Workshops and Seminars

Current Calendar of Workshops

Faculty Development

First Year Student Skill Expectations: Focus group discussion on the basic skill needs of incoming students

Five Hot Buttons for Teaching: What the Research Shows: Active Learning, Critical Thinking, cooperative Learning, Problem-based Learning and the latest Instructional Technology tools, singly or collectively, can improve teaching and learning.

Instructional Technology Tools to Support Teaching in Large Lectures: Many computer-based course tools will be demonstrated for supporting teaching in large lecture courses.

Learning Communities for Large Lectures: Many institutions are reshaping educational programs to provide structured "Learning Communities" that link existing courses together or restructure courses altogether. A panel of Faculty and Administrators responsible for these programs will discuss the success of the Rutgers Models in improving integration and understand of content and increased interaction between and among students and faculty.

Student Instructional Rating Survey Data Online: Following the President's request, acting on the advice and resolutions from the University Senate, the Center for Teaching Advancement and Assessment Research now is providing on line access to the data from the Student Instructional Rating Survey.

Teaching Portfolios: The Teaching Portfolio is best thought of as a documented statement of a faculty member's teaching responsibilities, philosophy, goals and accomplishments as a teacher. It is a flexible document, and can be used in a number of ways, depending upon the needs and interests of the faculty member. It can be an extensive collection of information, or something much more compact and limited. The essential structure and elements to be included will be presented.

Teaching Strategies for Large Lectures: Many techniques for engaging students in active learning in large-sized lecture classes will be discussed.

Teaching Strategies for Large Lectures: A collection of techniques for presentation and in class activities that improve teaching and learning in the "large" lecture course format will be exchanged.

The Use of Small Groups in Large Lectures: Effective use of small groups requires  thoughtful design and management. Several models for the use of small groups in lecture courses will be described and discussed.

Technological Support

Instructional Technologies

Acrobat PDF Creation for Electronic Grant Proposels - Grant funding organizations are increasingly requiring proposals be submitted electronically over the web. Creating an Acrobat PDF can save time and may be essential in some cases. This workshops will cover the use of Adobe Acrobat for creating PDF's from standard office software, sending PDF's as an e-mail attachment, posting PDF's on the web, and will include a discussion of some alternatives to buying the Adobe Acrobat package.  The workshop will also cover posting PDF's on the web.

Adobe Photoshop: Basic - The workshop on Adobe Photoshop will cover the editing of digital images, primarily aimed for use on the web. The workshop will cover issues of file formats such as GIF, JPEG, PNG and TIFF, and how to reduce file size for quicker web page loading while preserving image quality.

Creating Excel Spreadsheets for Grading - This workshop explores different methods of using Excel to calculate student grades. In addition to calculating weighted averages, we discuss methods of dropping the lowest grade, and assigning letter grades based on numeric average grades via a lookup table. Finally, we cover various dynamic means of assessing the performance of entire class by using charts and summation functions.

Detecting Plagiarism and Cheating - In this course we will discuss the Rutgers Policy on Academic Integrity. We will survey various ways that students across the country cheat. We will look at ways to identify certain types of plagiarism and how to use the Internet to gather proof of a violation. We will talk about effective ways to communicate the importance of Academic Integrity to students and ways to mitigate cheating.

Electronic Communications - An overview of tools and techniques that can be used to distribute announcements to students or facilitate small group discussions. Covers the creation and use of e-mail, mailing lists, instant messaging, chat, and web-based discussions.

FAS Gradebook and Privacy Issues - Discussion of acceptable practices for distributing student grades both online and in class, with a focus on how to use the FAS Gradebook for posting grades online. Also provides a look at the WebCT (Web Course Tools) gradebook and the online roster web site.

Online Group Projects and Journals - Example uses of some newer technologies ("wikis" and "blogs") to provide a quick, easy means of providing students with tools for creating web-based group projects, or online journals for writing-intensive courses or other courses where students are required to do reflective writing.

PowerPoint: Creating Presentations - This workshop provides a quick hands-on overview of PowerPoint; its structure, utilities, slide management features, animation, and design templates (with a number of tips and tricks).

RefWorks: Basic - RefWorks (free to members of the Rutgers community) is a web-based bibliography and database manager that allows users to create and administer their own personal bibliographic database. This hands-on workshop introduces RefWorks, and demonstrates how personal bibliographies can be created and managed. Two additional RefWorks tools, Write-N-Cite and RefGrab-It will also be demonstrated. Additional help will be available for persons logging into RefWorks for the first time.

Scanning Documents, Creating PDF Files and Copyright Issues - In this course we will learn how to scan documents into a PC, how to generate compressed files in Adobe Acrobat 5.0 and what copyright issues that instructors need to be aware of when posting course materials on the internet. We will address ways to secure the documents so that students need to their NetID to access the files.

Web Design and Accessibility - In this course we will learn about how to make your course materials accessible to the majority of your students. We’ll examine Federal 508 laws regarding the accessibility of web sites. We will talk about planning websites with accessibility in mind and how to analyze current web sites for potential problems. We’ll also discuss the topic of “usability” and your course materials.

Web Design Using "Contribute" - In this course we will learn how to make a basic course page using Macromedia’s Contribute 3.0 web page editor. You must have a Rutgers NetID with access to either an RCI or EDEN account to post your webpage.

WebCT: Moving to Sakai - WebCT will be discontinued in 2007. This workshop focuses on rebuilding courses in Sakai and is intended for current users of WebCT. Sakai is a new course and collaboration system.

WebCT: Intermediate - WebCT includes some tools for creating on-line quizzes and surveys. This workshop will concentrate on quizzes, but also covers the effective use of the student tracking and communication features of WebCT.

WebCT: Introduction (Web Course Tools) - WebCT is a tool that provides a simple way to access e-mail, chat rooms, bulletin boards, and other internet tools for instruction. This workshops introduces the features of WebCT and covers moving web pages into WebCT, managing student information, and manipulating the features of WebCT.

WebCT: Posting Files - An introduction to WebCT (Web Course Tools) geared towards the basic use of WebCT for displaying lecture notes, course handouts, and reading materials. Covers uploading and organizing material in WebCT, and the preparation of documents for the web.

WebCT: Quizzes - An overview of using WebCT (Web Course Tools) for generating online quizzes with multiple choice, matching, short answer and paragraph questions, including randomization of question order, automatic and manual grading.

WebCT: Quizzes & Working With Data - WebCT ("Web Course Tools") has a sophisticated quiz and survey feature. This workshop covers all the steps required to create a database of questions, quizzes with standard or randomized questions, and grading the quizzes. We also look at some of the problems with WebCT online quizzes and how to avoid them, and some practical methods for managing student data in the WebCT Student Management tool.

To register for a workshop use our on-line registration form. If you have trouble with our form, please call 932-7466. Dates are listed on the current calendar of workshops.