Customized Workshops

Ever wonder what students are really learning during your lectures? Don’t wait until the big exam to find out! Interactive lecturing can heighten student engagement and improve learning by creating opportunities for students to engage with course material through a variety of interactive techniques. These techniques allow you and your students to know exactly what they are learning—or where they are stuck—in real time. In this workshop, we will examine the pros and cons to lecturing, explore the research on student learning, and consider ways to implement this research to improve our lectures.

Discussions can be meaningful and productive learning experiences for students. However, sustaining engaging, equitable, and effective discussions is a challenging task for instructors. In this workshop we will model structured discussion techniques to explore our experiences with class discussions and brainstorm strategies to increase students’ participation in discussion.

Critical reflection is at the heart of being an effective teacher. It invites us to evaluate our philosophies about teaching and to reflect on the choices we make in our teaching practices. This process of inquiry involves deep analysis of the assumptions that frame our teaching and can be guided by viewing our teaching through four complementary lenses: ourselves, our students, our colleagues and the lens of literature and research. Together in this 2-part workshop, we will engage in critical reflection of our teaching and discuss tools and strategies for continuing this ongoing work in the future.

The research on how learning works has shown that students gain a better understanding of challenging concepts and retain the information longer when they are engaging with content rather than simply listening to it. In this workshop, we will explore the research on active learning, discover a few time-tested active learning strategies, and consider how to best apply these methods within a variety of classroom contexts. We will also discuss common concerns raised about implementing active learning and brainstorm solutions that will foster success for our students.

For many instructors, facilitating difficult discussions is a routine challenge. Although some faculty may teach courses that include highly-charged topics, we often don’t always know exactly what will be hot-button issues for our students. Additionally, hot moments that were not anticipated can happen in class at any time. Join us for this workshop to explore strategies that can help both you and your students better prepare to engage in productive and meaningful dialogues in the classroom.