This semester, our Excellence in Teaching Series (EITS) will introduce a few new tools designed to enhance your teaching and scholarly work. Whether you are looking to evaluate students' learning, streamline classroom management, or explore different strategies, this series will offer some support and insights.
Please complete the registration form if you would like to join us. All sessions will take place on Fridays from noon to 1:00 pm via Zoom. A Zoom link will be provided upon completion of registration.
Registration
We welcome suggestions for future Excellence in Teaching Series. Please share your comments with us.
Archive Events
2024 – Fall
Date | Topic | Description | Presenter |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10/11/2024 | Gradescope | Gradescope is an AI-powered grading tool designed to streamline the grading process for handwritten, coding, and complex problem-solving assignments. Gradescope helps save time, improves grading consistency, and enables detailed feedback across large classes. With its customizable rubrics and seamless Canvas integration, you can focus more on teaching and less on managing the grading workload. | David Yuill, Ph.D. Seth Polsley, Ph.D. |
| 10/18/2024 | Canvas New Analytics and Course Insights | Canvas New Analytics is a powerful tool that delivers real-time insights into student performance and engagement. Its intuitive dashboard allows instructors to monitor both individual and class-wide trends, including grades, participation, and activity levels. Course Insights, an in-house developed tool, provides customized dashboards offering key metrics on student performance, engagement, and diversity within your courses. Together, these tools enable faculty to identify students who may be struggling or disengaged, facilitating timely intervention. By leveraging detailed performance data, instructors can make data-driven decisions to optimize course delivery and ensure all students receive the support they need to succeed. | Yaoling Wang Raycelle Garcia |
2021 – Fall
For this semester, our Excellence in Teaching Series (EITS) will focus on post-COVID teaching, takeaways from teaching during the pandemic, and strategies for transitioning back to in-person teaching. Most sessions will take place on Fridays from noon to 1:00 pm via Zoom. A Zoom link will be provided upon completion of registration.
Featured speakers:
Abraham (Abe) Flanigan, Ph.D. College of Education | Carl Nelson, Ph.D. Mechanical & Materials Engineering | David Yuill, Ph.D. Durham School of Architectural Engineering & Construction | Elizabeth "Libby" Jones, Ph.D. Civil & Environmental Engineering |
Markeya Peteranetz, Ph.D. Engineering and Computing Education Core | Nate Pindell Engineering and Computing Education Core | Robert Vavala Engineering and Computing Education Core |
Date | Topics | Description | Presenter |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8/12/2021 (Thursday) | First Day of Class (Session recording) | The first day of a new semester provides the opportunity for students to form a lasting impression about the course subject matter, get to know their instructor, and make connections with their peers. Traditionally, the first class session is not utilized to its full potential, often focusing on the syllabus, course policies, and expectations of behavior. In this session, we will share research-based suggestions to help you ignite students' interest in the course content, provide a good first impression of you as their instructor, and get to know their classmates. The workshop will include activities that will allow you to make the most of your time with students on the first day of class. | Robert Vavala |
| 8/27/2021 (Friday) | Adaptations - In Behavior and Teaching Strategies (Session recording) | Students are ready to come back to class. But instructors need to be prepared to respond to potential student behavioral changes and habits. Humans are creatures of habit. Those habits can be sensitive. Just as you may find it mildly annoying that a road that you frequent to and from work to be undergoing construction, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed students' “normal” road to learning once. The return to normalcy will do so again. In this session, we discuss some potential adaptive behavioral responses of students, and the trauma-informed teaching strategies designed to assist with them. | Nate Pindell |
| 9/17/2021 (Friday) | Why aren’t my students more motivated?: A look at student profiles of motivated, self-regulated engagement (Session recording) | If there were a magic button you could press to increase students’ motivation, teaching would be much easier! That button might not exist, but understanding how different aspects of students’ motivation and self-regulation combine to create profiles of engagement can help us identify which kinds of support will work best for each student. This session will overview five evidence-based profiles of motivated, self-regulated engagement and present strategies you can employ to best support students exhibiting each profile. | Dr. Markeya Peteranetz |
| Canceled | Strategies to Curb Digital Distraction in College Classrooms | Student use of mobile technology for off-task purposes (a phenomenon commonly referred to as “digital distraction”) has become commonplace in college classrooms across the globe. This workshop will provide attendees with an overview of the digital distraction phenomenon and introduce strategies that can be used to curb the prevalence of student digital distraction in college classrooms. | Dr. Abraham (Abe) Flanigan |
| 10/8/2021 (Friday) | Faculty Panel (Session recording) | In this session, we are excited to have our faculty share their expertise with us. We will focus on post-COVID teaching: transitioning back to in-person classes. Topics include teaching inclusively in engineering classrooms, effectively communicating with students, and small teaching strategies that you can adapt to facilitate active learning. Session presentations: | Dr. Carl Nelson, Dr. David Yuill, Dr. Elizabeth "Libby" Jones |
2021 – Spring
Featured Speakers | ||
|---|---|---|
Alisa Gilmore Electrical & Computer Engineering | Heidi Diefes-Dux, Ph.D. Biological Systems Engineering | Jiong Hu, Ph.D. Civil and Environmental Engineering |
Vish Reddi Durham School | Bradley Severa IT Academic Technology | Marcia Dority Baker IT Academic Technology |
Title | Description | Presenter | Date and Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Invisible students? Strategies for engaging your students synchronously | Student engagement in synchronous sessions can leave instructors and TAs wondering are my students listening? How can I actively engage my students or tell if they are engaged? If I make it mandatory for them to have their cameras on, is this too far? In this workshop, Nate Pindell, an instructional designer partnered with the ECEC, will offer solutions and answer questions that you may have regarding synchronous content and student engagement. | Nate Pindell | 2/5/2021 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
| Are students cheating? Strategies for enhancing academic integrity | In this presentation, we will discuss various research-based course and activity design strategies that have been shown to help mitigate cheating in university classes and examine some technologies students might use to cheat. | Robert Vavala & Tareq Daher | 2/19/2021 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
| Instructor presence and access | It is crucial for instructors teaching online to actively and visibly engage their students, "perhaps with even greater intentionality than in face-to-face courses" (Jaggars, Edgecombe, and Stacey, 2013). In this session, we will discuss specific instructional strategies to increase instructor presence and build classroom community in an online course. In addition, we answer the question: Why Is Instructor Presence Important in distance Courses? | Robert Vavala | Cancelled (We are working on the sessoins for the fall, and will likely offer this topic then) |
| Teaching Inclusively | Come join us in a session focused on interrupting bias. Nationally, we have seen an increase in the conversations around Inclusive Teaching excellence. How ready are you to create a classroom learning experience that allows for all students to succeed? In this session, learn how to bring the perspectives of your students into the classroom, get introduced to the campus resources available to you, and learn strategies from the literature on inclusive teaching to practices. | Tareq Daher | 3/26/2021 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
| Student Self-Reflection | Whether we are teaching in a physical classroom or remotely, sometimes we just wonder whether our students are coming along with us. Embedding periodic self-reflection into our courses can provide us with a window on students’ presence – their engagement, their successes, and their struggles. Purposeful reflection has added benefits related to students’ development of learning strategies (ABET 7). For instance, reflection can raise students’ awareness of course goals, build their capacity to monitor and manage their learning progress and processes, and increase their ability to connect course content to their personal lives and academic and professional trajectories. Examples of reflection used with students at different academic levels and evidence of their impact on students’ behaviors and quality of engagement in a course will be highlighted. Recommendations for designing, implementing, and providing feedback on reflections will be shared. | Heidi Diefes-Dux | 4/2/2021 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
| How You can Save Students Money on Textbooks with Inclusive Access and OER Programs | If you are concerned about the rising costs of textbooks, you can easily save money for students by ordering textbooks through one of two Inclusive Access (IA) programs at UNL. Not only will you save students money, but they will have first-day access to textbooks and courseware in Canvas. We will review the two different programs available through the Campus Bookstore and UNL's Unizin membership. We will provide links to resources for faculty and students on how these programs work. Using Open Educational Resources (OER) is another option that can save students money. Some free textbooks already exist that you may adapt to your class through Creative Commons licenses. | Brad Severa & Marcia Dority Baker | 4/9/2021 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
| Faculty panel from our Fellows -Extended session | In this session, we are excited to have our faculty teaching fellows to share their teaching experiences during the pandemic. We will address challenges and strategies while teaching remotely. Topics include student engagement through Zoom sessions, Canvas course design for remote teaching, and strategies for managing students in a remote teaching session. | Alisa Gilmore, Jiong Hu, & Vish Reddi | 4/16/2021 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
| Writing Learning Objectives: did your students learn what you want them to learn? | What are learning objectives? What do learning objectives do? How do you know if your students have learned what you expect them to learn? In this session, we are going to discuss the importance of learning objectives, and how to use Bloom’s Taxonomy to write effective learning objectives. | Yaoling Wang | 4/30/2021 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
2020 – Fall
Featured Speakers | ||
|---|---|---|
Alisa Gilmore Electrical & Computer Engineering | Carl Nelson, Ph.D. Mechanical & Materials Engineering | Heidi Diefes-Dux, Ph.D. Biological Systems Engineering |
Jena Shafai Asgarpoor, Ph.D. Durham School of Architectural Engineering & Construction | Steven Cain Center for Transformative Teaching | |
Title | Description | Presenter | Date and Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meaningful Teaming Instruction and Assessment Anchored by CATME SMARTER Teamwork | Students do not learn effective team member behaviors and strategies that lead to successful team performance merely by being placed in groups and given activities to do. Students need formal, ongoing, and consistent instruction on teaming and assessment of their performance as team members. The goal of this session is to introduce the benefits of using the research-based CATME Model of Teamwork (https://info.catme.org/) as an anchor for developing course and curriculum level instruction on teaming through a commitment to a common set of effective team behaviors we seek to develop in our students. This session will overview the CATME Model of Teamwork, instructional strategies around the development of these behaviors, using CATME tools to manage and evaluate teams, and using CATME generated data for ABET assessment purposes. For those subsequently wishing to get up and running with CATME, a working group will be formed for Fall 2020 and initial training with CATME will be arranged in the near future. | Heidi Diefes-Dux | 8/14/2020 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
| Zoom | During this session, we will cover all of the basics of using Zoom to present content to your students. Topics will include a meeting room, recording a meeting, sharing your screen, using the chat feature, and creating and using breakout rooms. | Yaoling Wang | 9/4/2020 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
| Creating Canvas Content | During this session, we will discuss how to create content in your Canvas course. Some of the topics discussed will include creating an assignment (including Discussion Board assignments), building quizzes, quiz groups, and question banks, Modules/Pages and linking content into the page, prerequisite (adaptive release) of content, Assignment groups and giving them weights for grade center, embedding documents from Box, embedding items from VidGrid. | Jena Shafai Asgarpoor | 9/11/2020 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
| Communication Options | There are several options for instructors to communicate with their students: Topics discussed will include the use of email, Canvas Inbox (including reviewing your Canvas notifications settings), Canvas Announcements, Canvas Chat, Discussion Board, and Discord (Link to instructions). | Nate Pindell | 9/18/2020 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
| VidGrid | VidGrid, UNL-supported screen capture software, can be used to record lectures in order to share them with students. In this session we will cover the basics of using VidGrid, including claiming your VidGrid account, downloading the recorder, sizing the recording window, turning on the audio, turning the video function on and off, recording a session and saving the recording, creating folders, and sharing the recording link or embedding the recording in a Canvas page. | Carl Nelson | 9/25/2020 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
| Student Self-Reflection | Whether we are teaching in a physical classroom or remotely, sometimes we just wonder whether our students are coming along with us. Embedding periodic self-reflection into our courses can provide us with a window on students’ presence – their engagement, their successes, and their struggles. Purposeful reflection has added benefits related to students’ development of learning strategies (ABET 7). For instance, reflection can raise students’ awareness of course goals, build their capacity to monitor and manage their learning progress and processes, and increase their ability to connect course content to their personal lives and academic and professional trajectories. Examples of reflection used with students at different academic levels and evidence of their impact on students’ behaviors and quality of engagement in a course will be highlighted. Recommendations for designing, implementing, and providing feedback on reflections will be shared. | Heidi Diefes-Dux | 10/9/2020 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
| Grading and Feedback in Canvas | This session will cover using the Canvas Gradebook, Speed Grader, providing feedback, and creating rubrics in Canvas. | Nate Pindell | 10/16/2020 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
| Yellowdig | Yellowdig is a discussion tool that uses social learning platform to engage students with various resources. In this session, we are going to discuss how Yellowdig works and how to set up Yellowdig to grade students’ participation. | Steven Cain | 10/30/2020 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
| Academic Integrity | In this series, we are going to discuss various strategies that help mitigate cheating in your class, and examine some technologies students could use to cheat. | Tareq Daher | 11/06/2020 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
| OneNote Basics & Annotation | During this session, we will discuss how to be able to use your Microsoft surface to annotate your lectures. Some of the topics will include how to create binders and pages, inserting images and media, using the stylus to create personalized notes and equations, and how to customize OneNote for your purposes. | Alisa Gilmore | 11/13/2020 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
| Microsoft Teams (TBD) | Teams is a chat-based collaboration tool that provides teams with the ability to work together and share information via a common space. In this session, we are going to learn how to use Teams to chat, share documents and resources, make video calls, and more. | TBD | TBD |
2017
Title | Description | Presenter | Date and Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supplemental Videos in an Engineering Course: Why, How, for Whom | Short videos of worked-out engineering examples have been added to a course in thermodynamics as supplementary material. This talk outlines the decision-making process, the necessary technology, and the effort required in the creation of twenty-seven such videos. The impact on students from two semesters of experience is also discussed with regard to student use of the videos, student perceptions, and student outcomes. The impact on the instructor, such as lessons learned and future opportunities, will also be discussed. | Kevin Cole | February 17, Scott Engineering Center 237 (Lincoln) and Peter Kiewit Institute 250 (Omaha) 1:00 - 2:00 pm |
| Incorporating Peer Assessments | Great leaders are skilled at giving and receiving constructive feedback in order to develop themselves and others. Engaging in assessments helps us become more self-aware and to learn. The expectation for feedback also increases engagement in what is being assessed. It can include contribution feedback to team members, or performance feedback on other’s efforts. This session is a discussion on some approaches to engage students in peer assessments. | March 17, Scott Engineering Center 237 (Lincoln) and Peter Kiewit Institute 250 (Omaha) 1:00 - 2:00 pm | |
| Applying Blended Learning to a Synchronous Distance Course between Two Campuses | This talk presents an overview of a traditional linear controls course designed using blended, synchronous distance instruction. The motivation for the design was to explore a potential new solution to distance learning between campuses. Blended learning combines the best of teaching online and teaching in person in that it reduces seat time, increases active student learning, and optimizes in-class instructional time. This talk will cover faculty preparation, course design elements, technology, and course statistics and data collection. | Alisa Gilmore | April 7, Scott Engineering Center 237 (Lincoln) and Peter Kiewit Institute 250 (Omaha) 1:00 - 2:00 pm |
| An interactive session on Assignments, grading, and Feedback in Canvas | Assignments in Canvas show students all of the activities that will be expected of them and the points for each. Assignments include quizzes, papers, projects, discussions, and participation. Assignments can also be used to set up grading rules and weight grades. Learn how to set up, download, and grade student submissions using the speedgrader and how to provide text and video comments. The session will also cover setting up extra credit and weighted grading. | Tareq Daher | May 5, Scott Engineering Center 237 (Lincoln) and Peter Kiewit Institute 250TBD (Omaha) 1:00 - 2:00 pm |
2016
Title | Description | Presenter | Date and Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Using Just in Time Teaching in a Flipped Classroom | Dr. Subbiah is the Kenneth E. Morrison Distinguished Professor of Food Engineering in the departments of biological systems engineering and food science & technology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. Subbiah has an active research program in the area of multiphysics modeling of food processes for improving food quality and safety. He has integrated heat and mass transfer models with microbial growth/destruction models for evaluating food safety risk assessment. Dr. Subbiah co-invented a software program for food safety management system tracking microbial data in food processing plants and has pioneered hyperspectral and multispectral imaging systems for predicting food quality. He has developed a successful application of hyperspectral imaging system for forecasting cooked beef tenderness from fresh beef. | Dr. Subbiah | September 23, Scott Engineering Center 237 (Lincoln) and Peter Kiewit Institute 160 (Omaha) 1:00 - 2:00 pm |
| How to design your CANVAS course | By Fall of 2018, CANVAS will be the official Learning Management System of UNL. In this presentation you will learn Canvas basics, how to design your course on the Canvas system including building assignments, pages, modules and grading. You will also learn about campus resources to support you through rebuilding your course. | Tareq Daher | October 28, Scott Engineering Center 237 (Lincoln) and Peter Kiewit Institute 160 (Omaha) 1:00 - 2:00 pm |
| Using the online tool CATME to create inclusive groups in the classroom | This presentation will focus on the use of the website CATME as a tool that can be used to create groups in the classroom. While the random assignment of students to groups may appear to maximize class-wide diversity, it can isolate females or underrepresented minorities in a way that hinders their ability to perform well in the classroom. CATME is a tool that gathers demographic information from students, which it then uses to form groups which do not isolate, but rather clump those individuals. In addition, CATME provides a mechanism for users to rate the contribution of each team member. The presentation is given from the perspective of a user of this tool in the classroom. Mechanics and first-hand experience will be discussed. | Brassil | November 11, Scott Engineering Center 111 (Lincoln) and Peter Kiewit Institute 160 (Omaha) 1:00 - 2:00 pm |
2015
Title | Description | Presenter | Date and Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| ASCE ExCEEd Teaching Model | Materials associated with this presentation: (a) Blank Board Notes , (b) Board Notes Example , & (c) Bloom Verbs This seminar provides engineering educators with an opportunity to improve their teaching abilities. It focuses on basic skills and principles for effective teaching and learning. This Mini-ExCEEd seminar is not a replacement for the full workshop, but it introduces faculty members of all disciplines to the ExCEEd Teaching Model. Topics:
Dr. Gary Krause has been teaching engineering at UNL for 25 years. He has taught classes from required freshman courses up to Ph.D. graduate electives. He has received 17 teaching awards at the department, college, and university levels. He also spent four years as a mentor and course instructor for the national ASCE ExCEEd Effective Teaching Workshop. | Dr. Gary Krause | Lincoln Campus: Monday, March 2, 2015 / 10 - 11 a.m. / NH 175 Omaha Campus: Wednesday, March 4, 2015 / 10 - 11 a.m. / PKI 108 |
Should I Blend My Course? | Materials associated with this presentation: Presentation Slides Through blended courses, students complete class online and face-to-face, allowing instructors to maximize the benefits of both formats. Learn the basics of designing a blended course. Topics:
Dr. Sydney Brown has worked as an instructional designer for over 10 years, initially focusing on online learning, then moving to import successful techniques and strategies to face-to-face courses to improve student learning through the blend of online and face-to-face approaches. She specializes in innovative and effective technology use to support teaching and learning. | Dr. Sydney Brown | Lincoln Campus: Friday, Jan. 30, 2015 / 12 -1 p.m. / NH W213 Omaha Campus: Friday, Feb. 6, 2015 / 12 -1 p.m. / PKI 150 |