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. Read more and apply for the certificate today!

Teaching in Low-Bandwidth Environments: Strategies for Online Liberal Arts Courses

Dale Mineshima-Lowe
Parami University

Global Learning Focus

10 February

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

This workshop focuses on sharing and modeling best practices for teaching online liberal arts courses that include students in low-bandwidth environments, where internet access may be slow, unstable, or intermittent. Active, participatory learning and student interaction are central to liberal arts pedagogy, but they require thoughtful design in online settings. Unreliable internet connectivity can limit students’ ability to participate fully in real-time activities and to build meaningful connections with peers and instructors. Together, we will explore how to structure online classes and prepare course materials that support students with limited connectivity while maintaining interactive, discussion-based classrooms. We will consider strategies for balancing necessary accommodations, such as flexible camera use or relying on chat, with the pedagogical commitments at the heart of liberal arts teaching.

Writing Before Knowing: Freewriting in Multilingual Teaching and Learning

Liliana Tymchenko
European Humanities University

Global Learning Focus

25 February

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

This workshop explores ways that instructors can use informal, low-stakes writing in multilingual classrooms to help build more robust and nuanced collective understandings of key terms and disciplinary concepts. Rather than approaching multilingualism as a problem to be solved, the workshop approaches it as a resource for analysis, interpretation, and reflection. Participants will experiment with both monolingual and translingual freewriting, drawing on multiple languages to explore texts and concepts and to trace how meaning shifts across linguistic and cultural contexts. We will consider how creative appeals to multiple languages can broaden participation and enhance engagement for students with varying levels of proficiency in the language of instruction. Participants will leave with ideas for course activities and assignments that integrate translingual freewriting into their own teaching.

Reading With AI: Guardrails for Thoughtful Engagement

Dorota Ostrowaska
Birkbeck, University of London

4 March

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

Reading critically, both to understand the ideas of others and to surface one’s own, is a core academic and life skill. How might inviting generative AI into the reading process enhance or hinder this foundational skill? In this workshop, participants will read an academic text of their choice in dialogue with AI, experimenting with deliberate strategies for constraining and directing its role. The goal is to explore how instructors can create a pedagogical environment in which students work purposefully with AI when reading academic texts. By crafting AI prompts intentionally and reflecting on their effects, instructors and students can develop practices that help them retain intellectual agency in the reading process and ownership of the ideas that emerge through AI-assisted reading.

Writing in the Zones, Reimagined: Supporting Writers Across Modalities

Lynn Clausen

American University of Afghanistan
Dale Mineshima-Lowe

Parami University

10 March

9:00–11:00 (NY)
14:00–16:00 (Vienna)

Note the difference in time.

Writing in the Zones, a core Institute for Writing and Thinking practice, is a powerful tool for planning essays and developing ideas. By helping students to notice themes and patterns in their preliminary thinking, it helps support the transition from exploratory writing to longer, more polished work. This workshop will introduce Writing in the Zones in its traditional pen-and-paper form and then explore playful adaptations that experiment with form and medium, including using multimedia and digital tools that support the practice in online classrooms. Participants will explore how working with messy first thoughts, guided by a clear conceptual and visual structure and enriched through peer feedback, can support essay writing. The workshop will be useful to participants who are new to Writing in the Zones as well as those who are interested in expanding and reinventing this practice for different teaching contexts.

From Experience to Insight: Using Writing with Interactive Digital Activities and Games

Zlata Božac

26 March

9:00–11:00 (NY)
14:00–16:00 (Vienna)

Note the difference in time.

Many instructors use digital activities, games, or online tools to increase engagement, but it can be hard to help students slow down and learn from these experiences. This workshop focuses on how writing can support reflection, analysis, and discussion before, during, and after experiential work. Participants will briefly play The Fake News Game (getbadnews.com) and use guided writing prompts to reflect on their choices and assumptions. We will then step back to consider how these reflective writing practices can be adapted to other in- and out-of-class activities. The emphasis is not on the game itself, but on how writing helps turn experience into learning. Participants will leave with writing-based strategies they can apply to their own tools and activities in online and global classrooms.

Practicing the Global: Simulations and Applied Learning

Kerry Bystrom

Bard College Berlin

David Register

Bard College

Global Learning Focus

14 April

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

One goal of GHEA21 classes, and many other globally oriented classes, is to foster meaningful global dialogue. Yet achieving dialogue that goes beyond the surface can be challenging. This workshop will explore how simulations of international institutions and procedures, such as mock human rights review processes or climate negotiations, can deepen students’ understanding of global practices while strengthening their engagement and agency. Drawing on simulations and applied learning projects developed for GHEA21 courses on global citizenship, human rights advocacy and children’s rights, this workshop will explore practice-based classroom activities from design to assessment. Participants will have the opportunity to begin developing simulation or applied learning projects tailored to their own courses.

No Question Left Behind: Ending Your Course on a Reflective Note

Neada Mullalli
Pușa Năstase

Central European University

21 April

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

How can instructors use student questions to shape key moments in a course – especially the final class sessions – in ways that help students reflect and carry their learning forward? This workshop will explore how peer-led inquiry can help students surface unresolved ideas, areas of curiosity, and lingering questions at the end of a course. Often associated with exit tickets, student-led inquiry is approached here as a broader strategy for course closure that emphasizes dialogue and shared responsibility for learning. Through collaborative activities and opportunities to share best practices, participants will consider how student-generated questions and peer response can help create more meaningful final class sessions in both online and in-person settings.

From Comment to Dialogue: Feedback that Transforms

María Lucia Guerrero Farías

Universidad de los Andes

Andrea Solano Vargas

Universidad de los Andes

28 April

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

Do you spend a lot of time giving feedback to your students only to sense that it’s been ignored? This workshop explores how to shift feedback from evaluative comments to dialogic feedback – feedback that invites students to reflect and respond – using process writing practices. Dialogic feedback turns comments into the start of an ongoing conversation. As students write in response to feedback, they learn to dialogue with it, reflect on it, and integrate it into their work over time. Through individual and collaborative activities, participants will experiment with writing-rich feedback strategies and consider how to apply them in their own teaching contexts.