TILT (Transparency in Teaching & Learning)’s transparency framework provides a mechanism for laying out the Purpose, Task, and Criteria for Success when designing assignments and assessments. This transparent, explicit approach helps deconstruct “unwritten” rules for academic achievement to set all learners up for success. Join us to explore how greater transparency can increase your students’ consciousness of how they learn and how your course activities support specific learning outcomes and academic growth.

Social annotation creates opportunities for students to dig into readings together, forming a conversation in and around the text itself. This form of inquiry can be a welcome alternative to more traditional discussion forums, encouraging students to engage each other during the process of reading and analyzing texts. Social annotation encourages collaborative, group-based inquiry and helps students clearly connect specific parts of the text to their reflection and analysis, supporting students’ 21st-centry skills and engagement. Join us for a discussion on how to create social annotation assignments, benefits of this collaborative inquiry, and an overview of some tools that facilitate group annotation and allow students to respond to each other directly.

Quantitative Literacy (QL) is one of our five undergraduate learning outcomes, and is defined as competency and comfort in working with numerical data. This Deep Dive will help you bring an equity lens to your Quantitative Literacy-aligned assignment or course. Participants will learn the basics of inclusive pedagogy and quantitative literacy, review best practice in quantitative literacy generally, and investigate how to embed equitable and inclusive pedagogies in the context of quantitative literacy instruction. Participants will also have the opportunity to try applying QL and equity concepts to their courses and assignments.

Flipped Learning challenges us to think about our course design in terms of “spaces”: in-person/online, group/individual, self-paced/facilitated, synchronous/asynchronous. Once we’ve identified those spaces, our next task is to intentionally divide the work of the course into the spaces for which it’s best suited. What’s the best use of your face-to-face time with students? What activities are good opportunities for students to work independently? When do the just-in-time clarifications afforded by synchronous engagement make sense and how can we offer timely feedback in asynchronous contexts? How can we leverage asynchronicity to create opportunities for reflection, processing, and student-led troubleshooting? This Deep Dive will provide an opportunity to talk through the different sets of “spaces” that exist in our courses and provide resources that support planning/outlining a “flipped” course.

In this Deep Dive, we will learn about Neurodiversity and how you can help support neurodivergent students. Specifically, discuss Neurodiversity as a framework for understanding neurological differences. Through that lens, we’ll look at how those differences might be impacting some students’ learning experience. Finally, we’ll explore some strategies and best practices for designing and delivering instruction to neurodivergent learners and how those strategies can benefit all learners.

Learning outcomes are the destination and the course is the journey! This session will help you develop a map that clearly lines up the content, activities, and assessments in your course with its schedule and learning outcomes. We’ll talk about ways to break down outcomes into clear objectives, scaffold student learning to ensure foundational skills lead to more complex tasks, and how to make sure your assessments clearly measure students’ progress. The Deep Dive will explore resources, templates, and approaches that support strong course mapping.

Learn about different approaches to evaluating mastery in your course! Contract or specification grading approaches can help clarify your outcomes, reduce bias, and focus student attention on the process by which skills are mastered. Contract and specification grading can provide greater transparency to your assessment strategy and center your course around its desired competencies and learning outcomes. Join us to explore whether this approach could be useful for your courses!

The need to integrate in-person and online instruction has become paramount as the use of technology continues to reshape the educational paradigm. Hybrid learning, also known as blended learning, is an educational approach that combines traditional in-person classroom instruction with online learning activities, leveraging the benefits of both face-to-face and digital learning methods to create a more flexible and effective learning experience. This deep dive seeks to empower educators with strategies and practical insights for creating effective and engaging hybrid learning experiences, catering to faculty who are navigating the challenges and opportunities presented by hybrid teaching models. In this deep dive, our focus will be on pedagogical best practices, technological tools, and instructional design principles that foster a dynamic and cohesive learning environment.