Two special sessions – Teaching Distracted Minds: Old Challenges, New Contexts & Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty
Posted in: Event, News, Teaching Tips
featuring special guest
Director of the D’Amour Center for Teaching Excellence
Professor of English
Assumption University
Session One: Distracted Minds
9:00am EST – Faculty concerns about distracted students have intensified as we have all shifted online, but our real focus should be on how we help students achieve attention. This presentation draws upon scholarship from history, neuroscience, and education in order to argue that distractions are endemic to the human condition, and can’t be walled out of the physical classroom or online course. Instead, we should focus on creating educational experiences that cultivate and sustain attention. Participants will learn about a variety of potential pathways to developing such experiences for their students.
Session Two: Cheating Lessons
10:30am EST – When students engage in academically dishonest behaviors, they may be responding to subtle pressures in the learning environment that interfere with deep learning and nudge them toward cheating. Hence if we can gain a better understanding of the reasons for academically dishonest behavior, we can use that knowledge to improve our course design, teaching practices, and communication with students. This session will provide an overview of the various pressures that push student toward academic dishonesty, propose solutions for helping students learn how to do their work with integrity, and invite discussion about how to build a campus culture of academic integrity.
Join us as the best-selling author of Cheating Lessons (2013), Small Teaching (2017), and the recently published Distracted (2020) presents his research in two special sessions!
James M. Lang is a Professor of English and the Director of the D’Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption University in Worcester, MA. He is the author of five 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), and On Course: A Week-by-Week Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching (Harvard UP, 2008).
Jim 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 Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, and Time. He edits a series of books on teaching and learning in higher education for West Virginia University Press.
A dynamic and highly sought-after public speaker, he has delivered conference keynotes or conducted workshops on teaching for faculty at more than a hundred colleges, universities, and high schools in the United States and abroad. He has consulted with the United Nations on a multi-year project to develop teaching materials in ethics and integrity for high school and college faculty. He is the recipient of a a 2016 Fulbright Specialist Grant (Colombia), and the 2019 Paul Ziegler Presidential Award for Excellence in Scholarship at Assumption University. He has a BA in English and Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, an MA in English from St. Louis University, and a Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University.
Jim lives in Worcester, Massachusetts with his wife Anne, a kindergarten teacher in the Worcester public schools. They have five children, ranging in age from their teens to early 20s. Jim and his wife formed and lead the Lang Family Foundation, to which he donates a significant portion of his writing and speaking income. The Foundation provides grants to non-profit organizations dedicated to the alleviation of poverty and homelessness, support for the environment and the arts, and funding for libraries and public education. Recent grant recipients include the INTERFAITH HOSPITALITY NETWORK OF GREATER WORCESTER, a homeless shelter for families with children; the WORCESTER PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION, which raises funds in support of the library; and ABBY’S HOUSE, a shelter for homeless, battered, or low-income women.