Blog
Valpo Faculty Perspectives on Simple Syllabus
By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL This fall Simple Syllabus debuted university-wide. For our students this means consistent syllabus navigation across all their courses and the ability to easily access their syllabi via Blackboard or SS directly using...
Collaborative Spaces: One Size Does Not Fit All
By Ed Finn, Executive Director, CITAL Collaboration can happen almost anywhere; we see it all the time. Whether it is students sitting underneath a tree on a fall afternoon, or faculty members engaged in discussion at Grinders, the need to...
Valpo Faculty Respond to Generative AI
By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL At the faculty workshop this August, our keynote speaker Derek Bruff spoke about four possible faculty responses to AI: Red Light: I’ll prohibit the use of AI.Yellow Light: I’ll permit the use...
Two Perspectives on ChatGPT
By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL This past winter there was a veritable explosion of news stories about ChatGPT, a technology that lets users put in prompts to generate text that reads like it was written by a...
What Faculty Learning Communities Can Do for You
By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL Some of your faculty colleagues have been meeting regularly this year to explore a teaching topic that interests them and then making positive changes in their classrooms. That is what our Faculty...
Getting Your Students Excited about Learning
By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL Two proven ways to get students excited about learning are research and philanthropy. In the article below, you will learn about how the students of Kristi Bugajski (Biology) are raising money to...
Saving Your Students Money By Using OERs
By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL Jon Bull decided to make using open educational resources (OERs) a priority for his work at VU in order to help with student retention. That is why Jon instituted the OER Development...
What to Do for the Last Week of Class
By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL Does your last week of class look like every other week of the semester? If so, you may be missing a chance for a memorable finale that will fix the semester’s learning...
Take the Pain Out of Testing
By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL Everyone hates tests. For students, test anxiety has long been on the rise. Faculty dread both writing exams and the tedium of grading them. Three of your VU colleagues have found a...