Each year the Office of Undergraduate Education hosts an event focused on inspiring our faculty with ideas for innovation and interactivity in the classroom. The event features speakers, small breakout sessions and workshops. The event is free and open to the faculty, staff, and graduate students of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Teaching and Learning Collaboratory: Spring 2025 In-Person Faculty & Staff Workshop
Rensselaer’s Office of Undergraduate Education and the Teaching and Learning Collaboratory are pleased to host the 2025 Spring In-Person Professional Development Session for faculty and staff.
"Learning Today: Neuroscience, Digital Technologies, and Distraction"
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
11:00 a.m. – 12:45 p.m.
- The presentation, discussion, and Q&A will be held in the CBIS/Isermann Auditorium.
- Please register by Monday, May 5th to secure your spot. Attendance is limited to 100 participants, so register early!
- As a bonus, the first 75 registrants will receive a copy of James Lang’s book, Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It.
We are thrilled to welcome guest speaker James M. Lang, Professor of Practice at the Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Notre Dame and Emeritus Professor of English at Assumption University. He is the author of six books, including Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It, Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning, and Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty.
In this session, Lang will offer insight to:
- the neuroscience of our brain and a refresher on how it processes.
- teaching in today’s digital world of distractions, how it has changed learning, and guidance on how to work with various strategies in our classrooms.
- and a look into the thought that students do not seem to respect faculty and instructors as they have in the past. Does the distraction offer any correlation?
James 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, Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning, and Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty. A sought-after speaker, he has given talks and workshops on teaching for faculty at more than three hundred colleges, universities, and schools in the U.S. and abroad, focused on topics such as the science of learning, distraction in the classroom, academic integrity, and navigating AI/ChatGPT. Lang has consulted for the United Nations on the development of teaching materials in ethics and integrity for college faculty and is the recipient of a 2016 Fulbright Specialist Grant (Colombia). 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.
To view the past presentations of some of our plenary speakers, please visit the Rensselaer Teaching and Learning Video Tutorials Library. Within the library, there is a specific section for Colloquium Presentations.