Workshops

PFF-approved workshops are offered by the Graduate School, the Academy of Fellows for Teaching & Learning (AFTL), the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CET&L), the Graduate Association for Teaching Enhancement (GATE), and other UC groups. This page and the Microsoft SharePoint show which workshops qualify for credit for the present term. The workshops chosen by the PFF program typically focus on pedagogy.

Workshops lasting four hours or less are worth five activity points. Workshops lasting over four hours are worth ten activity points.

In order for students to receive activity points for attending a workshop, an activity log must be completed and submitted to gradpff@uc.edu within one month of the activity date. 

Tuesday, September 8th, 2020
From 2:00-2:45 PM
Register to attend via OneStop. 

This workshop is worth five activity points. 

Join CET&L for a weekly Virtual Coffee and Chat. The aim of these sessions is to build community by sharing experiences and discussing practices related to teaching remotely.  This workshop is best for those who are already teaching a course independently. If you are a TA, please see the Workshop "How's It Going as a TA?." Each session is approximately 45 minutes in length and is focused on a specific topic. A WebEx link to join the meeting will be sent the morning of the event. Register via OneStop. 

Thursday, September 10th, 2020
From 10:00 - 11:00 AM
Register to attend via OneStop. 

This workshop is worth five activity points. 

This workshop will be held via WebEx. A link will be sent to all registered attendees within 24 hours of the workshop.

In this collaborative workshop, we'll talk about our experiences with and share best practices for establishing online engagement with our students.

Thursday, September 10th, 2020
From 2:00-2:45 PM
Register to attend via OneStop. 

This workshop is worth five activity points. 

*Note: The morning of the workshop, we will send you a WebEx link to join the session.*

Join CET&L for a virtual conversation with fellow graduate Teaching Assistants (TAs). The aim of this session is to build community with other TAs by sharing experiences and discussing practices related to teaching. We’ll share the challenges and successes of being a TA and swap tips to help you have a great semester.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Build community with other TAs
2. Share teaching tips for a successful semester

Tuesday, September 29th, 2020
From 1:30 - 3:30 PM
Register to attend via OneStop. 

This workshop is worth five activity points. 

We will review the reasons behind online cheating & offer tips to enhance learning, encourage honesty, & prevent negative behaviors. We'll present information to benefit students & help you monitor progress & preserve the integrity of the course. 

Thursday, October 1st, 2020
From 10:00 - 11:30 AM
Register to attend via OneStop. 

This workshop is worth five activity points. 

This workshop will be held via WebEx. A link will be sent to all registered attendees within 24 hours of the workshop.

This session will focus on the unessay assignment, which is an alternative to the traditional assessments usually seen in the college classroom (essays and exams). The unessay asks students to show their knowledge of course content in more creative and student-centered ways. Rather than writing a paper, students can display their course knowledge in a way they choose. For example, students could create a piece of art, design a computer program, or shoot a short documentary. Students are evaluated based on how well they show their course knowledge through their chosen form. This workshop will introduce professors to a wide array of unessay assignments that fit within many different types of disciplines and help them design an unessay assignment for one of their own courses.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Define the fundamentals of the unessay assignment
2. Discuss how the unessay could be used in their discipline
3. Begin sketching an unessay assignment to use in one of their courses.

Tuesday, October 13th, 2020
From 10:00-11:30 AM
Register to attend via OneStop. 

This workshop is worth five activity points. 

This workshop will be held via Zoom. A link will be sent to all registered attendees within 24 hours of the workshop.

Encountering racism, implicit bias and microaggressions in the classroom presents an opportunity for discussion and learning; however, it can be challenging to know how to address the comments in the moment. The aim of the workshop is to create a space for dialog and sharing strategies for addressing these issues in the moment, as well as how to move forward with a continued discussion if needed. In this workshop, we will begin with guiding principles for addressing racism in the classroom, and then move into a community centered conversation on identifying and addressing both subtle and more blatant forms of racism in the classroom through the use of case studies.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Recognize microaggressions and subtle forms of racism
2. Reflect on the variety of viewpoints and perspectives on how fellow workshop participants react to racism in the classroom
3. Identify strategies and classroom policies they will use in their teaching to explicitly address racism.

Monday, October 19th, 2020
From 2:00 - 3:30 PM
Register to attend via OneStop. 

This workshop is worth five activity points. 

This workshop will be held via WebEx. A link will be sent to all registered attendees within 24 hours of the workshop.

This virtual workshop will focus on how to help students acquire metacognitive strategies to transform their attitudes about the meaning of learning and improve their success. We will discuss the particular challenges of the online environment and practical activities that can be included throughout a course to help students acquire effective learning strategies. The session will also provide examples of beginning-, middle-, and end-of-course metacognitive activities that can be incorporated into Canvas, UC’s Learning Management System.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Describe the particular challenges students might face learning in an online environment.
2. Identify metacognitive activities that can be incorporated at the beginning, middle, and end of an online course.
3. Translate metacognitive activities to their own courses and disciplinary contexts in order to improve their students’ learning.

Wednesday, October 21st, 2020
From 2:00-3:30 PM
Register to attend via OneStop. 

This workshop is worth five activity points. 

A student’s sense of belonging can have a significant impact on how they experience college and their academic success. In this workshop, we will explore theories of belonging and belonging uncertainty and how instructors can use these theories to promote connectedness and resilience in their classrooms. We will also introduce practical strategies such as setting up classroom norms that promote wellbeing, conveying that individual students matter, and teaching that struggles in college are common and can be overcome. The workshop will include opportunities for discussion of case studies and reflection on how to apply strategies to participants’ own contexts.  

Thursday, October 22nd, 2020
From 10:00-12:30 PM
Register to attend via OneStop. 

This workshop is worth five activity points. 

The transition to online instruction and student services in response to COVID-19 presents a substantial challenge for most postsecondary institutions. Among the most pervasive challenges are issues with racial bias and racial microaggressions that serve to impede the student experience. In an environment typified by time constraints, stress, and the unknown – racial strife is at an all-time high. This webinar will focus on strategies that educators can use to address issues of bias and microaggressions in order to meet the needs of historically underrepresented and underserved students in the online environment. The conversation will be facilitated by Drs. Frank Harris III and J. Luke Wood.  

Tuesday, October 27th, 2020
From 1:30-3:30 PM
Register to attend via OneStop. 

This workshop is worth five activity points. 

Plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty are an especially serious problem for online learning. This is the case even though the common perception that cheating is much more prevalent in online classes is probably not accurate. Even at levels equal to face-to-face classes, online academic dishonesty undermines student learning, but an exaggerated fear of rampant cheating and the notion that it is especially difficult to detect and deal with academic dishonesty can undermine the institutional integrity of online learning. On a practical level we also know that dealing with academic dishonesty when it does happen causes serious problems for teachers, administrators, and students.

With the goal of preventing plagiarism and cheating from happening in the first place, we will explore a few interrelated issues. We’ll consider the motives and reasons behind academic dishonesty and then take a look at some of the tactics online students employ to cheat and plagiarize. We will also explore ways in which we can design and manage our classes with the goal of minimizing or preventing plagiarism and academic dishonesty. For instance, we will explore the pros and cons of using proctored exams as a way to prevent cheating. Next, we will consider strategies for detecting cheating when it happens, including the utilization of the so-called plagiarism detection software. Finally, we will talk about specific ideas for how to talk to our students about the consequences of plagiarism and academic dishonesty in ways that don’t compound the problem.

Wednesday, November 4th, 2020
From 10:00-10:45 AM
Register to attend via OneStop. 

This workshop is worth five activity points. 

Join CET&L for a “Virtual Coffee and Chat.” The aim of these sessions is to build community by sharing experiences and discussing practices related to teaching online. This workshop is best for those who are already teaching a course independently. If you are a TA, please see the Workshop "How's It Going as a TA?." Each session is approximately 45 minutes in length and is focused on a specific topic. The topic can be found in the Additional Info section below.

The Coffee & Chat session will be held via WebEx. A link will be sent to all registered attendees within 24 hours of the session.

This event is a BYOB event. Sorry, no virtual coffee deliveries!

Wednesday, November 18th, 2020
From 11:00am-12:00pm
Register to attend here. 

This workshop is worth five activity points.

In this one-hour online workshop through the Academic Writing Center, we will discuss how to write effectively for an audience of undergrads, how to craft syllabi that are easy to read, and how to create course description that grab students' attention.

Thursday, November 19th, 2020
From 10:00 - 11:30 AM
Register to attend via OneStop. 

This workshop is worth five activity points. 

This workshop will be held via Zoom. A link will be sent to all registered attendees within 24 hours of the workshop.

Do you have a new course to develop or need to redesign a current course? Need a logical approach to course design? In this introductory workshop, we will discuss UC’s course design model and help you apply the model to your course design effort. Major components of the course design process include writing Student Learning Objectives, aligning objectives to assessments and activities, anticipating the students in your course, and collecting feedback. We will also review how you can seek further support as you continue to design your course.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Explain the advantages of using a course design method
2. Summarize the steps in the course design process
3. Begin developing a course using the UC course design model
4. Define next steps and supports available

Learning Outcomes:

1. Disucss and evaluate methods for dividing course lecture mateirals between Sync and Asycn modalities.
2. Discuss opportunities for students to encounter active learning experiences virtually.

Monday, November 30th, 2020
From 2:00 - 3:00 PM
Register to attend via OneStop. 

This workshop is worth five activity points. 

This workshop will be held via WebEx. A link will be sent to all registered attendees within 24 hours of the workshop.

Flipping the class is an organizational structure for blended instruction. Most of the time, instructures will flip their face to face classes by uploading key resources and content to an online environment with the expectation that their students complete or review said content prior to coming to class. This opens up in-class time for authentic assessment, practical applicaiton, and debreifing exercises to hone a student's understanding. Now that we find ourselves in a remote-instruction landscape, how can we acheive the same beneifts of flipping a class? During this session, we will discuss best practices for blending synchronous and asynchronous instruction for an online course while also exploring the technical how to's.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Disucss and evaluate methods for dividing course lecture mateirals between Sync and Asycn modalities.
2. Discuss opportunities for students to encounter active learning experiences virtually.

Tuesday, December 15th, 2020
From 9:30 - 3:00 PM
Register to attend via OneStop. 

This workshop is worth 3 credits (15 activity points) when participating in the full symposium. Attending part of the symposium will accumulate 1 or 2 credits, as appropriate. Contact gradpff@uc.edu if you have any questions.

This workshop will be held virtually. A link will be sent to all registered attendees within 24 hours of the workshop.

The UCBA Learning + Teaching Center, in conjunction with the FEC and CETL, will host an Online Symposium on Tuesday, December 15, 9:30-3:00. Natasha Jankowski, Executive Director, and Associate Professor with the Department of Education Policy, Organization, and at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, will begin the symposium with a workshop on achieving equity and inclusion through assessment.  

Potential breakout session topics include:

• Achieving Equitable and Inclusive Student Success 
• Assessment in the Age of Online or Remote Learning 
• Achieving Equitable and Inclusive Student Assessment 
• Achieving Equitable and Inclusive Program Level Learning