University of Houston-Downtown / Academics / University College / centers-offices / Center for Teaching & Learning Excellence / Teaching Certificate

CERTIFICATE IN EVIDENCE-BASED INSTRUCTION & COURSE DESIGN

Main Badge for the Certificate in Evidence-Based Instruction & Course Development

Through participation in a series of workshops offered by the UHD Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, faculty can earn various badges and micro-credentials, leading to a Certificate in Evidence-Based Instruction and Course Design. Completion of this certificate signifies a dedication to continuous improvement of teaching skills and a commitment to UHD student success. Upon completion, participants will be able to implement backwards course design, identify evidence-based strategies relevant to their courses, and increase student motivation and engagement.

To earn badges, please complete the Badge Survey for each workshop you attend. You can also view the session recordings by clicking the hyperlinked session titles below and then submit the survey to earn the badge.

Fall 2020 Workshops

See below for a list of certificate series workshops that will be offered this semester. Individual workshops will be conducted via Zoom from 1:00-2:30 pm on the noted dates. Sessions for each microcredential will be repeated on noted Fridays in one 3 hour session from ~1-4 pm. For those that participated in this certificate series last year but did not complete the certificate, you can earn digital credentials from the 2020-21 academic year and combine them with credentials from the previous year to earn the certificate. Note that you only need to complete 3 microcredentials to earn the certificate. There is currently no deadline for doing this. If you have earned badges in the past, login to Badgr (https://badgr.io) with your UHD email to view your progress.

If registration for a given workshop or microcredential Friday is open, you should see a Register Now link next to it. Please click the link to register by noon the day before the session. We will also send registration reminders and links via email.

Online Teaching Design and Delivery Micro-credential

Workshops and Descriptions

Sep 3 | Converting a FTF Course to Online | Register Now!

Sep 10 | Best Practices with UHD Technology Tools | Register Now!

Sep 15 | Creating a Community of Inquiry | Register Now!

Sep 18 | Online Teaching Design and Delivery Make Up Session | Register Now!

Integrating Academic Support Services Micro-credential

Workshops and Descriptions

Sep 29 | An Extra Set of (Virtual) Hands – Using Embedded Tutoring Across Disciplines | Register Now!

Oct 13 | Supplemental Instruction and the Virtual Classroom

Oct 27 | Tutoring and Online Student Retention

Oct 30 | Integrating Academic Support Services Make Up Session

Inclusive Teaching Micro-credential

Workshops and Descriptions

Nov 10 | Establishing an Inclusive Learning Environment

Nov 24 | Building Community and Managing Discourse

Dec 8 | Exploring Universal Design for Learning

Dec 11 | Inclusive Teaching Make Up Session

ABOUT THE CERTIFICATE

Earn badges by attending

individual workshops in the

series, facilitated by UHD

faculty and/or CTLE staff.

Completing three workshops

as grouped below, leads to a

micro-credential.

To earn the certificate,

complete 3 of 5 available

micro-credentials.

WORKSHOP TITLES & DESCRIPTIONS

MICRO-CREDENTIAL

DESIGNING A

QUALITY COURSE

Decision Filters for an Aligned Course Design
An effective and efficient backwards course design process begins with strategic creation of course learning outcomes. Outcomes serve as decision filters for creating aligned learning activities and assessments that accurately reflect learning. In this workshop, you will learn timesaving approaches to creating outcomes that will drive your course design.

Learning Assessments and Feedback
How do we develop effective learning assessments to monitor student learning in a way that informs metacognition and our teaching? Here, we will examine learning assessment strategies
ranging from formative to summative and identify which strategies best fit your course structure. By the end of this workshop, you will be able to: 1. Make exams better suit your learning goals,
2. Identify factors that influence test performance, and 3. Provide effective feedback.

Learning Environment Modeling
Backwards course design ends by identifying relevant course content and how it is delivered. To inform this process, Learning Environment Modeling (LEM) provides a design language to visualize a learning environment with some key instructional priorities at center stage. We will cover the five LEM building blocks (i.e. Information, Dialogue, Feedback, Practice, and Evidence) and visualize how they can be connected to create an optimal learning experience.

	Scholarship of Teaching and Learning In this introductory workshop, participants will explore various sources for efficiently identifying relevant and evidence-based practice that can be applied in their courses. The workshop will include resources available through the UHD library and more broadly online. Finally, we will discuss key principles of experimental design and data collection to equip faculty participants to engage in their own scholarship relative to teaching and learning.	MICRO-CREDENTIAL EVIDENCE-BASED INSTRUCTION
	Flexible Instructional Frameworks An instructional framework is a set of pedagogical strategies shown to be effective in various contexts. They can be adapted according to individual teaching styles. A good framework is 1. Evidence-based, 2. Structured, 3. Flexible, 4. Transferable, and 5. Logical. In this workshop, attendees will learn about various frameworks, apply appropriate frameworks to different scenarios, and explore ways to adapt frameworks to their style and context.
	Evaluating Teaching Effectiveness Teaching is a cycle of growth, experimentation, and improvement. One way we can grow as teachers is by polling the students we are teaching. Here, we will look at how UHD conducts student evaluations, and plan for them early by selecting questions from those evaluations to incorporate into an anonymous mid-term feedback survey. In this workshop, we will develop a plan to implement the survey and create an action plan.

MICRO-CREDENTIAL

STUDENT MOTIVATION AND ENGAGEMENT

Creating a Student-Centered Learning Environment

Students learn best where they can be authentic, speak openly, and construct new knowledge through meaningful dialogue. Establishing an environment like this starts before the first day of class, with a carefully crafted syllabus, and it continues with intentional approaches to connecting with students, building an inclusive community, and making the content relevant to the students. In this workshop, participants will learn about syllabus design, inclusive excellence, and relating content to the real world.

Student Motivation in the Classroom & Beyond

While extrinsic motivators, like grades, tend to be the focus for most students, we as educators can create a learning environment for student that supports their intrinsic motivation. In this workshop, we will present tangible strategies for enhancing student motivation that are based in self-determination theory.

Promoting Academic Integrity

Encouraging academic integrity in the classroom goes beyond establishing hard and fast rules in the syllabus. Open dialogue about the principles of learning are the foundation for helping students understand the why behind the institutions policies regarding academic honesty. In the workshop, practical strategies for encouraging academic integrity will be presented, along with specific monitoring tools.

	Writing Within Your Discipline & Giving Effective Feedback How do we develop effective assignments that produce the kind of student writing we expect to see? How do we teach writing within our disciplines, but not go crazy under the weight of grading? We will examine differing citation styles and how to utilize library services & resources, as well as techniques for ensuring transparency. By the end of this workshop, you will be able to make assignments that treat writing as formative, create multimodal prompts that address real world opportunities for writing, and give effective feedback on writing that students will actually use.	MICRO-CREDENTIAL WRITING IN THE DISCIPLINES
	Embedding Writing in the DisciplinesStudents benefit from a variety of writing activities that can be easily embedded into your course. This workshop will cover using social annotating as a way to improve critical thinking and writing, scaffolding low-stakes writing assignments towards a larger project, creating and using rubrics for writing feedback, and how to draw on writing skills students already bring to your courses.
	Writing for English Language Learners 60% of UHD students feel most comfortable in a language other than English. How does this impact their written fluency, and how might we address their unique needs? Here, we will examine techniques that use strong verbal fluency as a way to improve textual fluency and will consider a variety of specific grammatical and linguistic issues that produce translation errors. By the end of the workshop, you will be able to deploy strategies for improving student fluency within your own discipline, help students understand assignment prompts so they are better able to meet the requirements of the assignment, and find ways to encourage reading writing aloud as an adjunct to revision.

MICRO-CREDENTIAL ONLINE TEACHING DESIGN AND DELIVERY		Converting a FTF Course to Online Teaching online for the first time can be daunting. How do you decide what material from your FTF course to keep, which file formats to use, and which activities to deploy? In this session, as we will establish a definition for course content, begin to plan for the design of a new online course, discuss web-appropriate content formats, explore strategies for converting content, and look at tools for creating online content
		Best Practices with UHD Technology Tools UHD is fortunate to have in its array of technology tools a wealth of supplemental solutions to add to Blackboard to make your online a true learning environment. In this session, we will walk through all of the UHD-supported technology tools and discuss instructional best practices for each of them. We will also look at ways to get additional assistance with learning and managing these tools from the instructor and student perspective
		Creating a Community of Inquiry The most interactive and engaging online courses are taught by instructors who are more facilitators than lecturers. In these courses, students are the builders of knowledge. But how do we get there? In this session, we will discuss strategies and techniques to foster a community of inquiry among your learners.

Last updated 9/22/2020 2:55 AM

Contact Information

Email: ctle@uhd.edu

Location: ACAD 700A

Office Hours:
Monday – Friday
7:00 am – 4:00 pm

Director:
Gregory Dement, PhD
713-221-8280

Associate Director:
Georges Detiveaux, MA
713-221-2724

CERTIFICATE IN EVIDENCE-BASED INSTRUCTION & COURSE DESIGN

Fall 2020 Workshops