SPS Advanced Online Workshops for Faculty

Apply to register here for our upcoming new advanced online workshops focused on diverse topical areas and highlighting best practices in teaching. Each workshop is 8 days in length, conducted asynchronously and facilitated by SPS faculty development staff or faculty via Blackboard. Workshop cohorts are limited to about 25 participants in order to promote interactivity and communication. There are no face-to-face meetings required.

These advanced workshops are designed to be purely voluntary professional development activities and no payment is provided to faculty for participating. Faculty are welcome to participate on a casual basis but to attain a certificate of completion from SPS Office of Faculty Development and Instructional Technology, faculty must fulfill all stated requirements of the workshop. Those who complete all requirements can expect to spend an average of 5-7 hours throughout those 8 days in workshop activities.

Workshop Descriptions and Objectives

The Art of Feedback–offered online January 14-21, 2013

This workshop is designed to engage CUNY faculty in critical discussions and activities that will strengthen instructors’ approaches to providing students with high quality feedback. It provides participants with a better understanding of the basis for effective feedback, sharing evidence-based resources and addresses the issue of assignment design and its impact on the feedback process. It also introduces streamlined and efficacious processes that can help instructors manage their workload and more clearly communicate their feedback to students. Participants will reflect on their own practice and should emerge with some strategies that they can immediately apply to their own teaching.

There are no prerequisites for this workshop other than a basic familiarity with Blackboard. However, faculty should not take this workshop if they are enrolled concurrently with the Preparation for Teaching Online workshop.

Learning objectives for this workshop expressed in terms of expected outcomes for faculty:

• To identify and select instructional methods and approaches that make the process of providing students with feedback that is better quality, more efficient and frequent, consistent, reliable, objective and fair
• To experiment with approaches to improving the design of assignments
• To review the various means for providing students with written, automated, audio and video feedback in Blackboard
• To explore why, when and how to create and use rubrics
• To reflect on feedback practices with an eye to improving student learning

Registration for Advanced Workshops

Note: This is a new program. Additional advanced workshops will be launched and made available for registration here throughout the coming 2013-14 year.

Registration is now closed for “The Art of Feedback” workshop. 

Please note:  If there is sufficient demand, and if there is a workshop facilitator available, we will consider adding sections for the same or later dates. Workshop titles may be offered several times per year.