**IN PERSON** Create Engaging Content in the Digital Media Studio
Wednesday, October 21, 2026 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
CITL's Digital Media Studio features two innovative technologies designed to help you create engaging and effective video presentations and require minimum training or help. The One Button Video Studio allows you to create high quality videos with studio lighting, custom backgrounds, and presentation overlays. The Lightboard can be used to create recorded videos featuring handwritten presentation content, and unlike a classroom whiteboard, the Lightboard allows users to face their audience. The Lightboard can also host live sessions using Microsoft Teams or Zoom. In this face-to-face workshop, you will be introduced to tools and techniques that will engage your students with dynamic video content. Advance registration required.
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**ONLINE** Guardrails, Not Gotchas: AI Ethics, Practice, and Policy That Support Real Learning
Wednesday, October 21, 2026 from 12:10 PM to 12:40 PM
Generative AI has become a standard part of student learning workflows, but most institutional policies and practices have struggled to keep pace. This session examines two interconnected challenges: building AI governance frameworks that are transparent, defensible, and practically usable by faculty and staff; and ensuring those frameworks do not entrench existing inequities in access, surveillance, and due process. Drawing on recent litigation, USA national survey data, and practitioner-developed tools, participants will leave with concrete approaches to policy design and classroom practice. This webinar will be facilitated by Christian Moriarty, a Professor of Ethics and Law at St. Petersburg College, the Ethics & Governance chair of the Florida Artificial Intelligence Learning Consortium (FALCON), and a director and treasurer of the International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) in the United States of America. This webinar will be recorded. If you're unable to attend the live session, please register anyway to ensure you receive access to the recording afterward. This session is offered by OneHE. Register Now!
**ONLINE** Improving PDF Accessibility
Thursday, October 22, 2026 from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
PDFs are commonly used as course materials, but too often they create hidden barriers for students who use screen readers or other assistive technologies (note that PDFs are no longer permitted on NIU websites). While they can be difficult to make accessible, a few fixes can make a big difference. In this workshop, we’ll explore practical steps you can take to improve the accessibility of PDFs in your courses. You’ll learn how to check if your PDFs are readable, add tags, adjust reading order, and include headings and alt text. Advance registration required.
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**ONLINE** EDGE - Beyond Compliance: Accommodations that Foster Access and Student Success in General Education
Friday, October 23, 2026 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
General education courses serve students with a wide range of abilities, backgrounds, and learning needs. Moving beyond a compliance-centered perspective, this presentation explores how accommodations contribute to student success, engagement, and retention. This session examines the purpose of accommodations, clarifies faculty responsibilities, and offers guidance for implementing accommodations effectively. This is the second session of the Enriching the Design of General Education learning community for the 2026-2027 academic year. Advance registration required.
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**NEW - ONLINE** AI for Program Level Assessment Data Analysis and Decision-making Support
Tuesday, October 27, 2026 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Register to learn how to access and use AI tools to support making sense of how to use data gained from assessments of program level student learning outcomes. AI can't do the thinking for you, but it could help you facilitate conversations with colleagues in your department: better ways to present data, potential explanations to think about, next steps they might consider. (Please note that we will focus on program level processes, but these tools may be helpful making sense of classroom level assessment data as well.) Advance registration required.
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**ONLINE** Teaching Multilingual Learners: Lowering Barriers to Success
Tuesday, October 27, 2026 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
In a globalized higher education system, institutions must support multilingual learners by addressing language barriers and unfamiliar academic norms. This workshop aims to help educators support multilingual learners by addressing cultural nuances and language barriers. It will cover strategies for success, including instructional techniques and the use of digital literacy and AI for inclusion. Additionally, the workshop will discuss ethical considerations and challenges of using AI and technology to democratize English for multilingual learners. Advance registration required.
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**ONLINE** Making Community Engagement Count: Promotion and Tenure Lessons From Recently Promoted Scholars
Wednesday, October 28, 2026 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Navigating promotion and tenure expectations can sometimes feel daunting for community-engaged scholars. In this webinar, recently promoted or tenured faculty will share practical insights from their own journeys, including strategies for documenting community-engaged scholarship, demonstrating impact, building a strong promotion dossier, and balancing institutional expectations with authentic community partnerships. Participants will gain firsthand advice, lessons learned, and actionable tips for making community-engaged work visible, valued, and successful throughout the promotion and tenure process. This session is led by the Engagement Scholarship Consortium (ESC). NIU is an ESC member institution. Register Now!
**NEW - ONLINE** Honors Seminars Up Close: A Lunchtime Faculty Panel
Wednesday, October 28, 2026 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
Curious what it's like to teach an honors seminar? Join us online for a lunchtime conversation with faculty who have taught in the University Honors Program. Panelists will talk about how they designed their seminars, what small, discussion-driven classes with motivated students look like, and what they took back to their own teaching and research. We'll also go over how the Honors Faculty Fellowship works and how to propose a seminar on next year's theme, More Than Meets the Eye. Bring your questions, whether you're ready to propose or just wondering whether it's for you. Advance registration is required.
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**ONLINE** Meeting the Needs of Students with Disabilities
Thursday, October 29, 2026 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
When courses aren’t created with students with disabilities in mind, educators may be unprepared for accommodating them. Designing your course with accessible features built-in can help you avoid scrambling to meet students’ needs. Accessible course design also ensures all your students can access content and participate in class without being shamed for their needs. In this workshop, we will discuss how to create accessible course materials and class policies and coursework that consider students’ needs. Advance registration required.
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**ONLINE** Navigating the Nontraditional: Strategies for Supporting Today’s College Students Online Summit
Monday, November 2, 2026 from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM
This free online Summit brings together higher education professionals to share innovative strategies, practical tools, and collaborative approaches that support the success, persistence, and belonging of nontraditional students. Throughout the day, you’ll hear from students, educators, and higher education professionals as we examine the many ways institutions can better support students whose paths to and through college may look different from the traditional model. From student voices and transition support to belonging, re-enrollment, communication, assessment, and institutional practices, the symposium is designed to encourage meaningful conversation and practical ideas that can be taken back to campuses and communities. This session is hosted by Eastern Illinois University. Register Now!
**NEW - ONLINE** NIU Yellowdig Fall Workshop: Dig Into Yellowdig
Tuesday, November 3, 2026 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
When students are part of a community, their education becomes so much more than classes, textbooks, projects and grades. NIU has Yellowdig, which sparks real interactions that result in real communities.
What You’ll Learn:
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Getting Started with Confidence: A beginner-friendly introduction to Yellowdig, how it works, and step-by-step guidance on launching your first community.
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Driving Deeper Engagement: Practical, proven strategies to move beyond the basics and keep student conversations active, meaningful, and self-sustaining.
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Data-Informed Teaching: Advanced techniques for leveraging Yellowdig analytics to gain insights into student participation and refine your instructional approach.
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What’s New in Yellowdig: An inside look at the latest features designed to enhance both the instructor and student experience.
Join us to discover the benefits of social cognition and how to incorporate Yellowdig into your courses. Advance registration required.
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**ONLINE** Pedagogies of Care… for Whom? Myths and Misunderstandings about Teaching and Instructor Well-Being
Wednesday, November 4, 2026 from 3:10 PM to 3:40 PM
Following the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, the advent of generative AI, threats to higher education from politicians, changing demographics, and the perceived value of higher education, faculty are depleted and demoralized. These challenges are even more impactful for diverse and contingent faculty required to contribute additional, inequitable labor. Some campuses have provided help by offering programming targeting faculty and staff well-being – but much of this can actually hurt more than it helps. In their webinar, Chavella Pittman, Professor of Sociology at Dominican University, USA, and Sarah Rose Cavanagh Associate Professor of Practice in Psychology, and Senior Associate Director for Teaching and Learning at Simmons University, USA, will share thoughts on what many campuses get wrong about the intersection of teaching and well-being (e.g., mental and physical health, workload overload and overwhelm). They will then open the floor to a vibrant conversation with the audience about a path forward that truly values the well-being of both teachers and learners. This webinar will be recorded. If you're unable to attend the live session, please register anyway to ensure you receive access to the recording afterward. This session is offered by OneHE. Register Now!
**ONLINE** Illinois Online Higher Education Symposium
Friday, November 6, 2026 from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM
Join colleagues from across the state of Illinois for the 2026 Illinois Online Higher Education Symposium! This free, one-day virtual conference brings together thought leaders and practitioners with expertise in online teaching and learning to discuss the latest trends in online learning--from pedagogy to technology. All who learn, teach, develop, support, or administer online education are welcome! Learn More and Register Now!
**ONLINE** Ethics, Equity, and Responsible AI Use in Community Engagement
Tuesday, November 10, 2026 from 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM
In this webinar, community engagement researchers will discuss their innovative approaches to responsibly integrating AI tools with their scholarship while maintaining rigorous ethical standards, transparency, and accountability to community partners. This session is led by the Engagement Scholarship Consortium (ESC). NIU is an ESC member institution. Register Now!
**ONLINE** Centering Demonstration of Essential Learning to Streamline Degree Paths: Competency-Based Education & Credit for Prior Learning
Thursday, November 12, 2026 from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
As NIU and higher education in general adapt to the needs of current and future university students, competency-based approaches are increasingly being adopted. These approaches can enhance affordability and time-to-degree while focusing on attainment of the most important learning outcomes. High-quality assessment practices are central to the effective implementation of these practices, including granting credit-for-prior learning. Join us for a conversation about trends in the field and a panel of your colleagues implementing these practices at NIU. Advance registration required.
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**ONLINE** Success Strategies for Unpacking Your Community Engagement Work Into Multiple Scholarly Pieces
Friday, December 11, 2026 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Do you have a great service-learning, outreach teaching, community-engaged research, or Extension project and are unsure how to write it up for a peer-reviewed publication? Are you interested in branching out into interdisciplinary community engagement journals? Then this interactive webinar is for you.
Diane Doberneck will focus on what makes publishing community-engaged work different than publishing traditional scholarship, how to incorporate community partner voices, how to unpack a robust project into multiple scholarly pieces, and how to achieve article “fit” with specific journals. She will share additional ideas on how to disseminate your community-engaged scholarship at community engagement-friendly conferences. She will also review several practical writing tools and where to access more writing resources and support. Come away from this webinar with next steps for advancing your writing and publishing success. This session is led by the Engagement Scholarship Consortium (ESC). NIU is an ESC member institution. Register Now!
**ONLINE** Navigating Tensions Between Personal and Institutional Values and Goals in Community-Engaged Scholarship
Monday, January 25, 2027 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Community-engaged scholars often pursue their work with commitments to relationship building, responsiveness to community priorities, reciprocity, and meaningful community impact. At the same time, universities operate within systems that emphasize individual initiative, productivity, efficiency, and metrics that reflect institutional prestige. While these goals may occasionally align, they can also create tensions that require difficult choices and ongoing negotiation. This panel will explore the challenges that arise when personal values, community priorities, and institutional expectations do not fully align. Panelists will share their experiences balancing relationship-centered engagement with academic demands, navigating competing definitions of success, and making decisions when commitments to communities conflict with institutional pressures. Participants will gain insight into strategies for approaching these tensions thoughtfully while remaining grounded in their values and goals. This session is led by the Engagement Scholarship Consortium (ESC). NIU is an ESC member institution. Register Now!
