Workshops and Seminars
The Office of Teaching Evaluation and Assessment Research offers several workshops on the improvement of teaching and the use of instructional technologies. To register for a workshop use our on-line registration form. If you have trouble with our form, please call 932-7466.
Faculty Development
Classroom Inclusivity Series: A collaboration between various units across Rutgers University, organized and facilitated by The Center for Teaching Advancement and Assessment Research and the University Equity and Inclusion Office. The purpose of the program is to promote Inclusive Scholarship and Teaching (as identified by the Rutgers University Diversity Priorities) and in particular to support a more well-rounded understanding of Classroom Inclusivity.
- Understand and begin to address your and your students’ identities, biases, prejudices, and fears and the impact they have on learning and the classroom environment.
- Infuse inclusive teaching practices into your educational practices by course re-design or adopting new teaching activities.
- Ensure course content, web pages, activities, and assessments are accessible to all students.
Interpreting and Utilizing Student Feedback for Change: This workshop explains the process for distributing a customized midcourse survey to obtain student feedback. The process for conducting a midcourse survey will be explained whether through Blue or another platform like Google Forms. Quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze the data obtained from the survey will be discussed and templates provided. How this analysis could be extended to other forms of student feedback will also be discussed. The underlying focus will be how to make course improvements while addressing student concerns.
Adding Questions in Blue for Faculty: This short session brings instructors through the process of additional questions to their midcourse surveys or SIRS. Best practices for question design, communication of the survey, and monitoring the progress is also explained.
Teaching Portfolios: The Teaching Portfolio is best thought of as a documented statement of a faculty member's teaching responsibilities, philosophy, goals and accomplishments as a teacher. It is a flexible document, and can be used in a number of ways, depending upon the needs and interests of the faculty member. It can be an extensive collection of information, or something much more compact and limited. The essential structure and elements to be included will be presented.
Peer Review of Teaching: This workshop provides an overview of the peer review of teaching process and is designed to help departments understand best practice and develop a robust teaching evaluation process to support reappointment, promotions, and tenure decisions.
Peer Review of Online Teaching: Peer review of teaching is important for online courses so that faculty can have documentation of their successful teaching to use as evidence in teaching portfolios, and departments can better understand what is happening in virtual or partially virtual classrooms. For many instructors, the process of peer review of online teaching is entirely new. In this workshop, OTEAR discusses how to conduct online peer review of teaching, how to develop a rubric or guide that matches best practices for online teaching, and what to expect if someone will be reviewing your online course.
Classroom Inclusivity through Self-Awareness: Knowing one’s own social and professional identity is an essential initial step in developing an inclusive classroom. This includes being aware of bias, including any implicit biases that you may hold, and developing empathy. Literature on the history of the social context of higher education and diversity in dialogue will be discussed and participants will have the opportunity to consider implications for their courses and classrooms.
Creating and Supporting Inclusive Learning Environments: This workshop will provide instructors with a greater understanding of why and how to support inclusivity in their classes. Practical strategies developed from the relevant literature will be suggested and explained so that instructors will understand what they are already doing to support inclusive learning environments and develop new practices that will promote diversity and inclusion in the classroom.
Engaging Students in Asynchronous Sessions: Engaging students in the learning environment is one of the biggest challenges faced by instructors, especially when teaching remotely or online. From our surveys, we know that both faculty and students desire the engagement they are familiar with through face-to-face teaching. Faculty have mentioned the limitations of online classes and their frustrations because they cannot gauge student learning via body language, alertness, and facial expressions. These problems are magnified when faculty must teach large classes. Students appreciate the spontaneity of synchronous classes but value asynchronous recorded content so that they can review the material. In this workshop, we review the literature on the effectiveness of engaging students online, and explore best practices for building engagement opportunities into asynchronous sessions. We provide training on how to use some of our favorite tools including PlayPosit and VoiceThread.
Engaging Students in Synchronous Sessions: Engaging students in the learning environment is one of the biggest challenges faced by instructors, especially when teaching remotely or online. From our surveys, we know that both faculty and students desire the engagement they are familiar with through face-to-face teaching. Faculty have mentioned the limitations of online classes and their frustrations because they cannot gauge student learning via body language, alertness, and facial expressions. These problems are magnified when faculty must teach to large classes. Students appreciate the spontaneity of synchronous classes but value asynchronous recorded content so that they can review the material. In this workshop, we review the literature on the effectiveness of engaging students online, and explore best practices for building engagement opportunities into asynchronous sessions. We provide training on how to use some of our favorite tools including PlayPosit and VoiceThread.
Grading Schemes that Support Student Success: Grades have historically served a variety of purposes, from ranking students among their peers, to identifying high performing students who might excel in further study. However, scholarship of teaching and learning suggests that an instructor’s grading scheme can significantly impact student learning. In particular, two related approaches to grading, Master Learning with Competency Based Grading, and Specifications Grading, align grades with learning objectives, and promote greater mastery of course material. In this workshop, OTEAR introduces different grading schemes while also reviewing general best practices for promoting grading transparency and reducing grade challenges including clear weighting, use of gradebook options in the LMS, and development of appropriate rubrics.
Improving Education with the Science of Learning: The Impact of Culture, Beliefs and Memory: One reality unites educators across disciplines as diverse as Dance, Medicine, English and Engineering: the point of instruction is to ensure that students learn from our expertise. Fortunately, current neuroscience research on learning has established a common foundation that transcends content and setting. Follows up by delving deeper into the science of learning to focus on the impact of culture, beliefs, motivations, and mindset to learning.
Managing Large Online Classes: Teaching online is especially challenging when managing large classes, because many activities that work with smaller groups are unwieldy when teaching to 100 or even 400 students. In this session, OTEAR examines how to manage students, assessment, and engagement in large classes. We cover creating and evaluating discussions in discussion forums, developing meaningful assessments that are possible to grade in a time-efficient manner, hosting and managing synchronous sessions using Zoom, and incorporating tools such as iClicker or TopHat to enrich content.
Personalizing Learning to Improve Outcomes: The constructivist approach to pedagogy affirms that learning is an individualistic practice, and that new knowledge is always built on an individual’s prior understanding and experience. Personalized learning is an educational approach where instruction and assessments are aligned with individual students to address their diverse cultural backgrounds, interests, strengths, and learning needs. While it can be challenging to tailor activities for each individual in a course, students learn more when instructors create personalized learning environments. This session provides suggestions to move in this direction ranging from quick and simple strategies to more time-intensive approaches.
Preparing a Diversity Statement for Academic Employment: This workshop explores the purposes of a diversity statement for academic employment, reviews pedagogy practices for teaching diverse students, and examines how scholars can talk about diversity in their teaching and research. Armed with this information, participants review and critique sample diversity statements before work-shopping their own ideas and drafts of the diversity statement. Participants should bring any materials related to the diversity statement that they have already prepared.
Writing Exam Questions that Measure Student Learning: This workshop covered how to write valid and reliable multiple-choice questions, how to develop essay questions, and how to write rubrics to evaluate open ended questions. The workshop provided special focus on challenges associated with the remote learning environment, such as developing questions appropriate for an "open book" environment.
To register for a workshop use our on-line registration form. If you have trouble with our form, please call 932-7466.
Instructional Technologies
Acrobat PDF Creation for Electronic Grant Proposels - Grant funding organizations are increasingly requiring proposals be submitted electronically over the web. Creating an Acrobat PDF can save time and may be essential in some cases. This workshops will cover the use of Adobe Acrobat for creating PDF's from standard office software, sending PDF's as an e-mail attachment, posting PDF's on the web, and will include a discussion of some alternatives to buying the Adobe Acrobat package. The workshop will also cover posting PDF's on the web.
Intro to Canvas This workshop will cover the basics of how to navigate the Canvas learning management system and edit content in it. By the end of this session you will be able to navigate the global menu and a course menu, edit content and settings, and use Speedgrader. We will also look at the best ways to move Sakai content into Canvas and edit it there.
Basic RefWorks 3.0 RefWorks (free to members of the Rutgers community) is a web-based bibliography and database manager that allows users to create and administer their own personal bibliographic database. This hands-on workshop introduces RefWorks, and demonstrates how personal bibliographies can be created and managed. Two additional RefWorks tools, >Write-N-Cite and >RefGrab-It will also be demonstrated. Additional help will be available for persons logging into RefWorks for the first time.
Basic Web Design The fundamentals of creating web pages. Using the free "BlueGriffon" software, this workshop addresses how to create a simple site with multiple pages, links and images, and covers some basics of best web design practices.
Creating Excel Spreadsheets for Grading This workshop explores different methods of using Excel to calculate student grades. In addition to calculating weighted averages, we discuss methods of dropping the lowest grade, and assigning letter grades based on numeric average grades via a lookup table. Finally, we cover various dynamic means of assessing the performance of entire class by using charts and summation functions.
Creating eBooks for the Classroom This workshop will look at several resources for creating ebooks from original materials or collections of course materials, and distributing the ebook "course packs" to students. We will discuss the formats needed to support Kindles, iPads, and other devices. Software covered will include Sigil, Calibre, and iBooks Author, with the primary focus on iBooks Author.
Creating PowerPoint Presentations for Teaching This workshop provides a quick hands-on overview of PowerPoint; its structure, utilities, slide management features, animation, and design templates (with a number of tips and tricks).
Lecture Recording & Podcasting How to create and do some simple editing of audio content using the free "Audacity" software, and how to distribute the files to students as a "podcast" using RSS ("Really Simple Syndication") or iTunes.
Intro to Big Blue Button Big Blue Button is a web conferencing software application that you can use to conduct online classes, seminars, and meetings. Attendees will learn how to obtain an account, how to set up a meeting, and how to use the various features such as file sharing, link sharing, PowerPoint presenting, audio/video conferencing, polling questions, and live chat. Attendees will be able to see the Big Blue Button experience from the perspective of both a presenter and a participant.
Intro to Prezi NEXT - Prezi is a cloud-based presentation application (for both Mac and PC) that lets you organize and share ideas and information in a very dynamic way. You can lead your students (and audience) on a visual journey, collaborate in real time across time zones, and run your presentation from the cloud, desktop, iPad, or iPhone. In Intro to Prezi NEXT, you learn how to set up a free account, navigate the canvas, create frames, utilize templates, apply text, images and video, and use the Tool/Prezi Editor.
Intermediate Prezi NEXT The Intermediate Prezi workshop will cover advanced aspects and functionalities of Prezi, such as animation, in-depth customization, inserting audio & video and how to create a Prezi using an existing PowerPoint presentation.
Using Media with PowerPoint Presentations This workshop will explore the incorporation of audio and video into PowerPoint presentations for the PC. We will cover the different audio and video formats that are compatible with PowerPoint and available web resources for downloading free content.
Making Conference Posters in PowerPoint This workshop explores how to easily create conference posters by using PowerPoint tools. We will explore adjusting slides to poster dimensions, adding and managing text and bullets, images, charts, tables and other poster content. We will also generate QR codes which will link to informational websites from the posters. Finally, we will explore saving the poster as pdf files and printing options.
To register for a workshop use our on-line registration form. If you have trouble with our form, please call 932-7466. Dates are listed on the current calendar of workshops.
If you are looking for workshops on statistical packages (SAS, SPSS, R, and Stata), they are offered by Rutgers Libraries Data Services.
Last updated: November 1, 2021