Fishing for a Story: Podcasts in the Classroom

Dr. Becky Fuller, a professor of Animal Biology in the School of Integrative Biology, uses podcasting assignments to help her Ichthyology students reflect more deeply on lecture topics and share their ideas with their classmates and, once they're published, other biological sciences peers. Watch this short video to learn what led Professor Fuller to use podcasting to engage her students with the course material and each other, how students go about creating their podcasts, and how this teaching tool has impacted student learning.

Art of Teaching Lunchtime Seminar (March 3): Unlocking Student Creativity with the Un-Essay

The un-essay is a type of assessment that challenges students to interact with course content in meaningful ways and demonstrate their creativity, as well as their understanding of concepts. Petra Jelinek (Anthropology) will discuss the pedagogy behind the un-essay as part of her overall assessment strategy, and show examples of student work that reveal how they met and exceeded mastery of course concepts, and explored skills and talents they didn’t even know they had. Join us March 3 (12 pm-1 pm) for an inside look at this progressive pedagogy that fosters creativity, strengthens memory retention, and leads to greater learning outcomes. Zoom registration required.

Master Course in Online Teaching -  Join the Spring 2022 Cohort 

CITL's Master Course in Online Teaching (MCOT) is a deep dive into online teaching strategies that extend earlier summer teaching institutes. Prior participation in an instructional development series is not required but professional experience with university level instruction is strongly encouraged.

The MCOT Canvas Course opens on March 7^th with live Zoom sessions scheduled for Wednesdays from 11:30 – 1:00 beginning March 23rd.

Certificates will be presented to those who complete all course requirements. Register here for the Spring cohort. 

Help Guide the CITL Website Redesign

CITL is undergoing a website redesign and we need your input. We're gathering interested stakeholders to provide feedback at key stages of our redesign project. Please add your name here to get involved. We'll email this group as needed to guide our design decisions; no obligations attached. Contact Jim Wentworth (jwentwor@illinois.edu), co-chair of CITL's Curriculum Committee, if you have any questions, 

Your Illinois Online Teaching Community is Here

Looking for a place where you can share online teaching strategies and experiences, make connections, or become inspired? Please join us on Microsoft Teams and be part of our vibrant online teaching community here at Illinois! You are welcome to join the conversation, post something interesting, or make a friend by asking a question.

CITL Teaching Certificates -  2022 Deadline Approaching

If you are pursuing one of CITL’s Teaching certificates, the deadline to complete the requirements is coming up on April 15. For those certificates that require workshop hours, consider the following:

• Not every workshop listed on the CITL calendar counts towards a certificate. The full workshop description should indicate if a workshop counts. Of particular note:
• Canvas trainings don’t count for most certificates. Up to 3 hours of Canvas training may count towards the Certificate in Technology-Enhanced Teaching.
• The Art of Teaching Seminar series are not workshops and don’t count towards the certificates. Attend them because they are great, but not to earn certificate hours.
• The Master Course in Online Teaching awards its own certificate, and does not count towards other certificates.
• If you attend a CITL workshop online, we capture your attendance automatically and you don’t also have to seek out a facilitator’s signature for the workshop. On your certificate application, list the topic, hours, and date, and we will provide the signature after you submit your application.
• If you attend a CITL workshop in person, follow whatever instructions your facilitator gives for attendance. That would give us a record we could look up and sign your application later.
• If you identify a non-CITL workshop you think should count towards a certificate, contact Lucas Anderson (lander23@illinois.edu) to make sure it will count.

Developing Your Teaching Philosophy Statement for a Faculty Job Search
Tuesday, March 1
9:30 A.M. - 11:00 A.M., Armory Room 182, registration required
Presenter: Lucas Anderson

Innovation Studio Open Hours
Tuesday, March 1
10:00 A.M. - 4:00 P.M., Armory Room 172, no registration required, recurs every Tuesday
Hosts: Jamie Nelson and Megan Baird

Faculty Series on Teaching & Learning, wksp #4: Are We Helping or Hurting? Critical Factors in Motivating Students to Succeed
Wednesday, March 2
11:30 A.M. - 1:00 P.M., Armory Room 182, registration required
Presenter: Cheelan Bo-Linn

Canvas Open Hours
Wednesday, March 2
1:00 P.M. - 2:00 P.M., online via Zoom, no registration required, see calendar entry for Zoom link, recurs every Wednesday
Hosts: CITL Instructional Support and Training

Art of Teaching Lunchtime Seminar Series
Thursday, March 3
12:00 P.M. - 1:00 P.M., online via Zoom, registration required
Host: Ava Wolf

Question Dissection: You Asked for It!
Tuesday, March 8
12:00 P.M. - 1:00 P.M., online via Zoom, registration required
Presenter: David Favre

Faculty Series on Teaching & Learning, wksp #5: Creating a Responsive Student-Centered Syllabus to Support Learning
Wednesday, March 9
11:30 A.M. - 1:00 P.M., Armory Room 182, registration required
Presenter: Cheelan Bo-Linn

Keeping Stress from Evolving into Distress: A Guide on Managing Student Stress through Course Design
(from Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching) 

Stress is an omnipresent feature of most Americans lives (American Psychological Association 2010). The American Psychological Association defines stress as a “pattern of specific and nonspecific responses an organism makes to stimulus events that disturb its equilibrium and tax or exceed its ability to cope” (Gerrig and Zimbardo 2002) . Stress affects all Americans regardless of age, gender, race, socioeconomic status or prior life experience. Typically those who are experiencing stress report feeling “overwhelmed, worried or run-down” (Alvord et al., n.d.). Now more than ever, college students feel stressed in the university setting (Yorke 2004). These feelings are particularly acute among first and second year students who may be away from home for the first time and trying to adjust to college life (Misra and McKean 2000).

Stress can be both beneficial and harmful. Stress is beneficial when it leads to the production of energy boosts that increase alertness and help individuals power through high stress situations such as exams and/or work deadlines. This type of stress is typically referred to as eustress. On the other hand, stress is harmful when it is experienced in excess (Alvord et al., n.d.). This form of stress is referred to as distress. According to the American Psychological Association, distress can lead to adverse health outcomes that affect the immune, cardiovascular, neuroendocrine and central nervous systems (Alvord et al., n.d.). This teaching guide identified several behavioral, emotional and psychological signs of student distress and ways to minimize stress.

Supporting Struggling Students Through Collaborative Problem Solving
(from Faculty Focus) 

Every semester faculty are faced with students who struggle with completing assignments, understanding the content, or just find it difficult to participate in class activities and discussions. For many, these struggles are connected to low grades, negative perceptions of the instructor and class, increased absences, and indicative of a general lack of engagement.  It is not uncommon for faculty to misinterpret these students as lazy, unmotivated, or just unprepared to do college-level work.  Faculty regularly reach out to assist, but some students are put into the university machinery of “student support,” where their worlds become more complex with emails connecting them to support services like tutoring and counseling, or notifying them that they are in danger of failing or not passing a course. Although this outreach is intended to motivate and help, there is a very real cognitive and emotional load that can be demoralizing if not debilitating. This is complicated, if not impossible terrain to navigate for all of us who genuinely want to see students succeed. Greene (2009) developed a framework for collaborative problem solving as a way to organize, support, and deeply engage students in identifying realistic ways to get back on track and succeed within the classroom. This framework has three steps that can be applied across multiple modalities.  All three steps are based on the fact that we are not merely disseminating information, but teaching human beings to think through content to build disciplinary skills, insights, and understanding.