Week 9 with the OTL: Honoring and Supporting Our Veteran Students and Faculty
As we wrap up this busy transition week, we hope you and your students are doing well. As always, the OTL is here to support you.
In honor of Veterans Day, it is worth remembering the increasing number of veterans returning to higher education. This year DU’s military related population has increased nearly 12% from last year. These students bring a wealth of life experience, tend to be older than traditionally-aged students, and are likely to be working and supporting families outside of school. Learn more about veterans returning to school here. All students face educational challenges but those challenges experienced by veterans are different from that of our students who haven't served. To learn more about ways to support student veterans, please feel free to reach out to Damon Vine, Director of Veterans Services at [email protected], or visit the DU Veterans Services website.
Peer Teaching Mentors
The OTL also has a fantastic team of Peer Teaching Mentors, led by Dr. Lina Reznicek-Parrado, that you can connect with to talk about various topics, including student support. Our Peer Mentors are faculty across campus that provide personalized, peer-to-peer teaching support. You can choose any Peer - connect based on unit, time availability, or even teaching "superpower!" Visit our Peer Teaching Mentors web page to read more about our peers and make a connection. For more information, contact Dr. Reznicek-Parrado at [email protected].
|
|
Is your Canvas Course Pivot Ready?
Beginning next week, all fall quarter courses are required to be facilitated online. The Office of Teaching and Learning is here to help you ensure that your Canvas course is ready for this pivot. In this workshop we will talk through the minimum requirements for a Canvas course at DU. These requirements include your course communication plan, Canvas navigation and accessibility, asynchronous course assignment and/or final exam delivery, and synchronous class-time planning. Register to join us by using the link above, and we will email you the Online Course Planning Checklist prior to the session.
|
|
Writing Accountability Group (WAG) Winter Sign Up
Faculty in the Writing Accountability Group range from a variety of disciplines and stages in their academic careers. Across these differences, participants have discovered new ways of balancing their research agendas with other demands, while building supportive accountability structures for themselves and each other. Even for advanced-career faculty, the WAG has provided new ways of scaffolding the relationship between day-to-day writing, weekly time management, and long-term career goals.
|
|
Upcoming Events
Using Zoom for Student Presentations
Considering incorporating student presentations into your courses? This workshop will help you consider your options for setting up student video presentations using Zoom, Canvas, and Kaltura.
The session will cover:
- Student instructions
- Canvas assignment options
- Zoom recording tips
- Kaltura Media Gallery for sharing video
Canvas Coaching: Transitioning from Quarter to Quarter
Now that Fall Quarter is wrapping up, you may already be thinking about setting up your Canvas course shell for Winter Quarter 2021. At this Canvas Coaching session, you will learn how to move content from one Canvas course to another. We will also share tips and tricks for transitioning your course from Quarter to Quarter.
Heart of Higher Education
The Heart of Higher Education (HOHE) is an opportunity to gather as a DU community to share the challenges and opportunities of transcending the institutional, professional and personal choices that tend to separate core identity/integrity from day to day actions. The meetings are open to all faculty (of any rank) and staff (of any title). The Conversations are facilitated by Dr. Paul Michalec, OTL Faculty Teaching Fellow, and Clinical Professor in the Morgridge College of Education. The Heart of Higher Education Conversations create a positive and constructive space where staff and faculty can explore ways of re-connecting calling with professional responsibilities. In this academic year we will investigate the themes of uncertainty, impermanence, and resilience in academia. We will have sessions each month of this term, so if you are unable to join us this month, keep your eye out for future sessions.
Please visit our OTL Events Calendar for all of our upcoming events!
|
|
How to Write a Winning Book Proposal
For many academics, a book manuscript is key to earning tenure and establishing a scholarly identity. However, the path to academic book publishing can often be confusing, nebulous, and filled with scary myths and misperceptions. You may have a completed dissertation, a few rough book chapters, or even journal articles you’d like to transform into a coherent book project but you don’t know where to start to get your unfinished project into print.
The first, and most important, step to getting your academic manuscript published is crafting a compelling book proposal. This workshop will address many common questions about the book proposal process including (but not limited to):
- When should I start writing the proposal?
- What is the best way for me to contact an editor?
- How do I pick the best press for my project?
- And, importantly, what does a “winning” book proposal look like and how do I write one?
Each participant will leave the workshop with a working draft of the book proposal, a concrete plan to complete it within 4 weeks of the workshop date, and a post-proposal publication plan that will focus on how to query editors, writing the cover letter, etc.
Facilitated by:
Badia Ahad, PhD
Associate Professor & Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs
Loyola University
|
|
Faculty Learning Communities
Teaching and Professional Faculty Tools for Success
Tools for Success is a year-long FLC designed for teaching and professional faculty in the assistant rank at the University of Denver. The FLC will explore areas essential to the success of teaching faculty including community building, effective instruction, wellness, DU culture, promotion, national trends, inclusive excellence, and university resources. The monthly sessions in the fall will focus on community building and navigating transitions. The bi-weekly winter sessions are organized around the book (Inclusive Collegiality and Nontenure-Track Faculty: Engaging All Faculty as Colleagues to Promote Healthy Departments and Institutions) and learnings important to advancement, promotion, and university culture. In the spring quarter, the bi-weekly sessions will focus on the scholar/teacher model of excellence. We will form a Scholarship on Teaching and Learning (SOTL) group with the intent of writing about and publishing on our experiences as teaching and professional faculty in higher education.
Led by Laura Sponsler, OTL Faculty Scholar of Teaching and Professional Faculty
Coming this winter: Internationalization Faculty Learning Community
Co-facilitated by RSECS Associate Dean for Undergraduate studies and Teaching Associate Professor Breigh Roszelle and Executive Director for Internationalization Casey Dinger, this collaborative Faculty Learning Community is structured around book chapters. Participants will take turns leading the discussion using key theoretical and applied materials supplied by the facilitators to provide a grounding in the approach and tools to implement.
This FLC is organized around exploring the practice, development, and implementation of a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)-based course. This can take numerous forms, but in essence COIL is a type of virtual mobility, where students from DU and a partner institution abroad are given the tools and space to engage in purposeful interaction in a course. Students from both classes may interact synchronously or asynchronously for a few weeks or an entire term through whichever technologies are most relevant and useful. Often students work together on a project, class discussions, or similar group work. COIL is a powerful opportunity to help students engage in cross-cultural learning and global education on DU’s home campus.
|
|
Teaching Resources
This tool kit provides practical steps for readying your courses, no matter the modality. From Canvas basics to hyflex considerations, and complete with worksheets to guide you, this toolkit is a great starting point for course planning.
Getting overwhelmed by all of the different terms you hear related to online teaching and learning? Visit OTL’s glossary for definitions of key terms.
Visit this OTL web page for helpful links to resources such as Canvas guides and Knowledge Base articles organized by task, as well as a video walking you through setting up your Canvas course. These resources can be helpful no matter how you offer your courses this term.
This Knowledge Base article provides helpful tips and tricks you can use as you create pre-recorded videos, lectures, and demonstrations to enhance the asynchronous components of your course. You can also learn more about the various tools you can use to create your videos, such as Zoom and Kaltura.
Visit our Sample Syllabus Statements webpage for optional statements to help you communicate with students your policies around wearing masks in class, social distancing, attendance and participation, and more. Be sure to reach out to your Dean, Chair, or Director with any questions or for clarification around the use of these statements in your syllabus.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
