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Center for Teaching Excellence

  • Active Learning

Fostering Proactive Learning Environments

Managing a classroom is more than just being an expert in your field of study. Whether you are a tenured faculty or a new instructor, this certificate program will assist you in:

  • Understanding today’s student and how to structure your class to foster a sense of belonging
  • Developing proactive and reactive strategies for handling academic misconduct
  • Practicing how to avoid and address classroom conflicts

Program Requirements

  • Attend four primary sessions
  • Complete two elective sessions

Participants will have 3 academic semesters (not including summer semesters) to complete the certificate.

Click on the "+" sign next to each event to see description.

Fall 2022 Required Workshops

January 2023

Clearly articulating classroom expectations helps to set the foundation for a mutually beneficial course. Research shows that persistence and retention is connected to student's sense of belonging. Furthermore, students who engage in quality interactions with faculty are retained at a higher rate (Astin 1977, 1993). As a faculty member, it is important to assist in developing this sense of belonging and aid in students persistence and retention. This session will cover pedagogical strategies and ways to negotiate positive norms within your classroom to assist you in developing a meaningful academic environment.  Register

Creating an environment of integrity within the classroom truly takes a village. Faculty, administrators, and students all play a role in maintaining an ethical campus community. This workshop will explore preventative tools to address classroom roadblocks.  Register

In this session we will discuss the academic misconduct trends we are seeing online and in person with our students. Additionally, we will discuss how to identify and address these common violations while maintaining a productive instructor/student relationship.  Register

Engaging in conflict is challenging whether you are an experienced instructor or new to your role. A likely strategy is to ignore the behavior due to our own discomfort, concern over retaliation or fear that our intervention may cause more harm or disruption. Through case study examples this workshop will explore Gerald Amada's research from Coping with Misconduct in the College Classroom and provide participants with tangible strategies to disruptive behavior in a confident and fair manner.  Register

Fall 2022 Elective  Workshops

Technology misuse in the classroom has become so pervasive that we must rethink whether our energies should be spent fighting it or whether to work with students on a new paradigm. Yet struggles around technology are also the most obvious symptom of a much larger problem of many students’ inability to focus and the value many of them hold for multitasking.

Based on the recent text: Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It by James Lang, this break-out session will address the pervasive problem of distracted students, including how to use research on the effects of the technology students use as a distraction (cell phones), or as classroom tools (laptops).

Lastly, in this presentation, attendees will explore the various methods of how to foster better attention from students in the classroom and begin to “shift our thinking away from preventing distraction” (Lang, 2021).  Register

Tips and hints on elevating student engagement in the classroom. In this session participants will actively participate in discussion and observe student engagement examples they can implement within their classroom.  Register

To achieve optimal student learning and integrity in an academic environment, it is essential that instructors understand the importance of maintaining their students' interest and cultivate intellectual autonomy. It is through intellectual autonomy that students can begin to internalize the associated values of integrity and take responsibility over their own learning (Twomey et al., 2009). In the contemporary era of higher education, behaviors connected to cheating and plagiarism have made it a bigger challenge in guiding students to reach the level of intellectual autonomy that instructors would hope for.

Given the new norms and nuances of essay mills and contract cheating, the economics and consumerism related to academic dishonesty continues to expand. In this presentation, attendees will explore how effective teaching and learning strategies will assist in responding to what has become a pedagogical enterprise. Additionally, through these strategies, attendees will improve their teaching and student learning by creating a sense of community and becoming more transparent in their communication with students.  Register

 


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