Tag: instructional design
My Experience at CITAL as a Student Aide
By Soniya Ottayil, Senior Nursing Major & CITAL student aide I began working at the Center for Innovation in Teaching, Assessment, and Learning (CITAL) during my sophomore year at Valparaiso University. When I first accepted the position, I was nervous...
Helping Students Connect Your Class to Their Future Career
By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development Your students may not realize it, but in your classes, they are developing the skills that their future employers are seeking. To help your students understand this connection between classroom and career, Valpo...
January Teaching Tools Symposium
By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL On Tuesday, January 14, 2026, CITAL held our annual Symposium on Teaching Tools. Faculty learned from their colleagues and CITAL staff about some of the best online teaching tools available to enhance...
Faculty Development Fellowship Opportunity
Do you have some pedagogical ideas that you would like to try out in your classroom? Would you like to work collegially with other faculty to learn more and to hone your ideas? Then consider applying for CITAL's Faculty Development...
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...
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...