Past Events

In this webinar, we will discuss how we can grade student work and give feedback that they can use to improve their performance in class. This webinar is geared toward part-time faculty who have a limited amount of time to spend on their courses, but all faculty can benefit from thinking critically and reflectively about their grading practices. Topics that will be covered include rubrics, checklists, minimal marking, and targeted feedback and how to apply them in all disciplines.

Using small group collaborative learning can be a transformative experience for our students, but how do we ensure it is transformative in a good way? In the seminal text "Team-Based Learning: a Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching", Michaelsen, Knight, and Fink provide a comprehensive set of guidelines for incorporating formal teamwork into college courses. Topics addressed include specific procedures to help form groups and turn them into high-performing teams, to the "4S" rules for designing effective in-class activities, to discipline-specific recommendations and lessons learned, and more. Come and share your thoughts about how techniques from this book can help crank up learning in your course.

Course design is one of several important elements of teaching for student success. This interactive workshop will provide a framework for self-reflection about opportunities for course redesign through the lens of student success. The framework will emphasize three research-based elements: mastery, metacognition, and motivation. Join us to reflect on the framework and to strategize and set priorities to improve student outcomes.

This workshop is designed to help participants choose and use a variety of tools and techniques for assessing student learning in STEM courses that can help us better understand our students’ performance in the classroom, and also contribute to assessment needed for specialized accreditation such as ABET or NAAB. We will discuss important concepts underpinning successful classroom assessment of student learning, describe a variety of tools and techniques for STEM courses, and note connections to helpful literature. During the session each participant will have an opportunity to select several potential new assessment tools or techniques for their own course, and plan for potential initial implementation for one or two of those tools and techniques.

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) focuses on investigations of teaching practices and student learning within a discipline or across disciplines in higher education. If you are curious about your students’ learning and want to explore the intersection of teaching and scholarship, join us for this interactive webinar, where you’ll gain practical suggestions for any stage of the SoTL research process, from generating initial ideas to presenting or publishing the research. Webinar link and information will be emailed to participants a few days before the webinar.

Even though the book is five years old, Selingo’s analysis is still relevant. From his experience as an editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education, he traces problematic administrative practices that took hold in the first decade of the millennium (building debt and promoting a customer mentality with regards to students). Together with unforeseen societal changes, such as economic crises and disruptive technologies, these practices have exacerbated the college dropout problem and made students question the value of a college degree. Join us for this chat to discuss what of his analysis resonates with your experience, the likelihood of the future he predicts, and the applicability of the strategies he suggests.

Have you taught a class where students are highly engaged and are outperforming your expectations? What is so special about that class? How can you document what is happening so you can reproduce that impact in the future? In this workshop we will discuss the components of conducting scholarly action research in the classroom. We will also study several examples of successful applications for Institutional Review Board approval that you may be able to adapt to your own classroom research. Participants will leave with the beginning of an action plan to turn what started as a successful class into a scholarly paper as well.

We must intentionally think about where we want students to go in order to help them get there. Teaching with purpose requires us to first identify our course goals and objectives and create assignments that are aligned. Often we, as instructors, know why were doing certain things in our courses, but it might not be apparent to students. This workshop will explore the Transparency Framework (of purpose/task/criteria) developed by Mary-Ann Winkelmes, as it relates to assignment creation. We will introduce the framework and apply it to redesigning an assignment you currently use in your course.

This webinar addresses how performance criteria can be used to help learning objectives (which can sometimes seem static and impersonal in nature) come alive in the classroom. Performance criteria are the expectations given to learners before a performance that define the characteristics which make up a high quality performance related to achieving a learning objective. Participants attending this webinar will be able to articulate the value of writing and using performance criteria, practice using a methodology for writing performance criteria, and assess performance criteria to improve quality.

Employing active learning techniques does not automatically produce high quality learning, nor does it necessarily contribute to a productive academic mindset in students. While a large body of research shows that incorporating active learning techniques into the classroom can significantly improve student achievement of learning outcomes, how can we use it to produce a productive academic mindset as well? In this workshop we will explore how we can create productive academic mindsets by engaging students in ways that really make a difference. Specifically, we will consider three components identified in the research that teachers can influence student mindset in the classroom: emotional engagement, cognitive-emotional engagement, and behavioral engagement.

This workshop addresses easily adaptable strategies for effective teaching in the lab classroom to improve student understanding. Participants will discuss and share ways to provide a clear overview, use a range of examples, create an inclusive climate, seek student feedback, assign or evaluate lab reports, measure student understanding, and employ classroom assessment techniques.

Panelists discussing this timely topic will roundly explore how we employ, avoid, or confront discomfort in the college classroom. Topics will include teaching from a “pedagogy of discomfort;” student and instructor discomfort; the didactic benefits of making students comfortable; diversity and inclusion in the college classroom; safe spaces; trigger warnings, power dynamics, and more. Join us for a lively and much-needed discussion on the topic of discomfort in the college classroom!

Our previous workshops on motivation have focused on creating a supportive environment, enhancing student self-efficacy, and establishing the value of the material. In this workshop we will address new research that reveals that student motivation can be further enhanced with the establishment of rapport and trust between the faculty member and the students. Join us to explore this new information and discover more and better ways to motivate our students to succeed.

The most successful students take charge of their own goals for learning and are reflective about their learning processes. Attend this workshop to learn some simple ways to integrate metacognition and self-regulation—two research-based concepts that make a difference for motivation and learning--into your course.

NCUR is coming to Kennesaw State in April 2019! Encourage your students to take advantage of this opportunity to participate in a national conference by creating an assignment that they can complete at the conference. At this workshop, we will actively engage in the design and construction of assignments that will be relevant to your specific course and support your students' learning at the conference. We will apply the TiLT (Transparency in Teaching and Learning) framework to ensure that your students clearly understand the Purpose, Task, and Criteria for the assignment. Bring your ideas or existing assignments that you can revise and CETL faculty will be available to work with you one-on-one.

Many of us educators feel like they are walking on eggshells when they express their thoughts in the classroom and when they are faced with unsophisticated student comments. The discourse is rife with loaded terms such as “coddling," “trigger warnings,” “political correctness,” “safe spaces.” How do we balance the principles of academic freedom, freedom of speech and expression, and inclusive learning environments? How can we protect ourselves and our students? The authors (one the dean of the Law School at University of California Berkeley and the other the chancellor of University of California Irvine) provide a review of what schools can and cannot do, but, more importantly, discuss what’s at stake when we talk about censorship and hate speech. Come add your perspective to the discussion!

Why is it that so many student teams fail to live up to their potential? How can we design a process to create and manage more effective student teams? This workshop will introduce the research-based CATME team-maker and peer review tools. This online platform can be used directly, or its ideas adapted separately, to help produce high-performing teams in the classroom. Participants will explore some of the factors that research has uncovered for forming and managing effective student teams, and we will utilize the CATME system to observe how these factors can be operationalized.

Participants in this webinar will identify ways to introduce and sequence activities in the first week of class that preview what students can expect throughout the semester. Participants in this webinar will identify and share approaches and activities that set the stage for the semester. Possible topics include setting ground rules, establishing an inclusive classroom climate, using content-based strategies to provoke student curiosity, and goal-setting for student success. Let’s get started in purposeful and productive ways!

This workshop highlights important components of the educational research process, often referred to as the Scholarship of Teahcing and Learning (SoTL). Building on participant backgrounds in scholarly teaching, we will highlight key aspects of carrying out various types of SoTL work (from the very small and personal to the very large and collaborative). Throughout, we will work together in groups to support each other as we generate personal plans for moving forward in our teaching and learning journeys. These plans will incorporate elements of SoTL that will help us investigate the impact of our pedagogical practices on teaching and learning.