Fall 2024 Offerings
Click on the topic date or title to register. Topics will become available during the week of the semester indicated below.
Curriculum planning, also called curriculum development, can be defined as the step-by-step process used to create positive improvements in courses in order to improve the student learning experience. While there are different models of curriculum design, a thoughtful course plan is essential to the success of any classroom—and any group of students. This course will take you through the steps of curriculum planning using a method known as Understanding by Design.
Active learning, also known as active or cognitive engagement, consists of any instructional strategy providing opportunities for students to engage in meaningful learning activities and think about what they are doing. Active learning requires students meaningfully talk and listen, write, read, and reflect on the content, ideas, issues, and concerns of an academic subject. This asynchronous course will provide a variety of active learning strategies ranging from simple to complex, and will explain how these strategies can also serve as classroom assessment techniques.
Instructional scaffolds, just as in construction scaffolds, are temporary support structures faculty put in place to assist students in accomplishing new tasks and concepts they could not typically achieve on their own. Ideally, this support would be specifically tailored to each student, but it can also be effective done with the entire group. Strong scaffolding not only helps students with course specific assignments but can also teach students valuable skills about completing work independently. This asynchronous course will provide a variety of instructional scaffolds and explain what is happening in the brain throughout the phases of learning.
Week 10 (October 28)
Building Rapport with Students
Rapport is what occurs when two people “click” –they connect, they interact well, they respond to each other favorably. Rapport usually occurs when two people are very much alike or have a lot in common. That’s one of the reasons it isn’t always easy for professors to establish rapport with students. This asynchronous course will explain the benefits of building rapport with students as well as a variety of ways to do so.
Week 13 (November 18)
Creating More Inclusive Classrooms
In an inclusive classroom, instructors and students work together to create a supportive and open environment fostering social justice and allowing individuals to be fully present and feel equally valued. Thus, inclusive andragogy (adult-focused teaching approach) is an intentional way of designing curricula and teaching with an equity lens, to create a learning environment that supports diverse students in their learning. This asynchronous course will provide basic principles every teacher can apply to foster more inclusive classrooms.
Week 14 (December 2)
Your Teaching Persona
Derived from your larger identity, your teaching persona, or teaching presence, embodies who are you when you teach. Identity relates to our basic values that dictate the choices we make. These choices reflect who we are and what we value. Your teaching persona is expressed in how we go about shaping the learning environment and underlies what you do as a teaching. This asynchronous course will provide guidelines for choosing the features of your teaching persona so that overall, it invites and enables as many learners as possible.
