Denise Bostdorff Teachers on Teaching 2024 Essay
(Editor’s Note: NCA asked Prof. Bostdorff if we could share her remarks from the 2024 NCA convention’s “Teachers on Teaching” session at which she received the Ecroyd Award. They are below. Future Spectra issues will include others’ talks.) I grew up on a farm in northwest Ohio. When I was…
Teachers on Teaching With Steven A. Beebe
Steven A. Beebe Recipient of NCA’s 2024 Wallace A. Bacon Lifetime Teaching Excellence Award (Editor’s Note: NCA asked Prof. Beebe if we could share his remarks from the 2024 NCA convention’s “Teachers on Teaching” session at which he received the Bacon Award. They are below. Future Spectra issues will include others’ talks.) …
Update from the Teaching & Learning Council
The January 2025 Leadership Retreat was quite productive for the Teaching and Learning Council. The retreat resulted in four areas of focus to guide our work during the year. The TLC will continue to support our k-12 community. While we no longer have a division or interest group focused on…
Weaving Network Maps through Actor – Network Theory
This teaching activity introduces students to Actor-Network Theory (ANT) by encouraging them to map social interactions while considering the influence of non-human actors. Using a hands-on network mapping exercise, students will identify and analyze how objects, technologies, and infrastructures shape their everyday interactions. The activity is designed to…
“From Cornfields to Classrooms: A Storyteller’s Journey”
By Kirt Shineman, Glendale Community College Recipient of NCA’s 2024 Michael and Suzanne Osborn Community College Outstanding Educator Award (Editor’s Note: NCA asked Prof. Shineman if we could share his remarks from the 2024 NCA convention’s “Teachers on Teaching” session at which he received the Osborn Award. They are below….
Challenges and Opportunities for Community Colleges in a New Normal
The students we saw in our classrooms in 2019 will not return to our classrooms in the fall of 2021 or the spring of 2022, or ever. The global pandemic and the protest summer of 2020 have changed people permanently. Both the pandemic and the racial reckoning related to the…
New Resources for Post-Pandemic Teachers and Learners
One of the most profound shifts in higher education that was illuminated by COVID-19 in 2020 was the challenge the pandemic posed to (re)envisioning the pedagogical frameworks and practices employed to structure education in the classroom. Pandemic pedagogy, a term that is increasingly employed to describe the phenomenon at the…
Meeting the Movement: A Glimpse of a New Future
As the COVID 19 pandemic stretched across the globe during the summer of 2020, the necessity of social distancing and isolation hit Performance Studies hard. Perhaps no other subset of the Communication discipline is more dependent on people sharing space together than Performance Studies. Performance Studies retains a genealogical connection…