We are excited to offer a transformative course for educators focused on creating inclusive, accessible learning environments. Key topics include accessibility, inclusion, and Universal Design for Learning (UDL), emphasizing collective responsibility for access.
Participants will learn to use appropriate disability language, identify barriers affecting students, and understand diverse disabilities at Marian University. The course will emphasize embedding UDL principles in classroom culture, supporting all learners, including English Language Learners, through language and cultural diversity.
Additionally, the course will address neurodiversity and strategies to foster inclusive environments that empower neurodiverse students. Enroll to enhance your teaching practices and contribute to a more equitable learning community at Marian University.
To enroll in this self-paced Canvas course, follow this link: Access and Inclusion Master Class
Great teaching goes beyond delivering content—it involves guiding students to think critically, apply knowledge, and become self-directed learners. The Teaching for Learning Series equips educators with research-based strategies to bridge the gap between expert knowledge and student understanding, foster deeper learning, and promote long-term skill development.
Workshop 1: Expert Blind Spots: Overcoming Unseen Barriers to Student Learning
Experienced instructors often develop "expert blind spots," making it difficult to recognize the learning challenges novice students face. This workshop explores how seemingly simple tasks can require complex, hidden skills and introduces Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) as a powerful tool for uncovering and addressing these gaps. Participants will learn how to break down tasks into declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge, analyze their own mental processes, and implement strategies to make implicit expertise explicit—enhancing student understanding and mastery.
Workshop 2: Application and Transfer of Learning: Helping Students Use Knowledge in New Contexts
Mastering complex tasks requires students to integrate multiple skills and apply knowledge beyond the classroom—yet many struggle with fluency, automaticity, and adaptability. This workshop focuses on strategies to help students transfer their learning across different contexts by scaffolding skill integration, designing meaningful assignments, and highlighting connections to broader concepts. Faculty will explore how to adjust expectations, build automaticity, and create authentic learning experiences that strengthen both competence and confidence in students.
Workshop 3: Metacognitive Practices: Teaching Students to Think About Their Thinking
Metacognition—the ability to reflect on and regulate one’s own thinking—is a crucial but often overlooked component of academic success. This workshop delves into the metacognitive cycle, guiding faculty in helping students assess, plan, monitor, and evaluate their learning more effectively. Participants will explore practical strategies, such as modeling planning behaviors, fostering self-monitoring techniques, and incorporating structured reflection into coursework. By teaching students to become active, self-directed learners, faculty can empower them to navigate challenges with greater confidence and independence.
Workshop 4: Creating a Growth Mindset Culture: Fostering Resilience and Motivation
Students’ beliefs about intelligence and ability shape how they engage with learning. This workshop explores fixed and growth mindsets, emphasizing the importance of teaching the science behind neuroplasticity rather than simply encouraging a growth mindset. Participants will learn how to provide constructive feedback that fosters resilience, use strategies like Wise Feedback Framing to build trust, and adapt their language and approach to cultivate a supportive, high-expectations learning environment. By intentionally fostering a growth mindset culture, faculty can help students embrace challenges, persist through setbacks, and thrive academically.
Understanding how students learn is essential for designing effective and engaging instruction. The Science of Learning Series explores key cognitive principles that impact memory, retention, and student success. Each workshop delves into evidence-based strategies grounded in neuroscience and psychology, helping educators optimize their teaching for deeper, more lasting learning.
Workshop 1: Prior Knowledge and Retrieval: This workshop explores the critical roles of prior knowledge and retrieval practice in learning. It emphasizes that learning is associative and builds upon existing neural networks. The session highlights how activating prior knowledge is essential for new knowledge construction and how regular retrieval practice strengthens neural pathways, improving long-term retention. After this workshop, participants will be able to:
Workshop 2: Mental Cues: This workshop focuses on the significance of mental cues in memory and learning. It defines cues as signals that remind the brain to activate specific emotions, actions, or thoughts, which are crucial for retrieving information from long-term memory. The session covers how to help students avoid over-reliance on single cues by practicing material in varied ways and contexts. After this workshop, participants will be able to:
Workshop 3: Relevance, Meaning, and Emotions: This workshop explores the impact of relevance, meaning, and emotions on learning. It emphasizes that personally meaningful content and emotional engagement are critical for creating synaptic connections and enhancing memory. The session also covers strategies for integrating survival-relevant cues, such as vividness and personal relevance, into teaching to boost student motivation and learning. After this workshop, participants will be able to:
Workshop 4: Cognitive Load and the Impact of Time: This workshop addresses cognitive load theory and the importance of time and sleep in learning. It explains the different types of cognitive load—intrinsic, extraneous, and germane—and strategies for managing each to optimize working memory processing. The session also highlights the role of memory consolidation during sleep and the benefits of spaced repetition for embedding information into long-term memory. After this workshop, participants will be able to
Completing this course will result in the Transformational Teaching digital certificate, which is recognized by the Office of the Provost. In order to be eligible for the certificate, please complete all the modules and the final deliverable in the course with an 80% or better. Once the final deliverable has been reviewed using the rubric in the course and fulfills all the requirements, the certificate will be emailed to you. Having the certificate in a digital format will facilitate ease in uploading to Faculty Success.
Objectives for the Course:
To enroll in this self-paced Canvas course, follow this link: Transformational Teaching
TILT (Transparency in Learning and Teaching) is an evidence-based instructional framework designed to enhance student learning by making the purpose, tasks, and criteria of assignments and assessments explicit. This approach addresses common challenges students face, such as uncertainty about expectations, confusion over assignment requirements, and difficulty understanding the relevance of their coursework. By providing structured clarity, TILT helps students become more confident and effective learners.
At its core, TILT promotes transparency by breaking down assignments into three key components:
Research has shown that when instructors implement transparent teaching strategies, student performance improves—especially among historically underserved students. By making the learning process more accessible, TILT helps bridge equity gaps, reduces student anxiety, and fosters a greater sense of ownership over learning. Additionally, when students understand the reasoning behind assignments, they are more likely to engage deeply, develop critical thinking skills, and transfer knowledge to new contexts.
TILT is more than just a set of teaching techniques; it’s a shift toward fostering an inclusive, student-centered learning environment. By adopting TILT principles, instructors empower students to take an active role in their education, leading to stronger academic outcomes and a more meaningful learning experience.
In our recent Book Club discussions, we have delved into a range of thought-provoking topics. We encourage you to stay tuned for updates in the newsletter regarding our upcoming sessions. Additionally, our next reading list promises to offer an engaging selection of genres and authors that will surely pique your interest. Each meeting has fostered vibrant debates and thoughtful reflections, enriching our collective experience. We invite all faculty members to share their insights, questions, and favorite quotes to enhance our discussions. We look forward to your participation and to seeing you at our next session.
This semester's Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) book discussion will focus on A Pedagogy of Kindness (Teaching, Engaging, and Thriving in Higher Ed) by Catherine Denial. Academia is not, by and large, a kind place. Individualism and competition are what count. But without kindness at its core, Catherine Denial suggests, higher education fails students and instructors—and its mission—in critical ways.
The fall semester Center for Teaching and Learning book club will be reading Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning by Jose Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson. The book has three different parts to it, including thinking with AI, teaching with AI, and learning with AI.
The Center for Teaching and Learning is partnering with LEAP Indiana to offer this semester's book club, Keeping Us Engaged by Christine Harrington and 50 college students. The book offers faculty practical strategies to engage students that are research-grounded and endorsed by students themselves. Through student stories, a signature feature of this book, readers will discover why professor actions result in changed attitudes, stronger connections to others and the course material, and increased learning."
This semester’s book is Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience where legendary psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's famous investigations of 'optimal experience' have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying. This is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. In this new edition of his groundbreaking classic work, Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance. Read for your own benefit or for possibly integrating strategies into your course to support students' flow.
This semester’s book is Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education by Thomas Tobin and Kristen Behling. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework grounded in the neuroscience of why, what, and how people learn. Tobin and Behling show that, although it is often associated with students with disabilities, UDL can be profitably broadened toward a larger ease-of-use and general diversity framework.
This series of master classes is a series of 3 classes that provide you with the knowledge, experience, and confidence needed to design, develop, and teach courses effectively while using Canvas. It is highly encouraged for those teaching an online or blended course and extremely useful for those teaching face-to-face. The first of the 3 classes is the only class needed for the ACP requirement. Full Master Class series requirement is dependent on department leadership.
In addition to our core workshop series, we offer a wide range of professional development opportunities designed to support faculty in enhancing their teaching effectiveness. These sessions explore a wide range of topics. Whether you're looking to refine your course design, engage students more effectively, or implement research-based teaching strategies, these workshops provide practical tools to enhance learning and student success.
Inclusive and Accessible Teaching
Supporting Underprepared and Diverse Learners
Curriculum and Course Design
AI and Technology in Teaching
Engaging and Active Learning Strategies
Cognitive Science and Learning Theories
Reflective and Community-Based Learning