The Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) will offer several courses and trainings this summer to help you learn about effectively teaching online, engaging students, and more. Create a free CIRTL account at cirtl.net to register.
Basics of Online Learning and Teaching
Build your own online course in this blended 12-week course that walks students through online course development in a mix of synchronous sessions and asynchronous activities. The course will begin with 4 weeks of synchronous online sessions providing an overview of the course and an introduction to online pedagogy. Then, students will work through 3 weeks of asynchronous modules about effective online pedagogy, each involving approximately 4-6 hours of readings, assignments, and peer feedback. During this time students will work on their final projects where they will develop materials for an online course (or activity) they plan to teach in the future. Students will come back together for 2 more online sessions that will explore specific teaching with web conferencing software, and the course will end with 3 weeks of student micro-teaching presentations.
Begins June 2, 2020 and ends August 18, 2020.
Learn more: https://www.cirtl.net/courses/524
Engaging Students in the Teaching of Statistics (Short Course)
Learn the pedagogical foundations to effective teaching and learning in statistics in this short 4-session course. Students who complete this course will: 1. Improve their comprehension of the role that backwards design plays in successful teaching 2. Be able to develop teaching plans that involve active learning 3. Have at their disposal a number of tools particularly useful for teaching statistics 4. Have the capability to successfully reach students with diverse backgrounds.
Begins July 16, 2020 and ends August 13, 2020.
Learn more: https://www.cirtl.net/courses/522
Transforming Your Research Into Teaching (Short Course)
Learn how to build a course out of your research specialty in this 7-week course that guides grad students and postdocs through the fundamentals of course design. In this course, trainees learn the skills of course design and apply these skills by building a full college course based on their area of research expertise. Each week focuses on a different element of course design (using a Backwards Design sequence), allowing students to progressively build their course each week. At the conclusion of the course, students will present their course concept in a short presentation modeled on a course pitch session in a faculty meeting or job interview.
There will be a UNL-based cohort for this class. Contact Lisa Rohde at lrohde2@unl.edu if you are interested in participating.
Begins the week of June 15, 2020 and ends the week of July 27, 2020.
Learn more: https://www.cirtl.net/courses/486
CIRTL MOOC: An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching
“An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching” is an open, online course designed to provide future STEM faculty, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows with an introduction to effective teaching strategies and the research that supports them. The goal of the eight-week course is to equip the next generation of STEM faculty to be effective teachers, thus improving the learning experience for the thousands of students they will teach.
Learn more: http://stemteachingcourse.org/
2020 CIRTL Summer Institute on Scientific Teaching
The CIRTL Online Summer Institute on Scientific Teaching designed specifically for grad students and postdocs new to teaching. In this five-day institute, participants will experience a thorough introduction to the core ideas that ground CIRTL's approach to STEM education: learning-through-diversity, learning communities, evidence-based teaching, and teaching-as-research. By examining relevant literature, working online in small peer groups facilitated by topical experts, and performing structured work independently; participants will develop a deep understanding of scientific teaching.
Learn more: https://www.cirtl.net/events/868
Online Office Hours
Office hours have live, real-time online sessions focused on current topics in teaching and learning amid COVID-19. Sessions are one hour and run on a drop-in basis and do not require advance registration.
- Blending Asynchronous and Synchronous Online Teaching
- Learn how to create a blended course in a cohesive way while fostering an equitable learning environment for students. Schedule TBD.
- Running Online Discussion Sections
- Discuss effective approaches to running synchronous online discussion sections in this session tailored to TAs. Schedule TBD.
- What does a TAR learning community look like during COVID-19?
- Discuss how CIRTL practitioners have adjusted their Teaching as Research projects to a remote-teaching environment and reflect on the importance of community for future faculty in the wake of a pandemic. Schedule TBD.