CEL Events

The CEL offers events on teaching and learning-focused topics in a variety of formats, each session providing the opportunity to share experiences and knowledge with colleagues. 

If you are interested in facilitating a workshop or have suggestions for future topics, please contact us!

upcoming schedule of events

Workshops !

These collaborative events are designed for you to gather with your colleagues, learn together, and leave with a specific outcome to meet your teaching/professional needs. All workshops are held at the 11 am meeting hour in the CEL room.

Tuesday, October 8: Developing and Maintaining Your Research Agenda.
Dr. Diana Elliot (Department of Counseling and Student Affairs) will share tips for focusing your scholarship approach at a 4-4 teaching institution.  Whether you are incoming faculty or have been here a while, we can all use time to develop or fine-tune our scholarship plans.

Thursday, October 31: Connecting students: Empathy Mapping. 
Our students bring many layers to the classroom — from working full-time and feeling anxious to increased DSO accommodations and financial insecurity — but classes still have skills and content to cover. How can we identify these layers, and how might we help students be more motivated and successful in our classes?  Erin Kraal and Karen Rauch from the CEL will lead an empathy mapping activity focused on how students engage with the specific components of your course(s). 

Tuesday, November 19: Playing the Motivation Game.
Student motivation is a huge issue in our courses, and many faculty identify this as one of their top challenges. In this workshop, we’ll play some games to find new ways to motivate the students in our courses. Led by Erin Kraal, you’ll leave with new ideas to inspire your students, and a few prizes, too!

Lunch bunch!

Once a month, join the CEL for a brown bag lunch. Bring an interesting new idea, a sticky problem, or just your lunch! We’ll chat and share ideas with our colleagues…and yes, there will be cookies!The Lunch Bunch will meet Fridays from 12 – 1 pm in the CEL on the following days:

• September 27
• October 25
• November 15

Comp Conversations

Thursdays from 11 - 11:50 am in the CEL. You can also join us on Zoom! 

September 26, 2024: Peer Review Assignment Share

How do we challenge students to engage more deeply with peer writing? This is an “assignment share” workshop designed to give us all more options and ideas on peer review activities and assignments. We will focus on innovative strategies that shake up students’ (and our own!) expectations of peer review. If you use an interesting peer review activity in your composition course, email sleonard@kutztown.edu a brief description, assignment sheet, or other materials to share on our D2L page and in person at the workshop. Or, you can just come to get ideas.

October 10, 2024: A.I. Assignment Share

How do you teach students about LLMs (Large Language Models)? This is an “assignment share” workshop designed to give us all more options and ideas in teaching about or with “A.I.” If you are planning on using A.I. in your composition course, email sleonard@kutztown.edu a brief description, assignment sheet, or other materials to share on our D2L page and in person at the workshop. Or, you can just come to get ideas.

October 24, 2024: Strategies and Technologies to Support Students with Disabilities in Composition Courses

Megan Rutter from the DSO will show us assistive technology in Microsoft 365 and Glean. This demonstration will be followed by a discussion on pedagogical strategies for accommodations relevant to the composition classroom such as flexible assignment deadlines, oral participation, use of a computer, electronic notetaking, and more.

November 7, 2024: Multimodal Composition Assignment Share

Do you assign—or want to assign—posters, podcasts, presentations, videos, games, blogs, or more? This is an “assignment share” workshop designed to give us all more options and ideas on multimodal activities and assignments. If you assign any multimodal composition in your course, email me sleonard@kutztown.edu a brief description, assignment sheet, or other materials to share on our D2L page and in person at the workshop. Or, you can just come to get ideas.

December 5, 2024: O.E.R. Book Launch Party

Your Kutztown composition faculty colleagues wrote an Open Educational Resource textbook! This workshop will introduce you to this FREE resource designed specifically for Kutztown students in COMP100 courses and meet some of the faculty authors involved in this project.

Innovative Pedagogy Book Club

Do you feel like the feedback you give students isn’t being utilized? Are you stuck in “grading jail?” Does it seem students are just unmotivated to make meaningful changes? This semester’s Innovative Pedagogy Book group might be a good fit for you!

We will be reading Grading for Growth: A Guide to Alternative Grading Practices that Promote Authentic Learning and Student Engagement in Higher Education by David Clark and Robert Talbert (preview the eBook). This learning community will explore how different ways of assessment can help us achieve our learning goals and spend less time grading. This book group is co-facilitated by Jacob Sewall and Danielle Seier and meets throughout the semester on Mondays from 1-2 pm in the CEL office, Rohrbach 6. You can sign up for the book group by using this online form. If this time doesn’t work for you, please suggest an alternate time on the form.