In this keynote address, Dr. Lang discussed the history of human distraction, the impact of technology on distraction, and his research and strategies for “cultivating attention” for learning among students.
James M. Lang, Ph.D. is the author of six books, the most recent of which are Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It (Basic Books, 2020), Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning (Jossey-Bass, 2016), and Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty (Harvard University Press, 2013). Lang writes a monthly column on teaching and learning for The Chronicle of Higher Education; his work has been appearing in the Chronicle since 1999. His book reviews and public scholarship on higher education have appeared in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, including The Conversation, Time, the Boston Globe, and Chicago Tribune. He edits a series of books on teaching and learning in higher education for West Virginia University Press; he co-edited the second book in the series, Teaching the Literature Survey Course: New Strategies for College Faculty (2018).
This keynote centered helping faculty understand how pedagogical decisions they make knowingly and unknowingly can be especially harmful to the racially and ethnically minoritized students in their classrooms. Dr. Davison shared strategies to help faculty create racially-just classroom learning environments to the benefit of every student.
Dr. Chayla Haynes Davison is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education Administration and past recipient of Texas A&M University’sRobert and Mavis Simmons Faculty Fellowship. She earned a Ph.D. in Higher Education from the University of Denver and also holds a M.A. in College Student Personnel from Bowling Green State University. Her research centers on critical and inclusive pedagogy with emphasis on college teaching and faculty development, Black women in higher education and critical race theory and intersectionality scholarship and methodologies.
Launched in Spring 2022, the In Your Shoes: Student and Faculty Dialogues pilot program brought Georgetown faculty and students together to explore the intersection of identity and learning. As part of the Laboratory for Global Politics and Performance’s In Your Shoes methodology, students and faculty held two-way pair conversations before recording, transcribing, and sharing their partner’s words through performance. In this showcase session, attendees saw faculty and students from the pilot share excerpts from their work, and program facilitators discussed the outcomes and future applications of performance-based dialogue initiatives.
Read more about the In Your Shoes program.
In May 2020, a recent graduate, Alexa Eason (COL ’20), convened a panel of seven undergraduate students to describe their learning experiences from the first pandemic semester. Some of those students were current seniors returning to TLISI for an encore panel. The 2020 panel posed questions to the audience about engagement, fostering community, and strategies for navigating through virtual academic and non-academic spaces. The aim for this year’s panel was to continue this conversation, looking at how these themes permeated students’ experiences in the past two years during multiple transitions. The panel ended with a discussion of their key takeaways on learning and what they wish faculty, staff, and fellow students to remember most about the past two years of college.
Read Clare Reid’s visual essay on their original panel at TLISI 2020.