Course and Assignment Design
Upcoming workshops
Engaging Students with Accessibility
By appointment July-August, 2024
One-on-one personalized workshops fit to your role — Learn how to better engage students with Universal Design for Learning, and how to improve your (students’) digital quality-of-life with accessibility features in the tools you already use (Ally, Office 365, G Suite, Chrome/Edge/Firefox, and more).
Engaging Students with Accessibility (Group Training)
By appointment July-August, 2024
Inaccessibility can break students. This workshop covers the importance of accessibility, and gives attendees the tools and skills they need to implement it. By the end, participants will know:
What Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is, why it's important, and how easy it can be
How different disabilities affect...
Welcome Students to Your Course Using the acronym O.N.E. (Organization, Navigation, and Expectations)
August 20th, 2024
As instructors, we know where to begin in our courses, but do our students? The acronym O.N.E. is useful when we address the important issue of making sure we welcome students to our online courses in an organized, accessible way. In this workshop, you will learn fun ways to welcome your students into your course; you will learn how to organize and present your course to your students; and...
Introduction to Universal Design for Learning
August 28th, 2024
This workshop will introduce you to Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and give you context for why its role in accessibility. You'll learn about its three pillars and their different aspects. You'll also learn techniques to incorporate UDL principals in every aspect of your course, and how you can do so easily.
Creating a Course Navigation Video
August 30th, 2024
For students, beginning a new online course can be both exciting and overwhelming. A great way to relieve that anxiety and help students get familiar with your course is by making a short video to help them get started. A welcome video can help you walk your students through the course and explain the course structure and navigation. During this workshop, you will identify the purpose and scope of your video...
Past workshops
Welcoming Students to your Course using the Acronym O.N.E
January 9th
As instructors, we know where to begin in our courses, but do our students? The acronym O.N.E. is useful when we address the important issue of making sure we welcome students to our online courses in an organized, accessible way. In this workshop, you will learn fun ways to welcome your students into your course; you will learn how to organize and present your course to your students; and you will learn some activities you can do with your students to ensure they know how to navigate your course to find important information they need to be successful in your class.
Promoting Student Engagement with Online Tools
February 6th 2023
Join us as we consider how to improve student participation and engagement through the use of a variety of tools. There are many exciting tech tools to help you create a more engaging, interactive learning experience for you and your students. Come to this session to learn more about various online tools that can be used to engage your students with the course content, support student collaboration and resource sharing, and foster community in your course. There will be plenty of time to share your favorite tools and how you are using them in the teaching and learning environment.
Creative Approaches to Short Assignments
February 27th 2023
Short assignments can be opportunities for students to test out new ideas, identify knowledge gaps, and clarify the relevance of course materials to their own interests and career paths. But they can also feel like ""busy work,"" and students sometimes prioritize bigger projects and exams over these smaller exercises. In this session we'll highlight effective approaches to connecting and scaffolding short assignments to meet larger course objectives, and we'll talk about some of the creative approaches attendees have taken to get students invested in taking up this work.
Group Work That Students Won't Hate
March 27th 2023
Faculty increasingly see the value in assigning collaborative assignments and projects, but it can be challenging at times to set up these initiatives, maintain student momentum, and clearly assess the outputs of group work. This session will provide recommendations on ethical and effective approaches to collaboration and project management, and we'll invite attendees to reflect on their own efforts to help students see the professional and personal benefits of completing highly-collaborative (and creative) coursework.
Multimedia Principals: Creating Effective Instructional Materials
April 4th 2023
In this workshop, we will explore how to effectively apply the principles of multimedia learning to designing and developing instructional materials, such as PowerPoint presentations and videos. We will focus on employing strategies to create materials designed to increase engagement and knowledge retention as well as decrease cognitive overload.
Get Your Course Ready to Go Using CIT's Beginning of Semester Checklist!
January 10th, 2024
Let NECC's Center for Instructional Technology (CIT) help you make sure your Blackboard course is ready to go. Using CIT's Beginning of the Semester Checklist, this workshop will guide you through the steps for making sure your course runs smoothly for you and your students....
Creating a Course Navigation Video
January 11th, 2024
For students, beginning a new online course can be both exciting and overwhelming. A great way to relieve that anxiety and help students get familiar with your course is by making a short video to help them get started. A welcome video can help you walk your students through the course and explain the course structure and navigation...
Interactive Assignment Design through AI
January 16th, 2024
As AI tools become more powerful and accessible, they present opportunities to reinvent assignment design - if used judiciously. That’s why we developed this seminar—to equip educators to leverage these technologies ethically to solve real-world problems and make a genuine impact through multimedia.
Regular and Substantive Interaction in Online Courses: A Primer
January 17th, 2024
The purpose of this virtual session is for faculty to intentionally create activities and implement methods within online courses that are considered regular and substantive interactions (RSI) with students and ensure some level of consistency. On July 1st, 2021, the U.S. Department of Education updated its regulations for...
The SoftChalk Cloud Overview
Are you ready to make your online course content more engaging for you and your students? Join part one of this two part workshop series to learn more about how the SoftChalk program can help you design interactive learning modules, lessons, assignments and lectures that will breathe new life in your course content...
Hypothesis - A Tool to Make Reading Active and Social
February 9th, 2024
There is an exciting new active reading tool on Blackboard! Hypothesis is a social annotation tool that allows you and your students to actively read and annotate a text together as a group. You and your students can read, annotate and interact with a text to create a truly social annotation experience in your online or face-to-face classes...