CETL
The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) organizes and hosts this series featuring several campus resources that will aide early career faculty success. All educators are welcome regardless of your time here at Kennesaw State University.
To set faculty up for success, CETL is partnering with offices across Kennesaw State University to offer these sessions prior to the start of classes. These sessions are open to all faculty (new and returning) to attend. Please RSVP for the sessions you plan to attend.
| Date and Topic | Time | Sessions Title | Description | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Wednesday, Learning-Centered Teaching and Evidence-Based Pedagogy |
9 - 10:15 a.m. | Science of Learning | Any serious discussion of teaching should keep learners and their learning at the center (Weimer 2013). Taking learning as the litmus test of teaching compels us to understand the learning process so that our pedagogy can be conducive to student learning and success. This session will introduce insights from the science of learning based on Lovett et al. 8 research-based principles of learning (2023). | Kennesaw Campus, Dr. Betty L. Siegel Student Recreation Center, Room 1090 |
| 10:30 - 11:45 a.m. | Active Learning | As Eyler (2018) reminds us, learners actively construct knowledge by integrating new experiences into existing mental schemas, and doing so is an inherently social process. How can you engage your students as active participants in the learning process? This session will explore simple active learning techniques that can be applied in any discipline and in any teaching modality. | Kennesaw Campus, Dr. Betty L. Siegel Student Recreation Center, Room 1090 | |
| 2 - 3:15 p.m. | Expanding the NEST | Student success is an institutional and University System of Georgia priority. The literature on student success is very robust and it has identified several strategies that work to increase student learning, retention, and success, particularly from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE, Kuh et al. 2005). In this session, we will explore small teaching practices derived from KSU’s own NSSE data that cultivate student success and that will allow you to document your work in this area. | Virtual, Microsoft Teams | |
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Thursday, Course and Syllabus Design
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9 - 9:50 a.m. | Principles of Backward Design | “Backward design” offers an evidence-based, step-by-step method that simplifies the design process (Wiggins and McTighe 2005). Backward course design leads to more transparent and inclusive teaching, which promotes a sense of belonging in any learning environment and any teaching modality. This session offers an opportunity to be intentional about advancing your ideas for continuous improvement in your teaching. | Marietta Campus, Wilson Student Center, Ballroom |
| 10 - 10:50 a.m. | Designing Syllabi to Support Student Success | Palmer (2014) illustrates how being intentional about tone, providing clear expectations, explicitly connecting learning tasks and assessments to goals and objectives, and addressing the course’s long-term value improve learning in your course. This session offers an opportunity to review your syllabus to set not only your students up for success, but you as well. We will also review the Simple Syllabus process for uploading and making edits to your syllabus. | Marietta Campus, Wilson Student Center, Ballroom | |
| 1 - 1:50 p.m. | Managing Courses in D2L | All faculty assigned as an instructor for a course in OwlExpress will have a course shell assigned to them in our learning management system, D2L Brightspace. This session offers faculty an overview of the essential functions of D2L, including how to import course content into an empty shell. | Virtual, Microsoft Teams | |
| 2 - 2:50 p.m. | Sustainable Course Facilitation and Design | Sustainable Course Design means designing your course in D2L with the flexibility to shift between teaching modalities. This session offers an opportunity to dive into course facilitation skills needed to deliver a course in different modalities, including in-person, asynchronous, synchronous online, or hybrid. | Virtual, Microsoft Teams | |
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Friday, Assessment to Extend and Demonstrate Learning
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9 - 9:50 a.m. | Designing Effective Assessments | Assessment of student work is critical for helping students achieve deeper learning and to grow their capabilities. Nilson (2015) and Suskie (2004) posit that assessments should be motivating, aligned to goals and to learning tasks, reasonably simple, focused, and developmental, among other factors. This session will help you engage in the process of thinking through various design elements for assessments that support student learning in your courses. | Kennesaw Campus, Dr. Betty L. Siegel Student Recreation Center, Room 1090 |
| 10 - 10:50 a.m. | Grading and Feedback | Clark and Talbert (2023) outline how designing and implementing effective grading systems rests on four key pillars: clarity, helpfulness, forward thinking, and revision. In this session, we will explore evidence-based principles for designing and implementing effective grading systems and efficient grading practices. We will actively explore best practices and begin to reflect on how you can optimize your grading approach and improve student outcomes. | Kennesaw Campus, Dr. Betty L. Siegel Student Recreation Center, Room 1090 | |
| 1 - 1:50 p.m. | Assessment in D2L | D2L provides features for creating and tracking learning assessments, including gradebook and rubrics. In addition to these features, D2L has analytics to track the progress of your students. This session offers an overview of the learning assessment options in D2L as well as basics of the analytic tools. | Virtual, Microsoft Teams | |
| 2 - 2:50 p.m. | Using uHoo to Support Student Learning | uHoo is KSU’s learning analytics tool that helps faculty visualize and uncover existing patterns in your D2L data. It’s a tool for promoting student success, allowing you to review frequently missed quiz items, see patterns of student attendance, quickly identify students who need extra help, and more. Come to this introductory session to learn more about how to access and navigate uHoo Analytics. | Virtual, Microsoft Teams | |
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Tuesday, Teaching and Learning in the Context of AI
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9 - 9:50 a.m. | The Basics of AI and AI at KSU | Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming how we learn and work. This session will help you explore how learning the fundamentals of AI helps us to stay in the loop and enables us to contribute to the discussion of how we want to design our education and work environments and identify AI use policies at Kennesaw State University. | Virtual, Microsoft Teams |
| 10 - 10:50 a.m. | The Pedagogy of AI | With a solid grasp of AI fundamentals, we are now ready to consider the pedagogical implications of this tool. As Vivienne Ming’s research shows (2026), AI can sharpen our thinking or hollow it out, depending on how it is used. In this session, we will use insights from the science of learning to illuminate key pedagogical choices about AI in our courses (Ludwig & Zakrajsek 2026). | Virtual, Microsoft Teams | |
| 1 - 1:50 p.m. | AI2: Academic Integrity in the Age of AI | While issues of academic integrity have always been part of the higher ed landscape, the emergence of generative and agentic AI has deepened and accelerated anxiety about students cheating on activities and assessments. This interactive session will explore strategies faculty can use to create and sustain motivation in classes, so that students pursue the goal of learning instead of “getting the A” at any cost. | Virtual, Microsoft Teams | |
| 2 - 2:50 p.m. | AI & SoTL | Beyond teaching, faculty both new and returning have questions about ethical usage of AI in their research, including the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. This session will present a framework (Ritzhaupt, Dawson, & Crompton 2026) to help faculty decide appropriate and unethical uses of AI. | Virtual, Microsoft Teams | |
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Wednesday, Reaching and Teaching All KSU Students
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9 - 11 a.m. | Student Success Resource Fair | Come meet with over 20 resources across campus to explore how they can help you and your students succeed at KSU. | Kennesaw Campus, Horace W. Sturgis Library, 1st Floor |
| 1 - 2:15 p.m. | Digital Accessibility in Practice | Reducing barriers and designing environments that align with the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) benefits all students to engage meaningfully and thrive. Making learning accessible can seem like an overwhelming task. In this session, we'll help you understand how digital accessibility practices help transform teaching and learning both online and in the classroom. We'll also break accessibility down into simple habits and discuss how accessibility fosters student success for all. Participants will gain insight into the "who" behind the "why" of accessibility, with an emphasis on thoughtfully integrating accessibility into course design. | Virtual, Microsoft Teams |
