Events – IWT CLASP

2026–27 Certificate Pathways

Certificate in Global Pedagogy

The Certificate in Global Pedagogy is a microcredential for Global Higher Education Alliance for the 21st Century (GHEA21) faculty who want to make engaged global learning central to their global classrooms.

Certificate in Online Liberal Arts

The Certificate in Online Liberal Arts is a micro-credential for GHEA21 faculty who want to build and sustain dynamic, interactive online classrooms grounded in writing-rich liberal arts pedagogies.

Tags below indicate whether a workshop counts towards the specific focus requirement for each certificate pathway. See our certificate page for more details and apply today!

Annotation: Moving Beyond the Highlighter

Lynn Clausen

Smolny Beyond Borders

Dale Mineshima-Lowe

Parami University

Online Liberal Arts Focus

22 September

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

Students sometimes arrive in our learning spaces underprepared for the demands of close and sustained reading. This can be particularly challenging for multilingual students and those new to academic reading and writing. This workshop offers structured, adaptable tools—including Writing in the Zones—for breaking down text at paragraph, sentence, and word level. We will explore a range of approaches to annotation: in and out of class, individual and collaborative, digital and pen-and-paper. We will ask what we hope our students’ annotations will look like and accomplish. What does a good annotation do? Finally, we will consider how prompts can direct annotation and be tailored to different disciplines. Through discussion and writing, participants will leave with a transferable framework to be adapted and applied in their own settings.

Register here!

Collaborative Activities for Global Learning

Daniel Calingaert
Bard College

Global Learning Focus

29 September

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

Global classrooms, where students around the world come together online, provide valuable opportunities for intercultural learning. This workshop explores how to design assignments and shape classroom dynamics to make the most of these opportunities. It focuses on activities that challenge students to engage with diverse perspectives across geographic contexts, to work together constructively, and to learn from each other across cultural differences. Participants will take part in a group exercise designed to promote global learning, intercultural competence, and collaboration, and then reflect on ways they might add collaborative activities to their courses.

Register here!

Teaching Sensitive Topics through Freewriting

Liliana Tymchenko

European Humanities University

Global Learning Focus

8 October

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

This interactive workshop explores how freewriting can support the teaching of sensitive and controversial topics in liberal arts classrooms. When discussing issues such as war, colonialism, inequality, identity, and human rights, students often encounter emotionally challenging materials that require both intellectual and personal engagement. Participants will learn how carefully scaffolded informal writing activities can foster critical reflection, meaningful dialogue, and constructive engagement with diverse perspectives in both face-to-face and global online learning environments.

The workshop also highlights how freewriting can help students manage the emotional weight of difficult material. By reducing the fear of making mistakes and shifting attention from evaluation to exploration, freewriting helps students process complex experiences and develop confidence in expressing emerging ideas. Drawing on writing pedagogy and student-centered learning, the session offers practical strategies for creating inclusive classrooms that support both academic inquiry and personal growth.

Register here!

Mind the Gap: Writing and Quizzing at Mid-Semester with Gen AI

Zlata Božac

Dorota Ostrowska

Birkbeck University of London

Online Liberal Arts Focus

14 October

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

This workshop focuses on a pivotal moment in a course: the mid-semester point, when it is helpful to take stock of how students are learning. We will model a single, adaptable class session that expands core IWT practices—focused freewriting, private freewriting, and loop writing—with generative AI. The goal is to explore how generative AI can support a personalized, human-centered learning environment that is responsive to students’ needs. A guiding principle throughout is that AI augments teaching and learning rather than replacing teachers or learners.

The workshop addresses both sides of the classroom: for students, it offers a structured way to identify gaps in their understanding (via an individualized, AI-generated quiz built from their own writing) and take ownership of their learning; for instructors, a practical method for adapting teaching methods and materials, with AI assistance, in response to what students need at different points in a course. Drawing on the PAIR framework (King’s College London), the workshop focuses on Interaction (what happens when generative AI enters students’ learning and instructors’ teaching design) and Reflection (how this engagement can be helpful and human-centered) in order to develop practical, hands-on AI literacies for educators and students alike.

Register here!

Connected Learning with Limited Connectivity: Rethinking Learning Activities

Dale Mineshima-Lowe

Parami University

Global Learning Focus

Online Liberal Arts Focus

20 October

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

The workshop focuses on rethinking how we organize learning activities to include students in low-bandwidth environments, where slow, unstable, or limited internet can hinder students’ ability to participate fully in our online classes. Together, we will explore, adapt, create, and share learning activities for reading- and writing-based courses. Participants should bring one of their current learning activities for peer review and revision. Additional activities will be co-created by participants or shared by the workshop leader. This workshop builds on last year’s Teaching in Low-Bandwidth Environments; newcomers are welcome, and no prior attendance is required.

Register here!

Perfecting Imperfection: Using Collaborative Writing Practices to Develop Students’ Critical Thinking

Néka Da Costa

University of the Witwatersrand

28 October

9:00–11:00 (NY)
14:00–16:00 (Vienna)

Note the time change

In an era when students can generate near-perfect assignments at the click of a button, how can we help them trust their own “imperfect” academic voices to develop confidence and independent critical thinking? This workshop will guide participants through collaborative writing practices drawn from the leader’s own Theatre Arts classroom to teach students how to construct evidence-based arguments, engage critically with scholarly literature, analyze case studies, and improve their own writing—without relying on generative AI. Rather than treating academic writing as a polished product, these practices position it as a messy process of discovery that undergoes constant evolution. They inject a sense of playfulness into the production of knowledge, helping students find their individual scholarly identities in an increasingly AI-mediated academic landscape.

Participants should bring an anonymized example of student writing, already submitted for an assignment, to serve as shared working material.

Register here!

Teaching Personas and Creativity in the Classroom

Neada Mullalli

Anglo-American University in Prague

Pușa Năstase

Central European University

5 November

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

Note the time change

For many teachers, creativity in the classroom may seem like a double-edged sword. Approach it too enthusiastically and you might be perceived as not sufficiently serious or professional; approach it too superficially and learning goals are not met. As a result, even skilled teachers find themselves using the same “safe” toolkit of teaching methods. After all, we work hard to figure out our “teaching persona,” and experimenting with more creative assignments feels risky. Yet this is exactly what we ask of our students when we invite them to try unfamiliar writing-based practices.

This workshop is designed for teachers who want to reflect on their teaching persona and are open to trying creative assignments that might seem (at least initially) to clash with that persona. The workshop will model creative learning activities—such as staging a performance of a text or writing a haiku—before participants share ideas and discuss which activities they might carry into their own classrooms. Through writing-rich teaching and learning methods, this workshop uses self-reflection to challenge our default teaching personas and, ultimately, to normalize creative assignments in “non-creative” subjects.

Register here!

Beyond Cookie-Cutter AI: Writing-Based Frameworks for Mindful Teaching and Student Literacy

Zlata Božac

Dorota Ostrowska

Birkbeck University of London

10 November

9:00–11:00 (NY)
15:00–17:00 (Vienna)

Many instructors feel caught between two extremes: banning generative AI outright or embracing it wholesale. Rather than preaching a one-size-fits-all policy, this workshop offers a structured way to help instructors move past gut feelings and define pedagogical boundaries for a specific assignment. Participants should bring one of their current writing assignments to the session. Together, we will deconstruct the writing process from the student’s perspective and identify friction points: where and why are students using AI, and where do we draw the line?

The workshop then moves into direct simulation: participants will step into their students’ shoes, using a chatbot to work through their own assignment to see where AI has the potential to support learning, where it introduces pitfalls, and where it risks replacing the thinking the assignment is meant to cultivate. These observations become the basis for developing stage-specific guidance that helps students use AI deliberately while preserving the assignment’s learning goals. Participants will leave with a draft AI framework tailored to the writing assignment they brought.

Register here!