**ONLINE** Supporting Underprepared Students in Your Courses
Friday, January 24, 2025 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
It’s not uncommon to find students in our classes that are underprepared. Regardless of why students are underprepared, we can still help them be successful. This workshop is designed for educators to discover ways to support students through providing equitable assessments, materials, and opportunities in our classes. Together, we will discuss ways to determine students’ knowledge base and readiness level for the course. We will also discuss how to support students through collecting supplemental resources, modeling expectations, grading revisions, and creating opportunities for additional support. Advance registration required.
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**ONLINE** NAVIGATE + Mission AI: Enhancing Student Support Through Mission AI and Navigate
Friday, January 24, 2025 from 2:15 PM to 3:00 PM
Want to make a bigger impact in helping your students stay on track? Learn how Mission AI, NIU’s new AI text chatbot, integrates with Navigate to assist with actionable insights to support students in your classes or advising caseloads.
1. Capture the Student Voice: Discover how Mission AI’s chatbot responses uncover students’ needs and connect them with the right services, helping them succeed term by term.
2. Themes from student responses: Use Navigate’s tags and alert reasons to find students with various needs of additional support to inform your outreach and campaigns.
3. Function to Practice: Brainstorm ways you can see using the student responses in your teaching or advising practice.
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**ONLINE** Navigate How To: Set up student self-scheduling for student-instructor meetings
Tuesday, January 28, 2025 from 9:15 AM to 10:00 AM
Tired of endless emails to set up appointments with students? This session will demonstrate how you can use Navigate Staff's calendar scheduling feature to automate appointments or drop-in times for office hours.
- Calendar Sync with Outlook: Learn how to seamlessly integrate your Outlook calendar with Navigate Staff.
- Create Navigate Availabilities: Set up availability slots based on your office hours.
- Personal Availability Links (PALs): Generate PALs to include in your email signatures, Blackboard sites, and syllabi. Students can click and self-manage their appointments, reducing back-and-forth emails.
- Set Professor Home: With this functionality, we will show you how to set your Professor landing page as your default home screen for future log-ins.
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**IN PERSON** Create Engaging Content in the Digital Media Studio
Wednesday, January 29, 2025 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
The Digital Media Studio in CITL 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 required.
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**ONLINE** Using LockDown Browser & Respondus Monitor: Protect the Integrity of Online Tests
Wednesday, January 29, 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** Using LockDown Browser & Respondus Monitor: Protect the Integrity of Online Tests
Thursday, January 30, 2025 from 12:00 PM to 12:45 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** Yellowdig: Building Belonging: Student Communities Beyond Courses
Friday, January 31, 2025 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
Explore how the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business is transforming online education by creating a vibrant, connected student community. Join Adam Jordan, Ph.D. (Director of Online Programs), Kari Shattuck, M.Ed. (Associate Director of Academic Advising), and Ella Tabares (Academic Advisor) as they reveal their innovative approach to fostering belonging and engagement among online learners. Learn how they successfully launched and scaled a dynamic community initiative powered by Yellowdig, and gain actionable insights to elevate your own online programs! Register directly with Yellowdig
**ONLINE** Exploring In-class Exercises and Lesson Plans that Integrate Generative AI
Wednesday, February 5, 2025 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
In higher education, most of the conversation about the impact of generative AI has focused on text output for research and writing projects. But what about image generation with AI? Join us to hear three faculty members share their diverse approaches to helping their students build essential visual communication skills, increasingly leveraging the power of Adobe Firefly and other generative AI tools. This session is managed by Adobe. Register Now!
**ONLINE** LLM 101: Opportunities and Challenges
Wednesday, February 5, 2025 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Large Language Models (LLM) are a recent innovation in natural language processing (NLP) technology that employ transformer architectures pre-trained on massive amounts of digital text scraped from the Internet. As a result, applications like OpenAI’s ChatGPT as well as Anthopic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini can now generate original content that is, in many cases, indistinguishable from human written material. In this presentation, Professor David J. Gunkel will 1) demystify the technology of LLMs by providing an accessible explanation of the inner workings of these algorithms, 2) evaluate the costs and benefits of machine generated content in different areas of human communication, and 3) explore the impact these technologies are likely to have on writing and its future. In effect, the presentation asks and seeks to respond to these questions: Does an LLM application like ChatGPT write? Do these algorithms know or understand what they are saying? And if so (or if not), how will this affect and/or alter our understanding of human communication and writing? Advance registration required.
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**ONLINE** Anthology Blackboard: The One Where AI Transforms Teaching
Friday, February 7, 2025 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Join us for an engaging session exploring the transformative power of AI in education. This webinar features two thought-provoking presentations:
- The Impact of Using AI in Blackboard to Enhance Faculty Teaching Experience by Sara Ibrahim (Bowie State University) highlights how AI tools within Blackboard Ultra improve teaching effectiveness and elevate student outcomes.
- AI Automation for Academic Projects with No-Code Options by Szymon Machajewski (University of Illinois Chicago) introduces instructors to Perplexity.ai, a no-code AI agent for academic projects. Participants learn to create AI-powered educational resources without programming skills to complement Blackboard Ultra’s course AI tools. The session covers Perplexity's key features, including academic journal search capabilities, video analysis, and content sharing.
Discover practical strategies and innovative tools to revolutionize your teaching practices and drive meaningful engagement in the classroom. Register directly with Anthology Blackboard to attend.
**IN-PERSON** Enriching the Design of General Education - February Brown-Bag
Wednesday, February 12, 2025 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
The Enriching the Design of General Education (EDGE) pilot initiative supports excellence in general education teaching by fostering a thriving and supportive community of practice among faculty and emphasizing the unique philosophy and practices that define general education courses. This in-person brown-bag event will be informal - feel free to bring your lunch! Cookies and coffee will be available.
In this session, we will hear about the Division of Student Affairs about how their programs support student success, and then there will be a small resource fair where you can learn more about NIU's student support units.
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**NEW - ONLINE** VoiceThread Accessibility for NIU
Wednesday, February 19, 2025 from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
In this VoiceThread workshop delivered only to NIU Faculty and Staff, we will explore the accessibility features in VoiceThread. This session is led by VoiceThread staff. Register Now!
**IN-PERSON** How to Build a Community-Engaged Partnership
Thursday, February 20, 2025 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
NIU faculty and staff are doing impactful, community-engaged research, teaching and collaboration. This brown bag lunch series is your chance to hear their stories, ask your questions, make connections, and leave with tools and inspiration to pursue your community engagement goals.
In this session, part of the Division of Outreach, Engagement, and Regional Development Community Engagement Brown Bag Lecture Series, you'll hear from Jennifer Groce, NIU's Director of Community Engaged Partnerships. Learn about partnerships Jennifer has helped NIU develop with local businesses and organizations, and learn best practices for successful long-term community engagement. Register Now!
**ONLINE** Using VoiceThread for Language Learning
Tuesday, February 25, 2025 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
Anna and Shey are the co-hosts of The Teacher Think-Aloud Podcast, a podcast for reflective practice for teachers of English around the world. Between the two of them, they bring 30 years of experience in English language teaching, international education, and teacher development to the table. In this workshop, they will showcase some of their VoiceThreads and discuss their pedagogical approach to teaching languages. This session is offered and managed by VoiceThread staff. Register Now!
**ONLINE** Enriching the Design of General Education - March Brown-Bag
Wednesday, March 19, 2025 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
The Enriching the Design of General Education (EDGE) pilot initiative supports excellence in general education teaching by fostering a thriving and supportive community of practice among faculty and emphasizing the unique philosophy and practices that define general education courses. In this session, Andrea Radasanu, Assistant Vice Provost for Student Enhancement, will facilitate a conversation teaching Honors courses.
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**IN-PERSON** How to Create a Community-Engaged Course
Tuesday, April 15, 2025 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
NIU faculty and staff are doing impactful, community-engaged research, teaching and collaboration. This brown bag lunch series is your chance to hear their stories, ask your questions, make connections, and leave with tools and inspiration to pursue your community engagement goals.
In this session, part of the Division of Outreach, Engagement, and Regional Development Community Engagement Brown Bag Lecture Series, you'll hear from Alicia Schatteman, Ph.D., Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, and Laura Ruth Johnson, Ph.D., NIU Center for Nonprofit and NGO Studies. Learn about the new NIU community-engaged course designation, find out what best practices make for a successful community-engaged course and hear about the speakers' experiences teaching community-engaged courses. Register Now!
**IN-PERSON** Enriching the Design of General Education - April Brown-Bag
Wednesday, April 30, 2025 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
The Enriching the Design of General Education (EDGE) pilot initiative supports excellence in general education teaching by fostering a thriving and supportive community of practice among faculty and emphasizing the unique philosophy and practices that define general education courses. This in-person brown-bag event will be informal - feel free to bring your lunch! Cookies and coffee will be available.
In this session, the University Libraries and the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning collaboratively facilitate a conversation about the impact of adopting low- and no-cost course materials as well as the support and opportunities for finding, adapting, or creating open education resources.
Register Now!
