Designing a Canvas Course for Continuity and Transitions
A Canvas course that clearly outlines the semester can help students navigate a semester of transition, successfully starting the semester online and then moving to in-person teaching. This session will consider how instructors can use Canvas to help students find materials online, to communicate deadlines and expectations, and to help students connect to the class […]
Effectively Reusing Your Recordings
As we start this semester online, instructors may already have lecture recordings, guest lectures, demonstrations, and other videos that can be reused from previous semesters to support student learning. In this session, we will review ways to use the Class Recordings section of Canvas (also known as Panopto) to provide students with access to previous […]
Connecting your students to each other, to you and to the class materials during the online start of the semester
Helping students feel connected will be particularly challenging in spring of 2022 as Penn begins the semester online. In this session, faculty will discuss ways to get students interacting with each other at the start of class and how to build on those introductions to help students feel a connection to class materials and each […]
Connecting your students to each other, to you and to the class materials during the online start of the semester
Helping students feel connected will be particularly challenging in spring of 2022 as Penn begins the semester online. In this session, faculty will discuss ways to get students interacting with each other at the start of class and how to build on those introductions to help students feel a connection to class materials and each […]
Technology Tools for Online Communication, Collaboration and Peer Support: Introduction to Ed Discussion
Ed Discussion is a tool for online Q&A and threaded discussion among students or between students, instructors and TAs. It is being piloted at Penn during the 2021-2022 academic year as a potential replacement for Piazza to promote communication, collaboration and problem-solving and to help students better understand course materials. In this session, CETLI staff […]
Balancing flexibility and structure: Communicating and setting expectations with students about deadlines, exams and assignments
How much flexibility is too much flexibility? Many faculty hoped to help students through the pandemic by adding flexibility to their classes but found that students needed more structure to stay on track. On the other hand, too much structure increased student stress. In this conversation Professors Doug Jerolmack and Paul Saint-Amour will discuss questions […]
Getting students to connect to lecture and each other using Poll Everywhere
Instructors sometimes have difficulty getting students to interact with and think seriously about the material presented in class. In this session Jeff Saven of Chemistry and Alex Weisiger of Political Science will discuss different ways to use the polling platform Poll Everywhere to help students learn material, practice for exams and give each other feedback.
Room 134 (CETLI/OLI Seminar Room)
Getting Students Ready to Engage in Class
In this conversation Katie Barott of Biology and William Braham of Architecture will discuss ways to encourage students to come to class prepared to engage with class content. We will consider how to set expectations for what students need to do ahead of class, and strategies and technologies (such as Perusall and Google Docs) to […]
Room 134 (CETLI/OLI Seminar Room)
Designing Assignments that Reduce Student Stress and Promote Learning
We assign students work to facilitate their learning – but students sometimes feel so stressed about that work that they find it difficult to learn. In this discussion, Tobias Baumgart of Chemistry and Masao Sako of Physics will explore strategies – from assignment types such as homework and exams, to grading and feedback approaches – […]
Room 134 (CETLI/OLI Seminar Room)
Getting Students into the Philadelphia Community
Herman Beavers of English and Domenic Vitiello of City and Regional Planning will facilitate this discussion on the value of connecting our students with Philadelphia, on what we can accomplish in our teaching by bringing students into the community, and on the logistics of how to do so.
Room 134 (CETLI/OLI Seminar Room)
How Has Teaching Politically Charged Topics Changed Over Time?
Kathy Peiss of History and Rogers Smith of PoliticalScience have both taught political topics and often controversial or troublingissues in American history and politics since the 1980s. In this conversation, they will describe their own strategies for talking about political topics and explore ways of addressing the changing political landscape and changing student expectations.
Room 3N1H
What Makes Being in Class in Person Meaningful? a Community Conversation among Instructors and Students
As we wrap up the year's return to in-person classes, this Community Conversation will bring together faculty and graduate and undergraduate students to explore what we value in learning together, and the teaching practices that make the most of that in-person experience. This is an opportunity for instructors and students to learn from one another, […]
Zoom
Organizing Your Class on Canvas
Creating a Canvas site that is organized in intuitive ways can save instructors’ time and help students know what is expected so they can focus on learning. This session will outline different ways of organizing your materials, including pages, modules, the calendar, and the syllabus tool. Through this session, instructors will consider ways to create […]
Zoom
Introduction to Ed Discussion: A Tool for Online Communication and Peer Support
In the 2022-2023 academic year, Ed Discussion will replace Piazza as a University-supported tool for online Q&A and threaded discussion among students, instructors, and TAs. Ed Discussion can be added to Canvas or used as a standalone tool to promote communication, collaboration and problem-solving in order to help students better understand course materials. In this […]
Zoom
Using Gradescope to Increase Grading Efficiency and Feedback Effectivenes
Gradescope is a tool that helps instructors and their TAs to more efficiently grade and provide feedback on assessments and homework, for both in-class and online assessments. Gradescope can be used within Canvas so students can easily access their grades and feedback. In this session, CETLI staff will provide an overview of how instructors can […]
Zoom
Using Poll Everywhere for Active and Engaged Learning
Instructors can use Poll Everywhere in class to encourage student participation, to provide students live feedback, and to gauge student understanding in real time. Instructors can choose from a variety of activities, such as multiple choice polls, Q&A, and open-ended responses, with students participating from mobile devices or laptops. In this session, CETLI staff will […]
Zoom
Setting Expectations to Encourage Student Attendance and Engagement
Over the past year, faculty have reported many students disengaging and not coming to class. This conversation will give faculty a chance to discuss how to address this issue from the start of the semester by helping students to understand what is expected of them as students in the course and to know that coming […]
CETLI/OLI Seminar Room
Introduction to Ed Discussion: A Tool for Online Communication and Peer Support
In the 2022-2023 academic year, Ed Discussion will replace Piazza as a University-supported tool for online Q&A and threaded discussion among students, instructors, and TAs. Ed Discussion can be added to Canvas or used as a standalone tool to promote communication, collaboration and problem-solving in order to help students better understand course materials. In this […]
134
Leading Challenging Conversations in the Classroom
Getting students to talk openly and productively with each other about issues that evoke political and personal divides, including topics such as race, gender and class, is difficult, and perhaps becoming more so. But such discussions are vital, for students to understand such topics, the fields we teach, and how to live with one another […]
134
Assignments that Invite Students To Create Public Facing Work: Designing Projects and Supporting Students
Asking students to complete assignments that will be seen by audiences outside the classroom often encourages students to invest themselves in their academic work and think more creatively about it. In this session, Heather Sharkey from Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Deborah Thomas from Anthropology will open a discussion of ways to design public-facing […]
134 (CETLI/OLI Seminar Room)
Leading Graduate Seminars
Graduate seminars do many things: introduce students to a field and how to be scholars and professionals in the field, provide students with the tools to follow their own interests as well as give students entry to an entirely new set of interests, lenses and questions. In this session, Melissa Sanchez of English and Gender […]
134
Creative Projects that Promote Intellectual Engagement
Creative projects can allow students to explore course content in ways that encourage both analysis and imagination, excitement and insight. In this session Loren Goldman from Political Science and Grace Saunders Johnson from Africana Studies will start the discussion of how to design and implement such projects, considering how we can develop assignments that enable […]
134 (CETLI/OLI Seminar Room)
Scrapping Exams
This session will consider ways of assessing students that get away from high-stakes exams and better reflect the learning we expect of our students. Vijay Balasubramanian of Physics and Rob Ghrist of Math and Electrical and Systems Engineering will open this discussion of alternatives to exams, by exploring options that they have considered and how […]
Building a Welcoming and Accessible Canvas Site
The organization of your Canvas site can set a welcoming tone for your students and help students to find the information and resources they need to stay on track in your course. In this session we will discuss ways to set up your Canvas site to promote positive interactions with students and guide them through […]
Building a Welcoming and Accessible Canvas Site
The organization of your Canvas site can set a welcoming tone for your students and help students to find the information and resources they need to stay on track in your course. In this session we will discuss ways to set up your Canvas site to promote positive interactions with students and guide them through […]
Effective Grading and Feedback in Canvas
In this workshop, we will explore ways to use Canvas to efficiently grade students’ work and give feedback. We’ll look at ways to set up Canvas assignments, grading tools, and the gradebook to fit your needs, including ways to provide students with immediate feedback on low-stakes assignments, to automatically weight and drop grades, and to […]
Introduction to Ed Discussion: A Tool for Online Communication and Peer Support
This academic year, Ed Discussion has replaced Piazza as a University-supported tool for online Q&A and threaded discussion among students, instructors, and TAs. Ed Discussion can be added to Canvas or used as a standalone tool to promote communication, collaboration, and problem-solving in order to help students better understand course materials. In this session, CETLI […]
134 (CETLI/OLI Seminar room)
Active Lectures
This session focuses on how to make lectures more active and intellectually engaging for students. Allyson Mackey of Psychology and Rupa Pillai of Asian American Studies will facilitate this discussion of ways to incorporate active moments into lectures in order to encourage students to think, reset their attention and practice with material so they can […]
134 (CETLI/OLI Seminar Room)
Assigning Students Audio-based Projects to Improve Thinking and Presentation Skills
Audio assignments, such as podcasts, can help students think in new ways about what they are learning and about the audience for their work. In this session Jim English of English and Andi Johnson of History and Sociology of Science will ask us to consider why we might assign audio projects, how to do so […]
What Does ChatGPT Mean for Our Teaching?
This conversation will allow faculty to talk through their concerns about ChatGPT, a new AI platform that can generate and revise text and code. Will such platforms enable students to complete assignments at the push of a button, and make such cheating harder to detect? Do instructors need to change their assignments? How drastically? Alternatively, […]