Faculty note: Voelker talks teaching at North Carolina university


Historian David Voelker, associate professor of Humanistic Studies, spent time earlier this month on the campus of High Point University, a private, nationally recognized liberal arts institution in High Point, N.C., where he gave an invited talk and led a faculty development workshop on the scholarship of teaching and learning. Voelker, a co-director of the UW System’s statewide teaching development program, chose the title “Backward Design for Student Learning” for his talk emphasizing the value of prioritizing student mastery of course content over the notion of “covering” as much ground as possible. He expanded on the concept in his workshop titled “Rethinking Content Coverage,” in which he argued the case for moving beyond the pedagogy of coverage toward an intentional pedagogy of understanding, thinking, and application.