Center for Transformative Teaching

All of us at the Center for Transformative Teaching were saddened and angered by the senseless death of George Floyd in May. We remember, too, the many other black lives unnecessarily and unjustly lost in this country. Therefore, the CTT believes that we should make a statement that echoes and supports those made by Chancellor Green and Vice-Chancellor Marco Barker earlier in the month.

I admit as a citizen of a country other than the U.S., I have been hesitant to comment publicly on this issue in my professional capacity and on behalf of my U.S. colleagues at CTT. Having reflected though, I come from a place with an appalling record of colonial abuse of other races, a country that is guilty of the shameful operation of the Atlantic slave trade, and one which has a more recent domestic record littered with racial injustice and hatred, I feel I should add my voice to those already heard. As a Briton, I must own the role of my country in the abuse of people of color on a titanic scale. Britain didn’t just furnish the U.S. with its language and religion, it also made a significant contribution to the systemic racism we see today. Read more...

Given the challenges face-to-face learning presents to UNL in the fall it is important to create a broad framework for teaching and learning that allows the University to be prepared for any eventuality, and that ensures equitable treatment of its students no matter what their situation might be. Students who are unable to attend classes for whatever reason should not be disadvantaged. Simultaneously this framework should facilitate the needs of instructors to tailor their materials, activities, and styles to the demands of their own disciplines.

What follows is an attempt to outline a framework using hybrid face-to-face and online modes. The framework owes something to the HyFlex model but is not prescriptive. There are a few basic approaches that will be important for all classes in the fall, whether or not they are built out from an online or face-to-face model. Read more...

Since the COVID-19 situation forced most of us into remote working, students, faculty, and staff, have been coming to terms with a collection of new challenges. Not least among these has been switching to online instruction in the spring. We followed this up by moving our entire summer program online, and now we look towards the fall and a hybrid model of teaching and learning that will have a significant online component.

Whatever the challenges we face at UNL, the CTT is committed to supporting all instructors at UNL in their teaching. We seek to identify and share best practice across a range of pedagogies. In all our programming and interactions, therefore, we recommend approaches to teaching and learning that are active, collaborative, inclusive, and engaging. Our approach is non-prescriptive, however, and we consider instructors to be the experts on their material, and the relationship between that material and their teaching. We want to create a space in which the co-creation of knowledge can thrive. Read more...

Events

The events below include both those wholly sponsored by the CTT as well as other events on campus related to improving teaching and learning at UNL.