Session Title: You are Welcome Here! Creating an Inclusive Learning Environment at the University Level

Presented By: Stephanie Hopkins, Doctoral Student, Special Education and Rachel Juergensen, Doctoral Student, Special Education

Session Description: Learn and explore strategies to build an inclusive learning environment for diverse learners. Embrace the diversity that each of your students brings to the classroom to create an environment that is welcoming and safe for all students.

Projected Outcomes: After attending these sessions, participants will…

1) Understand the importance of creating an inclusive learning environment.

2) Take away concrete strategies to implement with their own students.

3) Have the opportunity to brainstorm and discuss how these strategies will be implemented in their own classroom.

Session Title: Energize Classroom Discussion with Visual Prompts

Presented By: Dr. Lara Dieckmann, Learning Teaching & Curriculum; Instructor, Secondary English Education, Writing Methods

Session Description: From Vygotsky and other social interactionists, we know that learners benefit from communicating with their peers; additionally, classroom talk promotes deeper understanding and retention, among other positive outcomes. Without clear direction, though, classroom talk can often devolve into socializing for the sake of socializing. This is not a reason to abandon discussion as a learning and teaching format; instead, the use of a novel, attention-grabbing method such as vibrant visual prompts can structure discussion purposefully. Imagery as a stimuli for answering questions often promotes deeper, divergent thinking, which, in turn, can invigorate a more focused discussion. Moreover, using imagery in unique ways can unite the classroom community, provide opportunities to build relationships, and offer insight into how learners are processing information.

Projected Outcomes: Participants will leave the session able to implement more focused, productive classroom discussions. They will also generate ideas for using image-based activities that energize lessons and underscore lecture materials and readings. Added benefits include building community, fostering relationships, and developing unique formative assessments.

Session Title: Balancing Feasibility and Quality in Teaching with Technology: Frameworks for Moving Forward

Provided By: WVU Press Author Dr. Michelle Miller, Professor, Department of Psychological Sciences, Northern Arizona University

Facilitated By: Jerod Quinn, Instructional Designer, Course Design and Technology

Session Description: As the dust settles from our emergency pivot and we look to what’s next, we can be thinking about what it means to maintain or improve the quality of the teaching that we do. Regardless of whether you’re planning to teach online, face to face, or some combination of the two, this presentation will share the points that will deliver the biggest impact for time invested – both yours and your students’. They’re also the approaches that are the most clearly backed up with empirical evidence.

Projected Outcomes: Participants in this session will become familiar with some of the ways to deliver high quality teaching including how to make deliberate decisions about essential elements, letting learning science be their guide, and how to get assistance with providing effective teaching.

Session Title: Supporting Future Research Leaders through the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Application

Presented By: Rachel Newman, Interim Director, Fellowships Office; Dr. Susan Renoe; Office of Research and Economic Development, Office of Extension and Engagement; Dr. Heather Hunt, Associate Professor, Biomedical, Biological & Chemical Engineering; Dr. Libby Cowgill, Associate Professor, Anthropology

Session Description: This session will enable faculty to help students develop into strong applicants for the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRF). The NSF GRF provides recipients with up to three years of tuition, stipends, and further educational support. Faculty support is a critical component to students’ crafting a competitive application. This session will introduce faculty to the goals of this program, its application components (which continue to evolve each year), key elements that make for a competitive application, and campus resources available (e.g. Fellowships Office, Writing Center, The Connector) to support applicants. A panel of faculty who have served as NSF grant reviewers will also share their perspectives. Our goal is that faculty will leave the session understanding the benefits the NSF GRF offers students and mentors, and with the knowledge needed to support applicants.

Projected Outcomes: After attending these sessions, participants will…

1. Attendees will learn the current NSF GRF award benefits, eligibility criteria, application components, and application timeline.

2. Attendees will receive a list of broader impacts activity ideas to share with potential applicants.

3. Attendees will meet faculty and staff with expertise in advising students applying for the NSF GRF.

They will leave the session knowing campus resources dedicated to assisting applicants.

Session Title: Implementing Learning-Centered Teaching Techniques

Presented By: Yun Zhang, Associate Teaching Professor, Physics

Session Description: I implement evidence-based teaching and learning techniques discussed in the three books (1) (2) (3) in transitioning my College Physics courses from teaching-centered to learning-centered. In this session I use my experience to draw participants’ attention to this increasingly accepted educational approach which focuses on student learning.

(1) S. Y. McGuire (2015), Teach Students How to Learn

(2) C. Harrington and T. Zakrajsek (2017), Dynamic Lecturing

(3) P. Blumberg (2019), Making Learning-Centered Teaching Work

Projected Outcomes: Participants will obtain an extensive inventory of learning – centered teaching techniques

Session Title: Noticing as the First Step: How to Infuse Your Course with Sensory Experiences

Provided By: WVU Press Authors Dr. Susan Hrach, Professor and Director, English and Faculty Center, Columbus State University; Dr. Martin Springborg, Director of Teaching and Learning, Innver Hills Community College.

Facilitated By: Dr. Steve Klien, Assistant Teaching Professor, Communications

Session Description: In this session, we will offer some why’s and how’s to develop our students’ observational skills through sensory experiences, whether we’re teaching in the classroom or online. We’ll share a few ideas for developing close listening skills, and discuss strategies from the visual arts for looking closely and communicating with visual images.

Projected Outcomes: Participants in this session will have an opportunity to consider specific examples, activities, and resources that enable them to teach students how to hone their observational skills through sensory experiences.

Session Title: Learning From my Mistakes I Made in a Decade of Teaching about Sex and Drugs

Presented By: Dr. Mark Milanick, Professor, Medical Pharmacology and Physiology

Session Description: Participants will discuss some of the mistakes I made in the course design as well as mistakes in how the material in the course was covered and assessed. The mistakes include designing the final assessment last instead of first and using imprecise categories and words in the classroom, male vs. female effects compared to whether the effect is due to the presence or absence of a uterus or high or low testosterone levels, what variations in behavior are classified as different vs. disorders, and when is abnormal healthy.

Projected Outcomes: After attending this session…

1.       Participants will be able to think more about whether exceptions exist to their current scientific classification systems and to ask in which contexts the classification system is useful and which contexts is the classification system obscuring information.

2.       Participants will have discussed the advantages and disadvantages to determining the final assessment as the first step in revising a course.

3.       Participants will have discussed when they are cheerleading, coaching, collaborating, counseling, instructing or professing in the classroom.

Session Title: Using Technology to Enhance Student Engagement

Presented By: Dr. Mark Kuhnert, Associate Teaching Professor, Health Sciences; Dr. Dorina Kosztin, Teaching Professor, Physics and Astronomy; Dr. Heather Hunt, Associate Professor, Biomedical, Biological & Chemical Engineering; Dr. Bethany Stone, Teaching Professor, Biological Sciences; Dr. Danna Wren, Senior Director of Academic Technology at University of Missouri System; Dr. Courtney Cothren, Assistant Teaching Professor, Marketing.

Session Description: This session will focus on enhancing student engagement in online learning environments. Presenters will discuss and demonstrate a variety of instructional strategies that leverage Canvas tools (Panopto, Voicethread, Zoom, etc.) to foster student-to-student, student-to-instructor, and student-to-material interactions. They will share where these strategies fall in the Active Learning in Digital Realms Capability Maturity Model developed by ShapingEDU. Experience has found that these strategies increase student engagement, active learning, and participation and improve both assignment quality and learning overall. These tools can be utilized in both online and in seat courses

Projected Outcomes: After attending these sessions, participants will…

1) Be able to describe a diversity of strategies for engaging students in an online learning environment.

2) Identify tools available in Canvas that can help support interactions online.

3) Learn strategies to utilize these tools to enhance both online and in seat courses.

4) Identify “next steps” for online instruction in their classes.

Session Title: Encouraging Deep Reading in Digital Spaces

Provided By: WVU Press Author Dr. Jenae Cohn, Academic Technology Specialist, Writing and Rhetoric Operations, Stanford University

Facilitated By: Dr. Jonathan Cisco, Associate Director, Teaching for Learning Center

Session Description: We’ll share ten creative activities that foster deep reading in digital environments. Activities include having students generate digital pin boards, voice memos or audio reflections and much more.

Projected Outcomes: Participants will become familiar with activities that help students curate content, make connections to prior experience, create new content, contextualize, and contemplate as they engage in digital spaces.

Session Title: Why UDL is Essential in the New Normal

Provided By: WVU Press Author Dr. Tom Tobin, Program Area Director for Distance Teaching and Learning in the Learning Design, Development, & Innovation (LDDI) Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Facilitated By: Ashley Brickley, Interim Director, Disabilities Center; Mary Decker, Instructional Designer, UM System Office of eLearning

Session Description: Universal design for learning (UDL) is a set of design principles based on the neuroscience of how humans learn. It advocates for lowering barriers to learning for everyone in three broad ways: (1) by providing multiple means of learner engagement; (2) by providing multiple means of representing information; and (3) by providing multiple means for learners to take action and express themselves. In this session, we’ll discuss UDL best practices and how they must characterize our post-COVID-19 learning environments.

Projected Outcomes: Participants in this session will have an opportunity to understand the conceptual underpinnings of UDL and review practical strategies that they can implement in their own learning environments.

Session Title: Check Your Alignment: A Practical Approach to Course Mapping

Presented By: Linda Lair, Associate Clinical Professor and Director of Clinical Education, Respiratory Therapy; Diane Weaver, CourseTune Representative

Session Description: If you are planning a road trip, you must first have a destination and then you must plan the route. The same principle applies when teaching a class. Course mapping allows one to plan the route using course goals, lesson objectives, and lesson plans. Completing a course map first will simplify designing the Canvas site. In this session, participants will learn through an existing course map designed by the presenter. Each step in the process will be presented to demonstrate how course mapping works. Time will be allotted for participants to ask questions related to their specific courses.

Projected Outcomes: Participants will leave with detailed instructions to implement this tool into their courses.

Session Title: Pedagogy Nerds Assemble! Battling Big Myths about Teaching in Troubled Times

Provided By: WVU Press Author Dr. Jessamyn Neuhaus, Professor of History, State University of New York – Plattsburgh

Facilitated By: Dr. Tori Mondelli, Director, Teaching for Learning Center

Session Description: This presentation is a call to action! We’ll look to the scholarship of teaching and learning, utilize our wisdom of experience, and draw on the support of our pedagogical communities of practice in order to fight the scourge of certain persistent, disempowering myths about teaching.

Projected Outcomes: In this motivating session, we will debunk three common, highly detrimental myths about teaching and learning: (1) educational technology is the most important part of online or hybrid course design; (2) content coverage is the most important part of any college class; and (3) the best teachers are super-teachers.

Session Title: Making Homework Assignments More Useful and Less Stressful in STEM Courses

Presented By: Yun Zhang, Associate Teaching Professor, Physics

Session Description: Instructors in STEM courses assign homework with the intentions of deepening students’ conceptual understanding and developing their problem-solving skills. However, students, especially novice learners, when facing assignments, often feel helpless, clueless, overwhelmed and stressed. These feelings have been attributed to the lack of a supporting structure which education researchers refer to as “scaffoldings”. In this session, participants (1) reflect on the challenges and difficulties students face, from their own experiences as novice learners and as instructors, and (2) discuss how to provide “scaffoldings” to students, to make assignments more useful and less stressful to better achieve learning goals. I will share my experience of implementing “scaffoldings” on the online platform Varafy in my large enrollment introductory Physics courses.

Projected Outcomes:Participants (1) are more aware of students’ needs, (2) provide “scaffoldings” to students in general and (3) implement the “scaffoldings” on an online platform.

Session Title: Emotions & Social Presence in Online Teaching

Provided By: WVU Press Authors Dr. Sarah Rose Cavanagh, Associate Director for Grants and Research, Assumption College Center for Teaching Excellence; Dr. Joshua Eyler, Director of Faculty Development & Director of the ThinkForward Quality Enhancement, University of Mississippi

Facilitated By: Dr. Monique Luisi, Assistant Professor, Strategic Communication

Session Description: In this session, we’ll explain basic principles and share practical tips for having a positive emotional and social presence in virtual learning communities.

Projected Outcomes: Participants will understand three principles for promoting a positive emotional and social presence online: (1) showing our personality as instructors; (2) displaying concern for students’ welfare; and (3) tapping into our “ultrasociality.”

Session Title: “I hate Zoom, but I love seeing you”: The Renewed Importance of Belonging and Connection for Learning

Provided By: WVU Press Authors Dr. Cyndi Kernahan, Professor of Psychology and Assistant Dean for Teaching and Learning in the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Wisconsin; Dr. Kevin Gannon, Professor and Director, Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning, History, Grand View University

Facilitated By: Dr. Lydia Bentley, Associate Director, Teaching for Learning Center

Session Description: Our relationship to our students matters just as much if not more than the specific content of our course. In this session, we’ll discuss some thoughts on how to convey this to our students even in a more uncertain teaching and learning environment. For example, insights will be shared from the experience of teaching about race in the college classroom and navigating potential conflicts.

Projected Outcomes: Participants will learn practical ways to communicate acceptance of their students, even as some of them may appear to resist aspects of the material being taught.

Session title: Self-Care for Faculty and Instructors

Presented by: Dr. Christy Hutton, Director, Wellness Resource Center; Dr. Kerri Schafer, Psychologist, Outreach Coordinator

Session Description: As the reality of remote work with kids, pets, partners, isolation and so much Zoom is sinking in, we may experiencing stress in new and challenging ways. Join Student Health and Well-Being staff for a discussion about how we can maintain well-being and engage in good self-care while working and teaching remotely. We will share strategies and provide an opportunity for you to share strategies that work for you. Pets, kids, partners, and random lawn mowing sounds are welcome.

Projected outcomes: After attending this session…

1. Participants will have strategies to maintain well-being in the new remote setting.

2. Participants will reflect on the importance of self-care in their work and teaching habits.

Session Title: Reflection on Graduate Student Teaching

Presented By: Dr. Ransford Pinto, Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis; Mr. Doug Valentine, Sociology

Session Description: With the advent of COVID-19 pandemic, colleges and universities transitioned to online classes and the role of Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTA’s) became more important than ever as they have to give more time communicating with students and helping professors transition materials and exams to a remote platform. In this session, GTA’s will discuss their experiences and how the “shift” has impacted their professional growth. Together, we’ll share and review strategies to help improve our pedagogy.

Projected Outcomes: Participants would identify online teaching strategies and ways to support their students in traumatic times.

Session Title: Grading & Creativity: Nurturing the Aha! Moment

Provided By: WVU Press Author Natasha Haugnes, Adjunct II Professor, Writing and Literature Program, San Francisco University

Facilitated By: Dr. Bethany Stone, Teaching Professor, Biological Science

Session Description: There is a pervasive idea in our culture that creativity and education are somehow opposites. In this session, we’ll refute this idea and discuss how we can foster creativity in the classroom through our teaching, learning, and assessment practices.

Projected Outcomes: Participants will have the opportunity to consider practical techniques that will invite students into the joy of the creative process—that “aha!” moment.

Session Title: Let’s Chill: Games & Learning Virtual Happy Hour

Provided By: Dr. Victoria Mondelli, Founding Director, Teaching for Learning Center

Session Description: Come chill with us at a happy hour all about games! Bring your drink to our Zoom Room…we’ll have a 10 minute presentation from Chas Grundy on how play, levity, and fun is helping to get us (and maybe our learners) through COVID-19.  After that, we’ll break out into small groups to talk about – and ask each other about – games and fun in the time of COVID.  We’ll end by coming back to the main room to give a quick synopsis of discussions.Join us!  You’ll leave with a host of new friends and the link to a Google Doc with discussion notes.

Session Title: Nurture the Doodle

Provided By: Deborah Huelsbergen, Curator’s Distinguished Teaching Professor, Art program – Graphic Design, School of Visual StudiesSession

Description: Bring your markers, pencil, crayons, pets, whatever and color and draw with me! This will be a time to sit and color/doodle/draw/chat.  We will discuss the idea behind using drawing, coloring, repetitive mark making and play to both relieve stress and focus attention. We will talk about mandalas and how creating them can be a form of meditation. We will chat and practice these things together. Want to make it a happy hour? I have no problem with that!

Projected Outcomes:

1. leave the workshop more refreshed and focused than when you entered
2. understand the value of drawing and coloring and how you can use it in both your interactions with students and your own life

Session Title: Chair Yoga and Breathing Exercises

Provided By: Andrea Kimura, Health Educator, Student Health and Well-Being, Certified Yoga Instructor