CTL Happenings - Message #509

The E.C. Moore Symposium on Excellence in Teaching and Learning will be held online on Friday, March 5, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. This year's Symposium will feature a keynote address on the role of "instructor talk" in promoting equity by Dr. Kimberly Tanner, Professor of Biology at San Francisco State University. Dr. Elizabeth Goering, Professor of Communication Studies at IUPUI will deliver a plenary addressing how metaphor and story can be used as active learning tools. View the full schedule on the E.C. Moore website and register today.

Elaine Seymour presents a selection of her research team’s findings from their multi-methods, 5-year study reported in Talking about Leaving Revisited: Persistence Relocation and Loss in Undergraduate STEM Education  (2019, Eds. Seymour and Hunter, Springer). She focuses on what contributors to student losses from STEM majors have and have not changed since the original 1997 (Seymour & Hewitt) study and what new contributors to loss have emerged. She presents the team’s new evidence on why particular student groups are most at risk and what factors contribute most to their persistence difficulties.

This event, held Tuesday, March 23, 2021 from 12 noon - 1:00 p.m., is sponsored by STEM Education Innovation & Research Institute and the Center for Teaching and Learning.  Click here to register  or for more information.

Speed Dating with Learning Technologies
Speed Dating with Learning Technologies is exactly what it sounds like—a matchmaking event that encourages participants to "date" a range of potential tools and services, gaining exposure to a lot of resources within a short period of time. UITS Learning Technologies is taking this event virtual!  For spring 2021, UITS Learning Technologies will host four themed sessions via Zoom: (1) STEM, (2) Health, Education, and Welfare, (3) Business, Law, and Public Affairs, and (4) Arts, Humanities, Language & Culture. Click here for more information and to register for an upcoming session, 

Call for proposals: Teach, Play, Learn 
Teach, Play, Learn (TPL) is IU's annual conference on game-based teaching and learning. This year's presentations will focus on real-life usage, empirical studies, and theoretical discussions. We're particularly interested in interactive workshops involving best practices for teaching with games or playful elements in the classroom.
Possible topics include:
• Board, card, or video games for educational purposes
• Gamification of the course
• Simulations and role playing
• Augmented and/or virtual reality (AR and/or VR)
• Study and research of games in the context of education
Proposals are due 11:59 p.m., Sun., March 28. For more details, visit the TPL website and be sure to save the date, June 25, 2021 for the conference!

Documenting a teaching practice becomes much easier if the faculty member can situate the teaching practice amidst best practices, identifying when and how student learning occurs, and identify the kinds of evidence needed to document and measure student learning outcomes. This webinar helps faculty describe learning events for two major categories of student learning experiences. Webinar participants will take first steps to articulating a sequence of learning events for particular assignments. Afterward, faculty members may work with CTL consultants to continue planning efforts to document teaching practices. This webinar is the 2nd webinar in a 3-webinar series designed to introduce faculty and graduate students to the process of creating, refining and documenting one’s teaching practices.

Creating accessible course materials is critical to support all students, particularly those with visual or audio impairments. In this webinar, participants will be introduced to tools, resources, and best practices for developing accessible course materials. This webinar is part of the Center for Teaching and Learning’s online mini-workshop series focused on foundational teaching skills, Teaching@IUPUI. Designed for new faculty, adjunct faculty, graduate students, and those looking for a refresher on good teaching practices,

Piazza is an online collaboration platform that facilitates interaction among students and instructors in an efficient and intuitive manner, helping students who are stuck on homework problems work through them with the help of their classmates, TAs, and professors. 

Some features include:

• Wiki-style formatting enables collaboration in a single space
• Anonymous posting encourages every student, even the shyest, to participate
• Instructors endorse student answers to keep the class on track
• Features a LaTeX editor, highlighted syntax and code blocking 
• Detailed statistics to help track student engagement

This webinar is also offered on Friday, March 19, 10:00 - 11:00 a.m.

This session introduces faculty and graduate students to the practice 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 many kinds of documents that include—but do not rely on—student evaluations of teaching. This webinar is the 3rd webinar in a 3-webinar series designed to introduce faculty and graduate students to the process of creating, refining and documenting one’s teaching practices.

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.

Students who have a growth mindset view intelligence as malleable while those with a fixed mindset view intelligence as finite. Students can grow with persistence and effort, but having a growth mindset underlies these behaviors. This, in turn, is dependent on the instructor’s mindset as well. In this webinar, participants will be introduced to the differences between growth and fixed mindset theories of intelligence and discuss activities they can incorporate into their classes to foster growth mindset. They will also reflect upon their current teaching practices that align with growth mindset and identify new activities.

New CTL Offering – The CHAT Room: Conversations Happening Around Teaching is a virtual, informal space where faculty can gather to discuss timely topics related to teaching. There will be a different topic each month, offered two days/times in order to make it possible for more faculty to participate. Each one-hour CHAT Room discussion will have a faculty facilitator and a CTL host. At the beginning of the session, the host introduces the topic and the facilitator, who then talks briefly about the topic and facilitates open discussion for the remainder of the  hour. The room will open 10-15 minutes early for people to socialize. Following the facilitated discussion, a CTL host will direct the participants to resources pertaining to the topic. The series began the first week of January 2021. The discussions are scheduled for the first week of each month on Tuesdays, 10:30-11:30 a.m. and Wednesdays, 1:30-2:30 p.m. 

The April topic for discussion is How do my blind spots impact my teaching?  The CTL host will be Jessica Alexander.

This session will repeat on Wednesday, April 7.

Join CIRTL at IUPUI to Build Your Resume and More.....

Presenters from across the country share their expertise on teaching and learning topics to prepare graduate students and postdocs for future faculty careers. Sign up for a free CIRTL network account to participate in CIRTL cross-network in Spring 2021 workshops, courses, and events. CIRTL events and programs provide you the opportunity to network and build connections with graduate students, postdocs, and faculty across the CIRTL network, which currently has over 41 member institutions from the US and Canada, including IUPUI.

CIRTL Open House

Are you a graduate student or a postdoc who is looking for ways to enhance your resume through teaching development, engage with diverse groups, develop communication skills, or grow your network within IUPUI and beyond? Join us, Wednesday, March 17 for the virtual CIRTL Open House to speed date your way through CIRTL and discover why this professional development program is the perfect match for you!

Workshop Series on Exploring and Unpacking Post PhD Career Possibilities

This four-part series helps mid/later-stage graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to articulate and build on professional skills acquired outside of “usual” classroom-related skills taught in CIRTL programs. Participants will develop enhanced self-awareness and agency with respect to employability by: identifying skills and competencies developed in many aspects of your experiences; determining areas for additional development; and developing awareness of possible post-PhD career paths. Learn more and register.

Teach Talk: Herron Faculty Crossing Resident, Lowell Hildebrandt
Title: Creative Learning in the Pandemic Era
Date:   March 12, 2021, 10:00 – 11:00 a.m.

Description: As an illustration instructor who relies on one-on-one interaction
with students and improvisational teaching methods, the virtual
classroom posed many challenges-- as I'm sure it has for most
educators. I chose to see this situation as an opportunity to seek out
new teaching strategies, uniquely suited to this environment. I've
discovered a few pedagogical techniques that are so useful, I plan to
employ them even after long-distance learning is no longer required. I
will be sharing these discoveries, in the hopes that instructors in
other fields may find them useful.

Lowell Hildebrandt’s drawing with paint tutorial video 

Participate in Our Writing Groups

Each semester, the Faculty Forum offers writing groups that provide encouragement, accountability, and a sense of community for faculty and staff. There are three ways to participate: Hybrid Writing Group, Online Writing Group and At your pace.    Click here for more information and registration or contact us at: faccross@iupui.edu. 

OLC Innovate: Free virtual conference open to all IU faculty and staff

Join your colleagues across IU to help shape the future of online education by attending the OLC Innovate 2021 virtual conference, held March 15 – 19, 2021. OLC Innovate 2021 will feature live-streamed and on-demand recordings, as well as keynote sessions, featured sessions, education sessions, and industry showcases. Topics will include teaching and learning practices, effective tools and technologies, online learning research, and much more. Check out the general program and list of sessions for full details. To sign up for the conference, follow the instruction here.

The Institute for Engaged Learning is working with Rachel Wheeler, an Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of Pathway Programs in SLA, to collect teaching resources that faculty can use to create more active, engaged learning opportunities and experiences for students, and consolidate these resources into an IU Pressbook, organized by types of resources and assignments.

There is a wealth of material out there both through various IUPUI centers and offices, and beyond on the web, but it can be difficult for faculty to find what they are looking for. The Pressbook will be organized to facilitate quick access to the resources that fit the instructor's needs. Please consider contributing to the Pressbook: If you have something to submit, or a request for a type of resource you are seeking, please take 10 minutes to fill out this Google Form: http://tinyurl.com/129s9xny.  If you have any questions, please contact us via email, iel@iupui.edu.

World101 is a growing library of free multimedia resources that provide an immersive learning experience in a variety of settings. IUPUI is using World101 in curricular and co-curricular activities as an internationalization and global learning strategy. Through its entertaining, interactive story-telling, World101 makes complex international relations and foreign policy issues accessible to learners both inside and outside formal academic settings. Click to learn more about World101.

SAVI Talks: Economic Opportunity, Social Mobility, and Race 

On Thursday, March 25, from 9:30-11:00 a.m. we will present the first of a series of public forums taking a deeper dive into the issues of economic opportunity, equity, and social justice, an expansion of the partnership between The Polis Center, SAVI and WFYI. We will focus on economic opportunity and social mobility and how that varies by neighborhood and race. We will highlight the history of redlining and home ownership and how that still limits economic prosperity. We will also explore childhood roots of social mobility, and more. Register today  for this online presentation! 

SAVI Equity Data & Information Hub 

The Polis Center is working on a SAVI Equity Data and Information Hub, and we seek your input on which priorities, topics, and content we should focus as we build it. What inequities keep you awake at night?  What type of data and information do you feel is not being generated or shared publicly that would help shed light on inequities? Please send your suggestions to Sharon Kandris.

Digital Encyclopedia of Indianapolis 

The Polis Center at IUPUI—in collaboration with The Indianapolis Public Library and several major Indianapolis cultural and heritage institutions and organizations—is developing a bicentennial legacy project: a digital version of the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis. Building on the 1994 print version, the free, web-based resource is expected to launch in early summer 2021. Click for more information or to Subscribe to its public newsletter  .

Upcoming SAVI Data Literacy Skills Training:  SAVI data literacy training empowers you to find, use, and understand data. Classes are as follows:

• Avoid Data Pitfalls  | March 11, 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. - Register
• Find Meaning in Data | March 18, 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. – Register
• Tell Stories with Data  | March 24, 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. - Register
• Frame the Problem | April 8, 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. - Register

Savini, C. (2021, January 27). 10 Ways to tackle linguistic bias in our classrooms. Inside Higher Education.

Prejudices about how our students speak and write is an iss of equity and inclusion. Catherine Savini gives us 10 strategies to recognize and combat linguistic bias in our classrooms.