CTL Happenings - Message #402

If you are teaching this summer or want to get a head start with fall classes, CTL’s Teaching@IUPUI summer webinar series has a broad range of foundational teaching topics from which to choose. Webinars are from 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Click webinar title for information and registration.

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.

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 responsible for revising an existing asynchronous online course or creating a new one? (An asynchronous online course is one with little to no real-time interaction in any format)

Will you be teaching that course in the next two semesters?

If you answered "yes" to both of those questions, the Online Course Design and Development Bootcamp may be for you. The Bootcamp is an 8-week intensive, interactive online course running from May 15th through June 20^th. It provides

• a structured introduction to online course design theory, research, and practice, including visual design, accessibility, usability, and media use and development.
• weekly assignments where you will create of parts of your asynchronous online course and share them with facilitators and peers for feedback and discussion.
• the experience of being an online student in an interactive, asynchronous, online course.

Participants are expected to make active progress on their course development every week, spending 4-5 hours each week on Bootcamp work. By the end of the 8 weeks you should have your course structure, student orientation, syllabus, and 1-2 weeks of your course assignments, instruction, and content completed in a Canvas course site plus a clear plan for completing your course development.

Participants who successfully complete the Bootcamp will earn a Designing an Online Course badge from the IUPUI Center for Teaching and Learning.

For more information and to register, please visit the Online Course Design and Development Bootcamp event on the CTL Website.

This session provides TILT Pilot participants with an opportunity to receive feedback on assignments you have or will revise to implement in either summer or fall 2018. Please bring three copies of your assignment(s) to the session. More information about the Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (TILT Higher Ed) project is available here.

Getting students to come to class prepared can be a challenge, but it is essential to making productive use of class time. Learning increases when students prepare for class meetings and, in turn, helps students see the value of assuming responsibility for their learning. This session will introduce instructional strategies to guide students’ pre-class learning, making explicit the relevance pre-class work and its assessment to student learning outcomes.

Assumed to be a basic teaching strategy, effective lecturing could still prove to be a difficult skill to master. Develop and delivering lectures with student needs in mind, however, can help to increase student engagement and content retention. This online mini-workshop will offer ideas and considerations for creating lectures that help students achieve learning goals, with time for questions and discussion.

Metacognition refers to how learners think about and monitor their own knowledge, a process which has been shown to improve students’ learning. Metacognitive skills involve assessing the demands of a task, evaluating one’s own knowledge and skills, planning an approach, monitoring one’s progress, and adjusting strategies as needed to complete the task. Participants will learn how to blend metacognitive skill instruction with content instruction by using strategies such as instructor modeling of reflection, student self-reflection, visual organizers, formative assessments, and more.

To promote faculty productivity and well-being, the Forum will facilitate online writing groups in summer 2018. These writing groups provide encouragement, accountability, and a sense of community while requiring a minimal investment of time. The Forum’s writing groups do not offer feedback on what you write. Instead, they provide a structure that supports regular writing.

The summer 2018 writing group will run from May 14^th to July 30^th. Please sign up by May 12^th. Membership is open to IUPUI and IUPUC faculty of all ranks, appointments, and disciplines. This summer, join a writing group and take charge of your time!

Click here for more information and to join a group 

Click here to send questions to the Forum.

What is the Forum? The Forum at IUPUI is a new organization that supports faculty collaboration and creativity. Its mission is to foster community among instructors, create coherence across resources, and support development for faculty of all ranks and appointments. Find out more here.

Sign up now for Teach, Play, Learn, Indiana University's inaugural academic conference on game-based teaching and learning!

Born from IU's interest in games as effective tools for teaching, the conference goals include:

• Highlighting changing technologies and pedagogies in educational games and playful learning
• Demonstrating benefits of using games in the classroom
• Showcasing practical solutions for creating and using games in education

The conference keynote speaker is Sarah Smith-Robbins, IU's director of emerging technologies for Kelley Executive Partners and a nationally-recognized expert in social media and its application to education.

When: Friday, June 22, 8:00 a.m.- 4:00 p.m.

Where: IU South Bend, Education and Arts building

Register and view schedule here. 

ISETL encourages college and university faculty and practitioners from all disciplines to develop, study, and apply learner-centered principles of teaching, learning, and assessment in innovative, yet effective and practical ways. They invite proposals for 50-minute presentations - interactive teaching sessions, academic research sessions, round-tables or poster sessions - that reflect these goals.  They are especially interested in presentations that demonstrate practical and creative teaching and learning techniques based on personal experiences and/or research that will appeal to colleagues in a wide variety of disciplines. Proposals are due May 15, 2018. 

The annual conference of the International Society for Exploring Teaching and Learning will be held October 10-13, 2018, in Tempe, AZ. Click here for registration 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.  

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.

Kropp, E. (2018, April 20). Using your instructor bio to humanize course, reduce student anxiety. Magna Publications. Retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/y82ebmwa

Becoming acquainted with new courses and new faculty members can be a stressful, anxiety producing experience for students. In this article, Dr. Evan Kropp discusses how faculty can leverage the "about me" section of their course site to make the course more approachable and reduce student anxiety which is of particular importance in fully online courses where students never meet their instructor face-to-face.