University Calendar

The Research Academy for University Learning would like to invite all faculty and staff to participate in Teaching Circles, a series of informal discussion meetings scheduled for the Fall 2013 and Spring 2014 semesters.

Light snacks and refreshments will be served at each meeting.

Teaching Circles are collegial, informal discussion groups in which faculty and staff come together to share mutual issues, strategies, practices, and research that addresses or may be affected by more national issues in teaching and learning.

More informally, we'd love to share stories and anecdotes about what is happening in our classrooms, exchange some best practices and ideas, discuss issues that arise and how we might work together as a community to ensure the success of our teaching and optimize the learning of our students.

Examples of topics could include discussions about student behaviors (cell phones, texting, digital devices in the classroom, social media, incivility), what it means to think critically in our disciplines, how to engage students in reading and writing in a variety of disciplines and the differences between disciplinary reading/writing, or conversations on how we engage students across and between disciplines and what we might borrow from one another in order to increase our student engagement. These are merely examples from current forum topic discussions from several of the virtual forums we belong to; there may or may not be more pressing issues on teaching and learning that are specifically relevant to Montclair State University. We'd also like to invite faculty to propose their own topics for each meeting that we can use as springboards for discussions.

We want to stress that these meetings are informal, and will focus on positive, constructive discussion. The Research Academy will provide opportunities for publishing and/or blogging about the topics discussed and outcomes of the meetings, as well as help identify areas of continuing inquiry and possible future funding of projects.

Please contact Julie R. Dalley T: 973/ 655-3276 F: 973/ 655-4258 Email: dalleyj@mail.montclair.edu with any questions, topic suggestions, or for more information. All are welcome; we look forward to seeing you there!