**ONLINE** Using the NIU Quality Essentials to Plan and Evaluate Your Online Course
Wednesday, June 25, 2025 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Online learners are resilient, persistent, self-directed learners, but you have an important role to play in helping them be successful. In this workshop, we'll identify and discuss research based standards (NIU Quality Essentials) to enhance your course design. Whether you're developing a course or interested in assessing an existing structure, you can explore the key components that will enhance any online learning space. Advance registration required.
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**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.
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**ONLINE** Strategies for Performance-Based Online Assessment
Monday, July 7, 2025 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Performance-based assessments measure student achievement of higher-order thinking tasks, such as demonstrating an activity, creating a product, or completing a process. These assessments are often authentic, open-ended, and real-world activities. In this workshop, you will discover strategies to create performance-based assessments in an online course environment. Advance registration required.
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**NEW - ONLINE** Enhancing Instruction with Adobe Express Presentations
Wednesday, July 9, 2025 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Discover how to transform your presentations with Adobe Express, a user-friendly tool for designing visually compelling slides. This hands-on workshop will walk you through key features of the platform, with live demonstrations and time to experiment with your own designs. Whether you're new to Adobe or looking to elevate your current slide decks, you’ll leave with practical skills and polished results. No design experience required—just bring your ideas! Advance registration required.
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**NEW - ONLINE** Book Chat: Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning
Tuesday, July 15, 2025 from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
In our book chats, we read the book so you don’t have to! Join us for an engaging discussion of Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning by José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson. This practical, research-informed guide helps educators navigate the challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence in the classroom. We’ll explore how AI is reshaping creativity, assessment, and academic integrity, and consider how faculty can use AI to enhance critical thinking, support student learning, and rethink their roles in an evolving educational landscape. NIU members with login credentials can access the e-book free online through the University Library. Advance registration required.
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**ONLINE** Empowering Self-Directed Learners: Strategies for Academic Success and Lifelong Skills
Wednesday, July 16, 2025 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Have you ever paused to think about what sets successful students apart from those who struggle? What if we could create classrooms that truly empower every learner and foster students' agency, making education meaningful and inclusive? By mastering self-directed learning skills, students can grow into their potential and confidently steer their own educational journeys. Join us for a discussion of practical strategies designed to help self-directed learners not only excel academically but also cultivate essential skills that will serve them for life. Advance registration required.
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**ONLINE** Top Hat Engage, Day 2
Thursday, July 17, 2025 from 12:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Join Top Hat for the second of two days of incredible programming designed to inspire and energize your classroom. Get faculty-led best practices to transform your lectures and unlock student success.
Ready for more inspiration? Reimagine reading, energize your classroom with new tech twists, and fire-up continuous learning with real-time feedback.
Day 2 Agenda:
- The End of Reading or a New Beginning? (12:00-12:45 PM)
Presenters: Donna Battista, Managing Director, Learning Solutions, Top Hat; and Dr. Jermaine Martinez, Northern Arizona University
- Engaging from the Start: Sparking Curiosity & Sustaining Focus (1:00-1:45 PM)
Presenter: Dr. Bradley Cohen, Chief Academic Office, Top Hat
- Feedback that Fuels: Strategies for Faculty & Student Success (2:00-2:45 PM)
Presenter: Sumi Voora, Professional Services Manager, Top Hat
This event is organized by Top Hat.
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**NEW - ONLINE** Motivating Students to Engage with Assigned Readings
Friday, July 18, 2025 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
It's a common challenge: students often come to class without having completed the assigned readings, which can limit their ability to fully engage in discussion and activities. In this workshop, we will discuss ways to encourage students to read through activities, differing modalities, and methods of accountability. Whether you teach a reading-intensive course or incorporate reading as part of a broader curriculum, this workshop will offer strategies to help motivate students to complete their assigned readings and engage more deeply with course materials. Advance registration required.
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**NEW - ONLINE** From Prompt to Picture: Teaching with AI-Generated Images
Tuesday, July 22, 2025 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Become an AI image alchemist! In this hands-on workshop, we'll
guide you through the process of using AI image generation to create a
compelling "Story in 5 Images"—a powerful activity you can do with
students that sparks creativity and understanding while developing their digital
literacy skills. Discover how this versatile technique can be woven into a
multitude of subjects, offering a fresh, insightful way to engage and assess
students. Advance registration required.
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**ONLINE** Teaching Digital Literacy with Adobe Express
Thursday, July 24, 2025 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Explore Adobe Express, a versatile digital design tool now available to all NIU faculty, staff, and students. This all-in-one solution covers image generation, photo and video editing, web design, posters, presentations, animations, and more, enhanced by generative AI. With hundreds of templates to inspire creativity, Adobe Express addresses the need for accessible digital tools in education. In this hands-on workshop, participants will create a self-portrait for course use, learning to generate customized content. Discover how to easily supplement your instructional materials with suitable images. Advance registration required.
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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.
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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?
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**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.
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**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.
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**NEW - ONLINE** NIU Yellowdig Summer Workshop
Wednesday, August 20, 2025 from 1:00 PM to 2:00 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. In this workshop, you will learn about the benefits of social cognition and how to incorporate Yellowdig into your courses. Advance registration is required.
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