Texas Teach-Up 2025 in Moody College
The Texas Teach-Up in Moody College
Texas Teach-Up, a UT Center for Teaching and Learning (CLT) event, offers opportunities for educators across the campus to gather in small groups for an informal class observations. After the class observation, the small groups freely discuss ideas about teaching and learning innovation. If you missed participating in this year's event, CATE captured insights to consider for your own teaching practice. We also included "Extend Your Teaching Practice" links with additional resources related to the specific educational moves.
Dr. Natalie Andreas' AI in Strategic Contexts Course
Students Comparing Original Writing and AI Drafts
The teaching and learning conversation following the observation in Natalie Andreas’s Digital Communication course naturally centered on questions about how students are using AI in academic settings. Natalie coached on how she supports students to submit original work alongside AI tool use. As a writing flag course, Natalie has students submit their original draft and the AI created draft for students to have the opportunity to critique their work. She also advocated for multimodal learning products to improve skill development by having students submit recorded oral delivery of written ideas.
Dr. Joe Cutbirth's Leadership Stories Course
Grouping Students
Before his Leadership Stories course, Dr. Cutbirth randomly generates groups of 3-4 and adds them to a seating chart displayed on presentation slides. Immediately upon entering the classroom, students know where to find their group members. Over the course of the semester, students work with all of their classmates at least once. The Texas Teach-Up group discussed this as an effective strategy for consistent exposure to new ideas.
Jigsaw Discussions
On discussion days, Dr. Cutbirth asks students to keep their electronic devices stored away and provides handouts with questions, assigning each group only one question to focus on. After a 15-minute discussion period, the groups share their findings with the whole class. During this time, students take notes for the questions not assigned to their group on the handout provided. At the end of the class period, students turn in their note sheets to serve as an attendance/participation deliverable. After grading, Dr. Cutbirth makes copies and returns the notes to students at the next class period.
Korey Periera's Audio for Picture Course
Supporting Live Problem-solving Skills
Korey Periera’s course puts learners in the driver seat of audio creation. An example of authentic learning came up in the observation when students had to pause their progress to trouble shoot issues with equipment and recording sound. Korey explained that the nature of working with audio for films will realistically include roughly equal parts of understanding the process and experimenting with getting the desired results. Korey suggested planning numerous low-stakes, formative assessments to allow for the trouble shooting process and increase student engagement with room for making and learning from mistakes.
Robert Quigley's Digital Storytelling Course
Meeting with Every Student
As an instructor in a large lecture course, Professor Quigley uses high impact practices to prioritize building instructor/student relationships. He sets up 15-minute student appointment scheduling at the beginning of the semester to meet with each student. During the appointments, he asks students about their career aspirations and emphasizes building their professional network.
Dr. Sean Upshaw's Health Communication Course
Giving Students Autonomy to Build Confidence
During the class, a student presented from his sear near the back with Dr. Upshaw advancing the slides. In the small group conversation after the class, Dr. Upshaw explained that he offers students who are particularly intimidated by public speaking to do their first presentation this way. He allows student to build confidence and have autonomy over the course of the semester to eventually present in front of the class. Observers indicated that they appreciate the approach, especially for a freshman-level course.
Dr. Jun Wang's AI and Communication Course
Creating Accessible Learning Environments
In Dr. Jun Wang’s AI and Communication class, accessibility was front and center. He used a mic and turned on live closed captions in his PowerPoint presentation to accommodate visual and audio formats of information. Student presenters also demonstrated awareness and comfort with attaching and speaking with the mic.
Productive Struggle in the Learning Pathway
When Dr. Wang introduced the project of partnering with AI to imagine new solutions to existing problems, a student asked, “How do we know which AI tools are better?” Dr. Wang explained that there were no universal standard AI criteria. Students were free to explore their problem and data needs to justify AI tool selection. Especially for learning in the emerging area of AI, allowing students to explore open-ended questions instead of pointing to one 'correct' answer supports critical and creative thinking. Dr. Wang assessed based on novel connections with well-developed rationales.
Student Choice and Voice
Dr. Wang designed his course with student choice and voice in mind to grapple with the complex emerging ideas surrounding use of AI in academic settings. He asked his students to solve a problem that was personally meaningful by partnering with AI to consider innovative solutions. Students pitched their ideas in presentations to the class and answered follow up questions. They also cited their work with specific AI tools.