One of our goals as a Center is to foster innovative, evidence-based teaching and learning practices and critical reflection through workshops, reading groups, and invited speakers involved with national and international research on higher education.

Workshops & Events are free and open to all faculty and staff teaching at Elon, and are designed for instructors working in a range of teaching and learning contexts.

Descriptions for current and past CATL offerings can be found below.

 

Upcoming 2026-2027 Events

August

Fall Course Reboot

August 18, 1:00 – 3:00pm, Belk 208 | Register here

Join CATL and TLT for an afternoon of directed support, working time, and peer feedback to help support your fall course! The session is organized around four focused themes: Canvas support, Canvas Gradebook, AI & Assessment, Syllabus and General Course Design. Participants will select one theme, and spend the afternoon with peers working on the course in that topic area, and then will participate in peer feedback.

September

Representing Your Teaching Series

The Representing Your Teaching workshop series is designed to help you collect, interpret, and share meaningful evidence of your teaching practice. Whether you are preparing to redesign a course, go up for promotion, or simply want to better explore your impact in the classroom, this series offers practical tools and reflective strategies to support your professional growth as a teacher-scholar. Each session builds on the last, guiding you from evidence collection to narrative construction.

⭐  Register for one or all of the sessions now!

Session 1: Direct Evidence of Teaching Effectiveness:  What does meaningful evidence of teaching look like?
September 1, 12:15 – 1:30pm

In this session, we will explore various sources of direct evidence—from assignments and assessments to classroom observations and student mid-semester feedback—that can give you insights into your teaching practice and your students’ experiences. We’ll discuss strategies for aligning evidence collection with your specific teaching goals, and how to design a system that offers a comprehensive, ongoing picture of what’s happening in your classroom. This workshop will help you think holistically about your teaching and give you a strategy for collecting relevant, purposeful evidence.

October

Representing Your Teaching Series – Session 2: Making Sense of SPoTs

October 13: 12:15 – 1:30 | Register here

Student Perceptions of Teaching (SPoTs) offer a source of information about students’ experiences in the classroom.  Making sense of this feedback from students can be challenging, particularly when student responses are inconsistent, incomplete, or unclear. This workshop will help you increase your strategies for making sense of both the quantitative and qualitative data found in SPoTs, as well as provide you with tools for connecting SPoTs with more direct forms of evidence of teaching effectiveness to make more informed decisions about our teaching practices.   We’ll explore ways to contextualize institutional evaluation questions within your unique pedagogical approaches, and ways to use the personalized questions for targeted feedback. By the end of the session, you’ll be better equipped to use student feedback as a constructive tool for self-reflection and representation.

November

Representing Your Teaching Series – Session 3: Using Canvas course analytics to understand student engagement (presented with Teaching and Learning Technology)

November 3: 12:15 – 1:30 | Register here

Your Canvas course site generates a steady stream of helpful information (e.g., assignment submission patterns, time-on-task, quiz analytics, discussion participation) that can offer valuable insight on student engagement, complementing the direct evidence and SPoTs data explored in Sessions 1 and 2. This session will help you navigate the Canvas course analytics tools and interpret what that data can (and can’t) tell you about how students are engaging with your course content and you reflect on the teaching and learning approach. We’ll discuss how to move beyond raw numbers to ask meaningful questions: Where are students struggling or disengaging? How might this data reveal gaps between course design intentions and actual student learning? You’ll leave with strategies for incorporating LMS metrics into your broader collection of evidence.

December

Representing Your Teaching Series – Session 4: Telling your Story

December 8: 12:15 – 1:30 | Register here

How do you turn evidence of teaching effectiveness into a compelling teaching narrative? This final workshop focuses on synthesizing evidence and values into a reflective, evidence-based story. You’ll learn how to write about your teaching in ways that communicate your philosophy, showcase your practices, and highlight your impact. We’ll discuss strategies for crafting narratives that are both authentic and aligned with your professional identity.

Grade-a-thon

December 14th, 9:00am – 3:00pm, Belk 208 | Register here

Ready to tackle the semester end grading period? Don’t do it alone! Join colleagues for a day of working through the finishing ends of the semester grades. Quiet space, peer support, highlighters, pens, tissues (for tears of joy), and snacks will be provided. Celebrate finishing off the semester in community!