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Happy New Year! I hope the beginning of the term finds you rested and recharged. The CTLO is entering 2024 with a number of new programs and initiatives that I hope you will join us for. We have several new workshop series – one on designing courses to disincentivize cheating and another on the research behind how learning works. We'll continue our Faculty Learning Community Lunches with topics related to attendance and engagement, teaching large classes, alternatives to high-stakes assessments, and technology tools for teaching. We have a few faculty trying out a new tool called Poll Everywhere – an audience response system that allows you to collect student responses to a variety of types of questions in real time. (If you are interested, please reach out to us!). We're rolling out new programs for post-doctoral fellows, and new speakers for our CPET program. We hope 2024 brings you a year of inspired innovation in your courses and your professional growth and development.

- Jasmine Bryant

"How to Design Courses to Increase Student Learning and Promote Academic Integrity", starting January 17.

Research into academic dishonesty and cognitive and behavioral theory can guide course design in a way that promotes learning and naturally reduces the incentives students may have to cheat. This four-session workshop, guided by the book "Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty" by James Lang, will explore faculty case studies and tangible changes you can make to your course to reduce or eliminate these features.

To RSVP, click here.

How Learning Works: New 5-Session Workshop Series - Registration required.

Evidence-based principles for smart teaching, grounded in research from education and cognitive and developmental psychology. Attend one or all sessions!

For more information, click here.
To RSVP, click here.

Transforming Your Research into Teaching for Postdocs - Registration required.

This 6-session short-course for postdocs will focus on participants learning the skills of course design and developing a college-level course based on the area of your research expertise.

For more information, click here.
To RSVP, click here.

Faculty Learning Community Lunches – Lunch with registration.

Join other faculty members to discuss challenges and share ideas related to teaching at Caltech. Faculty Learning Communities aim to provide a supportive conversation about teaching and are open to faculty members of any rank (including teaching faculty, lecturers, and instructors).

For more information, click here.
To RSVP, click here.

The CTLO is launching a new program just for postdocs which is designed to help familiarize and prepare participants for the teaching-related aspects of their role as a future faculty member, whether that is at a large research-focused university, a small teaching-focused college, or anything in-between.
The Postdoc Pre-Faculty Pedagogy Preparation Program consists of 5 components:

• Pedagogy (coursework on foundational principles),
• Practice (staff observation of teaching),
• Project (e.g. creating a course syllabus),
• Professional Planning (workshops to prepare for the faculty job search), and
• Portfolio (assembling their teaching portfolio).

Want to learn more? Come to the Info Session on Tuesday, January 9th from 11am-12pm over Zoom. We will introduce the program for the first 20 minutes, and the remainder of the time will be for drop-in questions.

To RSVP, click here.

This past fall CTLO Outreach hosted the Mark Cuban Artificial Intelligence Bootcamp for high school students for the third consecutive year. Twenty-five local students were introduced to open-source tools, allowing them to build their own AI applications related to Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Generative AI over the course of four Saturdays in October and November.

https://pasedfoundation.org/2023/11/07/embracing-the-future-of-artificial-intelligence/

The Planet Finder Academy of high school students from the Pasadena Unified School District continued its quest, with observation of the October 14th eclipse and field trips to Mt. Wilson Observatory and Mt. San Antonio College's Randall Planetarium and Observatory.

CTLO Outreach also hosted numerous field trips for local schools and school clubs. On October 23rd, 50 students from Pasadena High School's App Academy joined us for a day of exploring machine learning, quantum computing and AI, with talks from physics graduate student Yuchen Han, CMS postdoc Rafal Kocielnik and AWS Center for Quantum Computing researcher Nicola Pancotti.

CTLO Outreach also started its eighth year of the Visiting Scientists Program, with thirteen graduate students and postdocs teaching twice-monthly science lessons at Madison Elementary School. The Solar Energy Activity Lab began its fourteenth year of mentoring high school students in sustainable energy research projects, with four high school clubs working with eleven graduate students and postdoc mentors.

Come Teach, Learn & Volunteer With Outreach!

We're looking forward to our winter and spring activities, and are actively recruiting undergrads, grad students, postdocs, faculty and staff to bring family-friendly demonstrations, hands-on activities or short presentations to STEM events held at local schools and other venues. Sign up for upcoming events here: https://www.volunteersignup.org/8M7FR

Don't miss these upcoming opportunities:

• Give a science talk to an adult audience at a local pub.
• Judge science fair projects or science competitions at local schools.
• Host a short tour for small groups of high school/middle school students in your lab or facility.

Interested parties can also contact Kitty Cahalan, Assistant Director for Educational Outreach, directly at kcahalan@caltech.edu

Interested in outreach activities? Sign up for our Opportunity Alert Newsletter HERE: The most recent newsletter can be viewed HERE