Events: 2020-2021

April 2021

March 2021

Faculty facilitators include Margaret Chapman (English), Vickie Moore (Chemistry), Kristina Meinking (Classics), and Olivia Choplin (French)

You can download the book on CEL’s website here.

February 2021

Research on assignment design suggests that key elements affect how well students accomplish the assignment and the learning associated with it, including:

• Transparency, or how explicitly we explain the assignment’s purpose, tasks, and criteria for success, (Winklemas, 2014, TILTHigherEd)
• Alignment, or how clearly the structure and expectations of the assignment align with the learning outcomes we want students to achieve,
• Challenge, or the degree to which the assignment is appropriately demanding and prompts higher-order thinking and disciplinary content learning. (Sullivan & McConnell, 2018)

A new tool recently developed out of the AAC&U’s VALUE Project incorporates these principles to support faculty as we design assignments that clearly support course goals and foster meaningful student learning and critical thinking. During this interactive session, we’ll discuss these principles and then apply them to assignments you are developing or refining, using the Assignment Design and Diagnostic (ADD) Tool.

Bring an assignment you’d like to improve or to develop with feedback from colleagues.

January 2021

Winter Term Teaching Day:
Wednesday, January 6th, 2021 from 1:00-5:00pm

Looking for research-based tips and a place to brainstorm in advance of your winter term (or spring) course launch? In this series of micro-workshops, we’ll explore common challenges and interests based on our shared experience of hybrid and online teaching during the fall semester. The same set of micro-workshops will be offered on Tuesday, 12/8 and repeated on Wednesday, 1/6. Join us for the full suite of workshops on either date or “drop by” for one or two workshops that most interest you! (Zoom information provided when you register.)

• 1:00-1:50pm: Fostering learning and community through synchronous discussions in online and hybrid classes
• 2:00-2:50pm: Fostering learning and community through asynchronous online discussions
• 3:00-3:50pm: Motivating and engaging groups and teams
• 4:00-4:50pm: Enhancing and sustaining student engagement and participation in hybrid and online classes

Hyflex without High Frustration? Managing synchronous, hybrid instruction – Virtual Workshop and Panel

Thursday, January 7th, 2021 from 10:00-11:15am

Synchronous hybrid instruction is an alluring option: In theory, everyone has the same experience at the same time (though technologically mediated for some students), and the course can proceed at a relatively normal pace with classroom-based activities at the heart of the course. In practice, though, hybrid synchronous instruction can be challenging because of technological hiccups, our own cognitive load in engaging and attending to students in two “spaces,” barriers to student collaboration across spaces, and other technological or pedagogical hurdles. In this session, we’ll hear from a panel of Elon colleagues about lessons learned and how they are adapting to make hybrid synchronous instruction work in upcoming courses and hear from Kyle Altmann (Associate Professor of Physics and Faculty Fellow for Technology) about possible technological solutions. Join us to brainstorm new approaches to try out in your own upcoming courses. (Zoom information provided when you register.)

December 2020

Winter Term Teaching Day:

Tuesday, December 8th, 2020 from 9:00-11:00am and 1:00-3:00pm

Looking for research-based tips and a place to brainstorm in advance of your winter term (or spring) course launch? In this series of micro-workshops, we’ll explore common challenges and interests based on our shared experience of hybrid and online teaching during the fall semester. The same set of micro-workshops will be offered on Tuesday, 12/8 and repeated on Wednesday, 1/6. Join us for the full suite of workshops on either date or “drop by” for one or two workshops that most interest you! (Zoom information provided when you register.)

• 9:00-9:45am: Fostering learning and community through synchronous discussions in online and hybrid classes
• 10:00-10:45am: Fostering learning and community through asynchronous online discussions
• 1:00-1:45pm: Motivating and engaging groups and teams
• 2:00-2:45pm: Enhancing and sustaining student engagement and participation in hybrid and online classes

Fall 2020

The primary goal of the teaching triage sessions is to foster peer-to-peer faculty dialogue and problem-solving on “just-in-time” topics during this unusual semester.

The primary goal of the teaching triage sessions is to foster peer-to-peer faculty dialogue and problem-solving on “just-in-time” topics during this unusual semester.

The primary goal of the teaching triage sessions is to foster peer-to-peer faculty dialogue and problem-solving on “just-in-time” topics during this unusual semester.

How might we deliberately cultivate a learning environment “where all students are treated equitably, have equal access to learning, and feel valued and supported in their learning”? How can our teaching “attend to social identities and seeks to change the ways systemic inequities shape dynamics in teaching-learning spaces, affect individuals’ experiences of those spaces, and influence course and curriculum design”?   In this session, we will explore a host of effective inclusive principles and strategies–related to content selection and delivery, interactions, and assessment–synthesized from the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching. Come explore the recommendations and reflect upon which ones you might want to adopt or learn more about.

Summer 2020

Course Design Institute (CDI): Resilient Teaching

This week-long virtual course design institute (CDI) will focus on designing courses that balance the structure and flexibility necessary for students and instructors to adapt and thrive under potentially uncertain and shifting conditions. During the week, we’ll ask each participating instructor to focus on designing a single fall course as we explore blending the unique affordances of virtual and in-person spaces, synchronous and asynchronous modalities, and digital and pedagogical tools to foster and nourish rich interactions among learners, instructors, and disciplinary content and skills. And we’ll focus on creative use of a set of flexible principles that can help us design engaged, inclusive, and relationship-rich courses that are the hallmark of our teaching at Elon.

Ultimately, while physical distancing challenges us to teach and learn in ways that may look quite different from our usual routines, the CDI will guide us to apply our considerable creativity and teaching expertise to the task of designing course tailored to the unique demands of the fall semester.

Logistics: The CDI will be offered online twice this summer, between 9am-3:30pm, with abundant asynchronous work time and twice-daily synchronous groupwork components (11am and 2:30pm). There will be a small stipend for completion of the course.

To register: You can register individually, or as a group, with other colleagues you plan to work with during the week:

Registration for week 1 is now closed: Monday-Friday, July 6-10 from 9:00am – 3:30pm

Registration for week 2 is now closed: Wednesday-Friday, July 29-31 and Monday-Tuesday, August 3-4 from 9:00am – 3:30pm (no programming over the weekend)

Co-sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Teaching & Learning, Teaching & Learning Technologies and Writing Across the University, along with partners Center for Engaged Learning and Center for Design Thinking

Teaching & Learning Conference

The Teaching & Learning Conference has been cancelled this year. Visit the conference website for more information moving forward.

Course Design Working Groups

Times will vary

Whether you are planning a new course or re-thinking one you’ve taught before, you can sign up to be part of a course design working group. Groups meet 3 times during the summer—often over lunch—based on group member’s schedules. During the meetings, we’ll discuss each course, using a backwards course design framework and focusing on the questions and topics that most interest you as you design it.

Facilitated by CATL faculty, planned around your schedules, and focused on your key questions, course design groups can be a collegial and productive way to develop a course. Past working group members remark that:

• “the greatest use for me was the discipline of thinking through exactly what I wanted the students to learn.”
• “I typically think that course development is a very lonely process. It helped alleviate a lot of stress I was feeling.”

SoTL Community of Practice (CoP)

Times will vary   

Open to faculty of all experience levels, this CoP brings together colleagues who have an emerging interest in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) to:

• enrich thinking about SoTL and help you develop your SoTL project
• identify the ways the SoTL scholarly process aligns with research processes already familiar to us from disciplinary frameworks, and
• introduce members to resources helpful to develop and publish a SoTL project

Participants in the CoP will support, sharpen, and sustain the work of their colleagues, and individuals’ goals guide our shared time together.