This is the first in a two-part series on academic dialogue and is a collaboration between The Center for Excellence in Teaching; Quade French, USC Dornsife Associate Dean of Academic Culture and Well-being; and, Kamy Akhavan, USC Dornsife Executive Director of the Center for the Political Future. This video features Quade French discussing how to establish the foundations of academic dialogue.
This resource provides an overview of creating and using community agreements in a course to support respectful and productive student engagement. It includes options for how to create agreements, tips for implementation, and example agreements.
Keywords: community agreements, discussion norms, discussion guidelines, community guidelines, challenging discussions, academic discussions, dialogue, student engagement.
This resource covers strategies for facilitating academic discussions in a variety of teaching settings, including tips for planning discussions, options for whole and small-group discussion types, considerations for assessing student discussions, and relevant research.
Keywords: discussion, small group discussion, discussion forums, active learning, community agreements, discussion norms, strategic questions, participation.
A description of active learning strategies for a variety of teaching settings, including tips for implementation, sample activity descriptions, options for planning active learning and relevant research.
At the March 2024 “A Closer Look” CET workshop on information literacy in courses, USC librarians Ariana Varela & Bridgid Fennell, and Dornsife Professor of Latin American and Iberian Cultures Lori Mesrobian discussed the importance of information literacy across disciplines and strategies for faculty to incorporate more support for these skills with students – including a variety of approaches to instructional collaboration with USC librarians.
Bobby Borg of the USC Thornton School of Music discusses how student teams can use fictional artist personas to collaboratively create innovative music marketing strategies during the February 2024 Faculty Showcase.
Tara Mastro of the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology discusses utilizing the power of group learning where student groups design a pitch for a public awareness campaign during the February 2024 Faculty Showcase.
Leonardo Morsut of the USC Keck School of Medicine discusses a strategy to structure group assignments for in-class activities using collaborative tools during the February 2024 Faculty Showcase.
During the February 2024 Faculty Showcase, Helen Choi of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering discusses a group assignment strategy where students work in small groups to improve Wikipedia articles in engineering or science and how this collaborative structure encourages good digital citizenship.
Julianna Kirschner of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism discusses the development of collaborative sustainability work in a Small Group and Team Communication class with support from the Sustainability Across the Curriculum Grant during the February 2024 Faculty Showcase.
Center for Excellence in Teaching