Monday, 2:30-3:45pm

1A Oh, No! I Haven’t Started My Syllabus | Room 5382

Avra Spector and Anke Geertsma

For new instructors, one of the biggest obstacles to preparing a syllabus may be not knowing where to start. Join us for a workshop in which we’ll identify and prioritize the major elements that comprise a syllabus, from course descriptions, to grading requirements, to class policies, to a calendar of readings and assignments. We’ll share templates you can use to scaffold your own syllabus, and discuss how to integrate your own pedagogy and preferences with departmental requirements, calibrate the tone of your syllabus, and how clearly to express the primary narrative or argument for your course.

1B Students’ Learning Ecologies & Implications for Teaching | Room 3306

Laurie Hurson

This workshop will present a recent research project conducted at CUNY to map students’ “learning ecologies.” A learning ecology is the network of people, places, and technologies that a student constructs to connect their physical, social, and cultural environments to facilitate his or her learning process. Semi-structured interviews and mapping sessions revealed that students can provide valuable feedback about engaging pedagogy and how professors can use educational technologies and university resources to deeply support student learning. Insights from this research can help new and advanced teachers address and incorporate student experience and knowledge into their courses.

1C Accessibility, Inclusion and Universal Design | Room 3307

Sakina Laksimi-Morrow and Louis Olander

This workshop will explore the range of disabilities present in the CUNY classroom, as well as the construct of “disability” itself. Participants will be asked to identify accessibility barriers they may have experienced and observed, and consider how an approach to course design can take into consideration issues of accessibility and inclusion. The workshop will offer opportunities for dialogue about disability perceptions and accommodations, connect attendees to a range of available resources, and offer practical ways to mobilize universal design for learning (UDL) principles in course design.

1D Developing Your Teaching Persona and Classroom Community | Room 3308

Elizabeth Decker and Kaitlin Mondello

For many new instructors, occupying a position of authority in a college classroom can induce anxiety. In this workshop, we will discuss how to alleviate such pressure by developing a teaching persona that works with your personality and serves the learning goals of your classroom. We will explore how your teaching persona can help students form a sense of shared community in the classroom with you and their peers. Participants will leave the workshop feeling more comfortable about their position in the classroom and with in-class activities to help create a strong sense of classroom community among students.

1E Fundamentals of Teaching Lab Courses | Room 6421

Jordana Lovett

This workshop will lay out the essential knowledge needed for running a lab course, including both technical and creative aspects. We will cover management of the laboratory facility, and how to engage with students in the space. We will also discuss managing relationships with faculty (College Laboratory Technicians –CLTs– and professors), and accommodating the needs a diverse audience, as well as developing your ‘teaching persona.’ The workshop will be structured as an open discussion, so come prepared with any questions or concerns you might have!

Tuesday, 2:30-3:45pm

2A Crafting Your Syllabus: Theory Into Practice | Room 5382

Avra Spector and Anke Geertsma

If your course syllabus is the road map you provide students to keep them organized and on track, then how can its design help communicate that key information? In this workshop, we will look at and evaluate a variety of syllabi that model different rhetorical and aesthetic techniques for communicating that the course plan is a living, welcoming, accessible and even exciting proposition. Then, we’ll practice implementing some of these techniques ourselves and consider how they may act as specific instructional models for our students.

2B Ed Tech Sandbox: Using Digital Tools for Teaching | Room 6421

Laurie Hurson

This workshop will introduce various digital tools for teaching in and outside of the classroom. We will discuss basic criteria to consider when evaluating and selecting tools, and share best practices for how to get started with digital pedagogy. This workshop has been designed primarily for teachers just beginning to utilize digital tools in their courses but may also be useful for those with more experience who are interested in exploring how to evaluate and integrate new tools into their courses. This is will be a “hands-on” workshop where participants will be playing with web-based tools, so please bring a laptop if possible.

2C Inclusive Participation Practices | Room 3306

Kaitlin Mondello, Elizabeth Alsop

For many instructors, having a classroom full of eager, engaged students is a persistent goal and recurring challenge. We’ll explore strategies for generating active student learning including how to facilitate a class discussion and manage group work. Participants will reflect on different participation styles and common participation issues in the classroom. This workshop will help instructors create inclusive classroom communities and encourage students to develop their own voices and perspectives on how best to facilitate such spaces.

2D Improv for Academics: Getting Comfortable With Your Discomfort | Room 3307

Mei Ling Chua

Does the thought of being in front of a classroom cause you anxiety? Are you looking for ways to help your students be less nervous and more comfortable in the classroom? This workshop will draw principles and exercises from improvisational theater to explore strategies for working with and calming the nerves that often accompany public speaking and interaction in the classroom. Improv is a theatrical practice that is performed live and constructed in the moment. Improv exercises emphasize cooperation, generosity, comfort with spontaneity and responsiveness to unexpected situations. These skills, when transferred to the classroom, can increase student engagement and foster group cooperation.

2E Aligning Learning Goals via Backwards Design | Room 3308

Sakina Laksimi-Morrow

This workshop will offer opportunities for participants to take a deeper look at their course learning goals (outcomes/objectives) and consider personal/political teaching goals. In addition to reviewing, evaluating, devising and describing these goals and objectives, we will develop one assignment using a backwards design approach. Additionally, we will consider how to assess student learning through that assignment.

2F Time Management as a Graduate Student Instructor | Room 3310A

Elizabeth Decker

As a graduate student instructor, you must manage the demands of your own coursework and scholarship alongside the workload of teaching. In this workshop, we will strategically plan how you can meet and balance the varying demands of the semester. Through careful reflection on your work style and best practices for time management, each participant will leave with the beginning of an action plan for achieving their end-of-semester goals, week by week.

Wednesday, 2:30-3:45pm

3A Assignment and Assessment Design | Room 5382

Avra Spector

This workshop will focus both on how to design creative, engaging and challenging assignments for students as well as how to employ assessment methods that are generative and manageable. We’ll discuss ways to write clear, high stakes assignments and design rubrics that reinforce the objectives of the assignment for both you and your students. We’ll also focus on developing strategies to mark assignments, including papers and exams, quickly and efficiently. Finally, we’ll explore examples of both high-stakes and low-stakes assignments you might use in your classes to encourage students to reflect on and synthesize what they’ve learned throughout the semester.

3B Open Teaching w/ Educational Technologies | Room 6421

Laurie Hurson

In this workshop, we’ll explore the affordances and challenges of “open teaching,” and consider methods and digital tools that allow instructors and their students to engage with wider audiences and public discourses. In particular, participants will examine pedagogical strategies for increasing openness in their teaching, such as developing experiential learning opportunities, using open educational resources, and teaching on digital platforms such as the CUNY Academic Commons. Because openness is often facilitated or supported by digital technologies, this workshop will highlight open source educational technologies and address how to handle copyright/attribution and student data and privacy online.

3C Writing to Learn Across the Disciplines | Room 3306

Anke Geertsma

This workshops introduces instructors to the principles of WAC (Writing Across the Curriculum) and WID (Writing in the Disciplines) pedagogy. At the core of these pedagogies lies the idea that learning to write and writing to learn are equally important and that continuous writing practice helps students not only improve their writing skills but also better understand course material. In this workshop, we will explore ways in which we can bring writing into classrooms across the disciplines to create active, inquiry-based learning environments and encourage creativity and engagement. We’ll look at practices such as scaffolding and (peer) review, and design a low-stakes writing assignment for the course you will be teaching.

3D Teaching Aesthetics | Room 3307

Mei Ling Chua

As instructors, we are tasked with structuring the environment and modes in which our students engage and learn in the classroom. Design principles relate to many aspects of communication and interaction, including what happens in and around our classrooms. This workshop explores the role of aesthetics and design in teaching, and how the ways we present visual and sensory information can help clarify, emphasize, and direct attention to the ideas and knowledge we seek to engage with our students.

3E On Addressing “Problems” | Room 3308

Sakina Laksimi-Morrow

This workshop will consider common issues that may arise in the classroom, including plagiarism, student attendance and participation, excessive or inappropriate use of cell phones, inappropriate student remarks, and other pedagogical challenges. Participants will be asked to unpack their own expectations, anxieties and perceptions about their anticipated role and practices in the classroom. We will discuss various strategies for addressing some common issues and concerns while maintaining an inclusive, equitable, and empathetic learning environment.

3F Museum Pedagogy in the Classroom | Room 3310A

Sarah Litvin, Kaitlin Mondello, Elizabeth Decker

Learn how to enliven your classroom lessons and assignments with pedagogies used in museum exhibitions and tours to foster active, student-centered, and creative undergraduate experiences. We will discuss the theoretical underpinnings of these teaching strategies, and think about ways to use them in different disciplines. We’ll invite you to think about how you might apply museum pedagogy in your own disciplines and classrooms.

Thursday, 2:30-3:45pm

4A Troubleshooting on the Fly | Room 3306

Avra Spector

Sometimes class plans don’t work out the way you want them to. This workshop focuses on building strategies for troubleshooting class activities, exercises and assignments that at some point have departed from your aspirations. We’ll discuss specific scenarios and improvise possible solutions, and we’ll consider ways to build into course planning room to modify and shift based on outside and unexpected factors. Finally, we’ll talk about instructional design tips that may help you catch problematic spots before they happen.

4B Crafting Digital Identity & Teaching Portfolios | Room 5382

Laurie Hurson

Academics are increasingly using online spaces to build their digital presence and share their ideas. This workshop will provide participants with several methods for constructing and maintaining their digital presence including creating a personal website, sharing CV information and publications, and developing a teaching portfolio to document and showcase their pedagogy. The workshop will also touch on best practices for participating in online communities such as Twitter. Several examples will be presented, and participants will have the opportunity to begin developing their own digital presence.

4C Teaching as an International Student | Room 6421

Anke Geertsma

This workshop is designed specifically for international students who want to become more familiar with the American educational system and/or CUNY curriculum before stepping into the classroom. Maybe you have questions about your students’ (academic) backgrounds, classroom culture and dynamics, or worry about teaching as a non-native English speaker. We’ll discuss such common questions and concerns and hear from other international student teachers, who are joining this workshop to share their experiences, and think about how our backgrounds can inform and enrich our classrooms.

4D Creativity in the Classroom | Room 3307

Kaitlin Mondello

Across disciplines, our job as instructors often involves asking students to think, read, and write critically with an emphasis on logic, argumentation, and research. This workshop will analyze the interconnections between “critical” and “creative” thinking and demonstrate a variety of active learning strategies using creative methods. Together, we will deconstruct the binary of critical/creative and develop lessons and assignments that foster students’ creative thinking, as well as how to integrate creative options into assignment design.

4E Teach Your Own Research (and Ultimately Teach Yourself) | Room 3308

Luis Henao Uribe

Academics often conceive of research and teaching as two separate practices that compete for our time. Connecting this work via class design can be productive for both instructors and students alike. For instructors, it helps us to develop facility talking about our work and provides feedback on our ideas. At the same time, it can expose students to current themes and debates within the discipline. This workshop will explore different strategies to integrate your research interests into your teaching, while also introducing basic principles of public scholarship.