In case you have not heard the news, a new Learning Management System (LMS) will be coming to Denison beginning Fall 2022. The ITC, the Office of the Provost, and ITS have been working together to ensure Denison faculty are involved in the process of selecting a LMS that works best for the university. Demos of three systems, Canvas, D2L Brightspace, and OpenLMS (Moodle-based), will be held the second and fourth weeks of January.
CfLT Newsletter
The posts below are from the CfLT newsletter which includes curated, research-based digital resources to support ongoing faculty development and pedagogical engagement. As of August 2025, CfLT Director Karen Spierling oversees the content. Posts from July 2020-May 2025 were compiled by previous Director Lew Ludwig.
Teaching II – Speaking of Your Syllabus…
Do your students know where to look for help? As we are laying out that new class or revising a familiar one, consider the tips in this Chronicle article, How Your Syllabus Can Encourage Students to Ask for Help.
Students don’t read your syllabus? Recall this TTT deeper dive video where I give tips on getting your students to engage with your syllabus, based on a short Chronicle article.
Teaching – Considering Language when Creating an Inclusive Learning Environment
As we look at the semester ahead, now is an excellent time to reflect on our syllabus and other materials – do they set an inclusive tone? This article from the Teaching Professor provides an easy-to-read list of suggestions to make your materials do just that.
It is also a good time to revisit this TTT piece from Kaly Thayer, our Coordinator for Multilingual Learning, with tips on ensuring our grading and expectations do not privilege one group of students over another.
Tidbit – What Ted Lasso taught me about my first semester of teaching
Whether you’re a fan of Apple’s hit series or not, the fictional character Ted Lasso has some words of wisdom for those teaching for the first semester or thirtieth. Check out this short piece from The Teaching Professor, What Ted Lasso taught me about my first semester of teaching.
Tech – Workshop: “Seeing Through Your Text with Voyant: Low Barrier Text Analysis in the Classroom”
On Saturday, December 4, the Ohio Five CODEX team, in collaboration with Denison ETS and the Library, hosted a workshop on computational text analysis and using a tool call Voyant. Most of the faculty participating in the workshop left with ideas on how they can use this digital tool to have students conduct distance reading on their texts.
Teaching – Be good to your future self: The importance of self-reflection assignments between essays
As we sit down to grade that last stack of papers, did our students learn from subsequent assignments? That is, did students look at the graded work you returned and take the comments and suggestions to heart? In my experience, they more often look at the grade at the top, then move on.
In this concise piece from Faculty Focus, Julia Colella provides a self-reflection rubric she requires of her students after an essay assignment is returned.
Teaching – Be good to your future self: What Is the Purpose of Final Exams, Anyway?
As we head into final exams, several recent articles have reflected on the nature and need for the traditional final. In this Chronicle piece, Kevin Gannon – the tattooed professor – reflects on the nature of final exams and whether they serve the purpose we intend. In Exams Reimagined by Beckie Supiano, she shares examples of how professors are reimaging their exams.
Tidbit – What Ted Lasso taught me about my first semester of teaching
Whether you’re a fan of Apple’s hit series or not, the fictional character Ted Lasso has some words of wisdom for those teaching for the first semester or thirtieth. Check out this short piece from The Teaching Professor, What Ted Lasso taught me about my first semester of teaching.
Tidbit – The Listening I: Shifting Agency in Student Writing Conferences
As due dates for those scaffolded writing projects come due, many of us are holding writing conferences with our students. This article by Paul Hanstedt in
The Teaching Professor provides his fresh approach to this process that get his student actively engaged in the conference. He requires students to take out a notebook and make three lists:
- everything you already know you’re going to change
- everything you’re thinking about changing but aren’t sure about;
- any questions you have for him
He found that thee conferences were less work, students paid greater attention, and the papers got better.
Tech – Using tablet capture to save time
Ever want to communicate a quick idea or demonstration to your students outside of class, but an email format was cumbersome? Have access to a tablet, such as an iPad? Consider making a quick tablet capture voice-over video. Unlike a talking-head video made in something like Loom, with an iPad connected to a desktop you can create a quick voice-over video to:
- share a quick example that may involve drawings or computations
- point out key parts of a reading or diagram
- provide verbal feedback on students’ work
This excellent website from the University of Pittsburgh instructs how to create video capture on a variety of tablets and systems.