CTL Happenings - Message #518

Do you know anyone who will be a new graduate teaching assistant (TA) in fall 2021 and/or spring 2022? Have them register for the 2021 TA Orientation, to learn about the expectations and responsibilities of their new position and develop strategies to confidently and effectively interact with faculty and undergraduate students in face-to-face and online classes. Click here for more information and registration details.

Would you like to learn about how the practice of curriculum mapping can help maintain your program’s accreditation or improve student learning outcomes? Curriculum mapping helps you gain greater clarity about what students are expected to learn in your program, and in which courses. Mapping makes visible the gaps and redundancies of your program’s curriculum, and is the first step to assessing your program’s effectiveness in bringing about student learning. Join us for this introductory webinar on curriculum mapping!

As you prepare for fall teaching, use this instructional guide to improve assignments by clarifying their purpose, task, and grading criteria. Click here to view resource.

Mark your calendar now! The CTL’s Advancing Teaching and Learning with Technology (ATLT) Symposium is Friday, November 5, 2021 from 10:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Zoom. The call for proposals will open the end of July and registration will open in August. Come and hear from your colleagues and our keynote speaker about using technology to support both students and instructors. Watch the CTL Happenings for more information!

The CTL's Learning Environments Grant (LEG) program offers up to $25,000 per award to create innovative, inclusive, and engaging settings for learning at IUPUI, IUPUC, and IU Fort Wayne. This year's funding will be limited to furniture-only projects.

Talk with your colleagues about spaces in your school that could be used to reinforce your curriculum and build community among students, faculty, and staff. Contact Douglas Jerolimov (djerolim@iupui.edu) at the CTL to discuss your ideas. See the LEG website for more information and to download the RFP.

Full proposals are due by October 1, 2021, but preliminary ideas mustbe submitted in a Capital Projects Request for Service form no later than August 1, 2021.

Faculty who seek to refine and promote their teaching efforts may document their work through the development of a teaching portfolio, a site where faculty engage in reflective practice to measure the effectiveness of, and to refine, their teaching practices. This webinar introduces faculty to the teaching portfolio and to the several interrelated tasks that yield the teaching portfolio's elements: developing a teaching philosophy, identifying specific teaching practices to explore, document, and to improve, situating an identified teaching practices in an appropriate context, and collecting and evaluating evidence of teaching and learning.

Two Small Teaching Online (or anywhere) Faculty Learning Communities (FLC)  will be held this summer.  The goals of the FLC are to strengthen community among teaching colleagues, increase confidence and skill in applying online and general teaching strategies, and provide an opportunity to document professional development in teaching. Flower Darby’s book, Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes will serve as a guide to generate reflection and discussion. Each FLC will be capped at 10 participants. All participants will receive a free copy of the book.

Collaborative learning is associated with higher academic achievement and student engagement, in both in-person and online learning environments, and has been found to have a positive impact on a wide variety of students.  In this webinar, participants will examine challenges faced by students and faculty in using collaborative techniques, learn about best practices to overcome these challenges, and discuss examples for implementing and assessing collaborative learning techniques for the online and in-person learning contexts. 

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. 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 Faculty Forum offers writing groups that provide encouragement, accountability, and a sense of community for faculty and staff. This summer, there is only one writing group that meets via Zoom on Tuesdays from 12:00 - 2:00 p.m. The writing sessions ends Tuesday, August 10. There are no hybrid or at your pace groups. Click here for more information and registration or contact us at: faccross@iupui.edu. 

The SEIRI seed grants program (SSG) is a competition that facilitates and supports STEM education innovation and research. SSG is an opportunity to facilitate and support STEM education innovation and research at IUPUI. The deadline for proposals is November 1, 2021 by 11:59 p.m. Click here for more information.

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

• Frame the Problem  | July 8, 10 a.m.  | Register
• Find Existing Data  |  July 8, 12:30 p.m. | Register

Lang, James M. (2020-2021). Distracted minds, Series in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Gaining and keeping students’ attention can be challenging but getting students to focus on instructional activities is critical for their learning. This series of articles focuses on distraction in the college classroom and what to do about it but also touches on what faculty members can do to improve their own focus on work.