31st Showcase Faculty Expert Sessions

During these sessions, presenters will share how they have integrated active learning into their teaching, used other innovative teaching methods, or how they may be using technology in their teaching.  Presenters are encouraged to build an interactive session that facilitates dialogue among attendees.  Feedback from previous Showcase attendees have shown the most successful sessions to be those that provide a collegial exchange and practical takeaways or ideas how the topic presented might be incorporated into their own teaching.

Scheduled Faculty Expert Sessions - 50 minute
Beginning at 9:00-9:50 a.m. and 10:40-11:30 a.m.
 All Sessions in Plaster Student Union - Third Floor

Presentious: An Easy Way to Voiceover Your Presentation

Presentious easily creates effective presentations from PowerPoint, Keynote, and other formats. It's the easiest and most effective way to capture and share presentations. Presentious creates automated speech transcripts for your presentations and it's a new and exciting no-cost educational technology tool.

Time: 9:00-9:50 a.m.
Presenters: Ching-Wen Chang & Annice McLean
Room: 308

Scholar 2 Scholar

S2S is a campus-wide research initiative which supports students with work-study awards and interest in working with faculty from all disciplines as a research assistant. In this session, learn firsthand from pilot program participants (faculty & students) the program expectations and its challenges and rewards.

Time: 9:00-9:50 a.m.
Presenters: Jamaine Abidogun
Room: 312

9:00-9:50 a.m. Tough Talks: Your Role and Cultural Consciousness

A component of Missouri State University’s commitment to promote inclusion and value diversity, Tough Talks are a diversity lens for students to maximize their campus experience and learn about areas that they may not have experienced. Learn more about facilitator training to prepare you for Tough Talk sessions and other difficult conversations in your classroom.

Time: 9:00-9:50 a.m.
Presenters: Lyle Foster
Room: 313

Faculty Panel: Critical Thinking

Critical thinking involves a range of intellectual activities concerned with evaluating information as well as our own thought in a disciplined way. Our goal is to encourage students to assess information more comprehensively and develop their own thoughts, ideologies, and good decision-making. This panel will present examples and instructional methods they are using to foster critical thinking within their disciple.

Time: 9:00-9:50 a.m.
Presenters: Randy Meredith & John Downing
Room: 314

Classroom Strategies for Transforming Students into Passionate Professionals

Participants will learn the value of best practices for better equipping students to become professionals and citizens of impact. The Provost’s Student Success Committee will conduct this workshop to help faculty share strategies that produce more confident students, who are emotionally connected to their learning, their majors, and their future professional career aspirations. Presenters will introduce confidence and commitment-building tools and divide participants into brainstorming groups to apply these principles.

Time: 9:00-9:50 a.m.
Presenters: Tracy Dalton, Summer Harvey, Tom Kane, & Kelly Wood
Room: 315

9:00-9:50 a.m. Accessibility 101

We know the importance of making our course materials accessible to students, including individuals with disabilities. How can you be sure students using a screen reader can read your WORD or PDF document, or if they can interpret a graph in your PowerPoint? This session will provide valuable insight on how visually impaired students use screen readers to navigate documents. Practical tips on how you can make your course materials more accessible will also be shared.

Time: 9:00-9:50 a.m.
Presenters: Amanda Lehmann
Room: 317

Innovative Service Learning

MSU faculty/community will demonstrate how their service-learning courses worked to connect student-learning with important community issues including: Springfield’s Red Flag issues, the Fairbanks initiative, the MSU Vision Screening Program, the Safe and Sanitary Homes Initiative, and the Aging in Place program. In addition, faculty will engage in an interactive discussion of the methodology used to discover innovative and creative ways to integrate the teaching pedagogy of service-learning into courses. Participants will learn about a multi-disciplinary approach to service-learning in course design and research practices in service-learning, and opportunities for the CASL Faculty Research Stipend Award.

Time: 10:40-11:30 a.m
Presenters: Kathy Nordyke
Room: 308

Blackboard Black Belt Panel

In this session, a panel of Blackboard Black Belt instructors will share their “tips and tricks” of instructional technology and demonstrate their proven solutions that attendees can immediately use in courses being taught in the fall semester. The panel will also discuss under-utilized features, or hidden gems, of the learning management system that simplify course management and save valuable time for both online and seated courses. Ideas will focus on topics of efficiency, pedagogy, and instructor immediacy that enhance student learning outcomes. The panel will then address Q & A from the audience on innovative and creative ways to integrate technology in both online and seated courses to reach desired outcomes and high levels of student engagement.

Time: 10:40-11:30 a.m
Presenters: Kristi Oetting
Room: 312

Library Without Walls: Resources for Your Courses

Meyer Library’s Research and Instructional Services Unit will discuss resources from the Library website including online tutorials, virtual consultations, library instruction using Blackboard Collaborate, and the library presence in the Blackboard Services tab. The session will also touch on the Library’s various social media efforts (YouTube tutorials!) and how faculty and students can utilize that information for teaching and learning. Other library services and resources such as Interlibrary Loan, Course Reserves, new online study room reservations, subject guides, eBooks and databases will also be discussed.

Time: 10: 40-11:30 a.m
Presenters: Jessica Bennett & Tracy Stout
Room: 313

"The Devil is in the Details' : A Closer Look into some Common Instructional Practices

As an ongoing effort to generate greater student interest, engagement, and ultimately learning, instructors at all levels and disciplines continue to make significant changes to the way they teach. Often, considerable financial resources are spent to reconfigure classrooms or purchase devices to facilitate collaborative learning and encourage communication within a classroom. But after expending their earnest efforts, instructors are often left perplexed by the results of student assessments - both cognitive and affective. Asking, "Why isn't group work successful sometimes?" or "Why did only some of my real-world examples engage the students?" In addressing these and other questions, I will present key characteristics of the learning process: identifying activities and practices conducive to supporting these important aspects of learning. Using evidence from science education research literature, I describe implementation and execution of these instructional methods in ways that maximize the possibility of student learning.

Time: 10:40-11:30 a.m
Presenters: Gautam Bhattacharyya
Room: 314

In The Zone: Equipping General Education Instructors to Welcome and Engage a Diverse Student Body

This presenter aims to effectively equip 100- and 200-level general education instructors to build classroom communities that are conducive for domestic and international students alike. Educators equipped with and confident in these strategies should be able to foster a strong, diverse classroom community, altering a homogenous approach to education to one that reflects the belief that linguistic and cultural differences are not a deficit in the learning community, but a powerful asset.

Time: 10:40-11:30 a.m
Presenters: Lindsey Jackson
Room: 315

Simple Things You Can Do To Make Your Course More Accessible

Developing an accessible course seems like a daunting task but it doesn’t have to be. Taking a proactive approach and implementing simple strategies in the beginning will benefit all of your students – not just those needing academic accommodations. In this session participants will be introduced to proactive and simple strategies for making their courses more accessible utilizing universal design principles. Topics to be covered: How the use of styles in your word processing software and LMS improve access for visually impaired students; Use of color in course design; Using appropriate descriptions of graphics in course design; How the inclusion of captioning or transcripts for video/audio presentations benefit students with learning disabilities as well as hearing impaired students; and why it is important to know your Disability Support personnel.

Time: 10:40-11:30 a.m
Presenters: Stacy Rice
Room: 317