Speaking

Every year Jim delivers dozens of keynotes, lectures or workshops for faculty in higher education, occasionally secondary school educators, or organizations that have an interest on learning, attention, and writing. He has earned a reputation as a dynamic speaker who engages easily with audiences. Speaking engagements provide plenty of opportunities for participants to connect the content to their own teaching contexts, and to interact with Jim and one another. Faculty will leave every event with at least a few new ideas to try in their classrooms tomorrow, as well as inspiration to renew their commitment to their teaching or to their research and writing.

The topics below can all be presented as single-event keynotes or lectures, interactive presentations, or even multi-stage workshops unfolding over the course of a conference or faculty development day. Talks and topics can be taken singly or combined for a fuller event; both in-person and virtual engagements are available.

• NEW Write Like You Teach: Taking Your Classroom Skills to a Bigger Audience

  Are the faculty at your institution engaged in research that deserves to find a wider audience? Are you an academic or teacher that would like to cross over the border between writing for your disciplinary peers and writing for more public audiences? This interactive workshop argues that the way to establish these goals is to draw upon our hard-won wisdom as teachers to create better learning experiences for readers. This approach draws lessons from Jim’s work as a book series acquisition editor, his multiple books aimed at general academic audiences, and his dozens of published magazine and newspaper essays. This workshop is based on Jim’s next book, which will be published in April of 2025 from the University of Chicago Press. This material can be presented in a single interactive lecture, but can also be used to create a half-day or full day writing retreat for faculty.

• Supporting Student Attention in a Technological Age

  As new technologies become increasingly intertwined with our daily work as educators, we are learning disturbing lessons about the costs of attention loss in our lives and the lives of our students. Digital technologies like smart phones can hijack our attention, while artificial intelligence technologies promise to make it redundant. The most important education that students might need for the future will be focused on why and how they should take control of their attention and use it to achieve meaningful learning goals. Drawing ideas from philosophy, psychology, and educational practice, this talk will present creative strategies that teachers can use to enhance their courses, assessments, and classroom experiences with the power of attention. 

• Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from Learning Research

  Research from the learning sciences and from a variety of educational settings suggests that a small number of key principles can improve learning in almost any type of college or university course, from traditional lectures to flipped classrooms.  Drawn from Jim’s bestselling book Small Teaching, these sessions introduce some of those principles, offer practical suggestions for how they might foster positive change in higher education teaching and learning, and guide faculty participants to consider how these principles might manifest themselves in their current and upcoming courses.

• Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty

  When students engage in academically dishonest behaviors, they may be responding to subtle pressures in the learning environment that interfere with deep learning and nudge them toward cheating. These sessions provide an overview of the various pressures that push student toward academic dishonesty, propose pedagogical practices that reduce the incentive and opportunity to cheat, and invite discussion about how to build a campus culture of academic integrity.

For speaking engagements, Jim is represented by Jamie Brickhouse at the Red Brick Agency, but you are always welcome to contact Jim here.

Consulting

If you are interested in working with Jim on a short or long-term basis, he is available to consult with your institution, program, or department to built a culture of effective teaching and learning. In this work he will draw upon the many hats he has worn in higher education: full professor of English literature, director of an honors program, founding director of a Center for Teaching Excellence, chair of an evaluation committee (i.e., promotion and tenure), academic consultant to OneHE, and the author of two hundred published essays and five books on teaching, learning, and thriving in higher education. Learn more about consulting opportunities.