**ONLINE** Anthology Blackboard: The One Where Classrooms Have No Walls
Friday, May 9, 2025 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Explore best practices for online, hybrid, and HyFlex teaching, equipping educators with the tools and strategies to create dynamic and flexible learning experiences. This session features “Focusing on Soft Skills Development in Online Course Design," presented by Amanda Blum, Professor of Business at Arkansas State University. Dr. Blum explores effective strategies for building essential soft skills in college students through asynchronous online course design. Participants will learn about the challenges and opportunities of developing soft skills in an online environment. The session will cover a variety of instructional strategies along with practical assessment methods and best practices for fostering student engagement. Attendees will gain valuable insights into designing impactful online learning experiences that enhance students’ soft skills, preparing them for academic and professional success. As this webinar is being offered by Anthology/Blackboard, you will need to register directly with their organization for more information and login details.
**ONLINE** LockDown Browser & Respondus Monitor: Protect the Integrity of Online Tests
Tuesday, May 13, 2025 from 11:00 AM to 11:45 AM
This comprehensive training webinar is intended for faculty who are interested in using LockDown Browser and/or Respondus Monitor to promote academic integrity for their online exams. The session provides a detailed demonstration of both applications, including enhancements that make Respondus Monitor even more effective and easy to use. This session is led by staff from Respondus. Register Now!
**NEW - ONLINE** Show Your Work with Adobe Express Webpages
Tuesday, May 13, 2025 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Ready to showcase your work and personality online? This hands-on workshop will guide you through the intuitive process of building dynamic and visually appealing webpages using Adobe Express. Learn how to create engaging educational portfolios to highlight your skills and projects, or craft a compelling personal profile page to share your story and connect with others. We'll cover everything from layout design and multimedia integration to sharing your finished webpage with the world. Come discover how Adobe Express can help you make a memorable digital impression. Advance registration required.
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**NEW - ONLINE** Maximize Benefits of Diversity through Culturally Responsive Teaching in Your Classroom
Wednesday, May 14, 2025 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
This workshop will provide faculty with practical strategies to maximize the benefits of diversity through a culturally responsive teaching framework developed by Geneva Gay. Participants will explore effective ways to create a welcoming environment that recognizes and utilizes their students' diverse cultural, linguistic, and learning backgrounds. The focus will be on culturally responsive practices that affirm students' cultures while promoting positive academic outcomes. Faculty members will leave this workshop with actionable steps to take advantage of diversity in their classrooms. Advance registration required.
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**ONLINE** Mastering Knowledge Organization: Bridging the Gap Between Experts and Novices
Thursday, May 15, 2025 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Are you ready to discover the secrets of effective knowledge organization? Have you ever considered how experts and novices differ in their approaches to organizing knowledge? Do you find that your method of structuring information makes sense to you, but leaves students feeling confused? Join us as we explore these differences and uncover strategies that can improve teaching, enhance learning, and boost student outcomes. Advance registration required.
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**NEW – ONLINE** Fostering Independent Learners with Effective Metacognitive Strategies
Friday, May 16, 2025 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
Explore effective techniques to help students improve their learning skills. This workshop will provide proven strategies to guide students in developing essential study habits, understanding their learning styles, and using effective problem-solving approaches. By the end of this workshop, you will be able to identify strategies to promote metacognition, design activities that foster independent learning, and create a plan to implement these techniques in your classroom. This workshop is perfect for faculty who want to help students develop greater autonomy as learners. Register now to learn practical strategies that will help your students become independent, confident learners. Advance registration required.
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**ONLINE** Humanizing Your Online Course
Tuesday, May 20, 2025 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Research suggests that building a strong sense of connectedness in an online course promotes student success, engages students, and retains students. This requires that you establish a strong teaching presence within the course and that you create structures for students to form a community. In this online workshop, we share some strategies to make online courses more personal and techniques to build faculty and student presence in online courses. Advance registration required.
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**IN PERSON** Create Engaging Content in the Digital Media Studio
Wednesday, May 21, 2025 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
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 Collaborate, 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 is required.
Register here (Waiting List Only)
**ONLINE** LockDown Browser & Respondus Monitor: Protect the Integrity of Online Tests
Wednesday, May 21, 2025 from 1:00 PM to 1:45 PM
This comprehensive training webinar is intended for faculty who are interested in using LockDown Browser and/or Respondus Monitor to promote academic integrity for their online exams. The session provides a detailed demonstration of both applications, including enhancements that make Respondus Monitor even more effective and easy to use. This session is led by staff from Respondus. Register Now!
**ONLINE** LockDown Browser & Respondus Monitor: Protect the Integrity of Online Tests
Wednesday, May 28, 2025 from 2:00 PM to 2:45 PM
This comprehensive training webinar is intended for faculty who are interested in using LockDown Browser and/or Respondus Monitor to promote academic integrity for their online exams. The session provides a detailed demonstration of both applications, including enhancements that make Respondus Monitor even more effective and easy to use. This session is led by staff from Respondus. Register Now!
**ONLINE** Using AI to Generate Engaging Course Content
Friday, May 30, 2025 from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
Explore key strategies for creating compelling online course content, focusing on storytelling, multimedia integration, and the application of learning theories. Discover how to leverage Custom GPT for personalized learning scenarios and image AI tools for captivating visuals. This session is sponsored by Quality Matters and facilitated by Lisa Byrnes, Instructional Designer for Penn State World Campus. Register Now!
**ONLINE** Humanizing Your Course with VoiceThread
Tuesday, July 1, 2025 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
In this session, we will explore the ways that VoiceThread can help your students develop an AI-aware skillset and avoid the academic pitfalls of having a homework-completing co-pilot available 24/7/365. Understanding the human advantage is a critical component of AI readiness curriculum, and VoiceThread is the perfect platform to showcase, preserve, and develop these human-advantaged skills. This session is facilitated by VoiceThread.
Register Now!
Fall 2025 Teaching Effectiveness Institute - Authenticity and Presence as Faculty Wellbeing
Thursday, August 14, 2025 from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
We often hear about “student-centered teaching” and its benefits. Yet this approach can make faculty feel like their job is to become invisible, as though increasing learner autonomy equates to losing time to share our expertise. In truth, though, students rightfully depend on their faculty to remain present — present to the people and to the learning. In this half-day workshop, we’ll dig into some of the research that touches on instructor presence, learning, and relationship-rich education and rethink what it means to educate and be an educator today. Ultimately, our focus will be on how to be more authentically ourselves in our teaching — and why doing so matters.
Register Now!
Fall 2025 Teaching Effectiveness Institute - Sustaining Ourselves (and Work) in Uncertain Times
Thursday, August 14, 2025 from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Teaching in 2025 is not for the feint of heart. Uncertainty abounds, and how we maintain our commitment to transformational learning in the current environment can easily feel overwhelming. In this half-day workshop, we’ll talk about how to reclaim and sustain our joy and purpose in an environment filled with challenges. Participants will engage in discussion and reflection on questions like:
- What does it look like to identify and maintain boundaries to ensure we remain present to our work?
- How do we acknowledge the challenges in our environment without letting them dominate our thinking, teaching, and lives?
- What role does academic freedom play in this moment?
Register Now!
**NEW - IN-PERSON** Creative Innovation in Teaching and Learning
Friday, August 15, 2025 from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Unlock the power of creativity in your teaching through innovative course materials and exciting approaches to student work. Create more engaging presentations, graphics, and videos for your students. Develop strategies to integrate your course outcomes with important career readiness skills like creativity and digital literacy.
This session will combine a showcase of inspiring projects created by the NIU academic community and short presentations on fostering creativity and building career-ready skills in the classroom. It will culminate with an interactive workshop, where you will explore Adobe Express, a powerful but easy-to-use creation platform that is available at no cost to you and your students through NIU’s partnership with Adobe.
Register Now!
**NEW - IN-PERSON** Roundtable on the Future of AI in Higher Education
Friday, August 15, 2025 from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Dive into the transformative potential of artificial intelligence in higher education through honest conversations about affordances, challenges, and the ethics of AI. This session will feature industry insights and hands-on experiences with Creative Generative AI, namely Adobe Firefly. You will build pedagogical frameworks to leverage these tools in the classroom with impact. You will also have chances to experiment with these tools to develop creative exercises for students that promote critical thinking skills and AI literacy.
Register Now!
