Aspirational Teaching: Fostering Co-Creation in Our Classrooms

This workshop will give instructors examples of different approaches for implementing co-creation within their classrooms to highlight the variety of ways that students can generate knowledge within a course. It will also include a hands-on activity to help instructors develop a specific co-creation activity for their courses.

Developing an Undergraduate Learning Assistant Program

This series of sessions began on March 29, 2021, and taught participants how to establish and manage an undergraduate teaching assistant program to support the needs of their course or program.

Teaching a Growth Mindset

In this session, conducted on April 14 2021, participants learned what a growth mindset is, how to convey a growth mindset to students, the impact one's own mindset has on students, and the various ways course materials and interactions can encourage students to adopt a growth mindset.

Lessons Learned from the Fall

Presented in January 2021, this workshop began by presenting data collected from the students that visited CAST this fall to help faculty and staff better understand the challenges that students were facing. The instructional designers then offered practical solutions for faculty to help better mitigate those challenges.

Making your course more user-friendly for students

Students are reporting that one of their biggest challenges this semester is dealing with the cognitive load required just to navigate their widely varying courses. While individual instructors can’t do much about all of this variation, they can work hard to ensure their own courses are as intuitive and easy to navigate as possible.

Engaging Students Through Art

Learn about the Sheldon Museum of Art and how you can incorporate art and/or the museum to further your teaching goals. Sheldon staff will discuss the museum’s collection, exhibitions, and other resources, as well as ways we have collaborated with faculty to design learning experiences tailored to their curricular needs.

Leveraging Student Feedback: The Power of Formative Surveys

This workshop focuses on the attributes, logistics, and effective use of formative student surveys. Participants will learn how to create effective and useful surveys in Canvas and will be given time to work on building their own formative surveys while receiving help from instructional designers.

Ensuring Exam Security

We will discuss different approaches that can be taken using technology presently available at UNL, including exam randomization techniques, dividing exams into smaller pieces and synchronizing their delivery, and implementing lock-down browsers.

Strategies for Faculty Efficiency: Grading and Time Management

This workshop, conducted on July 31, focused on making optimal use of the tools available to decrease time spent on grading. This included developing useful rubrics, keeping a list of frequent comments, and using audio comments, and other practical tips.

Teaching in a Flexible Hybrid Classroom

Conducted July 30, this interactive workshop identified which aspects of a course are best delivered online versus in the classroom. Additionally, it covered the considerations for balancing synchronous versus asynchronous interactions when determining how often to meet with your class.

Remotely Facilitating an In-Person Course

Conducted July 29, this interactive workshop provided strategies for promoting an engaging instructor presence and maintaining student interest without being physically present in the classroom. The workshop also involved the presentation of best-practices as well as discussions on different topics.

Supporting Students: A Roundtable

Conducted July 28, this roundtable discussion invited instructors to interact with the leaders of several different centers across the university that support students directly to discuss their missions and how they work to help students.