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Workshop Catalog

This catalog brings together workshops offered by the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) along with sessions from partner units across campus. In addition to earning points, participants receive a badge sticker to place in a workshop passport for their own records. Workshop passports and neck wallets are available at the CTL. Here you’ll find a record of programs designed to enhance teaching, support professional development, and strengthen the learning experience at our university.

Earn your Accessibility Certificate in just one day through our comprehensive workshop led by Disability Support Services. Designed for faculty and staff, this training offers a clear understanding of how to support students with disabilities in the higher education environment, providing knowledge, strategies, and tools needed to ensure equal access to all learners. By the end of the training, participants will gain a deeper understanding of the “why, who, and how” of disability services and will be prepared to integrate accessibility principles into their teaching and professional practices.

Academic advising has played a vital role in the post-secondary education process since the inception of the academy. Historically, universities have embedded advising processes into academic experiences as exemplified by the “Oxford Model.” As accessibility to, and persistence through colleges grew, many institutions began to restructure the advising experience in manners that separated it from the formal classroom-based education structure. However, the desired learning outcomes associated with the academic advising processes remain and students benefit from learning-centered advising sessions.

The Advising as Teaching Series is designed to highlight the alignment between academic advising and the educational mission of UAB relative to student growth and development. Each session is designed in a workshop format such that they provide advisors opportunities to network with peers and practice skills associated with NACADA’s research-based best practices in academic advising.

The Blazer Core Teaching workshop series brings faculty interested in advancing UAB’s new Blazer Core Curriculum together for presentations and collaborative design sessions that focus on innovative course design, assessing learning, engaged pedagogy and community-based learning, educational justice, and other high-impact practices that create transformative experiences for core students. We welcome all UAB faculty to these workshops, even those who are not currently teaching in the core, with the knowledge that the Blazer Core belongs to us all and that these high-impact practices are important to all university teaching.

Contact: Christopher Minnix — Director, Blazer Core Curriculum

Strengthen your communication skills, professional presence, and emotional intelligence in this interactive workshop series designed for academic professionals. Whether you're looking to enhance your leadership, collaboration, or day-to-day interactions, this series offers practical tools to help you thrive in academic environments.

Contact: Jerad Watson — Manager, UAB HR Learning & Development — UAB HR
Feedback for Impact
Professionalism & Influence
Emotional Intelligence for Faculty

Are you designing a new course or redesigning an existing course? If so, we have the training for you! In the two-day training Designing Your Course: Course Design Essentials, faculty will learn about the backward design process, create measurable learning objectives, learn about library resources and copyright, and explore types of activities, assessments, and instructional materials that align with those objectives. They will also have an opportunity to share ideas for their course and receive feedback from peers and the OLT Instructional Designers. Faculty who complete the training will earn the Designing Your Course certificate.

Do you prefer to complete the training online at your own pace? If so, enroll in the Designing Your Course: Course Design Essentials online course in Canvas.

Contact: Randi Kirkland — Instructional Design Manager — CTL

The UAB Employee Assistance & Counseling Center opens a new website (EACC) is excited to team up with the UAB Center for Teaching and Learning to offer evidence-based tools to promote the development of faculty emotional health and well-being. This series has been developed to aid faculty in applying practical strategies from psychology to their own lives. View upcoming workshops below for more details.

Contact Unit: EACC

The Center for Teaching and Learning is committed to supporting faculty in developing learning environments that include diverse perspectives and viewpoints from other world cultures, as well as promoting the development of intercultural competence among all UAB students. The CTL also endeavors to empower faculty in welcoming international students to our campus by creating inviting, inclusive classrooms that demonstrate an appreciation for the rich vitality they bring to campus life and learning.

To accomplish this goal, the CTL presents the Global Awareness workshop series, providing strategies and tips for working with and teaching international students, as well as topics related to cross-cultural communication and developing intercultural competence. Earning the CTL Global Awareness Certificate includes attending 10 Global Awareness workshops and/or previously approved additional workshops.

Contact: Dr. Melissa Hawkins — Associate Director for Internationalization — CTL

Teaching Practices for International Student Success

Establishing Expectations for the U.S. Academic Environment
Tweaking Lectures for Optimal Comprehensibility
Helping International Students Avoid Unintentional Plagiarism
Managing Group Work with Cross-cultural Savvy
Please Talk! Promoting Class Participation
Supporting the Development of Critical Thinking Skills
Engaging in Teaching that Reaches All Students

Exploring International Student Backgrounds

Our early educational experiences shape what we bring to the university classroom. Investigate the educational cultures of our most common international student populations at UAB, with a particular focus on how those backgrounds might pose cross-cultural complexities to work through upon arrival in a U.S. educational context. Discover the key ways that you can be a “cultural broker” to your students in their adjustment to studies at UAB. Presentations will focus on the countries currently represented in the “top ten” student groups at UAB from the following regions:
South Asia
East Asia
Middle East and West Africa

Growing in Intercultural Awareness

Understanding the Impact of Cross-cultural Values
Addressing Student Concerns with Cross-cultural Sensitivity
Communicating Across Cultures and Languages
Adjusting to Living and Studying in a Different Culture

Teaching for Global Learning

Infusing your Course with Intercultural and International Learning
Guiding Growth in Intercultural Skills and Attitudes

The UAB Center for Interprofessional Education and Simulation opens a new website (CIPES) is excited to team up with the UAB Center for Teaching and Learning to offer training for educators in the growing field of Interprofessional Education (IPE). This series has been developed to aid faculty, teaching students in health-related schools, add Interprofessional content to their courses. Non-health-related faculty will also find the information and tools useful to integrate into any interprofessional activity.

Interprofessional education and collaborative practice continue to gain momentum in healthcare. Educators and accreditors are now focusing on how IPE can achieve the “Quadruple Aim” of improving; Population Health, Patient Experience, Per Capita Costs, and Provider Work Life. Participants will learn what constitutes IPE at UAB, how to incorporate IPE in their activities, and what resources are available.

Contact: Allison Shorten — Office of Interprofessional Curriculum — Center for Interprofessional Education and Simulation
Communication
Say What? Interprofessional Communication: Practical Applications for Student Learning
Teams and Teamwork
Leadership Fables as a Teaching Strategy for Interprofessional Education
Roles and Responsibilities
Values and Ethics
Breaking Barriers: Designing and Evaluating Engaging Interprofessional Activities

Offered in partnership with the UAB Graduate School, the LIFT series at the Center for Teaching and Learning invites UAB graduate students and postdoctoral scholars to Lean Into Future Teaching (LIFT) through this collection of workshops. Designed exclusively for graduate teaching assistants, or graduate students and postdocs who anticipate a career in positions with teaching responsibilities, the LIFT series will equip you with the essential skills and confidence needed to successfully navigate your first teaching experiences.

Whether you're anchoring a traditional class, leading a discussion section, teaching online, or facilitating a lab, this workshop series will provide practical strategies and tools to help you create a positive and effective learning environment now, and build your skills for future teaching responsibilities as well.

LIFT workshops will provide a foundation in teaching practice, with topics such as the following:

  • Principles of Good Teaching
  • Preparing for your First Class
  • Creating a Syllabus
  • Designing your Course
  • Creating Outcomes and Assessments
  • Rubrics: What are They and Why Should You Use Them?
  • Effective Content Delivery
  • Active Learning Strategies for all Classrooms
  • Designing Effective Group Work
  • Motivating and Engaging Students
  • Classroom Communications
  • Teaching in the Global Era

The series will also feature opportunities for International Graduate Teaching Assistants (IGTAs) to learn about the particular characteristics of the U.S. academic environment as they adapt to teaching here.

Participants who complete eight workshops in the program will receive a LIFT certificate from the Center for Teaching and Learning to demonstrate their engagement with learning about good teaching practice.

LIFT workshops will take place on the second Friday and fourth Wednesday of every month.

Student Counseling Services opens a new website is excited to partner with the Center for Teaching and Learning to offer faculty and staff training designed to equip participants to better understand and support students around mental health concerns. By supporting student mental health and well-being, faculty and staff can facilitate higher student retention and persistence to graduation as well as impact students’ overall ability to successfully pursue their academic, personal and career goals.

Contact: Angela Stowe — UAB Student Counseling Services
Mental Health Matters: Responding to Students in Distress
QPR Suicide Gatekeeper Certification
Mental Health Matters: First Aid
Mental Health Matters: Collegiate Substance Use and Student Support

The Teaching Effectiveness series seeks to bolster the teaching practice of all UAB instructors through workshops that inspire continuous improvement in teaching skills. Participation in each workshop earns UAB faculty 10,000 Gold points towards a CTL certificate and a Teaching Effectiveness series badge.

Contact: Dr. Amy Chatham — Executive Director — CTL

Principles of Good Teaching

How Students Learn
Teaching Today's Students
Motivating Students to Learn

Teaching Techniques

The First Day of Class
Active Learning
Alternative Assessments
Backward Design
Flipping the Classroom
Cheat-proof your Course: Incentivizing Investment in Authentic Work

Teaching Tools for Professional Growth

IDEA Surveys - Making them Work for You
Creating your Teaching Portfolio

Educational technology provides a powerful means to better engage students and teach more effectively. Through its Teaching with Technology Series, UAB instructional designers from the Office of Learning Technologies guide UAB instructors in exploring Canvas features such as gradebook, feedback tools, rubrics, and group tools, as well as other learning technologies available at UAB including Harmonize. Even if you have been teaching with technology for some time, come learn some new tips and tricks!

Canvas Gradebook Part 1
Canvas Gradebook Part 2
Providing Effective Feedback to your Online Students
Active Learning Strategies in your Online Courses
Teaching with Rubrics Checklists in your Online Courses
Facilitating Group Activities Online
Designing and Delivering for Large Classes
Upgrade the Discussion Tool in your Course with Harmonize
Becoming a Canvas Super-user, New Quizzes
Introduction to PlayPosit
Increasing Learner Engagement with Branched Learning in PlayPosit
PlayPosit Learner-made Bulbs
Simple Syllabus for your Spring Courses

The University Writing Center opens a new website (UWC) is proud to partner with the Center for Teaching and Learning to offer strategies for teaching writing. Workshops focus on teaching writing as a process, providing student writers constructive feedback, and facilitating productive peer reviews and other writing exercises.

Recognizing the importance of teaching writing across the curriculum, the UWC and CTL welcome faculty and staff from all disciplines who assign (or are interested in assigning!) writing in their courses.

Contact: Jaclyn Wells — Director — University Writing Center

Generative AI has arrived, and all predictions point to a near future in which it is integrated at some level into most careers. Consequently, as teachers, we need to understand how to use it, how our students use it, and how it will be used in each of our disciplines moving forward. The Using AI in the Classroom series seeks to demystify this new technology for UAB instructors and encourage dialogue about how we can leverage its potential in teaching.

Contact: Dr. Amy Chatham — Executive Director, — CTL
Workshop topics can also be presented onsite for school or departmental faculty trainings.
Introduction to AI
Engage in the Conversation
Academic Integrity
Experiment with the Tools
Experiences of Three Teaching Faculty
Redesign your Assignments/Your Course
Effective Prompt Generation
Effective Use in Online Courses

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