CTL Happenings - Message #510

The 2021 Plater Institute on the Future of Learning will focus on fostering antiracism in the classroom. The institute will bring together experts who will share strategies and resources on antiracist policies and pedagogies for the university community. Dr. Tambra Jackson, Interim Dean of the IU School of Education at IUPU will give the keynote address. For more information and to register, visit the Plater website.

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.

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.

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 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.

The CHAT Room: Conversations Happening Around Teaching is a virtual, informal space where faculty can gather to discuss timely topics related to teaching. The April topic for discussion is How do my blind spots impact my teaching?  The CTL host will be Jessica Alexander.

This session will be repeated on Wednesday, April 7.

This webinar introduces faculty and staff to the essential elements and design of a virtual exchange experience. Virtual exchange is a pedagogical approach that enables collaborations among students with peers in other countries through online technologies. Members of the Virtual Exchange Community of Practice will share practical tips for designing successful virtual exchange experiences in a variety of course modalities across a range of disciplines, including business, computer science and technology, health, and social sciences. Attendees will learn how to find partners and design icebreaker activities, interactions, and assignments for virtual exchanges that cultivate global learning and intercultural learning among students and provide benefits for faculty as well.

Transparent assignment designs have been proven to motivate increased student effort and to promote student success. Clarification and elaboration of an assignments’ purpose, task, and grading criteria works to scaffold student learning activities. Doing so helps all students, but especially students from underserved populations and students who are unfamiliar with college success strategies. In this webinar, participants will be introduced to the transparent design framework, analyze sample transparent assignments, and will begin drafting or revising a transparent assignment.

This webinar will provide an overview of the general education course review process, course dossier requirements, and the rubric that will be used to review the course dossiers. It will also address the option for preparing a simplified course dossier based on using a Mile Marker assignment.

Grad students and Postdocs:

Preparing and Delivering a Teaching Demonstration, March 18, 2 p.m. - In this webinar presented by a faculty panel you will learn about a framework for planning a teaching demonstration considering institutional and pedagogical contexts, including the situational factors such as the pandemic. 

Making the Most of Guest Lecturing Experiences,  March 22, 1 p.m.- This session will address strategies for being successful guest lecturer and present the experiences of a guest lecturer in a health science discipline.

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.

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. 

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:

• 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

Cavanaugh, S.R. (2021, February 9). How to Play in the College Classroom in a Pandemic, and Why You Should. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Link requires IU network ID.

Now, more than ever, we need to find pedagogically sound ways to help students let off steam and reengage in course content refreshed and renewed. Sarah Rose Cavanaugh walks us through seven ways we can bring play into the college classroom despite, and perhaps even because of, the pandemic.