The Teaching Center within the Center for Teaching and Learning Innovation (CTLI) offers many workshops for educators across campus. Below, you will find our workshop offerings and how to request a workshop using our form. The workshop offerings are examples of workshops we can provide to departments, units, and college, and they can be tailored to an audience's needs as well.
Workshop Offerings
- Active Listening and Dialoguing Across Differences in the Classroom
- This workshop equips educators with tools to facilitate meaningful dialogues across diverse perspectives in the classroom. Participants will delve into the principles of active listening and explore how it can foster trust, empathy, and mutual understanding among learners. Through interactive exercises, educators will practice strategies to encourage respectful dialogue, manage challenging conversations, and create a classroom culture where all voices feel heard and valued. Educators will leave with techniques to support productive exchanges that respect differences, strengthen community, and enhance student engagement.
- Assessing Students in the Age of Generative AI
- This workshop explores how to design fair, meaningful assessments in the era of generative AI. Participants will examine the impact of AI on academic integrity, how to talk to students about the use of GenAI, and explore strategies to foster critical thinking and creativity. By the end, attendees will gain practical insights to adapt assessments for the evolving educational landscape.
- Blended Learning
- This workshop showcases blended learning, which strategically combines online learning with traditional or face-to-face instructional practices. Participants will learn about the different types of blending and the necessary elements such as design, instructional strategies, assessment plans, and resources required for successful learning outcomes. We focus on practical tips and approaches for educators new to blended and hybrid learning, and emphasize the importance of clarity, learning goals, and equitable learning experiences in blended learning.
- Boosting Student Engagement
- This workshop will showcase several easy ways to boost engagement in courses of any modality (synchronous in-person, blended, hybrid; asynchronous). Using Zoom chat, Google Docs and Slides, word clouds, D2L, and other MSU technology tools, we will focus on low-barrier ways that instructors can connect with students, help students connect with each other, organize whole-class or small-group brainstorms, and translate effective in-person activities for hybrid or online classrooms.
- Course Design Principles
- This workshop is designed for faculty members focused on essential course design principles for both traditional and online learning environments. Participants will explore the Quality Matters (QM) framework and best practices in course design, emphasizing alignment between learning objectives, assessments, and instructional materials. The workshop will also address pedagogical soundness, equipping faculty with evidence-based strategies to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes. Through interactive discussions and practical exercises, attendees will leave with valuable insights to create high-quality courses that foster student success in diverse educational settings.
- Care-Based Pedagogy: Introduction
- This workshop is designed to provide educators with the frameworks and resources needed to center care-based practices in their pedagogy, which is a framework for teaching practices to foster human connection, communication, and well-being. Identity, intersectionality and intentionality will be overviewed to provide a foundation for thinking about strategies and toolkits for care-based practices in the classroom.
- Cultivating Learner Engagement and Student Connections
- This workshop explores strategies to enhance student engagement and foster meaningful connections in your classroom. Participants will examine the dimensions of learner engagement—behavioral, emotional, and cognitive—and learn how to leverage them to improve student success. The session will highlight pedagogical and technological solutions such as active learning strategies, collaborative techniques, and methods to promote student autonomy. Additionally, attendees will discover tools to identify and support disengaged or struggling students. By the end of the session, participants will leave with practical strategies to create a supportive, inclusive, and thriving learning environment.
- Designing your MSU syllabus
- In this interactive session, participants will learn all about syllabi at MSU. Topics include syllabus design, requirements and policies, considerations for more inclusive syllabi, MSU resources and templates, and alternative syllabus formats including a demonstration of an annotated syllabus model.
- Educational Technology Strategies
- This workshop overviews many realms related to educational technology: Learning Management Systems (e.g., D2L), Artificial Intelligence, classroom polling and response systems, grading technology, etc.
- Equity-based Teaching Teams and Mentorship
- This workshop is designed to provide educators with the frameworks and resources needed to center equity in their teaching teams and mentorship. This workshop will overview the importance of and strategies for equity-based mentorship and approaches to teaching teams.
- Inclusive Feedback Practices for Educators
- This workshop provides educators with the frameworks and resources needed to center inclusive feedback practices across disciplines. We will discuss frameworks for feedback and how to center linguistic justice and inclusion within feedback for learners.
- Inclusive Pedagogy: Introduction
- This workshop is designed to provide educators with the frameworks and resources needed to create more inclusive courses to honor and uplift the diversity of learners in the classroom. This workshop will overview the importance of intersectionality and inclusive pedagogy in syllabi/course materials, classroom activities, and course assignments/assessments.
- Intentional Feedback: Supporting Student Learning While Managing Time
- This workshop focuses on strategies to provide meaningful feedback that enhances student learning while maintaining time efficiency for instructors. Participants will explore the role of feedback in promoting learning, with an emphasis on intentional and elaborative feedback for multiple-choice questions (MCQs). The session will also address differentiating between higher-order and lower-order concerns, identifying assessment strategies, and leveraging educational technology tools to streamline feedback processes. By the end of the workshop, attendees will gain practical techniques to deliver impactful feedback and manage their time effectively.
- Mid-Semester Review
- This workshop, co-hosted by the Center for Teaching and Learning Innovation (CTLI) and the Evidence Driven Learning Innovation team (EDLI), is designed for anyone interested in improving their teaching by integrating mid-semester feedback. The session will focus on how to gather actionable feedback from students at a crucial point in the term, allowing instructors to address concerns and adapt their pedagogy in real-time. Participants will learn how to implement an efficient feedback collection process, with a focus on gathering insights that directly inform teaching practices. The workshop will also explore the use of ChatGPT for analyzing qualitative feedback, demonstrating how Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools can assist in identifying patterns and trends in student responses.
- Partnerships between Academic Advisors and Instructors
- In this workshop we will describe examples and benefits of strong partnerships between course instructors and academic advisors to support students’ academic success and thriving in college, focused on specific milestones in the semester. We lead participants through key interactions that can make a difference for instructors and advisors when these roles deliberately partner in service of student academic success and overall thriving in college.
- Peer Dialogues
- This is a program for peers (colleagues) to offer support and review the teaching practices, course design, and assessment evaluation. Peers may be from related or unrelated disciplines. Upon completion of this learning experience, participants will be able to: 1) Be able to describe the peer dialogue process, 2) Identify the area(s) they want to explore with a peer / colleague, 3) Be able to offer constructive feedback to a peer through review or observation of practice, 4) Be able to outline a plan to make revisions to areas of improvement highlighted by a peer / colleague, and 5) Reflect on the process of peer dialogue to help reciprocate as a reviewer or person seeking review and discussion.
- Pronouns in the Classroom
- This workshop will engage learners on understanding pronouns, how they are used in the classroom and everyday conversations, and how to foster environments for gender inclusivity. The session will also include strategies for gender and pronoun inclusivity within classroom syllabi and classroom activities.
- Setting the Tone from the Start
- The way a course begins is crucial for educators to establish an environment that fosters engagement, collaboration, and a sense of belonging. In this workshop, we will share actionable strategies that lay the groundwork for an engaging and inclusive course experience from day one, including practices related to syllabi, expectation setting and pedagogical transparency, checking in on learner needs throughout the term, and ways to build a sense of classroom community.
- Strategies and Best Practices in Academic Advising
- This workshop delves into strategies and best practices in academic advising. Participants will explore effective advising techniques and discover innovative problem-solving approaches tailored to their needs. We can customize the session to focus on specific advising methods you wish to enhance, ensuring that it aligns with you or your team’s goals and challenges.
- Transparent Assignment Design
- This workshop will introduce you to the concept of Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) and the Transparent Assignment Design (TAD) framework. This equity-centered, evidence-based teaching method has been shown to drastically reduce student late submissions, instructor grading time, and student frustration while significantly increasing the quality of student submissions. You will learn about the relationship between transparency and equity in learning, the key elements of a transparent assignment, and how to design an assignment using the TAD framework.
- Universal Design for Learning and Accessibility
- This workshop examines the critical intersections of identity, accessibility, and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). We will discuss how understanding, valuing, and planning for diverse identities— such as those around disability—can create a more equitable learning environment. This workshop also offers practical approaches to designing accessible and flexible learning experiences that meet the needs of all learners.
Workshop Request Process
Thank you for your interest in a CTLI Workshop. The process for requesting a CTLI workshop includes:
- Allow for Advance Time: You should be requesting a workshop with at least one month's worth of notice.
- Complete the Form: Within our form, we will collect basic information, your workshop request, audience information, and workshop logistics. You should complete one form for each workshop request.
- CTLI Processes the Form & Reaches Out: CTLI will review your request and consider staffing and preparation needs. This may take up to 2 weeks. We will contact you to discuss the request, scheduling, and staffing of your workshop. Then, we will work to deliver your workshop if it is within the resource availability of CTLI.
If you have any questions or concerns about this, please contact Bethany Meadows.