CTL Newsletter - May 2024

 

Message from Neil Hair, CTL Executive Director

It’s been a busy year! Our faculty fellows program of peer-to-peer support and consultations was extended to include two new AI fellows, we wrapped up a successful training program for faculty teaching in the new SHED and Wallace classrooms, and awarded a record number of Provost Learning Innovation Grants. CTL staff continued to play a vital role in assisting with academic technology support but we didn’t do this alone, I want to thank our CTL council, partnerships with other units across academic affairs and ITS & FMS and my leadership team for all their hard work. But wait! There is more coming. You can expect a full program of interesting and relevant training programs and events in the fall including a continuation of our plans for enhancing the ways in which we evaluate teaching effectiveness with training and support planned for administrators and faculty alike. When it comes to helping you tell your teaching story we have you covered. Summer’s shaping up to be busy too, with a number of classroom renovations taking place, a summer pilot of a active learning training program for faculty, and our big signature event - Summer Institute on May 14th and 15th. As always, it has been a pleasure helping you where we can.

Wishing you a productive and/or relaxing summer – see you, if not before, in the Fall.

-Neil

 
 

Editor’s Note: This concludes CTL’s Newsletters for the academic year. We will pause for the summer and return in late August. Have a relaxing and enjoyable summer break.

News + Updates

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.

Proposal a Teaching Circle
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Removing the Unreliable AI Detector from Turnitin

After much discussion and research, RIT has decided to remove the AI Detection feature within Turnitin due to concerns about accuracy of its classifications, reliability of classifications over time given improvements to AI, equity for students across writing styles and language levels, and ease of being able to evade detection.

The feature will be removed on May 13, 2024. All other features of RIT's Turnitin license, including Similarity Checking, Draft Coach for Google Docs, and Feedback Studio will remain active.

The CTL encourages instructors to talk with their students about the ethical and practical use of generative AI in their courses. CTL Staff are available to meet with instructors about course design and teaching strategies (request a meeting). There is additional advice regarding the use of AI-generated content in courses at Generative AI in Teaching website.

Learn More
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New Video Caption Download Feature in Panopto

Panopto, RIT’s educational video hosting platform, is releasing a new feature which allows instructors and students to easily download a video caption file when watching the video. The caption download will be accessible from the Captions tab in the video player and will automatically download as a .txt file to your device.

The CTL is excited to offer this new feature in the interest of accessibility for all. Text caption files are particularly helpful for students who use screen reading technologies to access course content and should be offered in conjunction with on-screen video captions.

The new Panopto video caption download feature will be available to all users on Thursday, May 9, 2024.

Learn More
 

Tools for Teaching

The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) supports faculty in using a variety of academic technologies. These three tools are not as well-known but are still valuable for certain use cases. Learn more visit our website.

iClicker
Student response collection system used for in-class formative or summative evaluations and polling. Learn more >

Camtasia
Robust video recording and editing tool. Can be used instead of Panopto for more complex video editing. Learn more >

Respondus
Quiz management system used to import publisher question banks into myCourses and create printed quizzes or tests. Learn more >

Looking for more?
See our Technology for Teaching Overview, or come meet with us.

 

Upcoming Events

Vist the CTL Events webpage to see our full listing.

Teaching Strategies

May 14-15 Summer Institute + AI Symposium | SHED & Wallace
Summer Institute will be held in conjunction with the AI Research Symposium, with the overarching theme of Teaching the 21st Century Student. Session tracks will include Helping Students Succeed, Engaging Learning Experience, Harnessing New Technologies, and Research on AI. Visit the Summer Institute website to view keynote speakers, schedule, and other details.

Teaching Tools

AUG 16 myCourses Help Session @ 10-10:50am | Zoom
Bring all your questions about myCourses.

 

Tool Tip

myCourses Discussion Participation Grade

Do you want to grade on discussion participation? You can view myCourses the discussion statistics then manually bulk grade students who have participated.

 

Questions - Need Help?

email us
ctl@rit.edu

visit us online
rit.edu/teaching

call us
475-2551

meet with us
rit.edu/teaching/consultations