Institutes
Our teaching institutes and workshops offer opportunities to develop your teaching skills, gain theoretical grounding and practical strategies, and to connect with fellow teaching graduate students and postdocs: Essentials of Teaching Institute | Inclusive Teaching Institute | Teaching Portfolio Institute | Active Learning Institute | Course Design Institute
Essentials of Teaching Institute
In this four-part workshop series you will explore strategies to foster a positive classroom environment, create effective interactive teaching activities to help students learn, and develop fair methods for assessment and grading.
What is the Essentials of Teaching Institute?
Building on the foundation of the TA Online Orientation, this Institute allows participants to explore strategies to incorporate inclusive teaching practices, support their students’ learning, and best assess this learning process. Throughout this institute, participants will develop an action plan for a course they may teach, culminating with peer feedback on this plan in the fourth workshop. Individuals who complete all four workshops under the Essentials of Teaching Institute will earn a letter documenting their completion from CTI.
Who can attend?
Graduate students and postdocs at Cornell.
When is the Essentials of Teaching institute?
The institute is held in the fall semester. Please check back for specific dates and times.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
- identify strategies to help students cultivate an appreciation for diversity.
- explore classroom strategies that engage a variety of learners.
- discuss methods of assessing student learning.
- develop an action plan for a course that they may teach.
Registration process & deadline
Please check back for registration information.
Contact Derina Samuel at the Center for Teaching Innovation with any questions about the institute.
Inclusive Teaching Institute
The Inclusive Teaching Institute for Graduate Students & Postdocs is an opportunity to explore diversity and inclusion in teaching and learning. As a participant, you will identify strategies to increase inclusion and accessibility, boost student engagement, foster belongingness, and design an action plan for future teaching. (Co-sponsored by the Graduate School's Future Faculty and Academic Careers office).
What is the Inclusive Teaching Institute?
This interactive workshop invites you to collaborate with other graduate students and postdocs to share what you know, explore how and why social identities come into play in the learning environment, and experience active learning strategies that increase engagement and inclusion. A five-point organizing framework invites entry from all disciplinary perspectives: Consider your students, and yourself as an instructor, how you teach, what you teach, and the overall learning environment. Leave with a toolkit of strategies and a plan you can use for future teaching.
Who can attend?
The Inclusive Teaching Institute is designed for graduate students and postdocs at Cornell.
When is the Inclusive Teaching Institute?
Please check back for dates and times.
Learning Outcomes
Participants will:
- use a framework to guide your planning for adopting inclusive teaching practices
- explore social identities and lived experiences to increase awareness of how these come into play in teaching and learning
- identify teaching strategies that foster engagement and a sense of belonging
- practice dialogue skills for communicating across difference
- explain why social identities are relevant in teaching and learning
Registration process & deadline
Please check back for registration information.
- This is a 2-day online event, so applicants should be prepared to attend both days.
- As space in the institute is limited, please register early to save a place.
- If you have any questions please contact Melina Ivanchikova at the Center for Teaching Innovation or Colleen McLinn at the Graduate School’s Future Faculty and Academic Careers office.
Sponsorship
This event is sponsored by the Center for Teaching Innovation and the Graduate School’s Future Faculty and Academic Careers office.
Teaching Portfolio Institute
How do you document and showcase your teaching and professional experiences? This institute is taught as a series of four workshops that will guide you through the process of developing components of an electronic teaching portfolio. These workshops are an opportunity to draft a teaching philosophy statement and examine the key components of a professional teaching portfolio. We encourage all graduate students and postdocs at any stage to attend.
What is the Teaching Portfolio Institute?
The institute will focus on three distinct elements of portfolio creation: collecting your documents; selecting what best showcases your development, values, and experience; and reflecting on your professional journey. Through a series of four workshops, you will have an opportunity to draft a teaching philosophy and a diversity statement and receive peer feedback.
Who can attend?
Graduate students and postdocs at Cornell.
When is the Portfolio Institute?
The institute is held in the fall semester. Please check back for dates and times.
Learning Outcomes
As a result of attending the Institute, participants will be able to:
- identify the components of a teaching portfolio
- create a draft of a teaching philosophy statement
- articulate important components of a diversity statement
- assess platforms for presenting portfolio materials
Registration process & deadline
Please check back for registration information.
Contact Derina Samuel at the Center for Teaching Innovation with any questions about the institute.
Active Learning Institute
How might you engage students and encourage them to participate in their own learning more directly? How does active learning help people learn? What strategies, from the simple to the complex, would you implement in your classes? In this series of four workshops, you will explore active learning strategies and examine how they help students learn more effectively based on current educational and cognitive research.
What is the Active Learning Institute?
Active learning refers to strategies that ask learners to engage and participate in their own learning by stimulating student motivation, curiosity, and metacognition skills. Activities such as writing, discussing, reflecting, or problem-solving can help learners organize knowledge and communicate it to others, practice expert-thinking, and remember longer and better.
In this four-part workshop series, you will explore active learning strategies and examine how they help students learn more effectively based on current educational and cognitive research. Experience a variety of activities--such as polling questions with peer discussion, minute papers, and more--and select practices to adapt for your specific teaching context. Leave with a list of strategies you can apply in your classes.
Who can attend?
Graduate students and postdocs at Cornell.
When is the Active learning institute?
The institute is held in the spring semester. Check back for dates and times.
Learning Outcomes
Participants will:
- discuss some of the most common active learning strategies and why they are effective
- practice designing active learning activities for a specific teaching context and learning outcome
- learn principles for planning out a class session that includes active learning activities
Registration process & deadline
Please check back for registration information.
Contact Derina Samuel at the Center for Teaching Innovation with any questions about the institute.
Course Design Institute
This series of four workshops guides you through the basic elements of course design, and strategies to define learning outcomes, align assignments and activities, evaluate student learning, and create a student-centered syllabus.
What is the Course Design Institute?
Where do you start when developing a course? This four-part workshop series will lead you through a process known as backwards course design in which you start by defining what you want students to learn and then align these learning outcomes with assignments, assessments, and learning activities.
Who can attend?
Graduate students and postdocs at Cornell.
When is the Course Design Institute?
The institute is held in the spring semester. Check back for dates and times.
Learning Outcomes
Participants will:
-
areate student-centered learning outcomes
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align learning outcomes with assessments and assignments
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apply backward course design principles to develop a learner-centered syllabus
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discuss how to implement one or two classroom strategies that align with course learning outcomes
Registration process & deadline
Please check back for registration information.
Contact Derina Samuel at the Center for Teaching Innovation with any questions about the institute.