying the L2 alphabet, cropping out digitized letters and symbols, and creating a sub-collection of characters themselves. Some of the materials used can be accessed below:

https://dpul.princeton.edu/msstreasures/browse/ethiopic-manuscripts

In the courses I teach at Hood College, I often incorporate a final project that utilizes IIIF images and is created using Scalar—a collaborative, media-rich authoring platform. The rationale behind this approach is that traditional final essays, while valuable, typically have a limited audience and are only read by professors and classmates. By making these projects publicly accessible, students can revisit and reflect on their educational journey in higher education. Below, I’ve included examples of book-length projects developed by students in my courses. Please be aware that some of the images included depict violent events:

Imágenes del cuerpo: La imagen fotográfica y las significaciones culturales del cuerpo

Literatura Latinoamericana: Tensiones desde el barroco hasta el post-boom

Iberian Cultures: The Mediterranean and Transatlantic Blueprint

Framed Gender Violence: Insights from Latin American Fiction and Film

US Latinx Activism and Protests: From the Farm to the (Legislative) Table

My goal is to host our own IIIF collection at Hood College, and to be part of the IIIF Consortium. As seen in the examples above, regardless of the area of studies, this kind of technology benefits student engagement in the classroom, as they develop not only knowledge about the discipline but also transferable skills such as: writing for the web, comparative visual analysis, spatial annotation, critical thinking, data collection, and observation.

Finally, I would like to share an episode on the Higher Ed Podcast, where Christopher Gilman and I talk about IIIF in detail: “Multimedia Magic: Integrating IIIF into your Teaching Toolkit”.

Student use of ChatGPT has evoked with many questions and much handwringing. Concerns about cheating and the end of creativity have been expressed alongside declarations of freedom from mundane tasks. How and to what extent are college students using ChatGPT to help with coursework?

In one study (Baek et al. 2024) researchers asked 490 students how much they used ChatGPT for various tasks: information retrieval, idea generation, drafting, editing, homework, conceptual understanding, summarizing, providing feedback, quizzing, planning, math, coding and writing. The researchers collected demographic data (gender, economic status, major, non-/native English speaker, etc.) and also asked the students about their AI literacy, attitudes towards ChatGPT, and whether they evaluate ChatGPT’s output. The students were assigned to five groups based on how much they rely on AI:

• The versatile low-reliers (38.2%) were the least likely to use ChatGPT for any of the tasks.
• Proactive learners (11.8%) used ChatGPT primarily for quizzing, feedback, and planning.
• Knowledge seekers (16.5%) sought out ChatGPT for knowledge retrieval, conceptual understanding, summarizing, and homework.
• All rounders (10.4%) used ChatGPT for all tasks, but especially planning, drafting, and coding.
• Assignment delegators (23.1%) frequently used ChatGPT for writing, homework, and drafting assignments.

Key takeaways:

• Students in STEM majors were more likely to use ChatGPT than non-STEM majors. Males were more likely to use ChatGPT than females.
• Students in their 30s and 40s were more likely to use ChatGPT than those in their late teens and 20s. This finding may reflect undergraduates fear of academic misconduct and/or older students feeling certain about how to use ChatGPT responsibly in academia.
• Non-native speakers of English were more likely to use ChatGPT for writing indicating that these students perceived ChatGPT could support English grammar and fluency.
• Many economically disadvantaged students expressed concern regarding accessibility due to WiFi issues and being able access free versions in the future.
• The “assignment delegator” group suggests that clear policies or guidelines need to be established and communicated to prevent academic misconduct.
• The students who used ChatGPT the most had the highest AI literacy and were most likely to critically assess ChatGPT’s output. Creating assignments that incorporate AI as part of the process will help students learn the strengths and weakness of AI and develop a critical mindset when using this emerging technology.

To learn more about this emerging technology, visit the Generative Artificial Intelligence research guide.

Baek, C., Tate, T., & Warschauer, M. (2024). “ChatGPT seems too good to be true”: College students’ use and perceptions of generative AI. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 7, Article 100294. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeai.2024.100294

In the Spring of 2018, I was excited to develop my first FYS course. But I very quickly realized that I had not been a first-year student in a long, long, time. What I needed was a subject expert for that part of the course. I had also recently been to a conference where I had learned about the amazing work of Alison Cook-Sather and her colleagues at Bryn Mawr College and their work on the Students As Partners (SAP) pedagogy. These student-faculty partnerships empower students to take a more active role in their learning by acting as true partners with faculty members to develop curriculum, act as peer mentors, and help with classroom management.

I knew that I wanted the topic of my FYS to be The Sociology of Star Wars. So, I hung up posters around campus that said, “Do you like Star Wars? Did you pass your FYS? Come see me!” And sure enough, students started to come by. I explained that I was looking for a partner to help me build the class over the summer and help me administer it in the fall. Very quickly a match was made with a rising sophomore majoring in Computer Science: his name was Joe. We applied for an internal research grant to fund our project over the summer, and we set to work. Joe brought an authentic approach to designing what first-year students needed to be successful in college, and he helped me explain key sociological concepts to non-majors. When we launched the course, he recorded videos introducing himself and his role in the course design along with tips and tricks throughout the semester. Throughout the semester, I also conducted surveys about how things were going and how students felt about Joe’s role in the course.

In January, Joe and I applied for a second internal grant to spend the January interim reviewing all our data and writing up an article: “Redefining the roles of master and apprentice: Crossing the threshold through the co-creation of a first-year seminar.” It is published in the International Journal for Students as Partners; an excellent resource for anyone wishing to learn more about all the ways SAP has been used to empower student learning while making faculty more responsive to student needs and developing a sense of pride in what they are capable of.

I love this pedagogical approach and use it to guide my approach to student learning in the classroom, though often on a much smaller scale than this project. We are all trained to be sages on stages, and the SAP approach may feel threatening or frightening to some. For me, it is about giving up authority, so that students can find agency. If we want to teach them to be critical thinkers and problem solvers, we must continue to find ways for them to develop their own sense of authority by allowing them to teach us what they know.

So here I am nearing the end of my first semester as the CTL GA. It has been amazing being able to dive in and learn more about two of my favorite topics, teaching and learning. Before returning to Hood in January of this year, I spent thirteen years homeschooling, teaching, tutoring, and advising new homeschooling parents. Most of my advice boiled down to this: teach them what they need to learn. It doesn’t matter what your child’s age or grade is. It matters that they have all the information that they need to move forward. If they don’t, go back and fill in the gaps and don’t stop until every gap is filled and the material has been learned. This foundation is the one they will build their lives on. I believe this so strongly that my son spent fourth grade only working on multiplication and reading—two things that take a lot of time and practice to learn and feel like they will probably just happen by default, but don’t.

According to Jon Marcus in The Washington Post article “It’s Becoming Easier to Get into Many Colleges,” it is easier to get into college today than it was even ten years ago. This makes me bite my nails. Not because I don’t think everyone should go to college (they should), but because students affected by pandemic-related school shutdowns might be shuffled into college without the foundations that they need. (I can say from personal experience as a high school dropout and GED recipient that the lack of a strong foundation will be a problem that keeps popping up.) This lack of foundation in students is setting up both faculty and students for failure. I worry that instead of the college working together to rebuild student foundations both academically and socially, the faculty will be forced to reduce their expectations in class and students will keep moving forward unaware of their deficits. Unprepared students are not an issue faculty should have to deal with alone. Students, faculty, staff, and administration could work together to find a way to address foundation damage that was caused by something completely out of everyone’s control. Personally, I think it’s worth the time and energy to create a whole freshman semester aimed at social and academic foundation building. Strong foundations will lead to stronger skills in the future including successful completion of challenging coursework at Hood. But beyond academic goals, strong academic and social foundations will lead to better college retention rates which would also be great for Hood’s future. Especially when successful graduates give back to a school that helped them create a strong foundation for a successful life.

The Center for Teaching and Learning condemns all forms of systemic racism, bias, and aggression against Black people, indigenous peoples, people of color, and those of marginalized genders and other marginalized identities. We understand that excellence in teaching, by definition, must reflect our shared humanity and promote inclusive practices such as:

• being conscious of biases, racial abuse, micro-aggressions, and those who are minimized or left out;
• understanding and supporting those underrepresented in our Hood community; and
• promoting ways to actively foster equity, diversity and inclusion in our classrooms, research, and publications.

The CTL advisory board is committed to raising awareness of all those who have been systematically oppressed, and we call upon Hood faculty and staff to join us in this commitment to create a more inclusive world.

Equitable grading "emphasize the process of learning versus performance outcomes and the attainment of grades." Check out UIC's Guide for Equitable Assessments to learn more.

Icebreakers can help some students feel more comfortable and make subsequent classroom conversations more productive. Other students find icebreakers a miserable part of the first day since not all students are comfortable with public speaking. Padlet icebreakers can offer a compromise.

https://www.tesol.org/blog/posts/5-ways-to-use-padlet-as-an-icebreaker/

Have you ever considered yourself a classroom conductor? Read more about how to engage students with the pace of your lecture. https://www.chronicle.com/article/distracted-minds-the-role-of-tempo-in-good-teaching?

Whether you know it or not, you're probably teaching information literacy in your classes. OSU's series on teaching info lit offers free workshops on research, AI literacy, writing effective research assignments, and more.

https://u.osu.edu/teachinginfolit/teaching-information-literacy-workshops/virtual-workshop-series/

Textbook programs with names like "equitable" or "inclusive" access can seem to be a cure-all to the various problems related to student access to course materials. The Chronicle asks: Are they really equitable?

Two Campaigns to Reduce Textbook Costs Are Often At Odds. Can They Co-Exist?

Did you miss one of CTL's fabulous events? Slide decks from previous presentations are available on Sharepoint!

2024-2025 Events - Find resources from all events

November - The Anxious Generation

Student Engagement

Open Pedagogy

Open Book It OER and OA

Want to read about some of the topics CTL is covering? Find CTL on Zotero.

View the CTL Library: https://www.zotero.org/groups/5620207/hood_ctl/library

Help us build the CTL library! Email ctl@hood.edu to be added as a contributor.

Want unlimited access The Chronicle of Higher Education? Access it through the library.

The library also has a section of books dedicated to teaching on the second floor.

• Jessica Hammack, Head of Research and Instruction, CTL Director
• April Boulton, Associate Professor of Biology, Associate Provost, Dean of the Graduate School
• Cathy Breneman, Assistant Professor of Social Work
• Ashley Coen, Assistant Professor of Education
• Sangeeta Gupta, Assistant Professor of Psychology
• Bridget Humphries, Director of Accessibility Services
• Beth Kiester, Associate Professor of Sociology
• Jessica McManus, Associate Professor of Psychology
• Heather Mitchell-Buck, Associate Professor of English, Coordinator of Digital Learning
• Nicole Pulichene, Libman Professor of Humanities
• Adelmar Ramirez, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Latin American Literature
• Kathryn Ryberg, Research & Instruction Librarian
• Sandra Thomas-Lalmansingh, Assistant Professor of Nursing
• Kristen Tzoc, Assistant Professor of Sociology
• Jeff Welsh, Director of Instructional Technology in the IT division
• Kelly Esposito, CTL Graduate Assistant

Email: CTL@hood.edu
Website: www.hood.edu/CTL
Location: Hood College, 401 Rosemont Avenue, Frederick, MD
Phone: (301) 696-3397