Events – IWT CLASP

NEW! Certificate in Global Pedagogy

The IWT CLASP Certificate in Global Pedagogy is a new micro-credential open to faculty from GHEA21 partner institutions who wish to deepen their global classroom practice. Workshops with the

Global Learning Focus

tag below count towards the global learning focus requirement for the certificate. Click here to read more and apply for the certificate today!

Bridging the Gap: Supporting Independent Academic Reading

Dale Mineshima-Lowe
Parami University

18 September

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

This two-hour interactive workshop is for educators seeking practical ways to enhance students’ engagement with assigned out-of-class reading. We will practice strategies for scaffolding reading assignments to help students overcome common challenges, including comprehension difficulties, low motivation, time management, and accountability. Through discussion, hands-on activities, and real-world examples, participants will share and develop practices that support student success before, during, and after reading. We will consider ways to activate prior knowledge, use guiding questions, encourage active reading through annotation and written dialogue with peers, and foster reflection and retrieval. Participants will leave with a toolkit of strategies and co-created templates to support student reading inside and outside the classroom.

Register here!

Writing through Wicked Problems: Parables, Rhetoric, and Student Voice

Zlata Božac

Dan Wessner

Parami University

Global Learning Focus

25 September

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

How can students find their voice when facing “wicked problems” – complex issues such as poverty and injustice that resist technical solutions and involve deep moral and cultural dilemmas? This workshop explores how rhetorical thinking and imaginative texts, such as parables and allegories, can help students engage with uncertainty and complexity. Drawing on Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen’s Annapurna parable, participants will write to uncover assumptions, inhabit multiple perspectives, and reflect on how meaning and agency are shaped through discourse. Rather than seeking easy answers, the workshop invites ethical, critical, and creative engagement with global issues, fostering the rhetorical awareness needed to act thoughtfully in the world.

Register here!

Climate Despair to Climate Hope: Building Connection and Action

Birsha Ohdedar

SOAS University of London

Erzsébet Strausz

Central European University

Global Learning Focus

14 October

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

Many students care deeply about climate change and other pressing global issues. As they learn more about the scale of these problems, it is easy for students to feel overwhelmed, hopeless, or powerless. As educators, how can we help students stay engaged, without losing heart? How can we foster hope, meaning, community and a sense of purpose in our classrooms? This workshop explores how simple writing practices, like free writing and guided writing, can support embodied learning and draw on diverse ways of knowing. These practices can help students reflect on their emotions, connect their personal experiences to understanding global issues, and imagine meaningful ways to take action. These techniques aim to help bridge academic learning with lived experience, and support students in finding clarity and motivation. This workshop is for educators who want to inspire and empower students, not only in facing the climate crisis, but also in responding to challenges like social injustice and global conflict. Together we will explore how to build learning environments rooted in care, community and action.

Register here!

Creating Choice-Driven Assessments: Principles and Practices

Nèka Da Costa

University of the Witwatersrand

María Lucía Guerrero Farías

Universidad de los Andes

29 October

9:00–11:00 (NY)
14:00–16:00 (Vienna)
Note the difference in time

Do your students see assessments as just tests or exams? Do your students value assessments – and the skills they aim to teach – beyond their grade? Choice-driven assessments give students some control over how they demonstrate their learning – for example, by choosing a project format, focus, or method that plays to their strengths. Such practices honor the diverse needs and voices of students and grant them agency in how they are assessed. This workshop explores why and how to incorporate more student choice into assessment design. Through a series of individual and collective writing activities, participants will reflect on the principles of choice-driven assessments and identify concrete ways to integrate them into their classrooms, fostering responsibility and ownership in student learning.

Register here!

AI: Your Most Disruptive Student

Begimai Abdraeva

American University of Central Asia

Dorota Ostrowska

Birkbeck University of London

5 November

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

We may be tempted to ignore the presence and the voice of our most disruptive – and perhaps most vocal and provocative – student: AI. Yet doing so does not serve teachers or learners. In this workshop, we use disruptive in the sense of disruptive technologies: forces that challenge old patterns and open possibilities for innovation. Together, we will explore how AI can be woven into teaching and learning as a partner in creative and critical thinking. Participants will experience what it’s like to include an AI bot as an active participant in collaborative writing-based practices such as dialectical notebooks and writing-to-read activities. The goal of the workshop is to help educators respond to concerns about plagiarism by establishing constructive boundaries around the use of AI and harnessing its potential for more engaged learning.

Note: Participants are asked to set up a ChatGPT account and to familiarize themselves briefly with the software prior to the workshop.

Register here!

Storytelling in the Global Classroom: Bringing Narrative into Your Teaching

Julia Carey-Arendell

Bard Early College New Orleans

Esther Laryea

Ashesi University

Reginald Louis

Haitian Education and Leadership Program

Global Learning Focus

13 November

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

Storytelling is a powerful yet often overlooked tool in the classroom – not only in literature, but across disciplines. Far from being an innate gift, storytelling is an art and a skill that can be learned and applied to engage students, to deepen their connection to topics, and to strengthen classroom community. In fields as varied as finance, history, and psychology, storytelling can clarify complex concepts, spark curiosity, and motivate action. In today’s global and multicultural classrooms, storytelling also plays a key role in bridging cultural perspectives, fostering empathy, and communicating across differences. In this workshop, we will use a variety of writing-based teaching practices to explore the underlying structures that make stories compelling and adapt these tools to our own disciplines.

Register here!

Building Knowledge Together: Strategies for Peer Feedback and Classroom Community

Alisa Alybaeva

American University of Central Asia

Gracy Pelacani

Universidad de los Andes

Liliana Tymchenko

European Humanities University

20 November

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

Students are the protagonists of their learning process and vital members of a community of learners. Yet for teachers, it is not always easy to cultivate the kinds of peer feedback that make collaboration meaningful. This workshop will focus on writing-based teaching strategies that foster active listening, thoughtful response, and peer teaching. Together, we’ll explore ways to help students share their knowledge with one another, develop skills for giving and receiving constructive feedback, and build supportive classroom communities where writing is both a tool for learning and a bridge between peers.

Register here!