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Teaching Renewal Week 2021 – January 11th-15th, 2021

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For session materials available on the Gateway, click on each session title.

Keynote Presentation

Strategies for Creating Inclusive and Welcoming Classroom Environments

Professors Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Wednesday, January 13th, 1:00pm-3:00pm
Learn more about their work to promote inclusive teaching at InclusifiED.
Featured Authors Presentation Featured Author Presentation
Syllabus: The Remarkable, Unremarkable Document that Changes EverythingWilliam Germano and Kit Nicholls will lead a faculty workshop that draws on their recent book, Syllabus: The Remarkable, Unremarkable Document That Changes Everything (Princeton UP, 2020). Professors Germano and Nicholls teach at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a small college in downto wn New York that offers degrees exclusively in Art, Architecture, and Engineering. Their workshop will focus on designing activities that help students find their motivation in the work of our courses, even and especially in the difficult learning environment of the present.

Facilitated by co-authors Drs. William Germano & Kit Nicholls
Cooper Union

 How Humans LearnJoin author Joshua R. Eyler for an overview of his book, How Humans Learn. We will identify five broad themes running through recent scientific inquiry—curiosity, sociality, emotion, authenticity, and failure. This session will launch a new book club where we will devote time for each chapter that provides practical takeaways for busy instructors.

Facilitated by Dr. Joshua Eyler
University of Mississippi
For session materials available on the Gateway, click on the title of the session you would like to view.
January 11, 2021
Register Here
Time Session
9:00am-12:00pm Teaching with Writing (Faculty Workshop)Are you interested in teaching with writing without drowning in the challenges of grading and extra work? Are you currently teaching or considering teaching a Writing Intensive class? If so, please join us for this interactive WI faculty certification workshop.

Find out more information on WI course guidelines and requirements on our website: https://cwp.missouri.edu/wi/

Projected Outcomes:

  • Participants will work with student writing;
  • Participants will engage in conversation with colleagues; and
  • Participants will apply their learning to their own courses.

Facilitated by the Campus Writing Program
12:00pm-1:00pm Lunch Break
1:00pm-3:00pm ACUE – Effective Online Teaching Practices – Cohort G Launch – Invitation onlyThe ACUE Course in Effective Online Teaching Practices is a unique collaborative offering between ACUE and our campus. This course launch will introduce the course content, cohort colleagues, cofacilitators and the ACUE professionals. This course provides various research-based practices to implement in your course. Among these, you will select and implement the practice(s) that best suits your goals and students. The ACUE course is community-based, and you will have many opportunities to learn from and share ideas with your colleagues about the teaching practices you are learning. Your facilitators will guide you through the modules, help to create an environment where questions, conversation, and learning are valued, and provide you with ideas and feedback.

Facilitated by Cindy Blackwell, ACUE, Kelly Holtkamp, Pearl Xie, and Jason McKinney
January 12, 2021
Time Session
9:00am-11:00am Supporting Faculty Success & Measuring Teaching EffectivenessFaculty success depends upon several key elements in one’s career. Opportunities to develop scholarly teaching practices, as well as to receive feedback from others on teaching are both important aspects of teaching life at Mizzou. The Task Force to Enhance Learning and Teaching needs your input related to these elements and more. Join us for an interactive session designed to set all of our educators on a firm path to continued teaching success.

Special note: This session is reserved for Mizzou community members, it will not be relevant to other UM System communities.


Provost Ramchand, Associate Provost Socarides, Drs. Brian Houston, Casandra Harper Morris, and Tori Mondelli
11:15am-12:15pm Efficient and Effective Practices for Online Teaching and Learning – Think the 3 D’s Join Office of eLearning Directors Andrea Strong and Emily Goldstein as they share three practices that will boost your effectiveness as an instructor and inspire you this spring. They will walk through finding and using templates for course materials to create consistent, accessible, and engaging course materials that will ultimately save you time in the long run. In addition, you will leave with strategies for building a classroom community which will be essential to the course’s success. Creating a classroom community provides students with an outlet and a voice to share their tacit knowledge, unique values, and perspectives. Be seen, be personal, be a frequent communicator and always think about how you can improve to help your students succeed.

Facilitated by OeL Directors Andrea Strong and Emily Goldstein
11:15am-12:15pm Streamlining the Holistic Rubric for Ease of Use – Invitation only
Let’s make progress toward an efficient way for those involved with making decisions for annual review, tenure, and promotion to complete the holistic rubric.

Facilitated by Drs. Bethany Stone and Stephen Klien
12:00pm-1:00pm Lunch Break
1:00pm-2:30pm Exploring the Power of Evidence-Based TeachingWhen a learning activity goes extraordinarily well in your classes, what makes it so effective? What types of teaching strategies support your students’ success? Join this session to explore a framework of evidence-based teaching practices that support effective learning. Share ideas with peers about how this framework can inform your teaching choices as you design courses and learning activities. Learn about an MU System-sponsored fellowship opportunity that invites faculty to hone their expertise as teachers by exploring this framework in virtual communities of practice.

Projected Outcomes:

  • Participants will apply an evidence based framework for teaching to their own course design choices.
  • Participants will reflect on a fellowship opportunity as it may align with their own professional development goals.

Facilitated by Julie Curtis, Lumen Learning
1:00pm-1:50pm Lessons from the Great Online MigrationIn this panel presentation, four Associate Teaching Professors will share strategies we’ve learned about student engagement while teaching the first year writing course English 1000 in hybrid and synchronous modes that will translate to teaching remotely in other disciplines. Presentation segments will include the aesthetics of the virtual instruction space and instructor presentation issues unique to the Zoom platform; strategies for effective formative feedback to enhance student engagement; different prompts for Breakout Rooms to help students teach each other and build community; and the use of tools such as Hypothes.is and VoiceThread to increase student engagement.

Projected Outcomes:

  • The audience will have the opportunity to practice one of the technology tools discussed as well as pose questions for the panelists.
  • The audience will see specific examples of different methods that the panelists have learned will effectively engage students and help create community in online modalities.

Facilitated by Kimberly McCaffrey, Viriginia Muller, Penny Smith-Parris, and Scott Garson
2:00pm-2:50pm Code Switching in the Theatre of Higher EducationTransitioning into graduate school gives some students the impression they must code-switch and hide their authentic selves, training themselves to be accepted by the majority rather than being proud of their culture, community, and skin. In a sense, they are playing their perceived role in the “theatre” of higher education. Code-switching can make students feel like they are impersonating another individual, hiding their true selves to avoid exposure. Staying true to one’s culture while ensuring one’s message comes across in a scholarly manner can be difficult, especially for minority and international students and professors. A cross-disciplinary approach to these issues explores questions such as: what does it mean to “perform” one’s identity? What constitutes an “authentic” performance? How does existing research about “code-switching” fit within paradigms of performance? How can this research be leveraged for pedagogical strategies that can improve student resilience and reduce the stress of “imposter syndrome?” Our presentation will illustrate the importance of encouraging students and professors to be their authentic selves in conjunction with sharing scholarly knowledge.

Projected Outcomes:

  • To understand existing research about code-switching, the performance of identity, and the construction of authenticity.
  • To analyze and identify connections that can be made between cross-disciplinary approaches to these issues.
  • To create pedagogical strategies that educators can implement to improve their students and their performance by overcoming potential stressors related to code-switching, valuing their cultural wealth/ cultural knowledge, and identity performance.

Faciltated by Drs. Jason McKinney and Kevin Brown
3:00pm-3:50pm Grad School During a Global Pandemic: Learning How to Teach When Nothing is NormalAs the challenges of COVID-19 continue to rock higher education, Graduate Instructors (GI’s) and Teaching Assistants (TA’s) must balance research, coursework, and developing effective pedagogy. At the same time, some commonly accepted strategies for student engagement have been fundamentally challenged by virtual learning and asynchronous course delivery. How do graduate teaching assistants and autonomous instructors navigate this new landscape? In this session, GI’s and TA’s will discuss their experiences and how the “shift” has impacted their professional growth. Together, we’ll share and review strategies and tangible resources to help improve our pedagogies.

Projected Outcomes:

  • Attendees will gain knowledge of tangible resources for developing their teaching skills and balancing the demands of graduate school.
  • Attendees will expand their social network of passionate, teaching-oriented graduate students. (This is particularly important at a time when we are increasingly siloed and lack opportunities to meet others.)

Facilitated by Laura Avery, Erika Schneider, Kanishka Sikligar, Doug Valentine, and Nanxi Xu
4:00pm-4:30 Self-Care: Chair YogaDetails coming soon.

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January 13, 2021
Time Session
9:00am-9:50am Building the Foundation: Informal Writing Towards Argument WritingLearning originates in the learner’s engagement with problems (Bean, 2011). So, teachers must present students with interesting problems within their discipline to address in order to create the opportunity for learning. One problem all students must solve is how to create a persuasive argument within their discipline. But when teachers assign students the task of writing a persuasive argument, it’s also important to guide students through developing a persuasive argument so students don’t become overwhelmed and give up. In this presentation, Drs. Bader and Lannin will discuss a variety of persuasive argument assignments, an approach to teaching students how to create a persuasive argument, using both informal and formal writing assignments, and describe our teaching experiences with persuasive argument assignments at the undergraduate level.

Projected Outcomes:

  • Participants will recognize the importance of using informal writing, peer feedback, and dialogue over a relevant topic to develop students’ ability to learn to write persuasive arguments.
  • Participants will also recognize the importance of knowing what topics are relevant to their students.

Facilitated by Drs. Amy Lannin and Valerie Bader
10:00am-11:45am Who Needs What When? Supports and Evidence for Teaching Effectiveness Along the Career Path Whether it is for annual review, promotion, or tenure, evidence of teaching effectiveness should be collected, curated, and reviewed. Join us to analyze scenarios for hypothetical faculty members at different points in their career life cycles. Contribute your ideas about what is needed at various points in one’s career.

Special note: This session is reserved for Mizzou community members, it will not be relevant to other UM System communities.

Facilitated by Drs. Casandra Harper Morris and Brian Houston
12:00pm-1:00pm Lunch Break
1:00pm-3:00pm Keynote Presentation: Strategies for Creating Inclusive and Welcoming Classroom EnvironmentsJoin Dr. Kelly Hogan and Dr. Viji Sathy for this online, interactive workshop on inclusive teaching. The session will highlight the need for high course structure and model techniques designed to elicit equity in both online and face to face courses.

Projected Outcomes:

  • Explain the inequities that arise in an unstructured learning environment.
  • Describe techniques that add structure and equity to a classroom.
  • Brainstorm ways to reduce the inequities in your own courses.

Facilitated by Drs. Viji Sathy and Kelly Hogan
UNC Chapel Hill
3:30pm-4:20pm A Group Project? In an Online Setting? Yes, Please!After more than 10 years as a professor, and as a recent graduate from an online-only master’s program, Amy Simons has some mixed feelings about group projects in online-only classes. Professor Amy loves them, student Amy hates them. How has wearing different hats put her in a position to reconsider, redesign, and restructure collaborative learning in her online classrooms. In this session, learn about how you can successfully support students in project-based learning from a distance.

Projected Outcomes:

By the end of this session, participants will see that group work can be done effectively in online courses, but that it requires a more intentional design and heightened instructor presence. Participants will re-imagine a group project currently in use in their courses and examine ways to introduce contracts and evaluations and to anticipate student needs for scaffolding and determine ways to meet those at the assignment design phase.

Facilitated by Amy Simons
4:30pm-5:00pm