COS Teaching Workshop Series

April 2024

Confirming Communication and Plus/Delta Feedback
UTSA's Dr. Mary Dixon talks about confirming communication and how to tailor feedback to students. When examining the evidence supporting resilience and a growth mindset, it becomes clear that mistakes play a pivotal role in the learning process. To effectively help students learn from these mistakes, three essential components come into play: providing constructive feedback, offering opportunities for improvement, and fostering a solid foundation of trust between faculty and students through confirming communication. By analyzing how mistakes shape our teaching approach and identifying effective techniques to establish positive relationships and trust with our students, we can create assessment strategies that significantly enhance student performance and facilitate deep learning.
☆Confirming Communication PowerPoint slides

March 2024

Teamwork – What Works?
Join the UTSA Faculty Champions for a panel discussion talking about what works for teamwork – we will discuss how faculty form teams, grading, and evaluating teamwork in the classroom!

February 2024

Interactive Lectures: A Pedagogy of Engagement That Works!
Dr. Claire Howell Majors from the University of Alabama talks about interactive lecturer. Educators today would be hard-pressed to identify a teaching technique more heartily maligned than the lecture. Critics have called lectures boring, obsolete, old-fashioned, overused, and even unfair. Scholars have declared lectures the losers of the pedagogical cage match with active learning. The criticisms, however, often are leveled at one type of lecture: the full-session, transmission-model lecture. Interactive lecturing is a model for combining lectures and active learning techniques in a way that has been documented to engage students and improve their learning.

January 2024

Tips and Wins for Teaching!
UTSA Champions discuss Tips and Wins for Teaching – what makes us excited about teaching, what we have changed in our classes, and what we are looking forward to in the upcoming semester!

Previous Years

November 2023

The Inner Ecosystems of Critical Thinking
What is critical thinking, and how do we teach it? Dr. Mays Imad from Connecticut College discusses how to go beyond the current research and practical implications surrounding undergraduate critical thinking skills to consider the inner landscapes of critical thinking. In this session, Mays examines the notion of the inner landscape of critical thinking and the importance of critical feeling and imagination as they relate to critical thinking.

October 2023

Traveling Workshop on Teaching Non-Majors: Challenges and Possibilities
Eva Erber from the University of Vienna and Laina Lockett from George Mason University From developed a 90-minute synchronous online workshop that allows participants to brainstorm possible ways to effectively engage a diverse student-body in: Introduction to Academic Writing to General Chemistry: Nearly every academic program of study requires their students to take mandatory classes, particularly at the introductory level. Throughout our own teaching careers and in our positions as educational developers, we have seen both the potential but also challenges that might come with these classes and the heterogeneous group of students attending them.
☆Traveling Workshop PowerPoint slides    ☆Traveling Workshop Padlet

September 2023

  • Tips, Tricks, and Things to Know in Canvas
    The College of Sciences Faculty Champions and COS Instructional Designers discuss tips, tricks, and things to know in Canvas. Now that the semester is underway and we have all had some practice in Canvas, our Champions will share lessons learned they have found from working in Canvas. We will also be discussing how to prepare your gradebook for the upcoming midterm grade transfer into ASAP.
  • Canvas to ASAP Grade Transfer Steps
    UTSA Digital Learning Resource

April 2023

Adding Breadth and Depth to Active Learning
Dr. Todd D. Zakrajsek from UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine discusses how best to split active/engaged learning into categories and, within those categories, consider ways to differentiate and use introductory levels from advanced levels, with minimal effort. Come learn how small changes in the right direction can result in large learning gains!

March 2023

Helping Students Focus on the Learning, Not the Grade: Alternative Grading Structures that Support Student Learning and Faculty Feedback
Dr. Santiago Toledo discusses alternative grading methodologies that emphasize learning centered feedback and de-emphasize point systems to change the narrative of how students perceive and utilize feedback to grow in their learning process.
☆SharePoint folder with resources

February 2023

Q&A with Academic Innovation: Canvas Transition
Academic Innovation and Instructional Designers discuss Canvas features, the timeline for the transition, and upcoming resources for faculty.

January 2023

BIG ASSESSMENTS, MEANINGFUL LEARNING: Designs to maximize student development
Dr. Marcelle A. Siegel's session focuses on major assignments and exams as devices to boost student learning. Learn about ways to scaffold projects and try a new assessment strategy.

October 2022

Teaching the Whole Student
In this workshop Dr. Bryan Dewsbury makes the case, using data from the classroom, as to why a holistic approach to instruction is critical, and explores specific strategies for enactment and assessment for impact on students.

September 2022

In her sessions, Dr. Saundra McGuire discusses the application of cognitive science and learning theory to increase student academic performance. Her talks provide specific tips for faculty, undergraduate students, and tutors/peer mentors working with students in the different sessions.