Category: CTL

How may I best help you?

The beginning of the semester can bring a lot of stress and be overwhelming! To better help you and be available for teaching technology and application consults, starting Fall ’25 term I am rolling out a Consult Calendar to schedule a time to consult with me which can either be in-person (in a classroom or our CTL office suite) or through Zoom.

An additional way to contact me is to email elearning@mtu.edu with as much information as possible about your issue and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!

As well, a new Introduction to Tech Teaching Tools – The Basics Canvas course has been created! This Canvas course covers the basics of Canvas and is self-enrolled; the course will eventually contain content for teaching applications supported by the CTL.

Thank you and have a great Fall ’25 semester!

– Sully

Building An Interactive Online Course Using DesignPLUS

Looking to make your online course more interactive and engaging? Join us for a hands-on workshop to learn how to use DesignPLUS to build an interactive online course. We’ll show you practical strategies and guide you through follow-along activities so you can start using these tools right away! Just be sure to bring your laptop.

When: Wednesday, September 3, 2025

Time: 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.

Location:  Van Pelt/Opie Library Room 243
Registration is required.

2025 CTL Instructional Awards Announced

The Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) congratulates the following 2025 Deans’ Teaching Showcase members who have been selected to receive 2025 CTL Instructional Awards.  

  • Innovative or Out of Class Teaching: Paul Goetsch (Biological Sciences)
  • Large Class Teaching: Shane Oberloier (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
  • Curriculum Development and Assessment: Laura Kasson Fiss (Pavlis Honors College, Humanities)

This year’s recipients will share brief presentations on the work that earned them their teaching awards at a CTL Lunch and Learn event on Tuesday, September 9, at 12:00 PM in the MUB Ballroom. Each will receive formal recognition and a cash award. 

Please register in advance to attend the luncheon.

The CTL would also like to thank previous instructional award recipients who were instrumental in the selection process.

We’re looking for nominations for the 2026 Deans’ Teaching Showcase during spring semester. Please consider suggesting (to your dean or chair) instructors who have made exceptional contributions in curriculum development, assessment, innovative or out-of-class teaching, or large class teaching.

Contact the CTL (ctl@mtu.edu) for more information or to request accommodations for meal attendance.

Coffee Chats with the CTL – Connect, Share, Inspire

Take a break and join the William G. Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) Thursday Sept. 4th from 3:30–4:30 p.m. in Library 243 for our biweekly Coffee Chats!

Enjoy a complimentary beverage from Velodrome as you connect with colleagues from across campus in a relaxed, informal setting. These sessions offer an open space to:

  • Share teaching ideas
  • Learn from one another
  • Collaborate and build community

No agenda. No presentations. Just rich conversation and meaningful connections.

              September 4th Topic: Tips and Tricks for a Great Semester!

We’ll kick off the series by sharing strategies, tools and insights to help set the tone for a successful and engaging semester!

Come as you are—whether you’re looking for inspiration, support, or simply a warm drink and good company. We’d love to see you there!

Formative Assessment: What Is It? Why Is It Useful?

Final exam week is coming soon. How confident are you that your students understand what you’ve been teaching? Do your students know what they understand and what they need to work on as they prepare for finals? If you are looking for a way to find out how well your students understand key concepts or can perform key skills before the students turn in a major project or take a big exam, formative assessment can help.

What Is Formative Assessment?

Formative assessment is a type of assessment that provides teachers and students with information about how well students understand concepts or can perform skills before students turn in a major project or take a big exam. “The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning” (Eberly Center, n.d.). These assessments are activities where students demonstrate skills or understanding and receive feedback on how well they perform skills or understand.

What Do Formative Assessments Look Like?

A formative assessment can be any type of activity that gives you and your students information about how well a student understands course concepts or can perform important skills. These activities should include opportunities for students to receive feedback on their performance.

“Examples of formative assessments include asking students to:

  • Draw [and share] a concept map in class to represent their understanding of a topic” (Eberly Center, n.d.). Then you create a concept map together as a class so students can compare their understanding to yours. You can also review the student concept maps to identify misconceptions and make plans to address them.
  • “Submit one or two sentences identifying the main point of a lecture” (Eberly Center, n.d.). Then you can share the main point you intended to communicate during the lecture, so students can compare what they took from the lecture with what you wanted to communicate. You can also review the student submissions to determine if your intended points are coming across to students.
  • “Turn in a research proposal for early feedback” (Eberly Center, n.d.). This feedback can be written or oral and can be provided in-person or through recorded audio or video. To explore different ways of providing feedback to students, learn more about the feedback options in Canvas, our institution’s learning management system (LMS).

These are not the only activities that can be used as formative assessments. What is key is that the activities give students a chance to show their understanding of course concepts or their level of proficiency when performing skills and that students receive feedback related to their achievement of course learning outcomes. Formative assessments give you the opportunity to determine if you need to review information or procedures, provide additional resources, or move on to a new topic or skill. Formative assessments give students the opportunity to determine if they are correctly understanding course materials and developing the desired skills.

How Can I Use Formative Assessment in My Courses?

To effectively use formative assessments in your courses:

  • First, identify the key concepts and skills you want students to understand or be able to perform. As you do this, you may want to consider the concepts or skills that have been challenging for students to learn in the past.
  • Then identify or develop activities that ask students to explain a concept, perform a skill, or in some other way demonstrate understanding of what you want them to learn. Consider reviewing the techniques suggested in The K. Patricia Cross Academy’s Techniques Video Library for ideas.
  • Determine how students will share their work with you so that you can “recognize where students are struggling and address” misconceptions (Eberly Center, n.d.).
  • Determine how feedback on their work will be provided to students.
  • Then try out the activities in your course.
  • Listen to student feedback about their experiences with the activities, and reflect on how well each activity helped you identify misconceptions or problematic performance.
  • Finally, make changes to the activities, and continue to use them to inform your teaching and students’ understanding of what they are learning well and what they should focus on as they continue to learn.

There is no need to change your entire course overnight. Instead, start small by adding one opportunity for formative assessment to your course. Evaluate how well it worked. Make changes. Then consider adding more.

More Information

To learn more about formative assessment, take a look at the following resources:

If you have questions about formative assessment or specific formative assessment techniques, contact a member of the Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning team.

References

Eberly Center. (n.d.). What is the difference between formative and summative assessment? Carnegie Mellon University. https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/basics/formative-summative.html

Respondus Monitor – Show Your Work

The Show Your Work feature in Respondus Monitor makes it easy for students to upload photos of their handwritten work at the end of an online exam. There are no folders to create, no PDFs to generate, no filename conventions to follow – in short, no hassles.

Show Your Work will prompt students to take a photo of their calculations, worksheets, diagrams, drawings, doodles – whatever you require – at the end of the exam.

Here’s how it works:

Show Your Work is enabled by the instructor from the Respondus Monitor settings (under Advanced Settings). The default instructions for students can be edited too.

Students take photos of their written work (up to 20) immediately after the exam is completed.

These photos appear in the top row of the proctoring results for the student. Click an image to view a large, high-resolution image of it.

Learn More:

To learn more about Respondus Monitor’s Show Your Work feature in this video.

CTL and Essential Education Lunch and Learn

Playing in PebblePad

Date: March 11, 2025

Time: 12:00 p.m. until 1:00 p.m.

Location: MUB Ballroom B

Join the Husky Folio program director on March 11th for an opportunity to practice using the powerful potential of PebblePad, Michigan Tech’s new ePortfolio platform under the Husky Folio initiative. This session is your chance to dive in and practice creating reflection templates and workbooks for your courses or even a personalized ePortfolio highlighting your unique experiences and accomplishments. Whether you’re experienced or just starting out on the platform, this is your chance to connect with colleagues, exchange ideas, and explore how PebblePad can be used. Bring your enthusiasm and prepare to learn a new way to engage learners.

For questions or to request accommodations, including dietary, please feel free to contact the CTL at ctl@mtu.edu or (906) 487-3000.

CTL and Essential Education Lunch and Learn

Building an Essential Ed Experience: (Re)Designing Your Course to Become an E3

Date: March 4, 2025

Time: 12:00 p.m. until 1:00 p.m.

Location: MUB Ballroom A

Interested in designing and teaching an Essential Education Experience (E3)? Join E3 leadership and fellow instructors for a course redesign workshop. E3 courses should prepare students for an ever-changing, dynamic, and diverse world by increasing social awareness, global understandings, and/or cultural competencies through hands-on learning. Students will apply their learning toward a project or activity that engages with community beyond the traditional classroom.

This workshop will cover the basics of E3 requirements and provide participants time to workshop with others an existing or proposed Essential Education Experience course, while learning more about practical tools for transforming their own courses into E3s. Faculty who are interested in E3 courses but don’t have a specific course in mind yet are welcome to attend and can expect to gain insights that will aid in future course development.

For questions or to request accommodations, including dietary, please feel free to contact the CTL at ctl@mtu.edu or (906) 487-3000.

CTL Services

CTL Services
Ever wonder how the Center for Teaching and Learning can support your instructional needs? We are here with support for any questions you may have about Canvas, Huskycast, Gradescope, Turnitin, Zoom, or iClicker. Already familiar with these but would like to take a deeper dive into some of these technologies or maybe you have never used these and would like to give them a try in your classroom, we would be happy to provide some one-to-one training! Feel free to drop by during our walk-in hours from 10-noon and 1-4pm Monday through Friday. We can also provide in-person consultations in classrooms for classroom teaching technologies. No time to stop by the CTL? Be sure to check out our online resources that can be found on our site in our Teaching and Learning Knowledge Base, Canvas Instructor Guides, and the Getting Started With Canvas sections.

Are you interested in taking a deeper dive into a specific instructional topic? We also have a periodical library available for checkout covering a wide range of topics! Feel free to stop in anytime and review the collection.


Points of interest!
iClicker Cloud – Reminding you that iClicker Classic was retired at the end of 2023 and iClicker Cloud will be the only supported polling software. The student experience will not change and students can still use either physical iClicker remotes or the mobile/web app, though iClicker bases are not in all classrooms. iClicker hardware – student remotes, instructor remotes, and bases – as well as the student mobile app will continue to be supported in iClicker Cloud. Visit the Center for Teaching and Learning’s iClicker resource page to get started using iClicker and for more information on transitioning to iClicker Cloud visit iClicker’s online resource page.

iClicker Groups (Beta) – iClicker Groups is in Beta, a new method of engaging your students with polling: promote discussion, open new lines of communication, and encourage collaboration. Utilizing this part of the iClicker suite divides your participants in groups to work on building a consensus for your polling. You can find the instructor guide at iClicker Groups (Beta).

New to iClicker Cloud – With version 7 Tools was introduced to the iClicker Cloud application. The poll taker is able to have a separated clock from the polling menu as well as at a future point be able to enable emoji reactions for poll takers.

If you have any questions or would like to know more, visit the iClicker Groups Instructor FAQ or contact us at the Center for Teaching and Learning for more information.

Feel free to contact us at 7-3000 or email us at elearning@mtu.edu.

CTL and IDEAhub Lunch and Learn

Date: Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm

Location: Memorial Union – Ballroom A

Registration is required.

Join IDEAhub leadership and participants from IDEAhub’s summer course redesign workshop. Find inspiration in faculty stories about their “small bite” course innovations and learn more about how to “level up” your teaching using IDEAhub tools for innovation.

To register please visit: https://mtu.libcal.com/event/13801954

For questions or request any accommodations, please contact the CTL at (906) 487-2275 or ctl@mtu.edu.