2017 Teaching, Research & Technology Workshops Session Description Archive
Session Dates
Wednesday, August 16
101: Introduction to WordPress
David Rose (CTRL)
Learn how WordPress can allow you to manage and maintain your online content through your very own public website or blog. Blogging can help engage students, facilitate discussions out of the classroom, and foster interest in your subject well after the semester is over. In this workshop, we will look at exciting examples of successful WordPress sites, discuss how to use blogs in the classroom, and provide tools to get started. If you’re interested in building your own website for a course or research purposes, then this is the workshop for you!
102: Real-Time Interactive Participation through Polling
Amanda Miller (CTRL)
Phones and computers have become a ubiquitous facet of our lives. In this session, learn how to transform them from an obstacle to learning to a great tool for teaching. While all three tools increase engagement, one does not require students to use technology-even if you are wary of student technology in the classroom, there is an option for you! These tools are easy to implement with customizable options that give you the ability to tailor each quiz, survey, or poll to your individual class’ needs. In this workshop, you will learn tools which evaluate understanding, ensure students have a voice, and keep students energized and on their toes.
201: Introduction to Blackboard
Scott Vanek (Library)
This workshop will explore how to set up a course in Blackboard, and will cover the features that are most commonly used, including adding items, assignments, discussions, and other features. We will also explore how to customize the menus and tools that faculty and students will most routinely use.
202: Tools and Tips for Visualizing Data in the Classroom
Ben Dempe (CTRL)
Ever feel like you are stuck in a rut of Excel bar charts? New tools in data visualization allow students to interact and explore beautiful data visualizations all at the click of a button. This session will cover several basic tools, such as Raw Graphs, Plotly, and Tableau that will help you create stunning data visualizations. You will walk away from this session able to quickly generate data that will engage students and bring them into the conversation.
301: Streamlining your Course with Google Apps
Emily Crawford (CTRL)
In this session, we will look at how Google apps can be used to streamline your teaching and course management, focusing particularly on Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Calendar. These tools allow you to create, share, and edit documents and spreadsheets for seamless collaboration, and share events such as assignment deadlines on a group calendar. You will leave the session understanding these apps and the benefits of their use in a course and able to create, share, and collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, and calendars. All AU students have Google accounts by default, and their learning curve will hence not be very steep.
302: Teaching with Qualitative Research and Data: Success Stories
Bill Harder (CTRL), Aaron Boesenecker (SIS) & Dick Bennett (SPA-JLC)
Working with real-world data can often be intimidating for students. This panel features insights from faculty who have their students collect and analyze original qualitative data in their courses. Students in these classes work with a variety of data types including: interviews, focus groups, surveys, archival documents, text, video, and social media data. Panelists will share their experiences and discuss how to effectively integrate these research projects into courses, the choice between individual projects and a single class-wide project, training students on the use of research software like Qualtrics and NVivo, and lessons they have learned from their own experience.
Open Lab for Practicing New Skills
CTRL Staff
Sit down and try out some of the technology tools you have learned about with direct access to our technology trainers.
401: Recording Your Lectures with Kaltura CaptureSpace
Katie Kassof (Library)
This session introduces you to Kaltura, AU’s media management solution, as well as prepares you to use the new Kaltura CaptureSpace software to record your classes, mini-lectures, student presentations, and more. Not only will you learn the technical aspects of the software, but also how to integrate this technology into your class effectively, which situations will work best for capture, and how to use it as a teaching tool rather than a record keeper. Please bring your own laptop for this session.
402: Faculty Tell All: Teaching Online @ AU
Joy Adams (Library), Bill Harder (CTRL), David Rose (CTRL), Andrea Carpenter (KSB), Adele Doperalski (CAS-BIO) & Michele Lansigan (CAS-CHEM)
The Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning, in collaboration with eLearning Support, offers a training course for faculty teaching online at AU. Facilitators will provide a snapshot of the course and its objectives, and recent participants will share success stories, providing ideas and inspiration for faculty considering teaching online, hybrid, or web-enhanced courses. Attendees will gain an appreciation for this rapidly growing segment of teaching and learning, and have an opportunity to ask questions and discover best practices that can enhance their instructional effectiveness and technical skills.
Open Lab for Practicing New Skills
CTRL Staff
Sit down and try out some of the technology tools you have learned about with direct access to our technology trainers.
Thursday, August 17
501: Effective and Efficient Grading Strategies
Rose Shinko (SIS) & Lacey Wootton (CAS-LIT)
Those stacks of student papers can be daunting, and even writing faculty sometimes dread tackling them. And yet, student writing is at the heart of the student-teacher relationship. In this conversation, we’ll discuss strategies for responding effectively and efficiently to assess student work and foster student learning. Participants should come away with ideas for varying response types and developing a response framework that reflects their desired outcomes for the assignment. Participants should bring a writing assignment that they’ve used in the past or plan to use this fall.
502: Open American: Open Educational Resources @ AU
David Rose (CTRL), John A. Willoughby (CAS-ECON), Stef Woods (CAS-Critical Race, Gender and Culture Studies) & Sorángel Rodríguez-Velázquez (CAS-CHEM)
Open Educational Resources (OERs) provide benefits for professors and students via increased academic freedom, availability of materials to all students on day one, and cost savings for students. Since 2015, faculty at AU have been redesigning courses to replace commercial textbooks with OERs, saving students approximately $227,700 in new textbook expenditures to date through CTRL’s OER Course Redesign Grants. Faculty panelists will share their experiences redesigning courses to use OERs, including the impetus for change, the process in which each of them engaged, and student responses to redesigned courses.
503: Tips on Effective Use of Data Visualization in Your Research
Assen Assenov (CTRL), Angel Bogushev (CTRL) & Bill Harder (CTRL)
This session will explore strategies for visualizing various types of qualitative and quantitative data. We will focus on best practices for presenting figures in scientific papers and demonstrate examples of effective data visualization using relevant software applications. We will discuss exploring data to search for patterns and insights to conceptualize the information and visualize the story it tells. We will also evaluate what makes a “good” data visualization. In the hands-on part of the session, we will create visualizations of both quantitative and qualitative data.
601: You Gon’ Be Alright Teaching We Gon’ Be Alright
Amanda Choutka (CAS-WSP), Adam Tamashasky (CAS-WSP) & Sarah Trembath (CAS-WSP)
Join a discussion on the book our incoming first-year students are reading this summer: Jeff Chang’s We Gon’ Be Alright. The book, which is this year’s Writer as Witness text, is a study of what the author calls the era of racial “re-segregation.” It is rich in youth-culture allusions and tech referents and will engage our students’ imaginations. It also brings to the surface some of the most profoundly problematic race-class issues of both this era and our campus. As such, teachers would do well to familiarize themselves with the referents and keep basic tenets of antiracist pedagogy and civil discourse in mind. In addition to discussing the book, Writing Studies Program teachers will share their experiences of having taught the book this summer and facilitate a discussion on best practices of introducing it into the classroom.
602: Leveraging Your Teaching and Research with Smartphone Filmmaking and Photography
Larry Engel (SOC)
Bring your smartphones! Bring your tablets! Learn how to make high-quality videos and photographs with your mobile devices. Today’s smartphones carry with them excellent lenses and high-resolution video, and you will learn how to make the most of them. We’ll also look at apps and hardware that further improve your video and sound. As more and more of our scholarly work is accompanied by media, and as we use social media for communication about it, becoming more literate in media acquisition and editing are important skills. You’ll also be able to help your students improve their capacity when creating media projects in the classroom.
603: Advanced Blackboard
Scott Vanek (Library)
This is a quick-paced workshop that is designed for experienced Blackboard users who want to learn about the more advanced features within Blackboard. We will explore the grade center in depth, as well as how to create and grade with rubrics, setting up course alignments (goals), and using adaptive release. This workshop is designed to take your Blackboard skills to the next level.
Lunch with Presentation: Who are the AU Undergraduate Students? Implications for Teaching and Learning
Fanta Aw (Interim Vice President of Campus Life), Traci Callandrillo (Director, Counseling Center) and Andrea Malkin Brenner (CAS-SOC and Director, American University Experience)
This luncheon will provide the latest data on the profile of AU undergraduate students with an emphasis on first year students. The session will discuss trends in holistic student development and implications for teaching and learning.
701: Stress vs Distress: When Too Much is Too Much
Counseling Center Staff
It is no secret that college students have many stressful experiences. Many are able to manage with the resources that have always been available to them such as conversations with friends, a good yoga or run session, or engaging in a spiritual practice. However, sometimes the stress they experience affects their abilities to maintain a healthy level of functioning. This informative workshop can help us understand how we can support these students.
702: Library Resources and Services for Increasing Research Impact
Rachel Borchardt (Library), Stefan Kramer (Library) & Chris Lewis (Library)
Learn how to use library tools to increase your research impact by helping you make strategic publication decisions, maximizing the discoverability and accessibility of your research, and metrics and strategies for demonstrating research impact. Covered topics will include open access, AU’s institutional repository, AUDRA, DOIs, increasing discoverability of research data, ORCID, impact factor and related metrics, and emerging metrics or ‘altmetrics’. This workshop is especially useful for any faculty preparing a file for action, particularly pre-tenure faculty, as well as any researcher early in their research career. Questions and discussion will be highly encouraged.
703: Real-Time Interactive Participation through Polling
Amanda Miller (CTRL)
Phones and computers have become a ubiquitous facet of our lives. In this session, learn how to transform them from an obstacle to learning to a great tool for teaching. While all three tools increase engagement, one does not require students to use technology-even if you are wary of student technology in the classroom, there is an option for you! These tools are easy to implement with customizable options that give you the ability to tailor each quiz, survey, or poll to your individual class’ needs. In this workshop, you will learn tools which evaluate understanding, ensure students have a voice, and keep students energized and on their toes.
801: Inclusive Pedagogy: Teaching English Language Learners
Lauren Sinclair (International Accelerator Program) (Facilitator), Kaitlyn Belloli (SPExS), Paul Bisagni (CAS-LIT), Shenandoah Sowash (KSB-MGMT), Emine DeLaitsch (CAS-LIT) & Behzad Jalali (CAS-MATH)
Increasing international student populations on campus presents specific opportunities and challenges in the classroom. This session will leverage practitioners’ expertise and experience in cultivating inclusive and equitable teaching practice for internationalizing classrooms. Participants will learn research-based strategies for supporting ELLs in the classroom; positioning them for learning gains and long-term success at the university; and leveraging their unique perspectives to maximize culturally rich learning environments. Specific topics covered include: classroom participation; grammar feedback in writing; academic integrity; and listening comprehension. Participants are encouraged to bring syllabi, assignments, and other materials for workshop-style breakout groups.
802: AU Is Still In – Are You? #ASustainableU
Megan Litke (Office of Sustainability) and Anna Olsson (CTRL)
AU’s new President Sylvia Burrell promptly signed onto the “We Are Still In” pledge to continue the U.S. commitment to ambitiously address climate change in lieu of U.S. federal support of the Paris Climate Accord. Join us for an interactive conversation about ways in which you can make a difference, by incorporating sustainability topics into your curriculum, and/or by committing to teach sustainably by becoming a Certified Green Teacher. This session is the kick-off for a year-long effort to encourage more action on our campus to fighting climate change at the grassroots level. Faculty from all disciplines are invited and encouraged to attend.
803: Boosting Class Participation with Social Media
Emily Crawford (CTRL)
Want to supplement class participation and communication with online interaction? Leverage students’ social media savvy for learning by using the platforms that many are already on – like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn – in your course. In this session, we will go over general strategies and best practices for facilitating student learning by using social media and explore the pros and cons of these three extremely popular platforms. You’ll learn how to determine which platform is right for your class and how to set-up, manage, and moderate multimedia discussion forums, live chat sessions, and more using these tools.
Wednesday, August 23
901: Course Policies: Best Practices and Realities
Betsy Cohn (SIS)
This workshop will address course policies such as: laptops and other electronic devices; late assignments; attendance; participation; office hours; group work; extra credit; and resubmission of graded coursework. While there is no one answer to what the best course policies are, we will examine faculty motivation behind course policies so that you can choose what is right for you.
902: The Universal Classroom: Designing Your Course for Diverse Learners
Joy Adams (Library), Marianne Huger Thomson (ASAC) & Lara Schwartz (SPA-GOVT)
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an instructional approach that promotes inclusion and engagement among all students, regardless of learning style, language background, or ability. Building flexibility, options, and alternate formats into your course design proactively addresses a variety of needs and tailors the learning experience to help students achieve self-identified goals and course learning outcomes. In this session, we will introduce the three principles of UDL, provide opportunities for brainstorming, and demonstrate simple ways you can begin implementing UDL in your face-to-face, online, or hybrid courses. We encourage you to bring a course syllabus to provide authentic examples for discussion.
903: Tools and Tips for Visualizing Data in the Classroom
Ben Dempe (CTRL)
Ever feel like you are stuck in a rut of Excel bar charts? New tools in data visualization allow students to interact and explore beautiful data visualizations all at the click of a button. This session will cover several basic tools, such as Raw Graphs, Plotly, and Tableau that will help you create stunning data visualizations. You will walk away from this session able to quickly generate data that will engage students and bring them into the conversation.
1001: The Modern Syllabus: Designing an Engaging Course Plan
Aaron Boesenecker (SIS), Sarah Irvine Belson (SOE), Kim Llerena (SOC) & David Vine (CAS-ANTH)
This interactive session is designed to help faculty consider how to construct a syllabus that provides a pathway to challenge students with rich content while providing a clear pathway to reaching course goals. Faculty will have the opportunity to discuss key issues in instructional design, consider how to coordinate syllabi for multiple sessions, discuss what to keep in mind when designing syllabi for first-year students, and consider the importance of including diverse perspectives in course content.
1002: Making Your Course a Space for Tough Conversations
Chana Barron (SPA-JLC) & Lara Schwartz (SPA-GOVT)
Our students often report that they are uncomfortable with class discussions about tough issues such as race, class, gender, and sexuality. Many factors contribute: their sense that their peers don’t understand or respect them; concern that faculty will disagree with them; or belief that faculty are biased or unwilling to ensure a fair and respectful dialogue. Faculty may struggle to promote respect while maintaining political and ideological neutrality. In this session, students will share their perspective on classroom climate with a particular focus on methods that can improve or impede productive conversations. We will then lead a moderated discussion of effective ways to make our courses a space to have important conversations about tough issues.
1003: Efficiently Using CTRL’s Quantitative Resources for Your Research and Teaching
Assen Assenov (CTRL), Angel Bogushev (CTRL) & Bill Harder (CTRL)
CTRL offers tailored support for incorporating quantitative software applications into your teaching and research. This session features a practical demonstration of research software interfaces and a comparative presentation regarding their strengths. We will also discuss with you the ways in which: (1) CTRL can offer support for your research and teaching, and learn from current faculty who have utilized our resources and incorporated them in their teaching and research; and (2) You can get insights about the best strategies to integrate the research software in your syllabus and implement the most interactive and practical ways for learning research software skills.
CTRL Faculty Awardee Presentation Luncheon
Andrew Spath (SIS), Maina Singh (SIS), Tricia Bacon (SPA-JLC) & Cindy Bair Van Dam (CAS-LIT)
Professors Andrew Spath (SIS) and Maina Singh (SIS), the two winners of the 2017 Jack Child Teaching with Technology Award, will discuss how they incorporate technology into their teaching. Professor Tricia Bacon (SPA-JLC), the winner of the 2016 Teaching with Research Award, will discuss how she integrates research into her teaching. Professor Cindy Bair Van Dam (CAS-LIT), the winner of the 2016 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award, will discuss her work to develop the new AU Core Curriculum.
1101: Encouraging Discussion, Participation and Enthusiasm in Class
Chris Palmer (SOC)
To develop a vibrant, productive, and memorable course, professors must continually work on inspiring students to become enthusiastic and motivated learners. Such students are engaged, active participants in their own learning. This session will provide you with tips on how to inspire and engage your students at various stages of developing and teaching your class, from the syllabus design, to your classroom atmosphere and interactions, and beyond the classroom. By the end of the workshop, participants should have tangible ideas on how to engage their students.
1102: Introduction to Library Resources and Course Reserves
Sean Casey (Library), Donna Femenella (Library) & Shane Hickey (Library)
Participants will receive a basic introduction to library resources and services for faculty research and instruction. The session will provide an introduction to library tools such as the library website, catalog, major databases, as well as library services available to faculty. Participants will also learn how to use course reserves to make class materials available to their students. This session is particularly useful for incoming faculty, but anyone wanting to learn more about the library is welcome.
1103: Dynamic Media: The New Classroom Gold Standard, Explain Everything
Sarah Grace (CTRL)
Personalization and interactivity can transform any subject matter or course material. This workshop will introduce you to the easy, exciting technology you need to do just that. Bypassing conventional teaching tools like PowerPoint, traditional screen capture, and whiteboards, we will focus on shareable, interactive content you can narrate, animate, and individualize through dynamic media tool Explain Everything. Participants should bring their own iPad or tablet (or will be provided one), and will leave knowing how to quickly plan, execute, and integrate easy, engaging Explain Everything projects and interactive presentations into their own classroom routine.
1201: Making Good Use of the First Day of Class
Betsy Cohn (SIS)
This workshop will explore how you can set the tone for the course on the first day of class. Little things make a big difference. How do you introduce the syllabus? How do you have students introduce themselves? What do you ask on your student information sheet (if you have one)? If you have a block class that meets only once a week, how do you make use of the whole class period? Bring your ideas and questions, as this will be an interactive workshop.
1202: Using Mindfulness to Promote Well-Being and Effective Learning
Elissa Margolin (CAS-DHS)
Innovative tools are urgently needed to manage stress and improve well-being. Challenging current events on and off campus compound an already troubling mental health climate: In a 2015 study, 91% of AU students reported feeling overwhelmed, 68% very sad, and 55.9% overwhelmingly anxious. Students note academics as a primary source of stress; this workshop equips faculty with concrete tools for alleviating some of this burden. Gain hands-on experience with mindfulness techniques to enhance student engagement, improve well-being, and promote an optimal learning environment; discuss AU-based data as a call to action; and review evidence supporting the beneficial effects of mindfulness.
1203: Innovative Teaching with Blackboard Collaborate: Boosting Class Participation with Social Media
Scott Vanek (Library)
Using Collaborate, professors can talk with students, share applications, files and images, and record these sessions for future use. Please join us to learn how Collaborate can help you offer a remote review session or office hours, face a weather emergency, or teach a hybrid class. This workshop will walk you through the steps to launch your own “Live Classroom” in Blackboard, provide an overview of its uses, and hands-on practice with: starting sessions, uploading and managing content, using the White Board, application sharing, and providing feedback.
