Announcements
TA Reading Groups Starting for Spring
How do the best college teachers teach? Find out by reading Ken Bain's What the Best College Teachers Do along with fellow TAs and a CITL facilitator. Meetings will be arranged to fit your schedule and participation will count towards the teaching certificates. Sign up for a reading group by following this link - you will be matched up with other TAs and a facilitator with similar availability.
Are You Taking the English Proficiency Interview (EPI) this Spring?
CITL and the ESL-ITA Program are offering three workshops to help graduate students prepare for the English Proficiency Interview (EPI).The virtual workshops will take place on February 9, 16, and 23, from 6:00 - 7:00 P.M. Attendance is free, but registration is required at https://go.illinois.edu/EPI_Workshop_Registration.
'Art of Teaching' Lunchtime Seminar Series Begins February 4th
Join us as we continue this important series exploring the art and science of good teaching. On Thursday, February 4 (12:00 - 1:00 P.M.) our guest will be Emily Knox, Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences, and CITL Faculty Fellow. Emily will present, Effective and Efficient Teaching for Student Success, an inside look at tips and techniques that can make your teaching more effective and support student learning outcomes. Attendees will be invited to share their own ideas for managing different types of coursework and student concerns. Please register to receive a zoom link at: https://go.illinois.edu/artofteachingregistration.
Illini Esports and Gaming on Campus
Join Illini Esports, along with faculty affiliates, for a presentation on the state of esports and gaming on campus. Learn about the opportunities it brings to our campus through education, community, research, careers, and alumni relations. Learn why you should be interested in esports and how you can get involved in its future at the University of Illinois. February 11, 12:00 – 1:00 P.M. Click here to register.
Free Virtual Statistical, Survey, and Data Consulting Workshops and Resources for Students and Faculty
Do you have students working on a data project who need some help? Students who want to learn how to use some statistical software? Do you need a dataset for your class? We help with finding data, troubleshooting code, or understanding analysis. Consulting and training workshops are open to campus with the following software programs: Stata, SAS, ATLAS.ti, SPSS, R, Python, Qualtrics, and Surveygizmo. For open hours and workshop registration visit: http://go.illinois.edu/Surveystatsdata.
CITL Innovation Spaces Open for Spring 2021
Join us for virtual office hours every Tuesday from 10:00 - 11:00 A.M. and Wednesday from 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. on Zoom. Jamie and Megan will be there to answer your questions about the CITL Innovation Spaces, emerging technologies, student engagement, Zoom, PowerPoint, and other educational technologies on campus! Ask us anything! If we don’t have the answer, we’ll point you to someone who does.
Prefer to join us in person? Visit the Innovation Studio during open hours throughout the Spring. The Studio will be open twice a week on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 10:00 A.M. - 2:00 P.M. Experience 3D printing, Virtual Reality, Laser Cutting and more. Activities are free! Please wear a mask and note that only 5 visitors are allowed in the space at a time.
Spring 2021 Faculty Workshop Series on Teaching & Learning begins February 17th
Come join a dynamic learning community by participating in this specially designed series for all faculty (across all disciplines and rank). The theme is “Creating Success When Teaching & Learning Remotely.” For returning attendees, there are several new workshops, such as a two-part series on test & exam construction, creating rubrics, and fair grading; a session on the teaching philosophy statement, and special guest speaker Shelly Schmidt on the connection of emotion and learning for student success. Included will be workshops for maximizing student feeback from informal (IEF) & formal (ICES Online) to make timely changes. Great conversation and handouts provided. Zoom link provided upon registration.
Download pdf flyer of the series here.
CITL Events & Workshops
Thursday, February 4
Three Compass Tools That Increase Student Involvement
10:00 A.M. via Zoom, check calendar listing for registration link
Presenter: JC Morgan
Thursday, February 4
The Art of Teaching: CITL Faculty Fellows Lunchtime Seminar Series
12:00 P.M. - 1:00 P.M. via Zoom, check calendar listing for registration link
Presenter: Emily Knox, iSchool
Monday, February 8
Lesson Planning for Discussion Sections
12:00 P.M. - 1:00 P.M. via Zoom, check calendar listing for registration link
Presenter: Leanna Duncan, CITL Grad Affiliate
Monday, February 8
Compass Test, Surveys, and Pools
1:00 P.M. via Zoom, check calendar listing for registration link
Presenter: JC Morgan
Tuesday, February 9
The Power of Presentations: Enhancing Your Slides for Teaching & Engagement
10:00 A.M. - 11:00 A.M., via Zoom, check calendar listing for registration link
Presenter: Jamie Nelson
Tuesday, February 9
Get in the Flow: Promoting Student Engagement in Online Learning
11:00 A.M. - 12:00 P.M., via Zoom, check calendar listing for registration link
Presenters: Eric Creuz & David Favre
Tuesday, February 9
Designing Objects for Laser Cutting
11:30 A.M. - 12:00 P.M., via Zoom, check calendar listing for registration link
Presenter: Megan Baird
Thursday, February 11
Illini Esports and Gaming on Campus
12:00 P.M. - 1:00 P.M., via Zoom, check calendar listing for registration link
Presenters: CITL Innovation Spaces Staff and Illini Esports
Thursday, February 11
Thinking Creatively about Courses with Lab, Arts, and Field Work
12:00 P.M. - 1:00 P.M., via Zoom, check calendar listing for registration link
Presenter: David Favre
Friday, February 12
Friday Forum: Easy Teaching Strategies for Student Engagement
12:00 P.M. - 1:00 P.M., via Zoom, check calendar listing for registration link
Presenter: Ava Wolf
Monday, February 15
Using Informal Early Feedback
10:00 A.M. - 11:30 A.M. via Zoom, check calendar listing for registration link
Presenter: Lucas Anderson
Monday, February 15
How to Build Secure Compass Tests That Don't Use a Proctor
1:00 P.M, via Zoom, check calendar listing for registration link
Presenters: JC Morgan
Wednesday, February 17
Spr 2021 Faculty Series on Teaching & Learning Wksp #1 "I Wish I'd Known That Earlier": Using Informal Early Feedback (IEF) and Formal (ICES) Online Feedback to Improve Teaching and Learning
11:30 A.M - 1:00 P.M. via Zoom, check calendar listing for registration link
Presenter: Cheelan Bo-Linn
Wednesday, February 24
Spr 2021 Faculty Series on Teaching & Learning Wksp #2 Engaging Students through Active Learning in Online Synchronous Sessions
11:30 A.M - 1:00 P.M. via Zoom, check calendar listing for registration link
Presenter: Cheelan Bo-Linn
See our calendar for a full list of upcoming events.
Teaching Tips
Starter Activities to Begin Any Class
(from Faculty Focus) What can you implement in your classes that can review content, establish a foundation for the day’s topic, encourage student participation, and get students prepared for the day’s activities? Whether you call them starter activities, bell work, or focusing activities, a predictable, formatted, content-based beginning of class activity can be used to achieve these goals. Beginning of class activities have previously been used to gain student attention, provide accountability, review material, engage with new content, or establish routines. To gain students’ attention, class might begin by using multi-media, hands-on activities, surprising events, humor, or appealing to students’ emotions (Davis, 2009). Or class might start with a repeating set of slides, asking students to sequence steps or sketch a content-related drawing (Honeycutt, 2019). Here are some suggestions.
When Directions are the Problem
(from Faculty Focus)Instructors often experience problems between the directions given for an assignment and the work submitted by a student. Students miss important parts of questions; they may fail to understand the directions; and they produce work which the instructor finds unacceptable. Unfortunately, students may fail to see what the instructor sees for the end product, leading to loss of time and learning. John Hattie (2015) found that instructors who directly teach what is expected, have improved student outcomes with a large effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.77).
Templating, where instructors explicitly develop, teach, and model expectations, improves learning and reduces time spent trying to implement directions and is rooted in Bandura’s social learning theory by helping students define, interpret, and mimic what was observed (Bandura & Walters, 1977). There are four components to consider: develop a minimum and a maximum for each criteria, give students a laundry list of expectations, use a checklist for the template, and model expectations.
See More Teaching Tips Here