Striving for Inclusive Excellence in Education
Program Overview
The Aspirational Teaching Institute is a semester-long program designed to help tackle major teaching challenges. Unlike single-topic workshops and other programs, this institute takes place over a 16-week period and is designed as if it were a course with bi-weekly synchronous sessions, instructional materials, and targeted support and feedback. Topics may vary from semester to semester. The Fall 2022 offering of the institute is Striving for Inclusive Excellence in Education.
The Striving for Inclusive Excellence in Education program tackles the following questions:
- How can student background impact engagement and performance in college courses?
- What can you do to help? More specifically, how can you design your course in a way that helps as many students succeed as possible?
The program facilitators from the CTT, with help from relevant campus leaders, will take point on answering the first question, and participants will develop answers to the second question. Facilitators will offer ideas and guidance but, ultimately, teaching is a personal endeavor, and the right ways of addressing these problems will need to be highly individualized. What works well for one instructor, or for one course, may not work for another. Participants will need to consider which ideas fit with their personal teaching style, the course they are teaching, and the backgrounds of the students the course is serving. While designing their distinct approaches, participants will have help along the way from fellow participants, CTT team members, and even students.
Institute Schedule
The Aspirational Teaching Institute will meet every other Thursday during the Fall semester, starting on August 25th September 8th, from 1:30-2:30 with a half hour of additional time allotted for casual discussion extending until 3 p.m. All of these instructional sessions will be held remotely.
At the same time on the alternating weeks, we will hold optional working sessions in the form of either a participant discussion time or an open office hours with instructional designers on hand to help brainstorm new approaches to the challenges participants are facing. These sessions will also be held remotely.
If you're interested in this programming, but have a scheduling conflict, we'd ask that you still register with the "Interested but Conflicted" option so that we can include you in communications that you might find relevant.
Institute Structure
The first of our seven instructional sessions will feature CTT Director Nick Monk and the two program facilitators laying out the details of the program. All subsequent sessions will involve an asynchronous guest lecture (posted to Canvas the week before the group meeting) by a campus leader or CTT representative whose work is relevant to the topic of the week. At group meetings, representatives from the CTT will follow up on the presentation by providing initial thoughts on how participants might incorporate the ideas presented into their own courses. Following that, there will be time for questions and an open discussion.
After each session, participants will have an opportunity to prepare and potentially share a reflection in which they:
- provide observations about how the given topic impacts their own course;
- summarize what steps (if any) they already take that addresses the topic; and
- identify steps they would like to consider taking in the future.
Time will be reserved at the beginning of the following session for debriefing: participants may want to reflect on things from the previous session that have stuck with them or offer observations they have made in their class(es) in the intervening time.
As a final deliverable for this program, the facilitators will invite participants to prepare detailed plans for each of the changes or interventions identified as being worthwhile. As these plans are designed, participants are encouraged to take abundant advantage of opportunities to consult with peers in the program, program facilitators, students, and applicable instructional designers.
Options for Participation
While we have designed the program to address specific topics about Inclusive Excellence, most of the issues being discussed have broader applicability. As such, we've designed the program to be as flexible as possible. When registering, we ask you to select one of the following ways of being involved:
Committed Engagement: Institute
If you are interested in enhancing the equity of your course delivery and have room in your schedule for a semester-long commitment, then this option is for you. Institute participants will be expected to attend all seven topics (or coordinate an alternate type of engagement with the program facilitators should complications arise), write a brief reflection after each one, and complete the final deliverable. Those who complete all these activities will be issued a certificate of completion for the Aspirational Teaching Institute.
Curious Lurking: Workshops
If you're interested in some or all of the topics but don't have the time to commit to fully completing this as a program, you're welcome to register as a "lurker" and attend individual topics that you're interested in without taking on an obligation to complete reflections or attend every session. Please be sure to register for the institute using this option so that we can make sure to include you in relevant updates, such as when new guest presenter videos are available on the Canvas site.
Interested but Conflicted: Scheduling Complications
Scheduling for these types of activities can be very difficult, because everyone has obligations at different times. But we don't want anyone who's interested to be left out entirely. If the Thursdays at 1:30 time doesn't work in your schedule, but you're interested in these topics, please register with this option. We'll continue to share resources that come from this institute with you and would be happy to include your voice asynchronously where applicable.
Although we're asking you to express your intent during initial registration, we understand that your availability may change along the way, and we're happy to accommodate adjustments accordingly.
Outline of Topics
A complete list of the seven topics that will be discussed throughout the semester, including information on the guest and instructional designer presenters, can be found on the course syllabus page in Canvas.