The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning offers teaching seminars, workshops, and certificates each semester to help interested faculty, teaching assistants, and instructors improve their teaching effectiveness and course management skills. These training programs provide opportunities to gather with colleagues to listen, discuss, interact, learn about, and reflect on a number of topics to enhance teaching and learning.

CETL has established the Faculty and Instructor News Site (FINS). Faculty, staff, and teaching assistants are invited to check out the list of upcoming training opportunities in FINS.  Our list of available programming is continually growing so be sure to check out our offerings often.

To attend a program, reservations are required and are accepted on a first-come-first-serve basis through FINS. To make a reservation, simply complete the online registration form. If a session is full, feel free to join the waitlist for that program because space frequently opens up. If you have signed up for a workshop and are not able to attend, your colleagues would appreciate if you unregistered, as we often have others who would like to register.

Your feedback is also important, as it helps us to focus and plan a more diverse program.

The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning welcomes suggestions or requests for possible seminars; contact the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (860-486-2686).

Educational Technology Workshops and Seminars

This workshop is designed for teaching and learning remotely. This workshop will increase your knowledge about and comfort level using either WebEx or Blackboard Ultra Collaborate as a communication and collaboration tool for teaching and learning.

You’ll learn how to use either of these products for small groups and online (virtual) office hours as well as which to use for your needs (office hours, guest lecturers, share screens in meetings, etc.).
We will begin the workshop by going to my WebEx Personal Room at: https://uconn-cmr.webex.com/join/kps05003

Before the Session Begins Please: Test if you can run WebEx on your computer and browser on your computer by going to: https://www.webex.com/test-meeting.html

Some advantages of using video in your class include the following:
• Provides a way for students to review material
• Provides instructors another way to present content (i.e. flip the classroom)
• Record video “microlectures” before or after class to help with difficult concepts

Using UConn’s video platform, Kaltura, you can record lectures, store videos, create quizzes, and share them in your HuskyCT course. In addition, students can use it for homework assignments or for discussions. The training will cover how faculty, staff, or students can create, upload, edit, and share videos. Also included will be instructions on how to caption your videos.

We will discuss best practice when captioning and will explore two applications (Kaltura and YouTube) that can be used to create closed captions for your videos. Both use computer-generated captioning which often requires that captions be edited by the video owner to improve accuracy. Research has shown that closed captions can benefit all learners as they watch the video content.

Learn more about it here: https://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/8/a-rising-tide-how-closed-captions-can-benefit-all-students.

In addition, we’ll explore tools that you can use to make your documents accessible such as tagging images, using styles in Microsoft Word, etc.

Once registered and if you will be attending via online please plan to join 10 minutes before the session begins to make sure you connect successfully.

This session will introduce you to the new look of HuskyCT, and will cover the basics of HuskyCT such as how to begin using HuskyCT, how the LMS can be used in academic and non-academic environments, basic functions and tools, and tips and tricks for beginner users.

This session will cover options for presenting and arranging materials in your HuskyCT course in ways that minimize confusion for students. We will discuss various organizational strategies, such as ways to develop a straightforward main course menu, building in content areas, the difference between sorting materials into folders and learning modules, as well as controlling the visibility of content to students. We will also cover options for adding multimedia elements to your course, such as audio and video, among the variety of other options available in the system.

Many instructors administer online assessments through HuskyCT, and this overview session covers the variety of settings that ensure a smooth experience for both you and your students. We will focus on the basics of test creation and a review of the options that determine the test-taking experience for your students.

Link will be emailed to registered participants the day prior
Presenter: Dan Facchinetti, CETL-EdTech

In this session, you will learn to ensure your Grade Center is set up to accurately record and calculate student grades within HuskyCT. We will cover specific settings and features including total points calculations, weighted percentage calculations, categorizing graded items, including/excluding graded items, incorporating tests/exams, assignments, discussions, as well as many other types of assessments and grades in your course. We will also cover how to send a grade column to Student Admin for midterm and final grade submission.

Link will be emailed to registered participants the day prior
Presenter: Dan Facchinetti, CETL-EdTech

LockDown Browser is a custom browser that locks down a student’s computer when used for administering a test through HuskyCT. Monitor is an additional feature that uses a student’s webcam to record them taking their test, which provides a means to review the student’s testing environment. When taking a test using LockDown Browser, students are unable to print, copy, go to other websites, access other applications, or close a test until it is ubmitted for grading, and Monitor creates a video record of the time they spent taking the test. This session will cover the use of LockDown Browser and Monitor for tests, quizzes, and exams in your course, including recommended settings and best practices.

As professors explore this new world of distance learning and look for ways to assess learning for the fall semester, they are searching for better ways to assess student work. This session will provide you with an alternative known as specification grading. Jamie Kleinman has been using specifications grading in her psychology courses for the past three years and will describe her experiences with this grading system, which helped her make a seamless transition to distance learning this spring semester. Specifications grading is a system designed to promote student motivation and mastery. All work is graded as pass or fail based on rubrics or ’specifications’ that are provided to students. Built into this system is a way for students to check their own work to determine if it meets the basic standard to pass and a feedback process for students to correct work that has not yet met the standard. Instead of focusing on getting grades, students focus on developing skills and engaging with the subject material in a way that promotes mastery through multiple levels of critique. While this system takes time to set up, once it has been established, grading is simplified for the instructor as they can use a checklist to make sure that student work meets the criteria to pass. Students are still assigned traditional grades by linking assignments together in bundles that correspond to grade levels. Jamie will bring course syllabi to explain how she uses this system and why it is an excellent way of approaching student work, today more than ever.

This will be demonstration of how to share an iPad using Webex or Blackboard Collaborate.  Please join the Webex session using a computer (laptop/desktop) and if you have an iPad, you can join the Webex session a second time if you want to test it during the session.  Just install the Webex app on the iPad and click on the link to join the session, then follow the prompts.  Do not turn on the microphone or camera on the iPad, you will use your computer to connect to audio and video.  Also, turn down the volume on the iPad so you don’t hear an echo.

Faculty Development Workshops and Seminars

This Teaching Talk session provides instructors with the opportunity to share the success and challenges of teaching. The thematic focus for this particular session is crafting a teaching philosophy statement. Topics include:
• Discuss the desirable elements of a teaching philosophy statement for job or PTR applications
• Begin drafting in response to prompts provided
• Share what is on your mind

Participants leave with specific strategies for teaching more creatively in order to increase student interest and participation. In this session, participants discuss topics like:
• Tools to enhance creativity, such as SCAMPER, Synectics, Brainstorming, and others
• The role of choice in motivating students to be more creative and productive
• Active learning
• Playing to your strengths
• The role of improvisation, role play, storytelling, modeling the real world…
• Learning games and ice breakers
• Making it safe to fail
• Using art and music
• Divergent and convergent thinking
• Using student creativity to help plan more interesting lessons
• Encouraging reluctant students to be more creative
• Assessment techniques that encourage creative problem solving

Participants come away with specific strategies for managing their own and their students’ anxieties. We discuss common causes of anxiety and solutions to overcome them.

A positive first impression is critical for a successful semester. In this session, we discuss making a positive first impression in all types of classes- in person, hybrid, and online. Participants will walk away with specific strategies for making a good first impression as well as specific strategies for conducting the first class in a manner that will draw students in and motivate them to do well in the class. We discuss topics such as preparing for the first class, how to begin, what to include, and how to handle introductions.

In this session, we discuss the three main actor's tools of face, voice, and body, along with other tools such as energy, enthusiasm, expression, concentration, focus, confidence, presence.

Participants leave with a clear understanding of the teaching persona- what it consists of, how to decide which parts of “you” that you will share with your students, how you will present yourself. At this session, participants discuss topics like:
• Effects of gender and age on how you present yourself, what you can do as an instructor
• How your personality affects your teaching style
• Your sense of self and how it affects your work with students
• How to develop an effective teaching persona
• How much of teaching is a function of your personality?
• Why is the teaching persona important?

Specific strategies regarding formulating and asking effective questions. An understanding of how an effective question differs from a less effective question. We discuss topics such as:
• What kinds of questions should be asked?
• How do we form these questions?
• How do we get answers to our questions?
• How can we use questions to assess learning?
• How can we more effectively respond to questions?

This Teaching Talk session provides instructors with the opportunity to share the success and challenges of teaching. The thematic focus for this particular session is crafting the syllabus, including:
• Course-design concerns
• Syllabus requirements
• Policy statements (what to include and why)
• How students use a syllabus
• Using the syllabus to engage students
• Using syllabus templates