On October 1, 2025, CTI hosted What Works: Creating Engaging Learning Experiences — a teaching showcase featuring faculty presentations and a poster showcase session demonstrating successful strategies for engaged learning. We also celebrated the Canvas Course Spotlight honorees – faculty whose use of Canvas has positively impacted the student learning experience, according to a student survey.

The projects featured in the What Works poster showcase have been developed into case studies, below, with case studies for the faculty presentations to become available over the next couple of months. These case studies not only document creative approaches to engaged learning, but are also meant to be adaptable, and provide inspiration and ideas for implementing engaged learning strategies into different courses and learning environments. 

We hope these case studies spark ideas for your courses, and if you adapt any for your classes, we hope you'll let us know! 

"What Works" Case Studies 

Poster Showcase

• Engaging the Community: An Applied Approach to Digital Storytelling in Dietetics
  • Kelly Quinn, Nutritional Sciences, College of Human Ecology
• Fostering Student Inquiry: A Scaffolded Approach to Developing Research Skills in Viticulture and Enology
  • Kathleen Arnink, Food Science, College of Agriculture & Life Sciences
  • Ria D'Aversa, Viticulture, College of Agriculture & Life Sciences
• Group Project Accountability in Retail Buying and Merchandising Course
  • Jaleesa Reed, Human Centered Design, College of Human Ecology
• Collective Discovery: Group Problem-Solving Using Student-Generated Data
  • Melissa Smith, Statistics & Data Science, Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing & Information Science
• Culturally Immersive Field Trips to Japan with Virtual Reality
  • Naomi Larson, Asian Studies, College of Arts & Sciences
• From Theory to Table: A Capstone Experience in Food Service Management
  • Emily Wilcox Gier, Nutritional Science, College of Human Ecology
• Constructive Learning through Peer Review and Feedback Literacy
  • Brian Richards, Biological & Environmental Engineering, College of Agriculture & Life Sciences

Coming Soon

• Teaching AI Literacy — What AI Can’t Read: Ambiguities and Silences
  • Jan Burzlaff, Jewish Studies, College of Arts & Sciences
• Stepping Through the Screen: A VR Journey to Rikuzentakata
  • Eriko Akamatsu, Asian Studies, College of Arts & Sciences
• From Student to Designer: An Experiential Classroom Project
  • Rhonda Gilmore, Human Centered Design, College of Human Ecology
• Making Science Relatable: A Physics Experience for Non-Majors
  • Natasha Holmes, Physics, College of Arts & Sciences