**View session recording here**

Decades of research demonstrate that the quality of student-faculty, student-staff, and student-student interactions are foundational to engaging, inclusive, and purposeful learning. Educational relationships influence motivation, learning, belonging, and achievement for all students, and particularly for new majority students. Drawing on some 400 interviews with students, faculty, and staff across U.S. higher education, this interactive session will explore practical strategies that you can use to ensure that all students experience welcome and care, become inspired to learn, and explore the big questions that matter for their lives and our communities.

Participant Outcomes:

Participants will:

• explore practical strategies that you can use to ensure that all students experience welcome and care
• explore the big questions that matter for their lives and our communities
• reflect on practices to implement in their own teaching

Peter Felten
Professor of History;
Executive Director – Center for Engaged Learning;
Assistant Provost for Teaching and Learning;
Elon University

**View session recording here.**

This panel will feature Mizzou students telling stories of times when interactions with faculty, staff, and peers influenced their educational journeys. Some of these will be inspiring and others might be humbling as students bring us into their lived experiences at Mizzou.

Student Panel:

Johanna Milord, M.S.Ed. Counseling Psychology Doctoral Candidate
Grant Parks, Grant Parks, PT, DPT, CSCS, Alumnus Class of 2021, Physical Therapy
Stephanie Blake, Undergraduate, Social Work
Roman Leapheart, Undergraduate, College of Education
Derek Pelkey, Undergraduate, Economics

Peter Felten
Professor of History;
Executive Director – Center for Engaged Learning;
Assistant Provost for Teaching and Learning;
Elon University

Please note that seating will be limited.

How often have you been asked what you are doing to support student mental health. In this session we ask a different question, who supports you and how can you support yourself? This session will be a discussion based opportunity to share ways we support one another and care for ourselves. We’ll learn new, simple ways to cultivate our own mental health & well-being without large investments of time or money. The goal of this session is to leave with a plan for investing in yourself and your colleagues to support faculty and staff well-being.

Participant Outcomes:

• Participants will learn new skills for supporting their own well-being.
• Participants will develop strategies for supporting peers and colleagues
• Participants will leave with the tools to create supportive work environments.

Christy Hutton
Associate Director, Student Support Services – Health Promotion & Outreach

Undergraduate and graduate students of color face challenges distinct from their White peers. In addition to stress related to life transition and academic coursework, students of color are burdened with navigating stressors related to their racial and ethnic background such as microaggressions and discrimination. Stress related to academics, social life, finances, and the socio-political climate may further impact students of color in a way that is uniquely different from their White peers.

In this presentation participants will learn about the stress experienced by students of color and develop strategies to support students at the individual, departmental, and college levels. This session will be facilitated by Nurturing Minority Wellness (NMW),a program developed by Student Health and Well-being to support the mental health and wellness needs of students of color at the University of Missouri – Columbia.

Participant Outcomes:

• Attendees will gain an understanding of culturally informed practices to support undergraduate and graduate students of color
• Attendees will gain knowledge of appropriate resources and how to use the resources on and off campus to support students.
• Attendees will develop proactive and reactive strategies to support the wellbeing of students of color they interact with.

Kerri Schafer
Licensed Psychologist – MU Counseling Center

Feedback that enables learning is a highly effective tool for concept/skill mastery but is highly time intensive.  Additionally, students who perceive feedback only as an evaluation are less likely to incorporate feedback into future efforts.  A well-constructed and attended discussion board is a powerful student engagement tool but is a significant time investment for the instructor.  This session presents two tools supported by artificial intelligence, Packback and Kritik, that provide students with learning-scaffolded opportunities to contribute to meaningful discussion posts, improve peer-review skills, and receive formative feedback.  Learn how these two tools can improve student performance in your classes while improving grading efficiency.

Participant Outcomes:

Participants will:

• Choose at least two assignments that would work well for one of the presented tools.
• Identify two ways the new technology benefits the student and two ways it benefits the instructor.

Sarah Buckallew, Assistant Teaching Professor & Dietetics Coordinator
– Nutrition & Exercise Physiology
Jennifer Bean, Associate Teaching Professor & Dietetics Coordinator
– Nutrition & Exercise Physiology

The University Libraries offer a large collection of printed volumes, online databases, and services for learning, teaching, and research. The fast-paced evolution of learning and research tools and technology – online databases, library resources and services, and the staggering amount of academic information, changes and updates to access tools and methods and necessitates increased awareness of what is available and that can be accessed and used.

The presentation will highlight existing resources, technology tools and services in the library. The discussion will cover existing resources from the library that can be integrated directly into your Canvas course. These include resources like the reading list maker that pulls content from the library into Canvas, E-Reserves, and subject and course guides. The discussion will also cover collaborative possibilities and practices for teaching and learning in both on and offline environments such as scheduling instructions sessions, creating interactive library learning modules, videos, and online guides geared to your courses.

Participant Outcomes:

The session will:

• Inform faculty and staff of the Digital Media tools available for student use in Ellis Library. Furthermore, examples on how to use these tools in projects and assignments can add hands on value and variety to the classroom
• Raise awareness of various library resources
• Explore opportunities for collaboration between librarians and teaching faculty
• Highlight some of the kinds of interactions that exist currently
• Discuss future possibilities especially in the online environment

Navadeep Khanal
Head of eLearning Technologies, Library Research & Info Services

What goes on when instructor-facilitated art discussions for Pre-K through college students are used to develop participants’ communication & socialization skills? What goes on when students are on the autism spectrum? Research featured in this presentation is currently investigating this second question in an area high school. Session participants will experience the pedagogy firsthand, actively and creatively reflect on presentation content, then share new understandings and continuing questions at the session’s conclusion.

Participant Outcomes:

Participants will practice, grow, and strengthen critical and creative thinking, evidential reasoning, and respectful debate throughout the presentation as they participate in a VTS art discussion, investigate & respond to the VTS pedagogy, and consider its applications for students on the autism spectrum.

Mary Franco, Adjunct Instructor – Learning Teaching & Curriculum
Melissa Kuseliauskas, Master of Education in Learning, Teaching and Curriculum – M. Ed with an emphasis in Art Education  

Instructors can positively impact student learning, sense of belonging, and success through implementation of evidence-based teaching practices in the classroom. This session will focus on three specific evidence-based practices: frameworks for note-taking, utilizing an active learning cycle, and teaching a growth mindset. The presenters were introduced to these teaching and course design strategies through an ACUE course on teaching excellence and we have found them to be effective across both in-seat and online instruction. Session presenters will discuss the evidence for these teaching practices followed by multiple examples of how these practices have been effectively implemented in their own online and in-seat classrooms. Session participants will reflect on their own course design and teaching practices to determine if these evidence-supported strategies would benefit student learning in their courses.

Participant Outcomes:

After attending this session instructors will be able to:

• Create an outline or format for successful note-taking to enhance student learning and success.
• Integrate aspects of the active learning cycle into lesson planning in order to prime students for learning.
• Identify growth mindset messaging central to student belonging and success in college

Jenna Wintemberg, Assistant Teaching Professor
– School of Health Professions/Health Sciences
Greg Cox, Assistant Teaching Professor
– School of Health Professions/Health Sciences

Teaching can be a solitary activity. But we don’t need to feel alone! Participants will work in small groups to explore some of their most joyful and most stressful moments in the classroom. Through meditation, journaling, and discussion, we will consider how to enjoy teaching more. This session is grounded in mindfulness practices, and we’ll work with the Triangle of Awareness, which guides us to explore how our thoughts, emotions, and body sensations interact with and reinforce each other. Participants will learn how to intervene at the level of the body to change a negative pattern of thoughts and emotions related to teaching. They will also cultivate connections with other instructors and gain support to enjoy their teaching lives more fully.

Participant Outcomes:

• Participants will gain awareness of how thoughts, emotions, and body sensations reinforce each other, and of how to intervene at the level of the body to change a negative pattern of thoughts and emotions.
• Participants will feel connected to others and supported to enjoy their teaching lives more fully

Rose Metro, Assistant Teaching Professor – Learning Teaching Curriculum

Due to the pandemic, automation in teaching and learning is rapidly transforming the educational process.  Its main goal is to reduce manual labor in repetitive tasks and to free up instructors’ time to create meaningful personalized teaching and learning experiences that support student success.

Bridging technology-mediated instruction and meaningful personalized feedback poses a challenge for language educators.  This presentation explores ways to incorporate personalized, asynchronous, formative e-feedback, using multi-modal CANVAS tools in foreign language courses.

Through the sense of sound pedagogical strategies found in The Seven Principles of Good Teaching (1987), the presenter will show how to increase students’ motivation and support their progress toward language learning goals using target-language-rich digital communications, audio and video feedback, multi-modal grading comments/rubrics, and high impact surveys.

Participant Outcomes:

At the end of the session, participants will:

• Identify specific ways of incorporating e-feedback into student-centered classrooms across disciplines
• Consider activities that can be adapted for various instructional levels and delivery methods
• Receive practical tips on how to best apply multi-modal e-feedback strategies in their own courses
• Leave with examples for incorporating interactive teaching techniques/ models into a curriculum

Irina Ivliyeva
Professor of Arts, Languages and Philosophy;
Chair of the Center for Advancing Faculty Excellence;
Missouri S&T, Rolla

Students of color, especially those at a predominantly white institution, have been shown to benefit from representation and support from faculty of color. However, faculty of color express lowered job satisfaction and face a low retention rate compared to their White peers. Faculty of color face several unique challenges in academia. Faculty of color experience both hypervisibility and invisibility in academia due to their identities. They are often automatically placed in roles related to diversity and inclusion and take on informal mentorship and support roles that aren’t rewarded in their tenure process. This creates an additional toll that is not placed on White faculty. Further, faculty of color are less likely to be accepted into social circles in their departments, perceive their scholarly contributions to be less valued than their White peers, and are less likely to achieve tenure. These additional burdens and disparities in recognition and promotion can result in negative mental health outcomes for faculty of color, who are more likely to exhibit symptoms of imposter phenomenon, anxiety, and depression.

Faculty of color hold unique strengths and perspectives that contribute to transformative learning environments, and it is crucial that they have access to the support and stability they need to thrive. This presentation will focus on 1) the ways in which faculty of color can “channel their strengths” as they navigate academia, and 2) provide administrators and mentors with a better understanding of how they can uplift their faculty of color. This session is offered by Nurturing Minority Wellness (NMW), a program developed by Student Health and Well-Being to support the mental health and wellness needs of students of color at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Participant Outcomes:

• Identify the strengths of faculty of color in higher education
• Understand the challenges faced by faculty of color
• Develop proactive and reactive strategies to support the wellbeing of faculty of color
• Use appropriate resources to support faculty of color in their work with students

Remya Perinchery, Post Intern/Post-Doctoral Psychology Professional, Psychology Resident) – Counseling Services

Maximize learning after exams with in-class and individual exam reviews. Strategies and tools for reviews will be shared. Students benefit from taking exams because test preparation improves long-term knowledge retention. However, the benefits of testing need not end when the exam concludes. Evidence shows learning value for students in revisiting exam items, especially those they answered incorrectly. Exam reviews create an opportunity for dialogue between students and faculty that demonstrates faculty commitment to student learning and fosters student-faculty connections. Reviews help students reflect on preparedness, guide student-driven development of action plans to improve future performance, develop self-regulation skills, and evaluate their knowledge in relationship to the class. Benefits for faculty include greater understanding of students’ knowledge, reasoning, and testing abilities. Welcoming constructive student feedback during exam reviews has the potential to improve student perception of faculty and exam fairness. During reviews, faculty identify common misperceptions as well as class wide and individual knowledge gaps. Faculty can use this data to clarify sticking points in the current cohort and improve future teaching. Additionally, feedback gathered can enhance item analysis, scoring, faculty item writing skills, and strengthen exam banks. Join us to learn best practices in after-exam reviews to strengthen your course and improve student outcomes.

Participant Outcomes:

• Develop knowledge of post-exam review strategies and practices.
• Discover the potential student and faculty benefits of post-exam reviews.
• Appreciate the learning value of post-exam reviews.
• Plan a post-exam review strategy for future use.

Sherri Ulbrich, Associate Teaching Professor – School of Nursing
Elaine Beach, Instructor – School of Nursing

The University of Missouri is home to over 4000 students who were originally admitted as transfers. Each year we see this number grow, and in fall of 2021, Mizzou welcomed 1,400 transfer students to campus. These transfer students are smart, resilient, and an important part of our campus community. However, the word “transfer” is often surrounded by many myths about who these transfers are and the needs they bring with them onto campus and into their overall higher education experience. Join us for a 50-minute session as we break down these common misconceptions, learn about ways to support transfer students on our institution, and hear from a panel of current transfer students about their experiences as it relates to student learning, sense of belonging, and success in college.

Participant Outcomes:

Participants who attend this session will be able to:

• Define the transfer population on Mizzou’s campus (average GPA, average number of credits, number of transfer students)
• Connect the three tenets of Schlossberg’s Theory of Transition (Evans, Forney, & Guido-DiBrito, 1998) to the different lived experiences of transfer students.
• Summarize 3-5 transfer student needs, as well as holistic support options.
• Identify one support they can utilize in their own classroom of campus space that will help better support transfer students.

Lexi Wolkow, Student Services Coordinator

*This session is being offered remotely via Zoom

The goal of a multi-cultural classroom is to facilitate student engagement and cross-cultural interactions with a shared objective of enhanced learning with maximum participation for each student. In this process, the role of an instructor in facilitating discussions while acknowledging cultural diversity, becomes all the more important (Shealey, 2007). Instructors may not be sufficiently skilled to engagement with very different students in their classrooms, and the hope is to be able to identify more cultural sensitivities in a classroom (Kauffman, et al., 2008). Culturally aware teachers adopt different student engagement techniques that considers everyone irrespective of their race, nationality, gender, religion, economic status and sexual orientation. A focus is also maintained of creating a classroom rich in human connections and shared values (Klein, 2015). Herein, the speakers will include experiential sharing and research to better understand the approach and challenges of cross-cultural human interactions in the classroom and provide tips and suggestions to be more cultural caring in a diverse classroom.

Participant Outcomes:

By the end of the workshop, instructors will be able to:

• Increase cultural sensitivity in classroom
• Identify diverse ways to engage students of all backgrounds
• Identify methods of building connections amongst students

Kanishka Sikligar, Doctoral Candidate
– Department of Chemistry
Johanna Milord, M.S.Ed. Counseling Psychology Doctoral Candidate,
GRA for Teaching for Learning Center

**View session recording here.**

Research finds that when students feel cared for by their teachers, they learn more.  New research now finds that when students feel cared for, their teachers also teach better – using more advanced instructional practices such as critical thinking and on-the-spot assessment of understanding.  One way that teachers show they care for students is by coming to class prepared to engage students.

Christy Bergin
Associate Dean for Research & Innovation;
Research Professor;
Department of Educational, Research, and Counseling Psychology.

**View session recording here.**

In this keynote address, Dr. Melzer will discuss the value of informal, low-stakes writing that focuses on “writing to learn” and share easy-to-implement strategies for integrating low-stakes writing in any discipline. The address will be interactive, and participants will reflect on their own pedagogy and develop potential writing-to-learn activities for their courses.

Participant Outcomes:

Participants will:

• learn what actions have the most meaning and impact for students
• reflect on ideas to use in their own teaching

Dan Melzer
Professor;
Director of First-Year Composition – University Writing Program;
University of California, Davis

In this workshop, Dr. Melzer will introduce faculty to the most prominent findings from the empirical research on response to student writing and share a heuristic for response that draws on these findings and helps to lighten teachers’ response load by shifting the focus of response from teachers to peer response and student self-reflection. By the end of this interactive workshop participants will gain strategies for responding more efficiently and effectively to student writing, ideas for improving the quality of peer response, and tools for encouraging student self-assessment.

Participant Outcomes:

Participants will gain:

• Gain strategies for responding more efficiently to student writing
• Ideas for improving the quality of peer response
• Tools for encouraging student self-assessment

Dan Melzer
Professor;
Director of First-Year Composition – University Writing Program;
University of California, Davis

Under-represented minority (URM) students experience some of the lowest persistence and graduation rates in higher education (Kezar et al, 2019). Minority students have higher attrition rates than non-minority peers across disciplines (Musu-Gillette et al. 2017). Research suggests that attrition of URM students is due in part to differences in “social belongingness” or experiences of “otherness” where students question if they belong or fit in a major or on campus (Havlik et al, 2017; Patterson Silver Wolf et al, 2019).

For the last 18 months, University of Missouri faculty from a variety of fields have gathered to discuss and implement instructional strategies for building community and improving students’ sense of belonging in the classroom through inclusive teaching practices. In this session, members will share the strategies and outcomes of three course redesigns implemented in Fall 2021.

By engaging with this session participants will:

• Gain insight into a variety of instructional strategies that help cultivate a sense of belonging in the classroom.
• Learn about the beneficial outcomes and pitfalls of the described teaching strategies.
• Consider the described teaching strategies in the context of their own courses.

Jason Furrer, Associate Teaching Professor
– Molecular Microbiology & Immunology
Amanda Durbak, Associate Teaching Professor
– Biological Science
Cheryl Hill, Associate Teaching Professor, Path & Anat Sci – Anatomy
Sarah Humfeld, Managger, Student Support Services
– Office of Undergrad Research
Addison Byrne, Instructor
– Animal Sciences
Bethany Stone, Curators Distinguished Teaching Professor
– Biological Sciences 

Dr. Sheldon and Dr. Dorime-Williams, the co-leaders of the design team for creating the new course evaluation survey, will discuss their work so far and the scale they have developed.  In the process we will discuss the mission we were given by the TFELT design team, our goals in creating a scale that met these priorities, the process we have been through for testing and piloting items, and present the new scale as it currently stands.  We will also explain how the scale and data align with the dimensions of Inclusive and Effective teaching that were identified by the TFELT committee.

Participant Outcomes:

Participants will understand the process and goals of our project, and become familiar with the contours of the new scale.

Kennon Sheldon, Curators’ Professor of Psychology
Marjorie Dorime-Williams, Assistant Teaching Professor – Provost

*This session is being offered remotely via Zoom

Student self-efficacy (Bandura, 1986) is defined as a student’s belief in their ability to achieve a given goal or task. In academics, students may develop levels of self-efficacy based on specific domains, or subjects (Bandura, 1986, 1989). These beliefs in turn play a role in the student’s perceptions of their ability to succeed academically and eventually in their careers longer term (Brown & Lent, 2005). When contextualized at a predominantly white institution (PWI), individuals who are less traditionally represented (e.g., students of color) have unique factors influencing their sense of belonging in the classroom. This workshop will explore the benefits of supporting a student’s growth mindset, and specific strategies for promoting learner’s self-efficacy despite experienced setbacks (e.g., resilience; Werner, 1989).  Historically, the research on resiliency has explored the general impact of biological and psychosocial risk factors, stressful life events, and protective factors in early and middle childhood and late adolescence (Werner, 1989, p. 72).

During the workshop, participants will review specific practices that instructors may implement related to increasing student resilience and academic self-efficacy. Participants will share experiences and explore methods such as collaborative goal setting and how positive relationships may help students persist to achieve academically and enhance their motivation to learn.

Participant Outcomes:

By the end of our workshop, participants will gain understanding about:

• The importance of a welcoming learning environment
• Ways to support their students’ self-efficacy by providing teaching practices such as constructive feedback
• Boost students’ learning motivation through relationship building, recognizing progress, and encouraging the importance of learning new skills.

Johanna Milord; M.S.Ed. Counseling Psychology Doctoral Candidate,
GRA for Teaching for Learning Center
Jason McKinney, Ph.D.
Middleton Fellows Coordinator | Instructor for University of Missouri Charter School Office

*This session is being offered remotely via Zoom

With updated accreditation standards, new teaching modalities, and the increased resource challenges for higher education programs, preparing for an accreditation visit is tough work. Despite these challenges, the Sinclair School of Nursing completed their accreditation materials far before their deadlines, enabling them to begin strategizing for their next accreditation visit even before the first was complete. Their secret: strong faculty collaboration and using the right tools.

In this session, Drs. Robin Harris, Nancy Birtley, and Jonathan Cisco will guide you through their process and identify how you and your team can mimic their success. After a demonstration of the curricular planning and mapping software, Coursetune, you’ll have the opportunity to hear from the Sinclair School of Nursing leadership team on how they improved student learning across their school.

Projected outcomes:

• Discuss vertical and horizontal alignment
• Reflect on how alignment improves student outcomes
• Discuss how Coursetune enables programs to improve their alignment
• Share best practices for preparing for programmatic reviews

Nancy Birtley, Associate Teaching Professor &
Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Area Coordinator – School of Nursing
Robin Harris, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs &
Associate Teaching Professor – School of Nursing
Jonathan Cisco, Director of Partner Success – Coursetune;
Senior Fellow – Higher Education Academy

Victoria Mondelli, Founding Director – Teaching for Learning Center
Emily Goldstein -Director of Instructional Design, Office of eLearning

This session will offer an introduction to and experiential practice of “lectio divina,” a contemplative reading practice that invites mindful attention to the emotional impact of words. This practice can serve both as a way to center students’ experience in the classroom and to open up an effective investigation of readings. In lectio divina, the class reads a short passage aloud, and students are invited to notice how particular words and phrases resonate for them and to be curious about that resonance. Students frequently may read quickly, without noting how words affect them, and so this practice invites an inquiry that can deepen engagement.

Projected Outcomes:

• Affective engagement of students with course material
• Ways of bringing students into the present moment of the classroom

Donna Strickland, Licensed Professional Counselor/Licensed Clinical Social Worker – Counseling Services

In Spring, 2021, the Provost of the University of Missouri-Columbia endorsed a new system for formally and informally evaluating teaching at MU. The new system provides three sources of evidence: peer review, student feedback, and self-reflection. Each of the three sources align to the 4 Dimensions of Inclusive, Effective Teaching: Welcoming & Collaborative, Empowering & Supportive, Structured & Intentional, and Relevant & Engaging. Woven throughout the 4 Dimensions are criteria that identify inclusive instructional strategies.

During this session a panel of current and past MU Teaching for Learning Center Faculty Fellows will summarize the new evaluation system and how it can be used to assess and improve teaching for all MU instructors “graduate, adjunct, faculty, and staff. They will introduce the newly developed training resources and connect participants with the developed tools. They will also answer participants’ questions about the new system and how it is being implemented at MU.

Participant Outcomes:

By engaging with this session participants will:

• Increase familiarity with the new MU system for evaluating teaching.
• Be able to explain how to find the new teaching evaluation training resources and what information they provide.
• Ask questions on how the new system may be implemented and affect their own evaluation and development of teaching.

Bethany Stone, Curators Distinguished Teaching Professor
– Biological Sciences
Stephen Klien, Associate Teaching Professor
– Communication

*This session is being offered remotely via Zoom

Instructors of Writing Intensive courses at Mizzou shared through surveys (n=81) and focused interviews how they adapted through emergency remote teaching (i.e., the sudden shift to online teaching) and beyond and what resources they used to support these changes.  Instructors used a process of reflexivity in pivoting their course structures to foster a learning community. Reflexivity is an ongoing process of reflection coupled with action toward improvement. In times of great societal stress and change like we experienced from March 2020 to the present with the ongoing evolving global pandemic, social unrest, and protests regarding racial equality, finding opportunities for reflexivity in teaching is a necessity to effective instruction.

In this session, learn how other instructors were reflexive in fostering a sense of community through emergency remote teaching and beyond through diverse approaches (e.g., soliciting and utilizing student feedback, discussion boards, break-out rooms, individual check-ins with students, Zoom office hours, streamlining assignment structure, use of polls and chatbox features).  Participants will practice reflexivity in how they fostered community in the classroom and identify successes and challenges from past semesters through individual reflection and discussion in wrestling with how their courses were experienced by different students and thinking through why and how this happened. Faculty resolved action for positive change for future semesters. Participants will be encouraged to consider diverse student experiences in their reflections. The end of the semester is an ideal time to practice reflexivity and learn and support each other.

Participant Outcomes:

• Participants will learn about the concept of reflexivity and consider how instructors utilized that concept to foster community during the evolving pandemic and other societal stresses.
• Participants will practice reflexivity in their own courses as an individual and through small and large group dialogue. They will come up with concrete strategies to foster community in future semesters through this process.

Caroline Brock, Associate Teaching Professor
– Sociology
Ashlie Lester, Associate Teaching Professor, and Director of Graduate Studies
– Human Development and Family Science
Christy Goldsmith, Assistant Director Student Support Services
– Campus Writing Program
Julie Birt, Educational Program Coordinator, Sr.
– Campus Writing Program
Keisha Avery, Graduate
– Biological Engineering-PHD

The following sessions are offered concurrently from 2:00pm-2:50pm

*This session is being offered remotely via Zoom

Undergraduate researchers and creative scholars develop critical thinking abilities, research techniques, and analytical skills.  However, there are a wealth of other learning outcomes that can be purposefully leveraged through engagement in undergraduate research.  This session, for both new and experienced mentors, will provide suggestions for activities that mentors can implement that will maximize student learning in other domains.  We will discuss easy ways to help beginning students become socialized to research, how students in their middle years can set goals to maximize future opportunities, and using seniors to mentor younger students, and in the process, grow themselves.  Students report the importance of dealing with or developing time management, perseverance, imposter syndrome, communication, failed experiments, writing, and confidence.  We will discuss existing activities and ideas that students can benefit from, without much additional work from the mentor.  Tips for helping students prepare applications for summer programs, advanced study, and fellowships will also be shared.

Participant Outcomes:

• Identifying activities and opportunities that build upon the undergraduate research experience that provide purposeful learning for students
• Developing creative ways to expand student learning in your research team
• Establishing a framework of challenge and support for your mentees
• Identifying activities that promote the 11 learning outcomes measured by EvaluateUR

Linda Blockus, Associate Director, Student Support Services
– Office of Undergraduate Research
Sarah Humfeld, Manager, Student Support Services
– Office of Undergraduate Research

In this session, the audience will learn about socio-cultural and scientific aspects of accents and dialects and how they may affect multicultural communications in academic settings. The presentation considers multicultural communications as an important factor building student-to-student and faculty-to-student relationships contributing to not only the students’ learning and academic success, but also to the faculty member’s success in the classroom and lab.  The audience will be able to reflect on and find ways to introduce language differences and the nature of language (perception and production) with their students early in the semester to initiate a positive conversation about how the brain processes language as well as the importance of being able to understand and be understood by people from a range of dialects and language backgrounds in their future professional settings.

Participant Outcomes:

• Learn about socio-cultural and scientific aspects of accents and dialects and how they may affect multicultural communications in academic settings.
• Reflect on and find ways to introduce language differences and the nature of language (perception and production) with students early in the semester.
• Consider dialects and accents as neutral terms, not as something that can be rated as good or bad, and that experience with people from various language backgrounds improves cultural awareness and also a person’s ability to decode small differences in language form more quickly.

Dana R. Fritz, Professor, Clinical, School of Health Professions
– Speech Language & Hearing Science
Jamille Palacios Rivera, Assistant Teaching Professor
– Applied Social Sciences

From 2019-21, the MU Task Force to Evaluate Learning and Teaching (TFELT) developed a system to evaluate and support Inclusive, Effective Teaching. This system uses a three-prong approach to evaluate teaching including peer reviews, student feedback, and self-reflection. The system is aligned around Four Dimensions of Inclusive, Effective Teaching: Welcoming & Collaborative, Empowering & Supportive, Structured & Intentional, and Relevant & Engaging. The evaluation tools, such as the Peer Review Rubric, assess the Four Dimensions. Also woven throughout the entire system are key elements of inclusion, diversity, and equity aimed at building a sense of community and individual voice in the learning environment, among other things.

In this session, we will discuss selected criteria from the Peer Review Rubric. We will 1) define what these criteria are, 2) discuss why they are important, and 3) describe examples of how these may be demonstrated in a diversity of learning modalities (in person and online). Participants will have the opportunity to provide their own examples and reflect on how their own instruction demonstrates each of the discussed criteria. They will also have the opportunity to use the criteria to reflect on directions they may wish to develop moving forward.

Participant Outcomes:

By engaging with this session participants will:

• Gain increased familiarity with the Four Dimensions of Inclusive, Effective Teaching and the peer review system.
• Connect what they’re already doing in their class with the Four Dimensions.
• Become more comfortable with education-based vocabulary.

Bethany Stone, Curators Distinguished Teaching Professor
– Biological Sciences
Dorina Kosztin, Associate Teaching Professor, Chair of Physics and Astronomy
– Physics

**View session recording here.**

Traditional high-stakes assessments such as major exams induce student anxiety, which hinders cognitive capacity and impedes students’ ability to demonstrate their knowledge. When we offer multiple lower-stakes assessments in all forms: quizzes, homework sets, and writing, among others, we reduce anxiety and thereby facilitate learning and academic achievement. In this session we’ll explore practical strategies to accurately and transparently assess learning without sacrificing rigor or overloading ourselves with grading.

Participant Outcomes:

Participants will:

• Explore the literature on anxiety, cognitive capacity, and low-stakes assessments
• Gain practical low-stakes strategies that work in every discipline, class size, and modality
• Reflect on assessment philosophy to begin to evaluate more learning-centered approaches

Flower Darby, Associate Director – Teaching for Learning Center

Peter Felten

Peter Felten is professor of history, executive director of the Center for Engaged Learning, and assistant provost for teaching and learning at Elon University. Peter has published six books about undergraduate education including (with Leo Lambert), Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College (2020). His next book, a student guide to relationship-rich education, is co-authored with Isis Artze-Vega, Leo Lambert, and Oscar Miranda, will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press in early 2023 (with an open access online version free to all readers). He has served as president of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) and also of the POD Network, the U.S. professional organization for academic developers. He is a fellow of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education, a foundation that works to advance equity in higher education.

Learn more about Peter Felten here.

Ellis Library offers all MU users access to Peter Felten’s book, Relationship-Rich Education

Daniel Melzer

Dan Melzer is a professor and Director of First-Year Composition in the University Writing Program at the University of California, Davis. He has published the books Assignments across the Curriculum: A National Study of College Writing, Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom (coauthored with John Bean), and Sustainable WAC: A Whole Systems Approach to Launching and Developing Writing across the Curriculum Programs (coauthored with Michelle Crow and Jeffrey Galin). His new book, Reconstructing Response to Student Writing, will be published by Utah State University Press in 2023.

Learn more about Dan Melzer here.

Ellis Library offers all MU users access to Dan Melzer and John Bean’s book, Engaging Ideas

Flower Darby

Flower Darby (she/her) celebrates and promotes effective teaching in all class formats to include, welcome, and support all students and to foster equitable learning outcomes for today’s new majority students. In her former roles as Assistant Dean of Online and Innovative Pedagogies and Director of Teaching for Student Success, Flower led efforts that support teaching excellence for equity and inclusion. Flower is an internationally renowned keynote speaker and author as well as adjunct faculty at Northern Arizona University and Estrella Mountain Community College. She has taught in higher ed for over 25 years in a range of subjects including English, Technology, Leadership, Dance, and Pilates. A seasoned face-to-face and online educator, Flower applies learning science across the disciplines and helps others do the same.

Through her publications and presentations, Flower has helped educators all over the world become more effective in their work. She’s the author, with James M. Lang, of Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes, and she’s a regular contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Her new book project is on emotion science and teaching with technology.

Learn more about Flower Darby here.

Ellis Library offers all MU users access to Flower’s book with James Lang, Small Teaching Online