Workshops

Your syllabus does a lot of quiet work. Learn how to build one that states your objectives and expectations clearly and keeps students at the center.

Good objectives make every other design decision easier. Practice writing ones that are clear enough for students to use and specific enough for you to assess.

Few of us set out to make our courses harder, yet students often describe the workload as overwhelming. We’ll look at six possible explanations and what they mean for your teaching.

Ready to turn an experiential learning idea into a real plan? Outline one unit or project for an existing course and get colleague feedback on how you’ll scaffold and assess it.

Turning a disciplinary topic into a First-Year Seminar takes more than repackaging content. Work through the college’s four critical outcomes with colleagues and leave with a proposal draft that is ready or close to it.

Is your First-Year Seminar due for a refresh? Talk through discussion and assignment ideas with colleagues, including how AI changes the picture.

For faculty internship supervisors.

Supervising an internship? Get research-backed strategies for designing internships that support student learning and connect to your outcomes and assessment goals.

Telling students what we know isn’t enough for them to learn it. Pick up basic techniques that get students working with the material during class.

Connection matters, but it doesn’t have to feel forced. Try small, realistic ways to build rapport that fit your teaching style.

Concept maps are powerful and a little tricky to use well. See the benefits and the drawbacks, then try mapping your own teaching or another project.

Screens and AI compete for our students’ attention, and ours. Instead of fighting distraction, experience two of James Lang’s practices for building attention on purpose.

Make your last day of class count. Leave with a plan for an activity that helps students connect and reflect on what they’ve learned.

How will your students spend the first day of your course? Plan first-day activities that set the tone and get students engaged from the start.

Feeling the mid-semester slump? Talk through activities that break up the semester and bring students back.

How do you keep students engaged during a lecture? Try activities and organizational strategies that make it more dynamic.

Good discussions rarely happen on their own. Learn how to set norms that support discussion and keep the conversation focused and productive.

What do we know about how students learn, and how should that shape what happens in class? Explore learning principles that help students take more responsibility for their own learning.

AI summaries and audiobooks make long reading assignments a harder sell. Explore why deep reading still matters and how to help students see its value.

Want to refresh your teaching without overhauling your course? Try strategies that take little prep and little class time, and draft a small teaching plan for an upcoming course.

Are your students memorizing instead of learning? Drawing on Saundra McGuire’s Teach Students How to Learn, this session covers simple strategies students can pick up in a single class session.

Are your students skimming the reading, or skipping it? Use reading as a case study in motivating students to take on the slow, hard work that learning requires.

Customizable for one course or multi-section courses.

Assignments and assessments carry a lot of weight in a course. Explore what makes them effective and where students tend to get stuck, then start designing or revising one.

Why wait for the big test to find out what students missed? Learn quick, easy techniques that show you where students are stuck while there’s still time to act.

See how rubrics can make your expectations clearer and your grading faster, then outline how to build one for your next assignment.

Wondering where to start with inclusive teaching? Reflect on your current practice and choose next steps for your own courses.

Active isn’t the same as inclusive. Using the high-structure framework from Hogan and Sathy’s Inclusive Teaching, leave with six questions you can use to test your next class plan.

We’ve all had them. Work through case studies of difficult student situations and trade ideas for handling them. Bring your own challenges.

What do you do when a classroom exchange turns into conflict? Learn to handle different kinds of conflict in ways that reduce harm and support student growth.

Free expression and equal respect can pull in different directions in a classroom. Compare three philosophical approaches to balancing them and decide where you stand.

Work through classroom scenarios where candid discussion and student wellbeing pull apart, and leave with language you can use in the moment.

An election year is a chance to build the skills and habits that democratic citizens need. Connect them to your course goals and plan practical ways to weave them in.

Not sure what to do about AI in your course? Leave with a revised AI policy for your syllabus and one assignment reworked to hold up better against AI use.

AI has disrupted teaching, but it may also support it. Explore AI as a tutor and as a teaching coach, along with real concerns about its environmental and cognitive costs.

Students learn through productive struggle, and AI makes it easy to skip. Learn three levers that raise motivation, then build strategies to reduce unauthorized AI use.

How do you know what students know when AI can do the work? Examine your own assignments for AI weak spots and explore responses that range from in-class work to redesigns that use AI openly.

AI is already part of your students’ work, whether you’ve planned for it or not. Clarify your own stance and make your expectations visible in a clear AI policy.

Faculty don’t agree on how AI fits into their own work, and that’s fine. Share concrete ideas in a crowdsourced resource, then think through your reservations and decide how, and whether, AI belongs in your work.

AI can do much of what we ask students to do, which puts the engagement they need at risk. Use learning science to plan work and strategies that help students use AI to enhance their effort, not replace it.

AI raises big questions for higher education that go well beyond academic integrity. Discuss what we may need to rethink about our educational goals and how AI both helps and complicates inclusive teaching.

What will students need to learn to serve the public good in a world changed by AI? Step back from integrity worries to consider the humanistic mission of higher education and our role in it.

For chairs and assessment or curriculum committee members.

Leading assessment for your program? Get an overview of the process and practical ideas for making your assessment plan meaningful and sustainable, and get ready for annual reports like APPLE.

Best as two sessions or a half day.

What should every graduate of your program know and be able to do? Work with colleagues to name and prioritize those goals and to say what makes your program distinct.

For a course or a degree program.

Clear outcomes are hard to write. Learn what makes an outcome statement effective, then draft and review your own with peers.

Best as two sessions or a half day.

Where in your program do students actually get the chance to reach your outcomes? Build a visual map that shows how courses connect and where the gaps are.

Request the full series or one part.

Outcomes assessment can feel hard and pointless. This series walks programs through the improvement cycle so the data is useful and the work stays sustainable.

1. Measures of Learning
2. Data Collection and Sampling
3. Presentation of Results
4. Interpretation in Context

Can you say who you are as a teacher in a page? Learn format and style expectations and start putting your ideas and values about teaching into words.

Do you start the semester or summer with big plans and wonder where the time went when it’s over? Clarify your goals and build a plan for the term, with support and accountability built in.

Student evaluations weigh heavily in hiring and promotion, yet research shows they can reflect bias. Learn how to interpret your evaluations and how to talk about them in job materials and tenure dossiers.