Back-To-School Workshops

At the beginning of the fall and spring semesters, we offer a variety of tech trainings and pedagogy workshops — both on Zoom and on campus — to help instructors prepare for the new semester. Below you’ll find descriptions and links to register for sessions we’re offering this January. At the bottom of the page are links to recordings covering some of the same content, in case that alternative works better for you.

On campus sessions are held in the CTE’s Innovation Lab, in the O’Neill 250 suite. Refreshments will be provided for in-person workshops. Please note that we have two sessions focused on GenAI this time, one on assignment design and the other on the ethics of teaching with GenAI.

Canvas: Basics (on Zoom)

Monday, January 8, 10:00-11:30

Canvas is an online learning management system that can serve as a central hub for your course. It can be an important tool for communicating with your students about course structure and requirements, and sharing course materials including syllabi, readings, and other media. During this workshop, we will introduce instructors to the Canvas platform and essential features such as Announcements, Files, Modules, Pages, and Discussions. The session will include substantial hands-on practice.

Register for Canvas: Basics

Canvas: Assignments (on Zoom)

Monday, January 8, 1:00-2:30

The Assignments tool in Canvas allows you to clearly present assignment criteria and due dates to your students, accept a range of file types, and communicate grades and feedback. This session provides an overview of the Assignments tool and how it interacts with other parts of a Canvas course site. We will demonstrate how to create and modify assignments, add accommodations for students, and provide feedback on submitted assignments. We will also briefly review the Discussions tool. For those wanting to work with Rubrics, a separate consultation can be arranged. 

Please note that this workshop will only briefly mention the Quiz tool. For an in-depth workshop on Quizzing in Canvas, please see the Canvas Quizzes workshop.

Register for Canvas: Assignments

Canvas Quizzes (on Zoom)

Tuesday, January 9, 10:00-11:30

Canvas offers both Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes, two tools for assessment which will co-exist for the foreseeable future. Respondus Lockdown Browser can be used with either tool to administer computer-based exams in the classroom, and Respondus Monitor provides additional features for the administration of remote exams. This workshop will begin with an overview of both systems and criteria instructors might consult in choosing between them. Facilitators will show how to create Quizzes with a variety of question types, and how to organize and grade them and provide student accommodations. We will also review how to apply Lockdown Browser and Monitor, and factors to consider in deciding how best to support academic integrity around exams.

Register for Canvas: Quizzes

Poll Everywhere (on campus)

Tuesday, January 9, 1:00-2:30

This session will provide an overview of the Poll Everywhere platform, a free, web-based tool for creating interactive activities and polls for students. We will cover creating and presenting activities in Poll Everywhere, registering students and preparing them to participate, as well as viewing student responses and exporting grades from Poll Everywhere to Canvas.We will demonstrate how the tool can be used for low-stakes quizzing and to increase class engagement. To facilitate the hands-on practice this session will include, it will take place on campus. Please bring a laptop, tablet or phone which can access the internet.

Register for Poll Everywhere

Drop-In Session #1 (hybrid)

Tuesday, January 9, 1:00-3:00

Bring questions on Canvas and other BC-supported technologies, and CTE staff will answer them on a first come, first served basis. To make drop-ins accessible to as many instructors as possible, they will be offered in person with the option to attend remotely. Please indicate when registering whether you plan to attend in person or via Zoom. You are welcome to participate in the other format if you change your mind, but having projected numbers is useful for our planning.

Register for Drop-In Session #1

Assignment Design Reconsidered with GenAI (on Zoom)

Wednesday, January 10, 10:00-11:30

Teaching in the era of GenAI tools like ChatGPT has compelled us to reconsider the kinds of assignments we ask our students to complete and how we prepare them to submit their best work. The session will cover topics like maintaining academic integrity, addressing AI biases, and utilizing AI to enhance learning objectives and streamline the assignment design process. We will discuss ways to incorporate GenAI in an assignment as well as strategies to disincentivize its use. Participants will gain insights into best practices in assignment design, with a special focus on integrating these practices with GenAI. 

Optional: you can come to the workshop with a particular assignment in mind, as a final activity will give you a chance to rethink this assignment in light of what we cover.

Register for Assignment Design Reconsidered

Panopto: Recording and Retention (on Zoom)

Wednesday January 10, 1:00-2:30

BC supports Panopto for both lecture capture, which records classes in technology-equipped classrooms, and personal capture, which allows instructors to record presentations with audio, video and screen content. This workshop will introduce both types of recordings and explain recently updated retention protocols, including how to save prior lecture capture recordings for future use. We’ll also cover the “opt in” process for requesting recordings, and making them available to students. We’ll demonstrate how instructors can use personal capture to create recordings on their own laptops for students to view asynchronously, allowing more time in class for interaction.

Register for Panopto: Recording and Retention

Active Learning 2.0: Strength in Structure (on campus)

Thursday, January 11, 10:00-11:30

Early advocates of active learning believed its benefits came primarily from giving students more opportunities to actively engage with and apply course materials. More recent research, however, has highlighted how the added structure provided by active learning strategies is also an important element of why active learning is effective in supporting student learning. 

In this workshop, we’ll discuss how we might apply the insights from these recent studies, for example by mapping out use of time to encourage preparation outside of class and focus in the classroom and by organizing collaborative tasks to incentivize participation. We’ll explore a range of ideas and interventions for working with structure that can benefit students in any field of study.

Register for Active Learning 2.0

Ethical Issues: Teaching with GenAI (on Zoom)

Thursday, January 11, 1:00-2:30

This workshop is designed for all instructors interested in how GenAI is impacting education, whether they are interested in using the technology for teaching or not. Facilitators will present the complex ethical landscape surrounding the use of GenAI in education, highlighting the following issues: bias in what AI produces, copyright concerns, risks for misformation, and accessibility of the technology. Facilitators will engage participants in a discussion of how to mitigate against these issues if using GenAI in the classroom, and how to discuss such issues with students.

Register for Ethical Issues: Teaching with GenAI

Canceled: Teaching the Hidden Curriculum (on campus)

Friday, January 12, 10:00-11:30

In The Privileged Poor, the sociologist Anthony Abraham Jack shares that because components of academic life like office hours aren’t often defined, many first-generation students don’t know what they are or how to make the most of them. The norms for office hours are part of the hidden curriculum, “the unwritten rules and unspoken expectations” of higher education. 

While some of our students come into our classrooms with a clear sense of these rules, they are unfamiliar to many others, including first-generation students who can’t lean on parental advice and neurodivergent students who are less likely to pick up on unspoken environmental cues. Unveiling the hidden curriculum in the courses you teach is one way to support the learning of all of your students. Join us as we think together about practices that we can use to reveal and revise the hidden curriculum, including small scale adjustments you can fit in the first days of the semester.

Drop-In Session #2 (hybrid)

Friday, January 12, 1:00-3:00

Bring questions on Canvas and other BC-supported technologies, and CTE staff will answer them on a first come, first served basis. To make drop-ins accessible to as many instructors as possible, they will be offered in person with the option to attend remotely. Please indicate when registering whether you plan to attend in person or via Zoom. You are welcome to participate in the other format if you change your mind, but having projected numbers is useful for our planning.

Register for Drop-In Session #2

Session Recordings

Click the links below to see recordings from previous tech trainings:

Accommodation Requests

The Center for Teaching Excellence is committed to providing equal access to its events and programs. Individuals with disabilities who anticipate needing accommodations or who have questions about physical access may contact centerforteaching@bc.edu.

Past Back-to-School Workshops

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