Posted in: 2025
Valpo’s Honor Code and AI
By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL Faculty are increasingly encountering AI in the classroom, whether they want it there or not. Not surprising, then, that there is an increase in the number of Honor Council (HC) cases involving...
Virtual Reality in Nursing Classes
By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL A nursing student wearing a virtual reality (VR) headset as they take the vitals of a virtual patient? This scenario is not science fiction but science fact at our College of Nursing...
Exploratory Learning
Written by Raina Isaacs, Instructional Designer, CITAL Exploratory learning is an active and inclusive activity that is the reverse of traditional instruction. In traditional instruction, we teach students the underlying concepts and then ask them to solve problems. In exploratory...
Teaching as Coaching: Actively Engaging Students
Written by Andrew Richter, Physics & Astronomy I have been teaching introductory physics courses at Valpo for twenty years, always with a continuous improvement mentality. I try new things based on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) and then...
Helping your Students Thrive with Slate for Student Success
By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL This fall Valpo is debuting a new student retention system called Slate for Student Success. You can access the system now via this link: https://shine.valpo.edu/portal/faculty-staff. Slate for Student Success replaces the Starfish...
Best Practices for Online Teaching: Quality Matters
By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL As many of you know, the market for online classes is growing. Even students who live on campus want the option of taking at least one online class per semester. That is...
Christ College’s First Year Program Transitions to Canvas
By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL Sam Graber, Director of Christ College’s First-Year Program (FYP), oversaw the program’s move from Blackboard to Canvas this past fall. This article, based on an interview, describes that transition, and how Canvas...
The Visiting Faculty Fellows Program
By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL Each year CITAL’s Visiting Faculty Fellows Program offers our visiting faculty a chance to enhance their CV by getting to know the work of one department or office on campus. We hope...
January Teaching Tools Symposium
By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL On Tuesday, January 7, 2025, CITAL conducted a half-day Symposium on Teaching Tools. Faculty learned from their colleagues and CITAL staff about some of the best online teaching tools available to enhance...