Diggs Week, March 25-29, celebrates teaching innovations
Innovative teaching techniques will be celebrated during Virginia Tech’s first annual “Diggs Week of Teaching Innovations,” March 25-29.
The goal of Diggs Week is to “encourage faculty members at all levels to try something new in their teaching or share an innovative teaching technique,” said management associate professor Terry Cobb, president of the Diggs Teaching Scholar Association, which is organizing the event.
“We also want to publicize the Diggs Teaching Scholar award, which differs from the university’s other teaching awards in that it focuses on how award winners will contribute to teaching innovations in the future,” he said. “Toward that end, Diggs winners are given grant money to support the innovative projects they proposed to win the award.”
Cobb is a multiple teaching-award winner and a 2012 Diggs Teaching Scholar who developed a teaching technique that uses self-managed student teams in classes to address complex projects. His research specialty is in organizational politics and organizational justice.
Diggs Week, Cobb said, “connects with the award’s mission of promoting teaching innovation and commitment to instruction at Virginia Tech.”
Faculty participation in the event, he said, can take any form — “from a short exercise in a first-time activity to a novel homework assignment to an entire class period dedicated to discussing something entirely new to the course.
“We encourage all instructional faculty to participate and to let us know, so that their participation can be recognized and publicized. We want to celebrate innovative teaching!”
The Diggs Teaching Scholar award, established in 1992, is sponsored by the Diggs Endowed Professorship Fund and the Center for Instructional Development and Educational Research. Individuals teaching at all instructional levels at Virginia Tech — endowed and full professors, associate and assistant professors, adjunct faculty, instructors, and graduate teaching assistants — are eligible for nomination.
For more information about Diggs Week or the Diggs Teaching Scholars award, contact Terry Cobb via email.
Read about “The Elusive Mr. Diggs” and the recipients of the award.
