News

The Course Design Institute (CDI) is a collaboration between IDEAS and UMass Flex. Faculty participate in an intensive course focused on creating and designing a new or reinvigorated online course. Cohort 6, composed of 17 faculty members from UWW Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, College of Natural Sciences, Riccio College of Engineering, College of Education, Manning College of Information & Computer Sciences, and Isenberg School of Management, completed the latest CDI in August 2025.  

Looking for a quick guide to get your course ready? These ten action items will help you get started and ready to teach. For more information, you can follow the Canvas Course Checklist. 

Across higher education, students are expected to master complex disciplines—but too often, our classrooms keep them in silos. The result? Graduates who struggle to collaborate across fields and apply their knowledge to real-world problems.

Imagine a classroom where students from different fields tackle challenges together, where lectures give way to hands-on projects, and where students not only deepen their expertise but also sharpen critical thinking, problem-solving, and teamwork skills. For faculty, this approach offers something equally valuable: a way to break free from traditional

Long before online teaching rose to its modern prominence, creators on the nascent video platform YouTube attracted large, recreational audiences to educational videos. Over the last fifteen or so years, “video essays”—medium- to long-form educational content that argues a central thesis—have grown in popularity, evolving an unmistakable feel and series of conventions. YouTube creators and videos glued college students to their screens without the incentive of course credit. As we instructors produce videos for our courses, we can learn a lot from YouTube! 

This three-part series presents a

Despite thoughtful planning, students in face-to-face, hybrid, and online courses can slip into passive routines. Listening without applying, posting without connecting, or attending without belonging are some of these. Engagement means active participation, cognitive effort, and social connection (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004). This article explains common engagement blockers across modalities and offers practical strategies you can use immediately. 

Your Canvas homepage is more than just a landing page; it’s a reflection of you as an instructor and the foundation for your students’ learning experience, whether you teach in person, online, or hybrid. 

Since students can access Canvas courses a week before the semester begins, your homepage often becomes their first point of contact. A clear, welcoming homepage helps students feel confident and ready to learn. If it’s cluttered or confusing, they can feel frustrated and disengaged. 

A well-designed homepage serves three practical purposes.

Canvas offers a Syllabus page that can be used in place of, or in addition to a document or PDF Syllabus. This tool can streamline editing for instructors and create an organized, accessible course summary for students. Learn more about why and how to use the Canvas Syllabus tool.

Caroline DeVane, Instructor in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, started with a simple wish: to experiment with video as a modality to communicate key concepts and ideas about anthropology to the students enrolled in her courses. Caroline wanted to move away from the post-COVID “rambling videos” that she resorted to as an emergency strategy for remote teaching. So, in 2023, Caroline enrolled in a short course about TikTok media production to learn how to create content best suited for her audience- her students. Caroline believes that TikTok, as a teaching tool, has the potential

Instructional Innovation Fellows engage in critical dialogue about the roles of AI, curiosity, and play in higher education classrooms. During the December 5, 2025 meeting, Fellows discussed secure testing environments and take-home laboratory kits as possible assessment and engagement strategies.