The KSAS Graduate Teaching Seminar is a workshop and forum for graduate students and post-docs interested in discussing teaching strategies and collaborating to generate solutions to challenges in the classroom. We welcome graduate students and post-docs from all Krieger School departments to attend any sessions that may be helpful for their teaching practice and professional development.
Fall 2025
Workshops will take place on various Wednesdays from 12:00PM – 1:00PM eastern in Brody Learning Commons Room 4040. This is an in-person only workshop series.
Please see the registrations below for the sessions you plan to attend. If your plans change after you register, please make sure to contact Allon before the session. This helps us plan and ensures that your spot can go to someone else who’s interested.
If you have any questions or feedback, please email Allon Brann at [email protected].
August 20th: The First Day, without icebreakers
What should we try to accomplish on the first day of a course? In this session we’ll discuss ways to get students excited about course content, comfortable with the kind of work they’ll do, and familiar with expectations, while avoiding conventional icebreakers or syllabus reading.
September 10th: Small group teaching, part 1
How can we make small groups work? What kinds of questions or tasks are they best suited for? Which teaching challenges can they address? And which challenges do they pose? This session should help you get more comfortable planning and implementing small group work in your courses.
September 17th: Small group teaching, part 2
To build upon the previous week’s session (see above), we will try out some different models of small group exercises that have worked well, especially in text- and discussion-based courses. (Note: attendance at part 1 is not required.)
October 8th: Student-centered lectures
To some, the title of this workshop makes no sense: more and more instructors and institutions have come to recognize that lectures typically rely on teachers’ ideas and work rather than students’. So is it possible to give a “student-centered” lecture? In this session, we’ll explore that problem and try to answer these questions: Can lectures better facilitate student thinking, requiring them to do something besides just sit and listen? If not, what’s the purpose of lectures at all?
November 5th: Can we make grades better?
In this session we’ll discuss some approaches to reforming traditional grading practices. We’ll evaluate how well we think these approaches do in making grades clearer, more consistent, and more effective in promoting learning.
November 12th: Should we get rid of grades?
Following the previous week’s workshop (see above), we’ll explore and debate somewhat more radical approaches: for diminishing or even eliminating grades in our courses.
Note: Participants in the Teaching Academy Certificate of Completion program may count these workshops towards their Phase I requirement.