Join us for CTL Teach Week, June 2 to 6, where we'll explore how to design courses that embody your teaching values. Discover how to intentionally center your pedagogical values in your classes—even when facing constraints.
Whether you're refining how your teaching philosophy manifests in practice or seeking specific strategies to enhance your course design and inspire your students to engage more deeply and effectively in learning, Teach Week offers meaningful evidence-based strategies and a course design clinic, with slots for individual consultations, to fuel your pedagogical innovation long after the sessions end.
WORKSHOPS
"Incorporating Your Teaching Values Through Purposeful Course Design"
Date: Tuesday, June 3, 10:00 to 11:30 am via Zoom
Facilitators: Katie Ingraham Dixie and Sara Cavallo (CTL)
What do you value most in teaching and is it reflected in your course? When we talk about course design, we often talk about alignment – making sure our learning goals, activities, and assessments connect to each other. Aligning our course design with our values, however, can also provide a vital anchor for our teaching, especially as we face constraints that might throw our courses out of sync with our original vision. In this session, you will reflect on and identify values that relate to your teaching and explore new ways to tweak your courses – whether through small adjustments or larger overhauls – to better align with your goals, values, and teaching philosophy.
In this session, you will:
- Reflect on and identify your teaching values
- Identify where your values may be missing in your course design
- Explore ways to better align your courses to reflect your teaching values
This session will offer a space to reflect on the overarching goals of your courses, allowing you to make purposeful design choices and leave inspired with new ideas and revitalized energy for the coming year.
"Using Critical Engagement to Teach Students With or About AI"
Date: Wednesday, June 4, 10:00 to 11:30 am via Zoom
Facilitators: Kirsten Helmer and Beth Lisi (CTL)
Artificial Intelligence is transforming higher education, prompting essential questions about student learning and intellectual agency. Whether you're eager to integrate AI or remain skeptical of its use, proactively engaging your students with AI's strengths, limitations, and ethical implications is critical. Intentionally integrating AI literacy practices into your course design enables students to thoughtfully question, critically evaluate, and ethically engage with AI, maintaining their intellectual agency in the age of AI.
In this interactive, practical session, you'll explore approaches to designing your courses with intentional AI-awareness, ensuring students can critically analyze AI-generated outputs rather than use AI to circumvent genuine learning. You'll discover strategies that honor your pedagogical values, whether you aim to cultivate caution and skepticism around AI or embrace its potential to enhance student learning.
In this session, you will:
- Reflect on your own teaching values related to student learning and agency in an AI-rich world.
- Be introduced to a comprehensive AI literacy framework to inform and guide your course design decisions.
- Create a discipline-specific learning activity that helps students identify AI limitations, critically assess AI outputs, and develop informed perspectives on AI applications
You'll leave this session equipped with practical, ready-to-implement course design elements and a deeper understanding of how critical AI literacy can align with your educational values, benefiting students' broader academic and professional futures.
"Incorporating What Students Crave into Your Teaching: 5 Student Success Takeaways from CTL's MAP Program"
Date: Thursday, June 5, 10:00 to 11:30 am via Zoom
Facilitators: Brian Baldi and Colleen Kuusinen (CTL)
What teaching strategies do students value? Years of collecting mid-semester feedback data across campus – from approximately 140 classes and 10,000 students per year – has allowed the CTL to keep a close watch on what UMass students are asking for and value in their courses each semester. In this session, we’ll share 5 major takeaways from the last 3 years of our mid-semester assessment process (MAP) program, unearth the “why” and teaching research behind their suggestions, and brainstorm creative solutions to meet UMass student needs.
In this session, we’ll:
- Reflect on what students have told us they want and why;
- Examine a synthesis of student comments from our MAP Program;
- Brainstorm all the possible ways to address the top 5 things students crave in a way that makes sense for your values, context, and learning goals for students.
In doing so, we’ll collectively discuss: What do students want? Why do they want it? And how do we make our teaching more student-centered in our various course settings? We suggest you bring or review your course evaluations or feedback surveys from courses you will be teaching in the fall, if available. We look forward to helping you develop a reasonable and meaningful plan for your course(s) so you feel prepared and ready for the fall!
Course Design Consultation Clinic
Dates: Multiple slots from Monday, June 2, through Friday, June 6 during Teach Week
Facilitators: CTL consultants
Whether you want to reflect on a course you just taught or create a plan for the upcoming semester’s courses, take a moment to think about how to put your teaching values into practice through a collaborative and thoughtful lens with a CTL consultant as your “thought partner.” Through these one-on-one consultations, you’ll leave with design ideas for your course that you can return to when you are ready to prepare to teach your course.
CTL consultants can think through many aspects of your teaching and course design, including:
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Reviewing your overall course design and identifying potential areas where today's students might encounter difficulties;
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Incorporating more or varied types of active learning into your course;
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Processing student feedback (e.g., MAP, Forward FOCUS, SRTI) to build on strengths and decide which suggestions to incorporate;
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Refining assessment and grading strategies to meet your objectives;
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Incorporating inclusive and anti-racist teaching practices to enhance the classroom environment;
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Identifying and responding to any personal "pinch points" that would make your teaching more joyful and efficient;
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And more, tailored to your specific needs!
Registrations for the Teach Week Course Design Consultations are now closed but we are still available throughout the summer to meet with you. Please contact us by email or phone or complete the “Schedule a Consultation” form.