Engagement and alignment: these two characteristics underlie vibrant, successful, and truly challenging courses. For the instructor, engagement and alignment allow more time to explore the most fascinating aspects of a discipline with students, mean fewer surprises in assessment outcomes, and optimally less time spent dealing with student concerns over grades, assignments and the purpose and rationale of the course.

Join us August 24-28 to explore the tools that make it happen. Come for one workshop, or sign up for all of them: we look forward to your participation and contributions during this week of learning and preparation.

Theme 1. Engagement: Inspiring Students to Learn

The Engagement series examines practices that motivate and inspire students to achieve more than they ever thought they could. We’ll explore:

• setting a tone for learning;
• using technologies to increase student interaction and provide prompt feedback;
• exploring course material actively and critically, and
• getting everyone involved, even in large class settings.

What you’ll learn about in this series can significantly impact student attendance, attitude, experience and success.

Theme 2. Alignment: A Shared Roadmap for Success

This series explores the design of thoughtful and systematic frameworks that prioritize the most essential ideas, knowledge, skills and attitudes students need to acquire in your course. A well-designed framework clarifies what students will be able to do by the end of the course, how they will achieve those outcomes, and how that learning will be assessed in ways consistent with the course requirements and the course’s purpose. This series will explore the alignment of:

• course outcomes
• classroom activities
• assessment, and
• feedback.

Real and fair challenge lies at the heart of students’ experiences of success. This series focuses on the mechanics of consistently producing such opportunities for a diverse range of students.