CTL Happenings - Message #465

New graduate student teaching assistants (TA) for the 2019 - 2020 academic year are invited to participate in the 2019 IUPUI TA Orientation to learn more about their new position and develop strategies to confidently and effectively interact with faculty and undergraduate students. The in-person training session is scheduled for Thursday, August 22, 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and the online Canvas course will be available from August 1. Successful participation includes completing the in-person training and the online course. Click here for more information and registration details.

You are invited to the grand opening of the Faculty Crossing and CTL 2.0!  Part workroom, part café, the Faculty Crossing is a technology-rich collaboration space for faculty and teaching staff of all appointments. Featuring welcoming spaces and a virtual reality innovation center, CTL 2.0 offers opportunities for all instructors to practice, experiment, and play with various teaching and technology solutions.

Remarks by Executive Vice Chancellor Kathy Johnson, Senior Associate Vice Chancellor Margie Ferguson, and others will take place during the event.  RSVP by August 27, 2019.

Organized as a series of discussions, the Associate Faculty Teaching Forum offers an opportunity to join your colleagues from many departments to discuss and to explore approaches to commonly encountered teaching issues at IUPUI. 

Jay Gladden, Associate Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education, will give this year’s keynote address, "Importance of Faculty in Student Persistence and Success." The AFTF takes place Wednesday, September 18, 2019 from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. Food and coffee included. Click here for more information and registration details.

The ATLT Symposium brings the higher education community together to examine and showcase both existing, and emerging instructional technologies, and their pedagogical application across a variety of disciplines.

Our keynote speaker, Open Education Librarian Michelle Reed at the University of Texas Arlington, will share her perspective on OER in higher education.  We will also reprise our popular "technology playground" to provide some hands-on experience. Join us November 8, for the 2019 Advancing Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium.

Indiana University has developed an award-winning smartphone app to help students stay on top of their schoolwork in Canvas.  The app is called “Boost,” it is available for free to all IU students, and it integrates with Canvas to provide reminders about deadlines and other helpful notifications.  For more information, see https://kb.iu.edu/d/atud.

Faculty have access to so many teaching and learning technologies at IU, it can be overwhelming to figure out the right tool for the job. The Technology Tool Finder is here to help, providing faculty with a one-stop portal for IU-supported teaching and learning technologies. Search for tools by category and learn how colleagues are using them. Access Tool Finder at toolfinder.iu.edu.

As IUPUI continues 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, course portfolio requirements, and the rubric that will be used to review the course portfolios. It will also introduce a new option for preparing a simplified course portfolio based on using a Mile Marker assignment. Examples from existing course portfolios will be incorporated into the workshop. Questions and discussion will be encouraged.

This workshop is being offered in two formats: in person and online.  When you register, you will be prompted to choose how you would like to attend.  It is also offered again on September 5, 2019 at 10 a.m.  

A syllabus is often the first impression that students form of a course, and it serves both faculty and student as a guide to and contract for the semester. A well-designed and personalized syllabus can help faculty set the proper tone while simultaneously helping them avoid having to repeatedly answer basic student questions about expectations, policies, and deadlines. By examining syllabi from various disciplines, this webinar will offer tips and considerations for effective syllabus design, show example syllabi, and include time for questions and discussion.

In this webinar, offered by the Centers for Teaching & Learning, we will explore and discuss the structure of Canvas, IU’s learning management system. The presentation will give instructors an understanding of the interactivity of Canvas tools and how that influences the way courses are set up.  You will learn how to

• share your syllabus
• create and grade assignments 
• communicate with your students
• get to know your students
• effectively use Canvas for teaching

Are you new to teaching at IU? Join this webinar to learn about the instructional technologies that can help you get the semester off to a good start.

You will learn how to:

• Share content with students
• Get to know your students
• Teach students about academic integrity
• Collect feedback from students
• Follow up with students who may be at risk
• Stay informed of instructional technology developments at IU

This event aligns with the following IUSM Academy of Teaching Scholars program competencies: Instructional Technology (IT).

Are your students coming prepared to class? Would you like to know how well they are comprehending the course readings? Accountability is key in active learning and flipped classrooms. In this webinar, Top Hat trainers will demonstrate how Top Hat Classroom and Assignments can be leveraged to help ensure your students arrive prepared for face-to-face meetings. Instructors from all IU campuses are invited to participate in this webinar.

Top Hat is a student response system and comprehensive teaching platform that instructors can use to engage students both within and outside of the classroom with interactive slides, graded questions, customized content, videos, discussions, and polls. Students use smartphones, tablets, laptops, or ordinary cell phones to participate in Top Hat activities.

How and when should you address disruptive student behaviors? Disruptive student behaviors are those behaviors which impede learning and teaching, and have the potential to escalate or spread if left unchecked. This webinar will present examples of disruptive student behaviors and participants will engage in discussions about how to prevent and manage such common disruptions in both the face-to-face and online teaching contexts.

Are you interested in having online office hours? Holding class while you are out of town? Inviting a guest speaker from anywhere in the world? Have students record their group meetings or dialogues? Zoom might be just the tool for you. IU faculty, staff, and students can use Zoom, a video conferencing and online collaboration tool, to host meetings that anyone can join. In this workshop, we will learn how users access their account, schedule, manage and record meetings, as well as how to use Zoom as an effective conferencing tool. 

The Polis Center at IUPUI is offering a series of free workshops to build data literacy skills and use the SAVI community information system as a resource. SAVI Training is a hands-on curriculum focused on data literacy from end to end. It features four groups of modules that teach one to ask the right questions, find the right data, find meaning in the data, and then use the data to make and communicate decisions.Workshops are offered every other week.

• Avoid Data Pitfalls |  August 8, 9-11 a.m. - Register
• Find Meaning in the Data |  August 22, 8:30-11:30 a.m. - Register
• Tell Stories with Data |  September 5, 9-11 a.m.  - Register

Thomas, B. (2019, August 5). Rethinking deadline and late penalty policies…again. Faculty Focus.

Course syllabus revisions often include changing grading and late submission policies based on faculty experiences in past semesters. In this article, an instructor shares her rationale and outcomes for the changes she made to her course policies to better reflect her teaching philosophy.