News + Updates

Call for Summer Institute + AI Research Symposium Presenters

We are seeking faculty to present your insights, expertise, and best practices at this year's Summer Institute on Teaching and Learning, held in conjunction with the AI Symposium on May 14-16. Presentation opportunities include:

• 50-minutes Workshops on Tue, May 14 and Wed, May 15
• Poster Session on Teaching with AI on Wed, May 15, during the reception

Presenters are encouraged to demonstrate practical applications, share tangible resources, and engage participants in meaningful dialogue and reflection.

Proposals are being accepted from all RIT Faculty until Monday, March 25 2024 at 11:59 pm. Presenters will be confirmed by Friday, March 29. For inquiries or to discuss your participation, please contact ctl@rit.edu.

Propose a Teaching Circle for Fall Semester

A teaching circle is a small group of teachers who meet regularly on-campus and/or via Zoom to discuss a specific teaching and learning topic. Facilitators may pre-schedule meetings or poll interested participants on their availability. Circles typically meet for an hour 4-7 times over a semester.

CTL is seeking RIT faculty and other instructors of record (e.g., adjunct, postdocs, GTAs) who are interested in proposing a topic and facilitating a teaching circle in Fall semester 2024. Visit our website to learn more about teaching circles, including the names of facilitators and topics of previously offered circles.

Please submit your proposal by August 13. 2024. Applicants will be notified on a rolling basis.

We will announce the roster of Fall teaching circle facilitators and topics to the RIT community on August 20 and 27. Interested participants are encouraged to contact circle facilitators by September 3.

Online Teaching Community of Practice

We are excited to offer a learning opportunity for all RIT faculty teaching in the Summer 2024 session. Our “just-in-time” Online Teaching Community of Practice provides faculty an opportunity to design or redesign an accelerated online summer course with the Center for Teaching and Learning support. Our overarching goal is for every participant to have a fully developed course that is ready for students.

Communities of practice can provide a way for teachers to remain connected to current best practices, share and analyze teaching problems, and provide mutual support during the course design or redesign process. Accordingly, this community will focus on the issues that commonly arise when practitioners talk about accelerated asynchronous online courses; these include:

• Deciding what to keep and discard while honoring learning outcomes
• Allocating appropriate “learning time” for students and “teaching time” for instructors
• Rethinking asynchronous discussion and team activities
• Revising assignments/assessments in view of GenAI
• Building community, belonging, and inclusivity

We intend to meet weekly or every two weeks from early April through May. Interested participants will be polled to determine the mode (on-campus or via Zoom) and collective best time to hold our initial organizational meeting during the week of April 1-5. During this meeting we will establish a mode and schedule for the remaining weeks. This community is limited to 15 members.

Please submit your request to join the Online Teaching Community of Practice by March 27, 2024 if you are interested in participating.

Have Students Book Zoom Appointments With You in myCourses

In the myCourses Zoom integration, instructors can create a schedule of available Zoom appointment times for a particular course. An example use case is for office hours. A student can select a day/time, which removes it from the availability options for other students in that course. Both of you will receive an email confirmation with the unique meeting ID and the scheduled day/time information. You and students can join your meetings from the Upcoming Events tab of the appointment area.

These features can also be used by TAs to share their help session times in your course and have students book times with the TA. The TA and the student would receive the email confirmation.