CTL & ASSETT Newsletter - August 2024

For educators, the month of August can bring on mixed emotions. While we hope you are finding time to relax and rejuvenate yourself in these last days of summer, we recognize you are likely also busy planning for your fall courses. As you dive into designing or updating your course syllabi, developing learning experiences to motivate and engage your students, and incorporating teaching strategies to better support the success of all students, we wanted to remind you that the CTL and ASSETT are here to help! In addition to our extensive online teaching resources, we have an exciting lineup of programs and events this August and September. Emphasizing themes like promoting student engagement, teaching with technology, and equity-minded teaching and assessment, our offerings have been thoughtfully designed to help you start the semester strong! We encourage you to explore our recommended resources, featured events, and Fall 2024 lineup, and we hope to see you this fall!

• Course-in-a-box for New CU Educators
• Course Design & Development, including Semester Planners
• Syllabus Design
• Promising Practices for Student-Centered Grading in Canvas
• First Day Tips
• Teaching Style & Content Delivery
• Active learning
• Formative assessment
• Teaching and Learning in the Age of AI

In recent years, U.S. universities have attracted over 300,000 international students, with more than 50% coming from non-English-speaking countries each year. These students face the challenge of adjusting to a new educational and cultural environment, often without the support of family and friends. Thus, in Spring 2024, CTL and ASSETT in collaboration with IEC, CEAS and ISSS, launched the Teaching International Students (TIS) micro-credential to provide professional learning related to supporting multilingual international students within and beyond the classroom. At the end of the 12-week program, participants developed innovative capstone projects tailored to the needs of international students in their discipline. These capstones had diverse aims, be it incorporating active learning strategies to enhance international student participation, surveying international STEM graduate students to assess their needs, or organizing resume writing workshops tailored for international students on the job market. As we celebrate the TIS micro-credential’s second year, we hope to continue developing a community of educators at CU, who strive for inclusive and equitable teaching in the global classrooms of today. Applications for the Fall 2024 Cohort are open until August 23, 2024 or until remaining spots are filled, whichever is sooner.

The Fall Intensive will run from Wednesday, August 21-Friday, August 23 from 9:00 a.m.-5:30 p.m. MT. *Coffee, tea, and pastries will be served during the morning in-person sessions.

This year’s symposium will focus on Equitable & Inclusive Engagement Practices for Learner Success, with workshops organized around three tracks: 

• Teaching & Learning in Canvas
• Supporting Learner Success in Large Courses
• Promoting Engagement through Technology

• Equity-minded Assessment Design (hybrid) on Tuesday, August 27, from 10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m. MT
• TILTing Assessments: Incorporating Transparency in Assessment Design (hybrid) on Thursday, September 5, from 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m. MT
• Gathering Mid-term Student Feedback (in-person) on Tuesday, September 24, from 12:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. MT
• Specifications Grading & Ungrading (hybrid) on Tuesday, October 1, from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. MT
• Labor and contract-based grading (hybrid) on Tuesday, October 29, from 2:00 p.m.-3:30 p.m. MT
• Implementing Alternative Grading: A faculty perspective (hybrid) on Monday, November 4 from 10:00 a.m.-11:15 a.m. MT

JET brings together educators from the CU Boulder community to provide professional development in social justice and equity in the classroom. The goal of this program is to equip instructors with evidenced-based resources and practices to co-create inclusive learning environments. Applications for the Fall 2024 Cohort are open until August 23, 2024, or until remaining spots are filled, whichever is sooner.

Teaching Triads supports small groups of faculty from different departments to observe each other’s teaching, learn instructional methods from one another, and build community. Participants who complete the program will receive a $250 Professional Development Award. Apply for the Fall 2024 Teaching Triads cohort by August 23rd.

Created by your peers to address grading challenges, Grade for Student Success is a faculty guide for leveraging Canvas to enhance student learning while making grading more efficient and customizable.

The rapid popularization of generative AI tools has created new challenges and opportunities for educators while raising complex questions about how we can best prepare our students to work with AI responsibly and ethically in their future professional, personal, and civic lives. Nineteen designers from across campus participated in the CTL/ASSETT AI Summer Design Studio where they developed and contributed resources to CU’s AI Teaching and Learning Repository. If you’re interested in incorporating generative AI and/or critical thinking about AI into your own courses, we encourage you to explore and play with the resources at https://teachandlearnai.com/!

• Inclusive Research Mentoring (CIMER) Fall Session Schedule for Grad/Postdoc Attendees
• Inclusive Research Mentoring (CIMER) Fall Session Schedule for Faculty Attendees
• Teaching & Learning with Artificial Intelligence Community of Practice (AICoP) Meeting Schedule
• Inclusive Community of Practice (ICoP) Monthly Meeting Schedule
• Elevating Your Teaching Voice on Monday, September 16, from 10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m. MT
• Introduction to Buffscreate on Thursday, September 26, from 12:00 p.m.-1:00 p.m. MT
• Strategies for Running Productive Office Hours on Monday, September 30, from 12:15 p.m.-1:15 p.m. MT
• Universal Design for Learning Overview & Micro-credential on Tuesday, October 15, from 10:00 a.m.-11:30 a.m. MT
• CU Lecturers Mixer on Wednesday, October 23, from 4:00 p.m-5:00 p.m. MT
• AI Tools for Educators and Course Design: A Hands On Workshop on Tuesday, November 19, from 1:00 p.m.-2:30 p.m. MT
• CU International Teaching Faculty Mixer on Wednesday, November 20, from 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. MT
• Incorporating Course Design & Universal Design for Learning on Thursday, December 5, from 1:00 p.m.- 2:30 p.m. MT
• AI & Career Pathways on Tuesday, December 10, from 12:30 p.m.-1:30 p.m. MT

Hosted By Rachana Bhave, CTL Equitable Assessment Specialist

Listen to a conversation CTL’s Professional Development Lead Preston Cumming and I had with the co-editors of the book Teaching Gradually: Practical Pedagogy for Graduate Students, by Graduate Students. In the first episode of this two-part conversation, we discuss our personal experiences to highlight the various pathways graduate students may take in higher education, how the book Teaching Gradually was conceived and assembled at Cornell University’s Center for Teaching Innovation, and the most valuable lessons on teaching shared by graduate students who contributed to the book. This podcast is available on Apple and Spotify.

Programs and Services
Consultations and Classroom Observations
Teaching Resources
Upcoming Events

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