Report on AY 2024 Spring Term Brown Bag Lunch & Learn

In addition to facilitating the proactive sharing of skills and specialist knowledge among faculty, Brown Bag Lunch & Learn (BBL&L) seeks to enable faculty members to learn from one another’s classroom experiences, including both things that went well and not so well, and meet colleagues from outside their own programs and departments. Furthermore, BBL&L aims to provide opportunities for faculty members to share information with one another as well as with staff members.

BBL&L #31: April 9, 2024

Theme: It All Begins From Week One: Notecards, Coloured Markers, and the Power of Self-Introduction

Facilitator: Assistant Professor Janet Borland (Major: History, Japan Studies)

Participants: 15 faculty members including the Director and the Associate Director of CTL, and 3 staff members

In the first BBL&L session of the academic year, Assistant Professor Janet Borland gave a presentation on how to encourage students to participate proactively in class, based on her own classroom practice. She introduced an activity in which students and faculty members create name tags with their personalities represented by colored markers and introduce themselves to each other as an effective way to help students feel comfortable speaking up in class and to help them understand each other's characters and profiles. Since the day of the seminar was the first day of spring term classes, many faculty members participated and had a discussion on effective class management methods.