List of Available Sparkshops

AI Expectations Start with the Syllabus

This workshop helps participants craft clear, effective AI use statements for their syllabi that set expectations, define boundaries and align with course goals and academic integrity.

AI Prompt Engineering

This workshop introduces participants to AI prompt engineering and helps them use practical strategies for crafting effective prompts that generate desired results from AI tools.

Using AI to Enhance Productivity

This workshop explores practical ways AI can support teaching, research and professional tasks, helping faculty increase productivity and devote more time to building relationships and engaging with students.

Accessibility: Captions for Flexible Access

This workshop explains how video captions help various types of learners to receive and retain information more effectively. Participants will practice editing captions in Kaltura.

Accessibility: Headings & Lists for Easy Navigation

This workshop explains how headings and lists improve readability and navigation. Participants learn to use built‑in software tools to structure content effectively.

Accessibility: Links and Color to Stop the Guesswork

This workshop helps participants create descriptive links, use tools to check color contrast and explore alternatives to using color alone to communicate information.

Accessibility: Tables to Keep Readers Oriented

This workshop helps participants gain perspective on how screen readers move through tables, learn common formatting choices to avoid and review examples of clean, accessible tables.

Accessibility: When an Image Needs Words

This workshop helps participants determine when images require alternative text and how to write clear, context-sensitive descriptions that enhance accessibility.

Brightspace Accessibility: Quick Wins

This session highlights high-impact, easy-to-implement accessibility improvements in Brightspace, including special access and accommodation settings, as well as scanning proper headings, document structure, alt text and content formatting.

Microsoft’s Accessibility Checker for a Quick Scan

Participants learn how to run Microsoft’s Accessibility Checker, interpret its recommendations and quickly fix common issues to improve the accessibility of instructional materials.

Building a Sense of Belonging with Community Agreements

Participants explore the purpose of community agreements and learn approaches for co‑creating them with students to foster belonging, shared expectations and accountability.

Building Welcoming Learning Experiences via Syllabus Language

Participants compare warm and cold syllabus language and examine its impact on student perception. The session provides examples of inclusive language to foster a supportive environment.

Roaring into a Successful Semester

This workshop focuses on student concerns during the first days of the semester and offers strategies for addressing these concerns while building a supportive and welcoming learning climate.

The “Hidden Curriculum”

This workshop defines the hidden curriculum and identifies common examples in higher education. Participants explore actionable ways to make these expectations visible to support student success.

Brightspace Accessibility: Quick Wins

This session highlights high-impact, easy-to-implement accessibility improvements in Brightspace, including special access and accommodation settings, as well as scanning proper headings, document structure, alt text and content formatting.

Build Interactive Brightspace Content with Creator+ Elements

Participants learn how to use Creator+ Elements to build engaging, interactive Brightspace pages, complete with reusable examples and practical design strategies to guide students through key concepts.

Low-Stakes Checks in Brightspace with Creator+ Practice

Discover how embedded practice activities with Creator+ Practice offer low-stakes opportunities for students to check understanding. The session highlights strategies for designing quick knowledge checks and other formative assessment opportunities directly within Brightspace content pages.

Brightspace Homepages: Quick Wins

Participants learn how the design practices of Brightspace homepages shape students’ perceptions and discover simple design choices that create an inviting, engaging course presence from the very first click.

Brightspace Automation: Intelligent Agents

This session introduces Brightspace Intelligent Agents as a way to automate outreach based on student activity (or lack of activity), assignment progress and course engagement. You’ll leave with examples and starter ideas for using automation to support retention, nudges and personalized learning support at scale.

Carrying Your Students’ Stress

Participants explore the concept of secondary traumatic stress and learn strategies for recognizing emotional impact, self-care strategies and when/where to seek more help.

Help Students Stress Less and Learn More

This session explains how stress affects the brain and learning processes. Participants learn instructional strategies that reduce stress and enhance student motivation.

Supporting Students in the Moment

This session presents practical approaches for responding when students share academic, personal, or emotional challenges. Participants learn techniques for active listening, validating experiences, connecting students to resources and maintaining boundaries.

Entrance/Exit Tickets

This session highlights how entrance and exit tickets promote student accountability and provide meaningful formative feedback. Participants examine a range of formats and prompts they can use in their courses.

Think‑Pair‑Share

Participants learn the fundamentals of this simple active‑learning technique and explore variations that promote student engagement, whether they are new to the method or looking to expand their practice.

iClicker for Classroom Engagement

This workshop demonstrates how iClicker can increase participation, reveal student thinking and support real-time instructional decisions through polls, knowledge checks and discussion prompts.

Creating Transparent Assignments to Support Student Success

Participants are introduced to the evidence‑based TILT framework and receive materials to help them design assignments that clearly articulate purpose, tasks and success criteria.

Exam/Assignment Wrappers

Participants explore how students interpret their performance and how those interpretations shape motivation. Examples of exam and assignment wrappers are shared to help students reflect on preparation and performance.

Giving Wise Feedback

This workshop examines the characteristics of effective feedback and common barriers to its use. Participants learn a research-supported structure that increases student uptake and benefits from feedback.

Grading Practices for Student Success

This workshop introduces learner‑centered grading principles and helps participants apply practical strategies—such as transparent criteria, varied assessments and built‑in flexibility—to support student success.

Using Rubrics to Streamline Grading

Participants learn the essential components of effective rubrics and review examples and tools for building them. The session also covers strategies for integrating rubrics into grading workflows.

Nurturing Growth: Formative Assessments for Classroom Success

Participants learn what formative assessment is, how it differs from summative assessment and how it supports learning. The session includes practical examples and guidance for when and how to use them.