TDP Sprint

Complete the Foundational Track in one week

About the TDP Sprint

The TDP Sprint is an intensive experience that offers all programs and time needed to complete the Foundational Track in one week. The 2024 TDP Sprint will run May 28 – 31, with a call for applications going out in April. Send any questions about this program to CTLgrads@columbia.edu.

The 2023 TDP Sprint schedule here is offered for informational purposes; the 2024 Sprint may include different workshops. Photos of the 2023 Sprint are available here.

Jump down to each day’s scheduleJune 5 | June 6 | June 7 | June 8 | June 9 (optional)| The finish line


Day One: Monday June 5

Time Location Activity
9:30 – 10:00 203 Butler Settling in, Essentials 1 prep module
10:00 – 10:10 Welcome and overview
10:10 – 11:40

Essentials 1 – Inclusive Teaching: Creating Engaging Learning Environments

Learn about the key terms, frameworks, and principles of inclusive teaching. This workshop focuses on strategies and tools for including all of your students in the learning process. We will ask how instructors can create inclusive classroom environments that set up all students for success, and how instructors can help students learn through the diversity of experiences and perspectives they bring to the classroom. 

11:40 – 12:10 Reflection overview and guidance
12:10 – 12:30 Essentials 1 reflection
12:30 – 1:30 208 Butler Lunch! Pick up your lunch in 208 and eat there, in 203, or outside
1:30 – 3:30 203 Butler

Identifying and Engaging Students’ Prior Knowledge

All learning builds on prior knowledge, and the ways in which instructors identify and engage what students (think they) know can have important implications for their learning. At times, instructors may choose to deliberately design learning experiences that extend or resonate with the experiences, values, or knowledge students bring into the classroom. Yet at other times, instructors may seek to challenge these ideas in service of course learning objectives. In this session, participants will consider the role of prior knowledge in their own teaching contexts, and confront a range of questions about how and why engaging students’ prior knowledge matters. 

212 Butler

Ways of Knowing

While students from historically marginalized communities aspire to careers in STEM at similar rates to their peers from dominant cultural groups, they are persistently underrepresented in STEM degree programs in the United States. How can graduate student instructors, teaching assistants, research mentors, and future faculty contribute to solving this inequity? In this interactive session, participants will engage with contemporary educational research that suggests that STEM education implicitly and explicitly devalues ways of knowing that differ from those of the dominant culture. By the end of this session, participants will be able to define a “way of knowing,” explain their own ways of knowing, and apply frameworks for supporting knowledge diversity in multiple learning contexts. 

204 Butler Table 1 Microteaching Practice session + microteaching reflection
208 Butler Table 2 Microteaching Practice session + microteaching reflection
3:30 – 3:55 203 Butler Table share-out and reflections
3:55 – 4:00 Day 2 preview and wrap

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Day Two: Tuesday June 6

Time Location Activity
9:30 – 10:00 203 Butler Settling in, Finish Essentials 2 prep module
10:00 – 10:10 Welcome and overview
10:10 – 11:40

Essentials 2 – Designing Learning Objectives

Learn about and engage with backward design: a scalable, end-in-mind approach to instruction that will help you effectively plan an activity, a class session, or an entire course. In this workshop for graduate students, we will discuss how to use previously-determined and described learning objectives as part of the backward design approach to drive assignments, feedback, and in-class activities for students. 

11:40 – 12:10 Essentials 2 reflection
12:10 – 12:30 Preparing to Teach module, Sprint temperature check
12:30 – 1:30 208 Butler Lunch! Pick up your lunch in 208 and eat there, in 203, or outside
1:30 – 3:30 203 Butler

Designing and Using Effective Rubrics

Considering ways to make your assessments more equitable and streamline the grading process? This session will introduce rubrics as a tool for equitable and efficient assessment. Participants will learn to apply an inclusive teaching lens to assessment design and feedback delivery through the development of rubrics. Participants will explore three types of rubrics and try their hand at developing an inclusive rubric for assessing student participation—an area often assessed, but at risk of being inconsistent or following opaque criteria. 

212 Butler

Teaching through Discussion

This workshop will explore how to teach through discussion and use students’ contributions to gauge their understanding, curiosities, and challenges in the classroom. It focuses on the following questions: How can we prioritize goals for a discussion? How can we make our expectations transparent to students and prepare them for discussion? And how can we assess whether or not our goals for discussion were met? 

204 Butler Table 3 Microteaching Practice session + microteaching reflection
208 Butler Table 4 Microteaching Practice session + microteaching reflection
505 Butler Table 5 Microteaching Practice session + microteaching reflection
3:30 – 3:55 203 Butler Table share-out and reflections
3:55 – 4:00 Day 3 preview and wrap

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Day Three: Wednesday June 7

Time Location Activity
9:30 – 10:00 203 Butler Settling in, Finish Essentials 3 prep module
10:00 – 10:10 Welcome and overview
10:10 – 11:40

Essentials 3 – Active Learning

Practice developing class activities that align with your learning objectives for students and incentivize all students to participate. Join the CTL for this workshop for graduate students focused on giving you strategies to better engage students in their own learning. In this workshop, we will discuss the evidence and efficacy of a variety of active learning strategies, and consider how these approaches can make our classrooms more inclusive. 

11:40 – 12:10 Essentials 3 reflection
12:10 – 12:30 Foundational Track capstone and exiting preview – TDP completion checklist
12:30 – 1:30 208 Butler Lunch! Pick up your lunch in 208 and eat there, in 203, or outside
1:30 – 3:30 203 Butler

Teaching with Objects

In our classrooms, we often strive to engage students with objects such as artworks, manuscripts, visualized data analyses, or physical/manipulable models. In this session, we’ll consider the meaningful deployment of objects as tools to support students’ achievement of the established learning objectives. In particular, you’ll come away with concrete strategies to improve students’ visual literacy and their frameworks for analyzing objects so that they can do so meaningfully. 

212 Butler

Hacking the Classroom

How can we leverage the often unideal spaces in which we teach to serve pedagogical goals? This session makes visible a range of “hacks” that instructors can make–ranging from furniture rearrangement to activity facilitation to critically reflective practices– that foster a positive classroom climate, engage students, and support active learning. We will identify techniques to effectively leverage space in office hours, small group discussions, and lectures. 

204 Butler Table 6 Microteaching Practice session + microteaching reflection
208 Butler Table 7 Microteaching Practice session + microteaching reflection
505 Butler Table 8 Microteaching Practice session + microteaching reflection
3:30 – 3:55 203 Butler Table share-out and reflections
3:55 – 4:00 Day 4 preview and wrap

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Day Four: Thursday June 8

Time Location Activity
9:30 – 10:00 203 Butler Settling in, Finish Essentials 4 prep module
10:00 – 10:10 Welcome and overview
10:10 – 11:40

Essentials 4 – Assessment & Feedback

This workshop gives you tools to assess students accurately, efficiently, and encouragingly. You will learn approaches for assessing student learning and providing feedback that encourages students to focus more on their improvement and less on bottom line scores. We will introduce tools to help streamline and standardize assessment and feedback, while helping students better understand what is valuable in the topic and discipline. Breakout groups will allow you to focus your discussion on written assignments or problem sets. 

11:40 – 12:10 Essentials 4 reflection
12:10 – 12:30 Preparing to Teaching materials peer review
12:30 – 1:30 208 Butler Lunch! Pick up your lunch in 208 and eat there, in 203, or outside
1:30 – 3:30 203 Butler

Syllabus from Scratch

Are you drafting a syllabus? Whether the syllabus is for the Teaching Scholars program, the academic job market, or a dream course in the future, join us to begin designing an effective, student-centered syllabus from scratch. During this Syllabus from Scratch workshop, participants will learn about the elements of an effective syllabus, define course learning goals, and discuss assessments that can promote student learning in their course. 

212 Butler

How Can Technology Impact Learning?

Technology has become a ubiquitous component of the higher education landscape, but there are still vocal debates about when we should use technology and why. So how can technology impact learning? During this session we will engage some of the literature examining technology’s role in supporting students’ learning and consider how technology can support and impede our desires to develop accessible learning experiences for our students. Participants will leave with considerations for choosing digital tools and engaging them intentionally and accessibly. 

3:30 – 3:45 203 Butler Table share-out and reflections
3:45 – 3:50 Exit with Foundational Track credit or switch to the Advanced Track!
3:50 – 4:00 Next steps with CTL and wrap

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Day Five (optional): Friday June 9

Time Location Activity
10:00 – 2:00 212 Butler and on Zoom (ctlgrads)

Coworking and individual consultation

If you have just a couple of loose ends to tie up to complete the Foundational Track, you are very welcome to use this time as a co-working session. This is also a great time to get individual consultation from CTL staff on any aspect of completing Foundational Track requirements, shifting onto the Advanced Track instead of exiting the program, planning future teaching development, and/or preparing a strong application for a CTL Fellowship

Feel free to drop by 212 Butler or Zoom into ‘ctlgrads’ at any time during this four hour block. Snacks will be on hand, but we will not be providing a full lunch on this day. Feel free to bring one in, though, to munch on as you complete any last Foundational Track tasks.

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Completion deadline: Monday June 12

Time Location Activity
Everything submitted by 5:00 pm Online

The finish line

On Thursday afternoon you decided whether you are exiting out of the TDP with Foundational Track completion credit on your transcript, or shifting onto the TDP Advanced track.

While we encourage you to complete all necessary submissions earlier, this is the deadline for Sprint completion. To make sure that you have submitted all necessary materials, please review the TDP Sprint Completion Checklist.

If you have any questions about completion of the Sprint, feel free to reach out to us at CTLgrads@columbia.edu. And congratulations for accomplishing this milestone; your efforts during this Sprint will benefit you and your students for years to come!

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