10 AND 12 DECEMBER 2024

CLASP FELLOWS COHORT '24 CAPSTONE CONFERENCE

CLASP Fellows Cohort '24 will share the results of teacher research projects that are the culmination of their work in the Fellows Program. Please join in listening to their presentations, discussing their research, and celebrating their work!

Register today!

“Real-Life Languaging”: Approaches to Teaching English Language Learners

26 November

8:30–11:30 (NY)
14:30–17:30 (Vienna)

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), uses authentic language material, such as newspaper articles, radio broadcasts and everyday communication situations. These help learners to feel immersed in real life social contexts where they engage with native speakers. At the same time, the everyday reality of second-language English speakers is that translanguaging (the ability to move between languages) is quite common. The aim of this workshop is to identify the ways in which CLT and translanguaging in ESL complement, support and inspire each other. This workshop invites lecturers and ESL/ELL instructors to join writing exercises where we will experiment with questions such as: How can translanguaging become a real-life element of everyday communicative situations in the classroom? How do we activate the instructors’/facilitators’ own multilingual backgrounds to access second language teaching? How do bridging/scaffolding devices in second language teaching give permission for playfulness in freewriting and dialogical notebook writing exercises? Register today!

Interviewing portraits: Engaging with Difficult Conversations in the Classroom

11 December

8:30–11:30 (NY)
14:30–17:30 (Vienna)

It can be challenging for us, as educators, to discuss tragic events such as wars, hunger, migration, violence, and poverty with our students. Many of us teach in classrooms where students face societal, political, or economic crises. That is why, in practice, our role often extends beyond teaching. In many instances, we must find ways to address these challenging circumstances without suppressing the associated emotions, instead integrating them into the learning process and creating a safe space where that learning can happen. This workshop will explore the application of IWT practices in observing, understanding, discussing, and writing about political, economic, and societal crises. More specifically, it will explore how IWT’s writing-based teaching practices can support processing, understanding, and coping with tragic moments through individual and collaborative working habits for students. Register today!

Designing Syllabi With an Equity Lens

20 August

8:30–11:30 (NY)
14:30–17:30 (Vienna)

The syllabus can be a place of old habits that reflect our own educational experiences and paths, and not necessarily the anti-biased journey of equity we practice or strive for. In this workshop, we will pass our syllabi through the lens of a campus equity statement to think about how the language of expectations we use towards our students shapes our authority, relationships, and community building in the classroom. If your campus does not have an equity statement (or has an outdated one), this workshop could help its generation and conceptualization as well. Participants will bring a recent syllabus or full draft for an upcoming course and can expect conversations about accessibility, universal design, and anti-racist approaches.

Reimagining the Online Liberal Arts & Sciences Classroom

17 September

8:30–11:30 (NY)
14:30–17:30 (Vienna)
A classroom built on active and connected learning is core to the liberal arts experience. Our practices encourage students to question assumptions, analyze texts, derive their own conclusions, debate, role play, and learn from one another. In this workshop, we will reimagine these foundational practices in the online classroom. We will probe strategies to keep students engaged without meeting face to face, consider the unique opportunities that online classrooms offer for active and connected learning, and work to translate some of our tried and true practices into a virtual terrain.

This workshop is the first in a series of three. Participants are encouraged to join us on 1 October for Building rapport in the Online Classroom: From Being Connected to Being in Sync and on 15 October for The Many Faces of Active Participation.

Think and Do:
Breaking Down a Mathematical Text

24 September

8:30–10:00 (NY)
14:30–16:00 (Vienna)
This workshop introduces strategies that help students tackle difficult texts. These practices help students to find points of entry, interrogate their understanding when it is still fuzzy or mistaken, and revise their thinking. We will work together to read and explore texts on the mathematics of voting, reflecting on how we can bring the strategies we use back to our own classrooms.

The content of this workshop is targeted towards faculty in mathematics and data-based social sciences, but participants from all backgrounds are welcome!

Fostering Inquiry in the Classroom

8 October

8:30–11:30 (NY)
14:30–17:30 (Vienna)
How do we encourage our students to write to inquire, wonder, and think? How can we create a space where metacognition and question posing can evolve naturally? This workshop will begin by exploring low-stakes writing practices that nurture curiosity and help students to see themselves as writer-enquirers. We will then think about ways to bring this mindset forward when students engage in more formal academic writing. This workshop is multi-disciplinary – participants from all fields will find practices to use in their own classrooms.

Building Rapport in the Online Classroom:
From Being Connected to Being in Sync

1 October

8:30–10:00 (NY)
14:30–16:00 (Vienna)
Classroom rapport is essential for active engagement, but it can be difficult to build and maintain. This is particularly true in the online classroom, where even experienced instructors can struggle to create space for connections to develop. In this workshop we will look at techniques to foster trust and understanding in the online classroom and talk about how we might adapt these practices for our own online learning contexts.

This workshop is the second in a series of three. Participants are encouraged to join us on 17 September for Reimagining the Online Liberal Arts & Sciences Classroom and on 15 October for The Many Faces of Active Participation.

The Many Faces of Active Participation

15 October

8:30–11:30 (NY)
14:30–17:30 (Vienna)
How do we offer engagement opportunities for all learners, not just those who speak up regularly in class? Active participation doesn’t have one face: it looks different for different learners and in different contexts. More specifically, the online classroom offers a unique opportunity for teachers to engage all students in creative, innovative ways. This workshop explores different ways of fostering active online participation through identifying what participation looks like and what key barriers are. Together, we will develop a toolkit with practical ideas to ensure inclusivity and active participation.

This workshop is the final in a series of three. Participants are encouraged to join us on 17 September for Reimagining the Online Liberal Arts & Sciences Classroom and on 1 October for Building Rapport in the Online Classroom: From Being Connected to Being in Sync.

Developing Student Media Literacy: An Open Access Module

22 October

8:30–10:00 (NY)
14:30–16:00 (Vienna)
How do we prepare students to navigate their own digital media landscapes? Students in a virtual classroom may come from a dozen media environments – all of which are quite different from one another, and often from our own. Ensuring that all students are media literate means giving them the power to understand the spread of information, assess credibility, and consume critically. The open access OSUN Media Literacy Module aims to do just that. In this workshop, we will walk through the tools in the Media Literacy Module, experiment with them ourselves, and think together about how to adapt the module to our own classroom contexts.

This workshop is targeted at faculty teaching OSUN Online and Network Connected Courses, but the content in the module is broadly applicable. All faculty are welcome to attend.

Managing Feedback and Silence in the Classroom

6 November

9:00–10:30 (NY)
15:00–16:30 (Vienna)
For an educator, the silent classroom can be a source of great anxiety and concern. Traditional approaches to effective classroom pedagogies often construct a binary between the silent classroom as an instance of passive/zero learning and the “voiced” classroom as an indicator of active learning. This workshop employs the IWT Dialectical Notebook, often referred to as a “written conversation,” as a way to begin to examine and harness students’ engagement and productivity. Participants will have the opportunity to work with and through the Dialectical Notebook first as learners themselves and then as instructors, designing activities that suit their own classrooms. Faculty from diverse disciplines and professional backgrounds are welcome to participate.

Writing to Read Difficult Texts

13 November

8:30–11:30 (NY)
14:30–17:30 (Vienna)

Creative, generative, or low stakes writing assignments are less common in more technical disciplines (such as Law, Economics or Public Policy) that often require students to work with difficult, complex, theoretical texts. This three-hour long workshop offers participants writing-rich strategies to use in order to demystify difficult readings through the use of techniques that invite students to engage through writing as part of their reading process. Working together experientially, participants will explore the potential of practices such as focused free writing, text rendering, loop writing, writing from sight & scents, and performance, within their own classes.

NEW!

“The Reflective Educator”: Writing to Support Ongoing Professional Development

20 November

8:30–10:00 (NY)
14:30–16:00 (Vienna)
Professional development is an increasingly important part of the tenure and promotion processes for faculty across disciplines and institutions. However, creating time for ongoing professional growth can be challenging–faculty are often stretched thin, juggling teaching responsibilities and research work. This workshop focuses on ways to use reflective writing as a tool for professional growth as well as a pedagogical innovation in and of itself. Through interactive and collaborative activities, participants will learn to integrate these writing-rich techniques authentically into their professional routine, thus promoting continuous improvement in their educational work.