Welcome to the Digital Learning Book Club!
Digital Learning and UT Libraries invite all UTK staff and faculty to participate in our Digital Learning Book Club. This blended online community focuses on digital learning topics such as inclusive pedagogy, online equity, and community & care. The book club offers flexible format and engagement, with no prior experience necessary. Read and join as you can!
Book selection
A Pedagogy of Kindness – by Catherine Denial
Registration
Sign up to participate through UTK Workshop Registration — participation includes emails to Zoom links prior to meetings as well as access to the Book Club's Inscribe community.
Questions?
Contact Jason Johnston (Digital Learning) or Grace Therrell (UT Libraries) with questions or for more info!
Fall 2024
This semester, the Digital Learning Book Club will read and explore themes from the book A Pedagogy of Kindness. Participants can access the book freely online through UT Libraries or can purchase a copy. The author, Catherine Denial, will also join us for our last meeting!
About this book (from the publisher):
Academia is not, by and large, a kind place. Individualism and competition are what count. But without kindness at its core, Catherine Denial suggests, higher education fails students and instructors–and its mission–in critical ways. Part manifesto, part teaching memoir, part how-to guide, A Pedagogy of Kindness urges higher education to get aggressive about instituting kindness, which Denial distinguishes from niceness. Having suffered beneath the weight of just "getting along," instructors need to shift every part of what they do to prioritizing care and compassion–for students as well as for themselves. A Pedagogy of Kindness articulates a fresh vision for teaching, one that focuses on ensuring justice, believing people, and believing in people. Offering evidence-based insights and drawing from her own rich experiences as a professor, Denial offers practical tips for reshaping syllabi, assessing student performance, and creating trust and belonging in the classroom. Her suggestions for concrete, scalable actions–nothing less than a transformational discipline–one in which, together, we create bright new spaces, rooted in compassion, in which all engaged in teaching and learning might thrive.
Meeting Information
All synchronous meetings will take place 12-1pm EDT on Zoom. Asynchronous discussion will take place on Inscribe.
Meeting 1: Intro & Chapter 1
Kindness toward the Self
Thursday, Sept. 5th – Zoom
Meeting 2: Chapter 2
Kindness and the Syllabus
Thursday, Sept. 26th – Zoom
Meeting 3: Chapter 3
Kindness and Assessment
Thursday, Oct. 17th – Zoom
Meeting 4: Chapter 4 & Conclusion – with the author, Catherine Denial
Kindness in the Classroom
Thursday, Nov. 7th – Zoom
About the DLBC
The Digital Learning Book Club uses a blended online modality (synchronous via Zoom and asynchronous via Inscribe) to promote a learning community that cultivates reflection around digital learning topics such as inclusive pedagogy, online equity, and community & care. Reflective reading and discussion guides the application of content to current online technology trends and concerns. This is not a how-to workshop or technology demonstration, but rather a conversation around important online learning topics.
All UT staff and faculty are welcome, with no prior experience or knowledge necessary. We invite participants to join as learners and select their own level of engagement based on their preferences and availability. Please join when you can and read as you can!