On February 26 and 27th, 2025 Dr. Kevin Gannon will visit the UAF Troth Yeddha’ campus to deliver a public lecture and workshop series. 

Kevin Gannon is Director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence and Professor of History at Queens University of Charlotte, in North Carolina. He is the author of Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto (West Virginia University Press, 2020), and his writing has also appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Vox, CNN, and The Washington Post. In 2016, he appeared in the Oscar-nominated documentary 13th, directed by Ava DuVernay. He maintains a website with additional links to his work. 

Open to the public, in person and on Zoom. 

Date and time: Wednesday, 2/26/2025, 4:30-6:00pm

Location: Hybrid- Zoom and JUB 301/305 (Usibelli Building)

Since “pandemic pedagogy,” instructors report struggling to (re)connect with students, as well as a marked decrease in student engagement and motivation. In asynchronous online classes, in particular, this has always been a concern, but even more so in our present moment. This session explores the idea of “humanizing” teaching and learning, along with specific tools and strategies by which we can do so—either in-person or online. We’ll examine some key research on the affective dimensions of learning, and discern how its findings can shape our approach to teaching. We’ll also look at some of the scholarship on belonging and consider the ways in which our courses might either contribute to, or be a barrier in front of, our students’ own sense of belonging. Areas of focus also include:

• Using transparent assignment design (the TILT framework) to enhance student motivation and academic agency.
• Transforming our syllabi into a welcoming introduction to our courses, accessible for all of our students.
• Some specific strategies for us to really get to know who our students are, in all of the complex ways they show up in our learning spaces.

In our current moment, weighted as it is with cultural conflict as well as the echoes of “pandemic pedagogy,” it might feel harder than ever to do the work of teaching and learning. Certainly, things feel at least different than they did before. Technological disruptions and changing student dynamics turn what used to seem like routine activities—reading, class discussions, writing—into difficult undertakings, marked by anxiety and hesitance, if not outright resistance. How do we operate within this changing landscape when what used to work….doesn’t? This workshop suggests that this process begins with understanding our own agency as teachers, naming the ways in which we’ve used that power, and identifying if and how we might use it for different ends.

• Try out the critical reflection techniques.
• Name and critique the assumptions we bring with us into our teaching and work with students, and assess whether they’re creating barriers.

Participants should plan to attend the lecture before the workshop.