We lead and support a variety of initiatives to provide Keene State College faculty opportunities for professional learning to enrich your teaching, engage with colleagues in a spirit of inquiry and reflection, and make teaching and learning more public and collaborative.
Our annual Open Classroom Days is a two-week open house in which faculty volunteers open their classrooms for their colleagues to visit. Faculty Enrichment developed this program to provide a structure for faculty to informally observe each other’s teaching as a catalyst for discussion and collaboration. It is part of our effort to promote and facilitate these conversations, to make teaching a more public practice on our campus, and to recognize our faculty’s dedication to teaching and learning. The next Open Classroom Days will be in Fall 2025; look for announcements in August and September with more information. Please contact Chris Odato (christopher.odato@keene.edu) if you have any questions about this program.
The Teaching Squares program is an opportunity for faculty to reflect and gain fresh insight on their teaching through reciprocal, non-evaluative classroom observations. A Teaching Square consists of four faculty, usually from different departments, who visit each other’s classes over the course of a semester, and then meet to discuss and reflect on what they observed and learned. Participating in a Teaching Square provides an organized opportunity to to engage with your colleagues in this reflective process of learning together that is separate from any evaluation processes. Teaching Squares will run again in the Spring 2025 semester; if you are interested in participating, please use this form to sign up. Please contact Chris Odato (christopher.odato@keene.edu) if you have any questions about this program.
This self-paced course provides information, recommendations, and resources for planning, developing, and delivering any course with a significant online component, whether it is fully online, partially online (hybrid/blended), or a face-to-face course utilizing online resources and activities. It also introduces effective practices in online/blended course design and criteria that you can use to both guide your design process and evaluate your course. There are suggested activities that will help inform your planning and opportunities to request feedback. Use this link to self-enroll in the course; if you have already enrolled you can use this link to go directly to the course.
The self-paced Orientation to Canvas Course is a valuable resource for everyone–faculty new to Canvas and those who have used Canvas for years. It demonstrates tools and effective strategies for building an engaging learning experience for any course, whether it is fully online, partially online (hybrid/blended), or a face-to-face course utilizing online resources and activities. Participants will experience Canvas as a student using tools such as notification settings, assignments, quizzes, grades, feedback, and announcements. Activities include building a course Module using the tools and strategies learned while a student in the course and the course includes information you can share with students such as notification settings and how to find feedback on assignment submissions. Use this link to self-enroll in the course; if you have already enrolled you can use this link to go directly to the course.
To help you save time and get started designing your course in Canvas, the Learning & Teaching Collaborative has created course templates that you can choose to copy into your course. The templates provides a framework to help you to build a well organized course that will facilitate a smooth student experience and includes space, prompts, and sample language for some of the information that you would want to include in a course with a substantial online component. Though it was initially created to help faculty who were developing online courses for the first time, the template is equally appropriate for face-to-face and blended/hybrid courses as for fully online courses. There are three versions of the template: The 15-week version is designed for full semester (Fall/Spring) courses, the 12-week version is for Summer Full session courses, and the 6-week version is available for courses in the Summer 1 and Summer 2 sessions. Visit this link for more information and instructions to add the template to your course.
The Teaching Innovation Studios are opportunities for faculty to join in-depth exchanges of ideas around a selected topic related to college teaching. This faculty-led group began meeting in fall 2016 to form a community of practice to support each other in learning about and applying new and innovative practices in our teaching. At each Studio we discuss a selected topic related to college teaching. We come prepared to share our own experiences or ideas that we have been interested in trying. Together we exchange ideas, brainstorm, and ask questions, with the hope that everyone can leave with new ideas and recommendations to apply in their courses. Examples of past topics include active learning strategies, self- and peer assessment, alternative approaches to final assessments, structuring successful group work, efficient course design strategies, and making larger classes feel small. View descriptions and resources from past studios.
A Learning Community is an active group of colleagues who work collaboratively on an on-going basis, focusing on a particular pedagogical or research topic, issue in higher education, or other topic of shared interest. By design, learning communities promote collegiality, and they also encourage innovation by providing a safe space to explore new ideas, experiment, and reflect with your colleagues. Collaborative staff facilitate some learning communities, but we support learning communities in a variety of other ways: selecting topics, identifying possible members, promotion and communication, logistical support, research, help with data collection, and as participants in the groups.
You can contact Chris Odato, Coordinator of Instructional Development, or Jenny Darrow, Director of Digital Learning, with questions or to inquire about support for forming a new learning community.
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