CTL Happenings - Message #392

The E.C. Moore Symposium on Excellence in Teaching/LEAP Indiana Conference will bring together the Indiana higher education community to examine teaching excellence and innovative pedagogies to encourage student learning. The symposium offers an opportunity to discuss current trends and issues in teaching and seeks to foster collaboration across disciplinary and institutional lines.

The conference will feature a keynote address by Gardner Campbell, Associate Professor of English, Virginia Commonwealth University on The Network is the Deliverable: Shifting the Metaphor in Professional Development. Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick, Professor of English, Affiliate Faculty in Women’s Studies, and Director of the Office of Student Research, IUPUC will give a plenary address titled Active Learning Pedagogies in Active Learning Spaces: Theory and Practice in Feminist Classrooms. See the schedule for the complete list of sessions.

The event will be held on Friday, March 2, 2018, 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. in the IUPUI Campus Center.

Click here for information and to register.

As your semester gets underway, now is a great time to make sure your courses do not have any broken or inaccessible links. This is especially important if you have ever recorded voice-over lectures using Adobe Presenter/Connect or have other media content (such as recorded webinars)  located on the now retired Adobe Connect server (connect.iu.edu/…).  

Why? Because if you have content from Adobe Connect or Presenter that you did not download prior to the retirement, you may still retrieve it by completing the Adobe Connect and Presenter Content Recovery Form by February 26, 2018.

Now is also the time to check for missing content in other courses that you may only teach periodically (for example, just during the fall semester), just in case they make use of content on the now-retired Adobe Connect server.

Canvas has a tool that quickly identifies broken links in your Canvas courses called the Canvas Course Link Validator. This tool will search your course content and return a list of links that are invalid or unresponsive. To learn more, watch this short video: Link Validator in Canvas Tutorial.

If you need assistance with replacing broken course links or with the Canvas Link Validator tool, please contact us

Instructors, sign up for the learningtechnologies-l mailing list to stay abreast of important news and information related to Canvas, Zoom, Kaltura, and other UITS-supported technologies for teaching and learning. To join the list, follow the instructions in https://kb.iu.edu/d/awbu.

This workshop introduces faculty and staff to the Quality Matters (QM) Rubric and to the QM Process. Quality Matters is a nationally recognized quality assurance organization for online course design, and the QM Process is a faculty-led peer review process that uses the research-based standards (criteria)  of the QM Rubric to certify online courses. Eventually, many online courses within the IU system will undergo the QM Process with the goal of achieving national QM recognition. Faculty may also use the QM Rubric as a guide to design online courses. And, for faculty who are interested, this course serves as a pre-requisite for QM's Peer Reviewer Course, which is a required course for faculty who seek certification as a QM Peer Reviewer, allowing them to participate in QM course reviews for courses created here at IU and at other universities.

The workshop will be offered at IUPUI as an in-person workshop, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. with a one hour break for lunch.  Participants are free to bring their own lunch or to take advantage of the many options available on campus. To receive the QM certificate of completion for this workshop, participants must be present for and participate in the entire workshop.

The next Quality Matters Event: April  13, 2018  (click here to register)

As IUPUI begins the process of reviewing general education courses, course coordinators or faculty responsible for preparing course portfolios for review may have questions about the information and materials that need to go into the portfolios. This workshop will provide an overview of the course review process, a review of course portfolio requirements, the process for assembling and submitting the portfolio, and the rubric that will be used to review the course portfolios. Examples from existing course portfolios will be incorporated into the workshop. Questions and discussion will be encouraged. 

Are you teaching online? Then you know that it can be challenging to get students to read, watch, and review the materials you provide and to complete online activities. What if your students *couldn’t* read, see, hear, or understand the materials or assignment instructions? Students using assistive technology experience that frustration on a regular basis and there are more of them that you think. In this webinar, we will share 4 concrete (and relatively easy) actions that you can take to help reduce barriers and let your students focus on learning and not access issues.

This session introduces faculty and graduate students to best practices of documenting one’s teaching. Participants will examine different kinds of evidence and documents to capture, and to make the case for, teaching achievements.  Participants will consider how to shape their evolution as teachers through the use of student course evaluations, peer reviews of teaching, and other means of measuring student learning. This workshop is the 3rd workshop in a 3-workshop series designed to introduce faculty and graduate students to the process of creating, refining and documenting one’s teaching practices.

In many courses, students feel isolated and disconnected from their instructors and classmates. VoiceThread is a tool that helps create social presence and a collaborative learning community in online, hybrid, and face-to-face courses. With VoiceThread, instructors and/or students can create, share, and comment on a variety of files, including slides, images, and videos. In this webinar the basic features of VoiceThread will be demonstrated. Participants will learn how VoiceThread works within Canvas and will have the opportunity to review a variety of examples from actual courses. 

• Save the dates for the spring 2018 Becoming an Effective Educator series! These workshops and webinars will address how to leverage professional development opportunities and construct a strong application for faculty positions. Click here to learn more and to register.

• Introduction to CIRTL - Learn more about CIRTL at IUPUI and get badges to highlight your professional development activities in teaching. Click here to learn more and to register for one webinar in this series.

• Interested in learning from presenters from across the country as they share their expertise on teaching and learning topics in STEM education? Sign up for a free CIRTL network account to enroll in upcoming CIRTL cross-network courses and events.

With sponsorship from the Indiana University Office of Scholarly Publishing and UITS, IUPUI University Library is hosting a half-day symposium on affordable course materials. The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that IUPUI undergraduates paid an average of $1,204.00 on books and supplies in the 2016/2017 academic year. The high cost of textbooks contributes to student debt, low retention rates, and negatively impacts the quality of student life. This expense adds to the many barriers to success faced by lower income and food-insecure students.

This symposium will explore the connection between course material costs and student success, progression, and retention, and will feature three experts on affordable course material from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Attendees will also learn how programs (IU eTexts) and software (Pressbooks) can be used to adopt or create affordable textbooks and materials in IUPUI courses.

Register here (for the light breakfast).

Want to learn more? Read Scholarly Communications Librarian, Jere Odell’s blog post about why textbook prices matter and see the attached invitation.

There are a variety of ways faculty, staff, and administrators can enhance their knowledge and share their expertise in global and intercultural learning this year. The Office of International Affairs has a small fund available to offset a portion of the associated costs of these professional development opportunities.

For information about the opportunities, click here: http://international.iupui.edu/global-learning/grants

For information about funding, contact Dr. Leslie A. Bozeman, Director of Curriculum Internationalization lbozeman@iupui.edu.

In the United States, less than half of the students who enter into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) undergraduate programs as freshmen will graduate with a STEM degree.  On this basis, there is a clear need for innovative initiatives that promote undergraduate retention and achievement within STEM.  The LSU Office of Strategic Initiatives (OSI) has developed a stable of such initiatives.  

Join SEIRI, along with the Chemistry and Chemical Biology Departments at IUPUI in welcoming Isiah M. Warner, Ph.D. on Wednesday, March 28, 2018, 4:10 - 5:30 p.m. at the IUPUI Campus Center Theatre, CE 002. Dr. Warner is Vice President for Strategic Initiatives, Philip W. West Professor of Chemistry, Boyd Professor at Louisiana State University, and HHMI Professor.  He is considered one of the world's experts in the analytical applications of fluorescence spectroscopy.    Dr. Warner has conducted educational research which focuses on mechanisms for maintaining and enhancing student education  in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), with a particular focus on encouraging his students to pursue terminal degrees.

For more information and registration, go to: http://go.iu.edu/1SzW; or contact the SEIRI office at 317-278-0168 (seiri@iupui.edu).

Register today for the 3^rd annual Adjunct Faculty Scholars Conference at IU Southeast, which will take place on Saturday, April 7, 2018.

This year’s theme is The Unique Expertise, Skills, and Gifts that Adjuncts Bring to Instruction.

The Keynote speaker is Lynn Slaughter, Adjunct Faculty Instructor for the IUS Writing Program.  Her keynote is titled “Building Strong Student-Teacher Relationships and a Positive Classroom Environment”.

This conference is free to all IU Faculty. Breakfast and lunch will be provided.   

Click here to register or  visit the Adjunct Faculty Scholars Conference website for more information.

As FACET celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2018, they are excited to reflect on three decades of changes and continuing challenges in teaching and learning. Join members, from the inaugural FACET class (1989), new inductees, and all members in between, to discuss issues and concerns over time in higher education ranging from teaching and learning in specific courses, to pedagogical challenges of engagement to political struggles in and about higher education.

The retreat will be on May 18-20, 2018. More information about the dates and location can be found at the FACET website. Also, please consider facilitating a session. For those interested in facilitating a session, you can find the form here.  

Orlando, J. (2017). What research tells us about online discussion. Magna Publications. Retrieved February 19 from https://goo.gl/JvvQmd.

Creating fruitful online discussions requires more than simply posing a question in Canvas. This article offers suggestions for maximizing the benefits of online discussions.