Author: Jeff Toorongian

As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) continues to evolve, instructors are exploring how these tools can support teaching and learning while considering their implications for academic integrity, student learning, and responsible use.

The Center for Faculty Excellence (CFE) has launched a new Teaching and Learning with GenAI resource collection to help Michigan Tech instructors navigate these opportunities and challenges. The guidance offers practical strategies and considerations to help instructors make informed decisions about GenAI use in their courses.

The resources address several key topics, including:

• Understanding GenAI capabilities and limitations
• Deciding how GenAI fits into your course
• Communicating expectations for student GenAI use
• Designing assignments with GenAI in mind
• Using GenAI responsibly to support instructional work
• Addressing academic integrity concerns

These resources are intended to support instructors regardless of their current experience with GenAI or whether they choose to incorporate these tools into their teaching. The emphasis is on thoughtful, responsible use that supports student learning and maintains instructor oversight. We encourage you to explore these resources and consider how the guidance might inform your teaching practices.

On September 15, the Center for Faculty Excellence (CFE) hosted its annual Instructional Awards Luncheon, recognizing three Michigan Tech instructors for their outstanding contributions to teaching and learning.

The 2026 CFE Instructional Award recipients are:

• Holly Hassel, Professor of Humanities — Curriculum Development and Assessment Award
• Tim Van Wagner, Associate Teaching Professor of Applied Computing — Innovative or Out of Class Teaching Award
• Jeff Pettibone, Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology and Human Factors — Large Class Teaching Award

During the luncheon, each recipient shared a brief presentation highlighting the teaching practices and contributions that led to their recognition. The presentations provided attendees an opportunity to hear directly from the awardees and learn more about their approaches to supporting student learning.

The CFE Instructional Award Series recognizes teaching contributions that may not always be captured through traditional teaching awards, including innovative teaching practices, effective instruction in large-enrollment courses, and important work in curriculum development and assessment. Recipients are selected from instructors recognized through the annual Deans’ Teaching Showcase held in the spring semester.

Congratulations to Holly, Tim, and Jeff, and thank you for sharing your work with the Michigan Tech teaching community.

Learn more about the CFE Instructional Award Series.

As you prepare your Canvas courses for the fall semester, a new resource is available to help make sure your course is ready for students. The Michigan Tech Canvas Course Readiness Guide is now included in all Canvas course shells and provides a practical checklist of items to review before the semester begins, along with additional recommendations for maintaining your course throughout the term.

The guide is designed to help instructors catch common Canvas setup issues before they create confusion for students. The initial Course Readiness section focuses on the most important tasks to complete before students enter the course. These include importing content from a previous course, adding an accessible syllabus, checking assignment groups and grading schemes, organizing course navigation, publishing essential Week 1 content, and using Student View to make sure students can see and access what you expect.

The guide also calls attention to a few easily overlooked Canvas details that can have a significant impact on students. For example, courses must be published before students can access course content or receive Canvas announcements. Instructors using Course Access Materials should also confirm that the appropriate navigation link is visible and that the correct materials are available.

Beyond the start of the semester, the Comprehensive Course Maintenance section provides additional suggestions to consider as you build and manage your course throughout the term. Topics include gradebook settings, assignment and availability dates, module organization, communication practices, Huskycast video access, and assignments connected through external tools such as Gradescope or publisher platforms.

Each section also includes links to relevant Canvas Guides and Michigan Tech resources, making it easy to find additional instructions when you need them.

As you prepare your fall courses, take a few minutes to review the Canvas Course Readiness Guide available in your course shell. A short check now can help prevent common problems once students arrive and help provide students with a smoother start to the semester.

Questions about Canvas or course setup? Contact the CFE support team at elearning@mtu.edu for assistance.

Have you been frustrated with how rubrics work in Canvas? Are you interested in trying out some new rubric features? If so, you can enable the first round of enhanced rubric features (phase 1) in your courses this semester. Canvas enhanced rubrics introduces a new, user-friendly interface paired with enhanced functionality to improve your grading workflows. Key updates include:

• Drag-and-Drop Functionality: Allows you to easily reorder ratings or criteria to suit your rubric design.
• Copying and Duplicating Criteria: Save time by duplicating frequently used rubric elements.
• Customizable Ordering: Choose between “low to high” or “high to low” arrangements for rating scales.

These updates should simplify rubric creation but also ensure consistency and fairness in evaluation.

During the first phase of the Canvas Enhanced Rubrics project developers have focused on providing educators with tools for easier rubric organization and more intuitive marking. By streamlining the grading process, these improvements can support equitable evaluation and save valuable time. Future updates will expand these features further, enabling student self-assessment and other enhancements to promote deeper engagement with learning.

If you’d like to try out enhanced rubrics in your Canvas course(s) you can enable the feature in course settings. From the feature options tab click to enable the enhanced rubric option (see screenshot below).

Canvas considers enhanced rubrics a feature preview option, which means it’s under active development and allows early adopters who opt into the feature to provide the Canvas Community user group with valuable feedback to help improve the feature. This Canvas guide provides additional details on managing enhanced rubrics.

Contact the CTL (elearning@mtu.edu, 487-3000) if you have questions or need additional assistance with Canvas enhanced rubrics.

With the new academic year now underway, we would like to remind instructors of the campus subscription to the Teaching Professor sponsored by the William G. Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning. The Teaching Professor is a highly informative newsletter with a singular purpose: to provide ideas and insight to educators who are passionate about teaching. It’s a source of cutting-edge information and inspiration for more than 10,000 educators at universities and colleges worldwide.

To access the Teaching Professor visit teachingprofessor.com:

• On campus you can obtain full access to all Teaching Professor content (including their extensive archive) if your computer/device is connected to the campus network (except the MichiganTechGuest network). It is not necessary to create an account or log in to access the subscription on-campus.
• Off campus access is also available but does require you to create an account.

Take advantage of this resource and contact the CTL (ctl@mtu.edu) if you have any questions.

As we begin a new fall semester I’m pleased to share an update on classroom renovations that were completed during the summer.

EERC 2nd. floor

The entire second floor of the Electrical Energy Resources Center (EERC) was renovated and all existing classrooms were impacted. The renovation included new wall and ceiling work, new light fixtures and new flooring. Furniture was replaced in all rooms with the exception of EERC 218 which received new active learning furniture as part of a pilot last spring semester. If you are teaching in this area now, we’d love to hear your comments about these updates.

Rekhi G006

Rekhi G006 is a new 54 seat active learning classroom. It features 6-person tables with stacked monitors that can display both instructor content as well as local student group work. Both wall-mounted and personal size whiteboards are also available. The room technology includes a document camera and room cameras for recording presentations or for Zoom sessions.

ChemSci 104

Room 104 in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering building was renovated, combining what was previously two separate smaller classrooms (104A/B). The new 60-seat classroom features multi-level seating options for groups of six students with plenty of whiteboard space. The room technology includes a classroom camera and ceiling microphones for Zoom or recording applications.

The large classroom in Dow 641 also received much needed new furniture this summer. It features larger tabletop works surfaces with available power to better support students who use laptops/tablets and better supports active learning activities.

Contact the CTL (elearning@mtu.edu) if you’d like more information about these classroom updates or to arrange for a room orientation.