CETLI Events Calendar

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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.

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 […]

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 – […]

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.

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.

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]