See below for a list of our advanced workshops, focused on diverse topical areas and highlighting best practices in teaching. Workshops are conducted completely online (unless noted otherwise) and are facilitated by SPS faculty development staff or faculty via Blackboard. Workshop cohorts are limited to 15-25 participants, depending on the topic, in order to promote interactivity and communication. Workshops are open to all CUNY SPS faculty, whether full-time or part-time.

Currently Offered:

Open UDL Workshop: Making Your Courses Accessible to All

October 21 – November 4, 2024

This fifteen-day, online workshop provides an in-depth introduction to Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and to the intersection of UDL and Open Educational Practices (OEP), which include OER and Open Pedagogy. Participants will review the principles of UDL and explore how OEP can help reduce accessibility barriers for all learners, including those with disabilities. Participants will also learn about best accessibility practices in online courses, including identifying and fixing common accessibility issues. For the workshop project, participants will complete an inventory of one of their courses from a UDL perspective and create a plan for implementing UDL principles and open practices.

Learning Objectives

• Understand and apply the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
• Understand accessibility and accommodations as they relate to UDL
• Understand when it’s appropriate to create new content or new learning activities rather than remediate existing content
• Discover the intersection of UDL and Open Educational Practices OEP
• Evaluate course content from a UDL perspective, including when it’s appropriate to create new materials or learning activities
• Implement UDL and OEP to improve accessibility for all your students
• Identify the ways that accessibility tools can detect and remediate accessibility issues

Workshop Outcomes

• Complete an inventory of a course through a UDL lens
• Create a plan for using UDL principles and OEP practices to improve student engagement and accessibility

Compensation

• To be eligible, faculty must be able to take on an additional 7 NTA hours in Fall 2024, based on their workload and title. (See this explanation of workload limits.)
• All participants must obtain approval of their supervisor or Academic Director.
• Staff are welcome to participate but are not eligible for compensation.

Registration

Registration is extended to Thursday, October 17.

Past Workshops:

OER & Open Pedagogy Workshop

Monday, July 10 to Sunday, July 23, 2023

This workshop introduces the theory and tools that support OER and Open Pedagogy in online courses. Extending on the content of past sessions, this workshop is open to all SPS faculty, even those who’ve previously completed the OER Workshop or who’ve developed OER or ZTC courses. 

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the relationship of OER and Open Pedagogy
• Use Backward Design to incorporate OER and Open Pedagogy into a course
• Navigate the open community by learning how to find and share OER, including openly licensed images, open learning activities, renewable assessments, and student-created resources
• Learn how to include OER on your CV

Workshop Outcomes:

• Identify an opportunity to use OER or Open Pedagogy to enhance a course
• Create a plan for implementing OER or Open Pedagogy (syllabus for incorporating OER content, or lesson plan for new Open Pedagogy learning activity or assessment)
• Share an OER (syllabus or lesson plan) on OpenEd.CUNY

Follow-Up:

• Present the syllabus or lesson plan to program Academic Director, as a proposal for inclusion in an SPS course
• Share your experience of implementing the syllabus or lesson plan in future sessions of the OER & Open Pedagogy Workshop

Compensation

Upon successful completion of the workshop, eligible faculty participants will be paid for 7 Non-Teaching Adjunct hours at their contractual NTA rate.

Eligibility

• Faculty Participants must be eligible for an additional 7 NTA hours in the semester, based on their workload and title.
• Faculty participants must obtain the approval of your Academic Director.

Accessibility & UDL Workshop: Making Your Courses Accessible to All

This two-week, online workshop provides an in-depth introduction to accessibility and Universal Design in Learning (UDL) for online and hybrid education. Participants will review the principles of UDL, learn about best accessibility practices in Blackboard, and get hands-on practice creating accessible documents and multimedia. In applying the skills acquired in this workshop to course design and your teaching, you will create an online experience that is welcoming to all learners, including those with disabilities.

Creating Instructional Videos with the SPS Media Studio

In this 1 ½ week workshop, participants will create an engaging instructional video using SPS’ new Media Studio. Together with OFDIT staff, participants will develop a script, collect visuals, practice speaking in front of a camera and the green screen, record and edit a video for use in their courses.

Notes: 1) This workshop has limited number of seats. 2) While parts of the workshop are offered online, participation also requires one or two individually scheduled visits to the Media Studio at our office (119 W 31st Street in NYC).

Open & Active Video Workshop

The Open & Active Video Workshop will be hands-on! Each participant will create an accessible video, enhanced with an interactive element, to address a pedagogical need in their course, and then share the video and activity as an Open Education Resource (OER).

Think of learning bottlenecks, those challenging concepts, analyses, or applications of new knowledge that students struggle with every semester. By creating a video that complements your existing materials or demonstrates the steps of a complex process, you can help students reach the next level of learning. By adding an interactive element to the video (think annotations, discussion, comprehension questions), you can encourage active learning among all your students. By sharing your video and activity openly, you can help faculty and students in your field who come up against the same challenge. It’s win-win-win!

This workshop invites faculty to identify a pedagogical need that can be addressed by the addition of multimedia content presented in an active learning context. Participants will be trained on the steps for scripting, recording, and editing an instructional video and on adding interactive elements to videos in their courses. The workshop includes technical training and support for the screencast recording, hosting, and sharing tools available at SPS.  

Learning Objectives: 

• Use Backward Design to identify a pedagogical need in a course
• Become familiar with Active Learning, particularly as it applies to using video course materials
• Gain the technical skills to create an instructional video that includes interactive elements
• Learn how to include your OER creation on your CV and in your faculty portfolio

Workshop Outcomes:

• Create an interactive instructional video 
• Share the video as an OER on OpenEd.CUNY

Enhancing your Course through the Use of Open Educational Resources (OER)

Workshop Description
Are you looking to replace an expensive textbook that often goes unread by students? Are you hoping to enhance or remix your course materials with fresh and stimulating text or multimedia content? Would you like to become more aware of resources available in your discipline for possible reuse by you or your students?

This asynchronous online workshop, jointly offered by CUNY School of Professional Studies and Lehman College, will provide a deep dive into Open Educational Resources (OER) and how to find, evaluate and integrate them into your courses. Appropriate for those new to the subject as well as those who have already worked with OER.

SPS and Lehman faculty participating in this workshop will select an OER textbook or other OER content and create a plan for implementation as their final deliverable.

Participants completing this workshop will:

• Define the various types of OER.
• Distinguish between the different OER permissions for adoption, attribution, and reuse.
• Identify collections of resources that provide OER relevant to their own course and discipline.
• Evaluate OER using appropriate standards and criteria.
• Select an OER textbook or other OER content for inclusion in their course.
• Draft a plan or outline that can be used to implement revisions or integration of the chosen OER within their course.

OER Workshop Website
On this site, you can find more information about the workshop content and structure, download the workshop to be imported into Blackboard or Course Sites, download guides for implementation and more.

VoiceThread Bootcamp

VoiceThread is a web-based tool that allows faculty and students to have conversations using any mix of text, audio or webcam comments. VoiceThread can be used to record a course topic introduction, create interactive online lectures, extend classroom conversations, enable students to create digital portfolios, or support language practice. Find out more on the SPS VoiceThread support pages.

This bootcamp is learner-centered: whether you are an experienced multimedia user or new to VoiceThread, this will plant the essentials of cultivating dynamic discussions and creating vibrant content.

There will be some activity required every day, and during the workshop you will:

• Acquire the skills to create VoiceThread presentations for your course.
• Design a learner-centered VoiceThread assignment ready to be used in your course.
• Develop a technical skill set to create engaging and interactive online learning experiences for your students.

Enhancing your Classroom with Blackboard Collaborate

— offered online for 11 days. Next t.b.a.

In this workshop, we will explore the many features of Blackboard Collaborate. Blackboard Collaborate allows instructors to enliven their courses with real-time (synchronous) sessions that can include audio and video interaction with students, an interactive whiteboard, application and desktop sharing, and breakout rooms for student groups.  Collaborate provides your online class with more immediate communication and opens up new possibilities for group work and presentations for both online and face to face courses.

The workshop will combine lessons and discussion in an asynchronous format with live, real-time Collaborate sessions, allowing you to get to know Collaborate while working together to design lesson-plans and assignments for immediate use in your courses.

Schedule and Participation

Most of the workshop activity takes place over the first 8 days; in the last two days, participants will schedule and attend one small-group presentation.  Because Collaborate is a synchronous tool, everyone will participate in a total of two hour-long live sessions to practice and gain hands-on experience.

Learning outcomes for this workshop–participants are expected to learn

• To distinguish between the various tools and features Collaborate offers and gain familiarity with their use
• To evaluate the appropriateness of tools and presentation modes with reference to student audience, course learning outcomes, and course activities
• To gain confidence in moderating Collaborate sessions
• To design Collaborate activities and assignments that promote student interaction with course content
• To brainstorm and share activity and assignment ideas in live sessions and in discussion with other faculty

Writing is Thinking: How to Improve Student Writing in Your Course

— offered online for 8 days; next t.b.a. 

The degree to which students are able to express their ideas and frame their arguments through writing has an impact on student success in nearly every course, across all disciplines.  The importance of writing is further amplified in online courses since writing becomes the dominant form of communication.

Premised on the notion of writing as a continuous thinking/learning process, this workshop is intended to provide faculty in all disciplines with tools to incorporate writing into their courses so as to increase student engagement and learning. While many tend to treat writing as merely the outpouring of already developed ideas and reflections on a particular topic, research findings have shown that writing indeed is a tool for thinking, through which we come to develop our ideas in much more complex ways.

The workshop will address not only the different types of writing activities that can be introduced, but also proven techniques for improving student writing. Some of the areas explored are high and low stakes writing, scaffolding the writing process for students, the discussion board as a means to foster critical thinking and writing, using technology to engage and motivate students to write, and providing more effective feedback on writing. Throughout this workshop, participants will be asked to apply the lessons and principles learned to improve their current course writing activities or to introduce new approaches.

Learning outcomes for this workshop–participants are expected to learn

• To identify the pedagogical principles behind scaffolding and sequencing of writing
• To distinguish between low and high stakes writing assignments in the context of your own course
• To apply some concrete strategies for fostering critical thinking through writing on the discussion board
• To identify technology tools that have the potential to motivate and engage your students in writing
• To identify the different  approaches to providing feedback to students on writing
• To apply the workshop lessons to improve a current course writing activity or to formulate a new writing activity.

Multimedia Tools for Teaching and Learning, Part I: Enhancing Your Course Using Audio and Video

—offered online for 8 days; next t.b.a.

Online or hybrid teaching provides a vital opportunity to make the course experience more engaging, and to put students in a position from which they are actively creating and not just passively receiving course content. In this workshop series, we will introduce various multimedia and interactive tools that will help make your courses more dynamic and collaborative.

Part I of the Multimedia Workshop series will explore the ways that multimedia tools such as VoiceThread and Screencast-O-Matic, as well as audio tools such as Audacity can be used in conjunction with other Blackboard tools to enhance your course content and increase interaction.

The workshop will combine lessons and discussion in an asynchronous format with live, hands-on experience with various multimedia tools. Participants will also work together to develop assignments and activities they can use immediately in their courses.

Learning outcomes for this workshop–participants are expected to learn

• To distinguish between the different categories of multimedia and interactive tools
• To identify aspects of your own course that could be enriched or enhanced by greater interactivity
• To explore the features and functions afforded by various multimedia tools
• To create one or more multimedia objects or assignments to be implemented in your own course.

Note: Workshops in this series can be taken individually and non-sequentially.

Multimedia Tools for Teaching and Learning, Part II: Collaborative Tools

— offered online for 8 days. Next t.b.a.

Online or hybrid teaching provides a vital opportunity to make the course experience more engaging, and to put students in a position from which they are actively creating and not just passively receiving course content. This workshop series will introduce faculty to various multimedia and interactive tools that help make online and hybrid courses more dynamic and collaborative.

Part II of the Multimedia Workshop series will introduce several collaborative tools designed to facilitate group efforts for generating or processing course material. These tools take advantage of the opportunities online and hybrid courses provide to engage students in actively creating instead of just passively receiving educational content. We will explore VoiceThread, TimelineJS, Mindomo and diigo in conjunction with the Group tool provided in Blackboard to help you design activities  in which you work with students and students work with each other in new ways.

The workshop will combine lessons and discussion in an asynchronous format with live, hands-on experience with various multimedia tools. Participants will also work together to develop assignments and activities they can use immediately in their courses.

Learning outcomes for this workshop–participants are expected to learn

• To distinguish between the different categories of multimedia and interactive tools
• To identify aspects of your own course that could be enriched or enhanced by greater interactivity
• To explore the features and functions afforded by various multimedia tools
• To create one or more multimedia objects or assignments to be implemented in your own course.

Note: Workshops in this series can be taken individually and non-sequentially.

Mobile Learn: Designing a Mobile Friendly Course

— offered online for 8 days; next t.b.a..  

More and more faculty and students at CUNY are using Blackboard Mobile Learn, and it’s no wonder! Blackboard Mobile Learn allows you and your students to access courses on the go, to post announcements and participate in discussions on your mobile device, to link your Dropbox account and upload files to your discussion board and content areas, and to use the camera and video features of your mobile phone or Ipad/tablet to post pictures or videos for experiential learning. But in order to have a seamless experience on Blackboard Mobile, your course must be designed with Mobile in mind.

Learning outcomes for this workshop – participants are expected to learn:

• Set up the course structure for Mobile Learn
• Identify best practices for naming files and folders for Mobile Learn
• Integrate rich content for Mobile Learn (videos, audio files, images, etc.)
• Identify incompatible formats to be avoided
• Create a Mobile Compatible quiz/test.

The Art of Feedback

— offered online for 11 days; next t.b.a.

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 outcomes for this workshop — participants are expected to learn

• 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

Essential Instructional Design for Faculty

—offered online for 8 days; next t.b.a.

This workshop is intended to foster more effective course and assignment design by CUNY faculty.  It provides participants with a better understanding of the essential principles of instructional design and explores alternative approaches to presenting content and fulfilling learning outcomes.

It also provides an overview of the different ways courses can be organized in Blackboard with an eye to selecting the formats that might be most appropriate for a particular course. Participants will reflect on their current design and organization practices 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. This workshop is particularly recommended for those who teach online or hybrid courses.

Note: Faculty should not take this workshop if they are enrolled concurrently in the Preparation for Teaching Online workshop.

Have questions? Send us an email.