Writing Across the Curriculum Lunch & Learns
Leveraging Writing as a High-Impact Practice: Designing and Assessing Assignments
Date: September 14, 2023
Time: 12:15 – 1:30 p.m.
Location: Executive Dining Room, Christian Cafeteria
Facilitator: Dr. Jen Talbot
Writing assignments are highly effective at helping students engage with content in complex ways and develop their own voices as professionals in a discipline, but they can also be labor intensive. This workshop presents some of the benefits of writing as a high-impact practice, and offers strategies for developing assignments and streamlining the feedback process. Participants will also have the opportunity to learn from one another as we work with a sample paper. Register online!
Style and Clarity in Technical and Workplace Writing
Date: October 26, 2023
Time: 12:15 – 1:30 p.m.
Location: Executive Dining Room, Christian Cafeteria
Facilitator: Dr. Jen Talbot
Academic writing and technical writing–forms of written communication used by professionals to convey specialized information–are governed by different sets of conventions. In many cases, because of these different conventions, students struggle to apply what they have learned in their First-Year Writing classes to writing in their disciplines. This workshop offers strategies and language to help us help students bridge the gap between academic and technical writing, and to help them learn how to write like a scientist (or a historian, or a nurse, or an engineer…). Register online!
Co-Sponsored Programming
Implications for Educating for Diversity (UCA Core)
Date: October 5, 2023
Time: 12:15 – 1:30 p.m.
Location: BHCC 112/114
Facilitators: Jacob Held, Nelle Bedner, Eric Bowne, Jacob Bundrick, Mavuto Kalulu, Sandy Longhorn, Louis Young
Join us for a conversation and workshop on developing impactful engagements with the UCA Core Diversity learning outcomes. Do you wonder how to better facilitate “curiosity” among your students? Or maybe you’ve struggled with fostering and evaluating “empathy.” What have your colleagues been doing in the classroom? What seems to work well? For this lunch and learn session we will hear from colleagues who teach in each goal, learn about what they’ve been doing, and brainstorm ways to improve our own classroom activities. Register online!
Goal A: Analyze one’s own cultural values and assumptions.
Goal B: Analyze or compare diverse values, traditions, belief systems, and/or perspectives.
Goal C: Analyze creative works within diverse contexts.
Accommodations & Accessibility with the Office of Accessibility Resources & Services (OARS)
Dates: September 14, 2023, September 28, 2023, January 25, 2024 or February 8, 2024
Time: 1:40 – 2:30 p.m. (x-period)
Location: Student Health Building 307
Facilitators: Doris Pierce & the OARS Team hosted by Charlotte Strickland
Students with disabilities are making their presence known within the higher education landscape nationwide like never before. At least 10% of the general student populations of colleges and universities are students with disabilities. Even though UCA student population enrollment numbers are solidified after the 11th day of classes for any given semester, disabled students can register to request accommodations that provide equal access to the UCA campus community through the Office of Accessibility Resources and Services (OARS) within any time frame throughout the academic year. Attend our training to understand why OARS exists, why we do what we do and how we educate the entire campus community about accommodations and accessibility. Diversity credit is provided for all attendees.
Register with Employee Engagement & Enrichment (Scroll down the page to locate these events.)
Book Talk: Adventures in Self-Publishing a Children’s Book on Nature: Joys, Frustrations, and Lessons Learned
Date: Thursday, November 2, 2023
Time: x-period (1:40-2:30 p.m.)
Location: McCastlain Fireplace Room
Facilitator: David Dussourd
In this talk, David will describe his experiences publishing children’s books with IngramSpark and Amazon KDP. David will discuss his motivation and goals in writing children’s books and review steps taken to bring the books to publication. The talk will emphasize what he wishes he had known before publishing with the goal of helping other authors navigate the self-publishing industry. Register online!
Constructive Dialogue: Fostering Trust, Curiosity, and Deeper Learning in the Classroom
Date: Tuesday, October 17
Time: 12:15 – 1:30 p.m.
Location: BHCC 112/114
Whether used to practice critical communication skills or as a pedagogical strategy for teaching about challenging social issues within a discipline, constructive dialogue helps students build lasting skills for life in a democratic society. Panelists Riva Brown (School of Communications), Taine Duncan (Philosophy & Religion), Cindy Lea (Honors College), and Sherry Skaggs (Sociology, Criminology, and Anthropology) will each share what they have learned from incorporating constructive dialogue into their classrooms as part of a year-long community of practice. Following the panel, participants will identify resources for building their skills in facilitating dialogue and applications for dialogue in their classrooms. Register online!
Student Engagement with Digital Ink
Date: Tuesday, November 7
Time: 1:40 – 2:30 p.m. (xperiod)
Location: College of Business Auditorium 107
Digital ink moves the traditional hand-written notes or drawings from the whiteboard to the screen with a digital pen display. With digital ink you can create images, solve worksheet problems, highlight key points, and annotate slides all as if you are using a real pen on paper but the students see it on the screen. If you’ve ever seen the Khan Academy style videos, that is digital inking. It has greatly benefited my online and face-to-face lectures. It brings ink to life!
The lesson covers an introduction to how to create Kahn Academy-style videos, Microsoft’s built-in drawing functions, as well as several drawing and annotation tools. The benefits of moving from the whiteboard to digital ink for both the online and traditional classroom are palpable. Live-streamed online lectures had a classroom-like feel because the pen strokes are in real-time for students attending remotely. Traditional lectures are more engaging and immersive because the instructor faces the class and not the whiteboard and can swap between annotating slide to working problems on a blank screen. The use of the drawing monitor allows the instructor to adapt to students’ questions in real-time, illustrate concepts with digital inking, take notes that can be digitally shared, and answer questions more interactively. The drawing monitors allow the instructor to create information-rich content that is more interactive and immersive than both traditional and online lecture methods. It’s the bacon to your classroom breakfast!