Fall 2020
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Online TA Skills: Getting Started in the Virtual Classroom
We’ll explore the digital skills needed to carry out a range of your TA responsibilities from managing the virtual classroom to hosting online office hours in Zoom.
Thursday, August 27, 2020
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Online TA Skills: Getting Started with Sakai
Learn how to create and manage a Sakai course site. Demonstration of commonly used Sakai teaching tools, site navigation, and key features of the gradebook and TA grading permissions.
Tuesday, September 8, 2020
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Online TA Skills: Using Zoom Breakout Rooms
Learn how to effectively use Zoom breakout rooms and its more advanced features (whiteboard & annotation tools). We’ll demonstrate interactive examples in Zoom to guide the TA through the process of facilitating a live Zoom session.
Thursday, September 17, 2020
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Online TA Skills: Effective Use of Video
Learn how to effectively use video in your role as an online TA. We’ll explore options for creating video with a focus on Panopto. Learn how you can use video to record lectures, give students feedback, provide Q&A, and work out problem sets to facilitate learning.
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Online TA Skills: Facilitating Inclusive Online Discussions
In the virtual classroom student learning will also take place through meaningful online discussion, including team-based discussions. Learn effective facilitation strategies to reach out, engage and manage virtual discussions using Zoom and Sakai.
Tuesday, October 20, 2020
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Online TA Skills: Wrapping Up the Term
TAs have many tasks associated with wrapping up the term from managing student assignments and communications to using the Sakai gradebook. Our graduate student panel will share how they respond to (and solve!) end-of-semester instructional challenges.
Spring 2021
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
10:00 am to 11:30 am
Designing an Effective Writing-Intensive Course
This session explores a variety of approaches to teaching a writing-intensive course—from multiple, smaller writing tasks to semester-long research projects. Topics include choosing writing assignments that fit the course structure, helping students learn about writing in your discipline, using peer feedback, deciding whether to assign multiple drafts, balancing course content and attention to writing.
Monday, January 25, 2021
10:00 am to 11:30 am
Crafting Effective Writing Assignments
How you articulate a writing task can have a large impact on what your students do and what they learn. Topics for this session include setting expectations, selecting an appropriate genre and audience for student writing, helping students identify a meaningful and manageable writing project.
Thursday, February 11, 2021
4:30 pm to 6:00 pm
Take Your Teaching Skills Anywhere: How to Talk about your Teaching Experiences to Employers Beyond Academia
In this interactive workshop you will uncover how your teaching experiences can help potential employers understand the crucial skills you’ve learned in graduate school—skills that are transferable to a variety of careers beyond faculty positions.
Monday, February 22, 2021
10:00 am to 11:00 am
Setting Up and Managing Group Writing Assignments
While co-authorship is increasingly common in undergraduate courses, faculty often have little training on how to effectively manage collaborative student work. Topics for this session include forming groups, assigning roles, reducing freeloading, and setting up a peer evaluation protocol.
Monday, March 8, 2021
10:00 am to 11:30 am
Giving Efficient and Effective Feedback
Instructors often spend considerable time marking student papers--identifying errors, making suggestions, line editing, and so on. But the long hours instructors put into this effort are frequently not very effective in helping students become better writers. This session provides strategies for giving effective and efficient feedback on student writing.
Wednesday, March 17, 2021
1:00 pm to 2:00 pm
Using Peer Feedback Effectively
Peer feedback (often called “peer review” or “peer response”) has become a mainstay of writing pedagogy. Peer feedback can indeed be valuable; but, like all classroom practices, it’s effectiveness depends on how it is implemented. Topics of this workshop include understanding students’ history with peer feedback and social dynamics, choosing and articulating the feedback task, setting expectations, and assigning groups.
Thursday, March 18, 2021
2:00 pm to 3:00 pm
Teaching and Mentoring Diverse Learners
In our teaching and mentoring experiences, we may work with students from many different backgrounds and who embrace many different identities. How can we create and hold space for these many differences effectively? In this interactive workshop, Assistant Dean Francisco Ramos, Ph.D. will help us consider strategies to make us more effective teachers and mentors in supporting our students.
Tuesday, April 27, 2021
2:00 pm to 3:00 pm
Strategies for Centering Instructor Identity in STEM Education (Webinar)
In this webinar, we will talk about how to productively center and leverage your social identities in your role as a STEM instructor. We will unpack problematic assumptions about how identity aligns with authority and how you can build trust and community with your learners. You will also leave with strategies to overcome common challenges you might encounter when promoting equity and inclusion in the STEM classroom and beyond. This free webinar is provided through Duke's institutional membership to the National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity.