Webinars

Can Universities Keep Pace with Digital Transformation? – Campus+ Australia
January 31, 3:00 AM Central | Online, Free
Join a panel of experts to understand where universities stand to benefit most from digitally enhanced teaching and learning, AI and unprecedented volumes of data. We’ll discuss: • The use of AI and VR in higher education teaching and learning • How higher education research can be enhanced with artificial intelligence • Where are university funds best-placed to optimise digital transformation investments • How digital skillsets can be developed • How the benefits of digital transformation can be equitably distributed among students, staff and institutions

Learning Styles: Understanding the Myth and the Opportunity – OneHE
January 31, 3:10 PM | Online, Requires Free Trial
The learning styles myth has been noted by many as “the myth that will not die.” We have evidence, so why doesn’t this just go away? In this webinar, we will look at WHY people believe it is effective to teach to a given learning style, under what circumstances teaching to a perceived learning style may be beneficial and explore a very straightforward alternative that is in line with the evidence. After all, if you are going to take something away, there needs to be a replacement. In this webinar, you will learn about an effective replacement.

Conferences

The 2024 Teaching Professor Annual Conference
June 7-9 | New Orleans
It’s not your imagination—teaching has gotten more demanding in the past few years. Come to The Teaching Professor Conference June 7-9, 2024, in New Orleans to get some tools, tricks, ideas, and inspiration to handle the issues facing college professors today. You don’t have to struggle with these challenges alone!

Resources

CTE Learn – ACTE Online Learning Network
Virtual professional development and free supportive resources for CTE professionals. CTE Learn offers comprehensive professional development including credit courses, online resources, and free webinars. 

How Equitable is Your Grading? – Grading for Equity
We all want our equity in our classrooms, so find out in this short quiz: How accurate, bias-resistant, and motivational is grading in your classroom? It’s REALLY important to remember that these questions aren’t assessing how much you’re committed to equity, how much you care about your students, or how dedicated you are to teaching. Through no fault of our own, teachers have had almost no training or support in how to grade. That’s why this quiz simply asks about how you grade, and gives you some feedback on how much you may be supporting equity or, inadvertently, be using 100-year old grading practices that may be perpetuating inequities. (This quiz requires an email, but the email does not need to be valid.)

Short(er) Reads

I’m An Adjunct: What Do I Need to Know About Teaching? – Faculty Focus (5 min read)
When I started as an adjunct faculty member, I had no teaching experience. I was handed a syllabus, a classroom, and students, and left to figure out the rest on my own. In preparing that first course, I focused on what I thought were the essentials of teaching: finalizing the syllabus, picking the readings, and writing the assignments. Now, with nearly 20 years of teaching experience, and nine working as an educational developer, I know that while those planning steps are needed, they are not the most important. These are three essential things that adjunct faculty (and all faculty) need to know about teaching when getting started.

Increasing Student Success: A Developmental Approach – Faculty Focus (4 min read)
Increasing student success requires tight alignment across course learning outcomes, assessments, and planned learning experiences, but why, after all the hours spent planning for student success, do large numbers of students still struggle in college? When it comes to increasing rates of student achievement, satisfaction, and graduation, what really makes the difference?

Providing a Path for Lifelong Success: Helping Students Learn How to Learn – CrossCurrents (5 min read)
We can help students become better able to direct and manage their learning by showing them how to use “learning strategies.” Learning strategies are devices or behaviors that aid in retrieving previously stored information as well as acquiring and integrating new knowledge. Examples include previewing, summarizing, paraphrasing, visualizing, creating analogies, taking notes, and outlining.

Long(er) Reads

Ungrading Has an Equity-Related Achilles Heel – Grading for Growth (8 min read)
Namely, for courses that require a grade at the end of the semester, the allocation of grades in an ungraded course is highly susceptible to the instructor’s – and also sometimes the student’s – implicit biases. These biases can perpetuate systemic inequities, including in students’ access to privileged academic opportunities well after the course has finished. I have implemented ungrading in multiple semesters, in multiple formats (to varying degrees of success) in my community college General Biology courses. But I won’t be using it again. In this post, I explain why.

A Positive Environment of Engagement and Retention in the Online Learning Environment – Faculty Focus (10 min read)
Student engagement in an online environment can be achieved through various forms of interaction, including behavioral, emotional, and cognitive formats (Hollister et al., 2022). Engagement itself is truly the glue that holds a positive teaching and learning experience together, and as a faculty member, it is our responsibility to provide an environment of positive learning and engagement for our students. Students who make a strong effort to understand the material will incorporate new knowledge into their daily lives, practice, and/or profession (Campbell, 2023).  As faculty, we must do our best to not only observe engaged practices but include them within the online environment of today.

Podcasts

Let’s Talk About Teaching Long Classes with Dr. Sheila B. Robinson – Lecture Breakers (35 min)
Classes that are 3, 4, 5, or more hours long present new challenges (and opportunities!) when it comes to student engagement and learning. In this episode, we talk about how to keep students engaged and focused in long classes without overwhelming them with too many activities and distractions. We start our conversation discussing the benefits of teaching long classes and how you can use that to your advantage when designing active learning experiences, especially when it comes to debriefing and reflection activities which we may not always have time to do in shorter classes.

Attention Please: Professors Struggle with Student Disengagement – EdSurge Podcast 
Keeping the attention of students during lectures has always been hard. And after COVID-19 disruptions that meant years of Zoom teaching, many professors say things are harder now. We’ve been exploring this rise in student disengagement — and what creative professors are doing to counteract it — in a three-part podcast series. The stakes are huge, because the concern is that maybe the social contract between students and professors is kind of breaking down. Do students believe that all this college lecturing is worth hearing? Or, will this moment force a change in the way college teaching is done?
Part 1: An Inside Look at the ‘Student Disengagement Crisis (34 min)
Part 2: How Instructors Are Adapting to a Rise in Student Disengagement (30 min)
Part 3: Hoping to Regain Attention of Students, Professors Pay More Attention to Them (46 min)

My Classroom is a Safe Place: Empowering Trans-spectrum Students – Faculty Focus Live (18 min)
Today, we’re going to talk about strategies that instructors can use to create safe spaces where transgender students feel as if they belong without fear or stress, and ultimately, help students grow personally and academically. Both instructors in this episode will share their own stories and explain how making small, inclusive adjustments will help students feel more comfortable, perform better academically, and grow personally.

AI Corner

Teaching with AI Toolkit – ACUE
The free AI Basics Toolkit contains:

  • A visual timeline of AI development
  • An “AI BASICS” interactive video experience, taken from ACUE’s new Quick Study courses, to get up to speed on the vocabulary of AI
  • An AI Vocabulary Guide
  • A GETTING STARTED WITH AI quiz that will guide you on where to start with ACUE’s new AI Quick Study series 

AI Quick Study Series – ACUE 
Online, Self-paced | $299
The AI Quick Study Series features a collection of four high-quality Quick Study courses that equip educators with the foundational knowledge and skills needed to efficiently utilize AI. Instructors will learn effective methods for prompting AI, how to use AI to efficiently develop course resources, how to foster responsible use of AI tools, and how to develop AI-inclusive as well as AI-resistance learning experiences.

AI for Secondary Education – ION | University of Illinois Springfield 
03/18 – 04/14 | 4 CEU Hours
This instructor-led, four-week, fully-online course will introduce AI to secondary education educators. COD is a member of ION; see Institutional Memberships – Professional Development Resources for more information.