Welcome to the Fall 2019 Semester

Whether you are returning to campus or new to Illinois, we hope you are embarking on a great semester! CITL is here to help you achieve your teaching and learning goals. You can always fill out our consult request form to set up a meeting with us.

How to Use This Newsletter

This newsletter comes out approximately every two weeks. It begins with announcements of upcoming events of interest to teachers of all ranks. Below that you will find a listing of the next few CITL workshops coming up on our calendar, any technical trainings CITL is offering, and sometimes workshops offered by other units on campus. Each newsletter ends with timely teaching tips to help you have a great semester. Now, on to announcements!

CITL Open House September 20

Join us on Friday, September 20, between 10am and 3pm for a tour of the newly modernized Armory. Learn about the services that CITL offers faculty, staff, and students. Enjoy refreshments, demonstrations, and hands-on activities.

Ready

• Grab a map and a coffee at the Main Office Lounge in room 156 of the Armory
• Meet CITL experts on i>Clicker, Compass, and learning technologies
• Visit the iFLEX Classroom for student-centered learning

Set

• Try on a VR headset and experience immersive learning
• Play with emerging technologies at the TechHub
• Explore free tools for teaching, from Adobe to Google to Microsoft

Go

• See demos of Illinois Online courses, interactive eText digital textbooks, and Digication for student ePortfolios
• Explore ICES, Scantron, and Data Analytics with the pros
• Record yourself at the new Instructor Recording Studio

Fall 2019 Junior Faculty Seminar Series on Teaching & Learning begins September 18

Come join a dynamic learning community by participating in this specially designed seminar series for junior faculty (though all faculty are invited to come). We’ll share strategies and best practices for improving student learning and your teaching. For returning attendees, there are several new workshops, such as Art of Lecturing – An Introduction and Making Teaching Stick. We will also include how to use and analyze student feedback (IEF and ICES) and student motivation. Great conversation and handouts provided. Limited seating and registration required. Look here for a flyer of the series.

Are You Taking the English Proficiency Interview (EPI) this Fall?

CITL and the ESL-ITA Program are offering a series of four weekly workshops to help graduate students prepare for the English Proficiency Interview (EPI). Workshops will be held on September 11, 18, 25, and October 2, from 5:30pm to 6:45pm, in room 428 Armory Building. Attendance is free, but registration is required at https://go.illinois.edu/EPI_Workshop_Registration.

Earn a CITL Teaching Certificate

CITL offers five teaching certificates designed to help you improve your teaching practice and signal to others your commitment to teaching and learning. Whether you are an experienced instructor with years of experience, a brand new graduate student with no teaching responsibilities, or are somewhere in between, one of our certificates is probably right for you. Visitthe teaching certificates page of our websiteto learn more, and fill outour consult request formto find a CITL staff member to help you get started.

Call for Applications: 2019-2020 Illinois Leadership Center Faculty Fellows Program

The Illinois Leadership Center (ILC) is now accepting applications for the 2019 – 2020 Faculty Fellows. The ILC Faculty Fellows is a group of leadership scholars from a variety of disciplines, with an interest and focus on leadership research and/or leadership education. A discretionary fund of $2500 per year will be given to each fellow to support their leadership research and scholarly activities. Deadline is September 13. Visit this page for more information and for how to apply.

Want to see what workshops and events are coming later in the semester? Look at our full calendar for more information.

Helping Students Memorize: Tips from Cognitive Science

I was wrapping up a presentation on memory and learning when a colleague asked, “How do we help students learn in courses where there’s a lot of memorization?” He explained that he taught introductory-level human anatomy, and although the course wasn’t all memorization, it did challenge students’ capacity to retain dozens of new terms and concepts. The question itself is tricky because most teaching professionals are heavily invested in the idea that learning isn’t about being able to regurgitate facts on an exam.We also worry, and with good reason, that emphasizing rote learning steals time and effort away from the deeper thinking that we want students to do. Here are sometechniques that target this specific teaching and learning challenge.

Creating Cartoons to Spark Engagement and Learning

As instructors, we are constantly looking for new ways to capture our students’ attention and increase their participation in our classes, especially in the online modalities. We spend countless hours crafting weekly announcements for classes and then inevitably receive multiple emails from our students asking the very same questions. The question remains, how do we get them to read our posts?It was precisely that problem I was trying to solve when I came across several articles touting the benefits of comics in higher education classrooms. I knew I couldn’t create an entire comic book, but I wondered if I could create a content-related cartoon that would not only capture students’ attention and maybe make them laugh, but also interest them enough that they would read the entire announcement or post. After a positive response, I decided to provide my online and face-to-face students the opportunity to try their hand at cartoon creation. This activity provide more ways for students to develop higher levels of assimilation and creation (Bloom’s Taxonomy, 2001)

Click here to see past Teaching Tips