We found 116 results that contain "#iteach.msu.edu"

23,000 users. 36,000 sessions. As with any new platform, users flocked slowly to the #iteachmsu Commons, a platform for educators at MSU that combines aspects of an online forum and social network. But iteach.msu.edu has seen exponential growth over the last year. Makena Neal, head of the #iteachmsu Commons team, attributes this growth, in part, to the versatility built into the platform’s core concept: that it would be whatever purpose its community of users decided. 
“We built #iteachmsu Commons, and it’s been a very informed process throughout many years of focus groups and testing, but ultimately, it’s a space that’s for educators, by educators,” says Neal. “We’ve stuck to our guns on this: how the community picks it up is how it’s going to be used. We’re not gatekeepers. People can use the platform however it’s going to be most meaningful and useful for them.”
Neal and others who worked on the project believed in the vision: that MSU educators, broadly defined, could benefit from having a digital place to ask questions, trade tips, and share ideas. But evangelizing for the platform was difficult with people already inundated with communication channels like websites and newsletters. Neal thinks the interactivity offered by the platform, and its focus on MSU educators specifically, differentiates it from other media and social networks available to Spartans.
“The Commons is meant to be a place where people can connect and share knowledge regardless of their role, regardless of their discipline, and get feedback and insights from other folx across the board,” says Neal. “MSU is a really big place. We’ve got educators working across a variety of roles and spaces. Some are physically on campus, and some are around the world, especially given today’s remote and hybrid work. Sheer size and disciplinary silos can make it really difficult to connect with people outside of our ‘home bases’. It’s also difficult to elevate and leverage the knowledge that exists in those other spaces. Iteach.msu.edu can help.”
One of the new functions driving this sharing is the threaded reply, similar to the one adopted by many social and message apps over the past few years. While a seemingly small detail, threaded replies open up entirely new formats and, accordingly, created a new recurring feature on iteach.msu.edu: “Ask Me Anythings,” or AMAs.
“Educators from around campus volunteer to host an AMA on a topic of their choosing,” says Neal. “For example, ‘Makena Neal is hosting an AMA on adult learners.’ Users can reply in a thread with questions or comments, and the host can reply directly. It’s now a much more user-friendly experience. One of the really cool things about the AMAs is that they’re repositories of knowledge, discoverable by searching iteach.msu.edu. You might search for the phrase ‘adult learners’ and find an AMA where the host shared a series of links, documents, and tips.”
Neal and her team are watching the platform evolve with continued fascination. Some of its popular components were designed and inserted by the team intentionally, such as the Thank an Educator feature. 
“Anyone can go to #iteachmsu and recognize any MSU educator that has had an impact on them. And of course, when I say ‘educator,’ I mean anyone who contributes to the teaching and learning mission of the university,” says Neal. “This includes everyone from undergraduate learning assistants to administrators, librarians to learning designers. I really love that. I think it’s really important to elevate and celebrate the amazing work we know is happening at MSU, but that we don’t always hear about.”
But other features, like the AMA, are evolving naturally from the community of users. And the platform is also serving as a way for previously seldom-connected offices to collaborate or gain more visibility with other audiences. For instance, the MSU Extension group is the fastest-growing group on the platform, and they are curating articles related to the extension and outreach side of education, including reaching diverse audiences and facilitating groups, according to Neal.
“We’re seeing units, like the Office for Faculty and Academic Staff Development, turn to iteach.msu.edu when they get questions about specific topics,” she says. “For example, if an educator has questions about what components need to be on their syllabus at the beginning of the semester, OFASD can direct them to the list of syllabus resources on the #iteachmsu Commons, or they can search iteach.msu.edu themselves. It’s a really exciting multi-unit collaboration.``
To keep the campus community apprised of everything happening on #iteachmsu Commons, Neal and her collaborators began releasing a newsletter highlighting popular content on the site, called the “#iteachmsu Digest.“ The Digest also includes a Featured Educator section to bring attention to the site’s popular Thank an Educator function.
Neal is optimistic about the site’s future now that so many groups and tens of thousands of individual users are having conversations there. She also maintains that those not inclined to use the site’s interactive features will still find useful content about their discipline or unit. 
Below is a list of the most popular content from #iteachmsu Commons during the 20-21 academic year.

How Do We Best Support Students in a Remote Learning Environment? (article)
Mid-Semester Feedback (playlist)
Student Success Contacts and Resources (playlist)
MSU Learning Communities are Spaces to Explore Ideas in Education, Teaching, and Learning (article)
Educator Development Opportunities (playlist)
A Case for More Testing: The Benefits of Frequent, Low-Stakes Assessments (article)

This week, we wanted to highlight Stokes Schwartz and Garth Sabo, both educators with the MSU Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities. Stokes and Garth are also the co-facilitators of the “Reading Group for Student Engagement and Success” Learning Community this academic year! According to the Office for Faculty and Academic Staff Development (formerly AAN), this Learning Community is: A Zoom based reading group that pairs theory and praxis of student engagement techniques to drive greater student success in general education and prerequisite courses at the university. Bimonthly meetings (twice a month) consist of reading and discussing 2-3 recent articles and sharing best practices for applying methods in courses across the university. These two also use a group on the #iteachmsu Commons to share information about upcoming meetings, attach reading files, and continue to engage in asynchronous dialogue outside their meeting times!
Read more about these Learning Community co-facilitators’ perspectives below. #iteachmsu's questions are bolded below, followed by their responses! 
Q & A with Garth Sabo & Stokes Schwartz

You are facilitators of a Learning Community (LC) and decided to have a group on iteach.msu.edu for that LC. What about the #iteachmsu Commons appealed to you for this group?
Sabo: A major component of the LC structure at MSU focuses on providing some element of public dissemination of the work we do together, and Stokes and I both appreciated that #iteachmsu would allow us to make our group activities visible to the wider MSU community. We both felt a strong need for some type of digital meeting space/repository for things like meeting notes, agendas, etc., and we found that iteach.msu.edu offered a suite of those tools that were fairly easy to wrap our heads around and adopt as practice. 
Schwartz: Having a central place for learning community members (and interested parties) to check-in, share our thoughts, relevant documents, and planned talking points for meetings/discussions as well as any follow-up observations in the days following a meeting.  Personally, I have found iteach.msu.edu relatively easy to use.  
Sabo: Our LC meets digitally, and we also thought that it would be nice to structure things in a way that leaned into benefits of that structure rather than simply trying to imagine ourselves as an in-person community that only meets via Zoom, so we’ve also tried to use iteach.msu.edu as a platform for ongoing and supplemental conversations to the discussions that come up during our scheduled meetings.
Tell me more about your LC and what activity in your #iteachmsu Group looks like? (This can include, but not limited to goals, topics, general overview of membership, the kinds of things being shared in your group.)
Sabo: Our learning community is titled “Reading Group for Student Engagement and Success,” and the only thing I don’t like about it is the name. Stokes and I are both faculty in the Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities, and part of the impetus for the group was a desire to dig deeper into pedagogy research that might help us crack the egg of engaging students in a required course. We wanted to find a format that allowed us to have pedagogy conversations that were data-driven and practical in focus, so that our community members could feel like our conversations were driving towards concrete actions.
Our Zoom meetings focus on talking through a few pre-designated texts that the entire group reads. We’ve been fortunate that our current roster has also agreed to take turns as interlocutors, with one person briefly presenting on some additional text(s) that add additional context to the material we all consumed
Schwartz: Typically, Garth and I plan 8-10 multipart discussion questions for our meetings on fostering student engagement and success, which we share via iteach.msu.edu a few days ahead of time. Team community members have also shared information and related ideas via our iTeach group.  We are also in the process of compiling a playlist.  
Sabo: Our iteach activity tends to be kind of evenly split between looking back at what we’ve already done with logistical stuff (like meeting agendas, Zoom links, etc.) and what we might do (like additional discussions or resources that members post or comment on in the Feed). Our current membership is a great mix of folks across the College of Arts and Letters in a range of roles, which has enriched our conversation in ways that I couldn’t have anticipated. We’re certainly open in having more folks join us if interested!
Schwartz: We have had four meetings so far and have our fifth coming up on December 3, 2021 from 10-11:30 EST and all are welcome! Please note, if you're interested in joining the 12/3/21 meeting, please reach out to either co-facilitator via email or on iteach.msu.edu, as the readings we'll be discussing are from a hardcopy book we've procured!
What has been a highlight of this semester for your LC and what are you looking forward to next semester?
Sabo: I love talking about teaching with people who love teaching, and I really feel like that has been the tone of our conversations all semester. I’ve been very appreciative of the fact that our group has been able to talk about the challenges of teaching while still being productive and hopeful about what good teaching can do for our students and the world. One thing that has certainly helped that has been the spirit of collaboration that’s breathed through this group since its beginning. Stokes and I have had a good rapport even since the planning stages of this community, and that has continued as we’ve gone from the process of proposing the group to actually planning its meetings. As you might be able to tell from how long my answers to these questions are, I tend to be wordy and big-picture in my focus, and Stokes does a great job of bringing things back around to ask, “Okay, but what would that actually look like?” in a way that has helped our conversations find a great balance between macro and micro issues of engagement and student success. Our members have been great about thinking and sharing proactively as well.
Schwartz: The highlight?  Two actually.  First, working with my co-facilitator Garth.  We seem to have established an effective working relationship and bat our ideas-plans back and forth until they take solid shape.  It has been fun sharing our ideas, developing our respective parts, coming back to the figurative table for another round of mashup, and then seeing what the final results are before the day of an actual meeting.  Second, the knowledge and personalities of our learning community members, all of whom bring interesting experience and perspectives to our meetings.  Thus far, I have really enjoyed the experience.  It has been like grad school in the best way possible (without the egos and constant stress). 
Sabo: Just to peek behind the curtain a little bit,  next semester we’re pivoting slightly to frame our conversations with the goal of producing tangible results of our collaboration, whether that be conference presentations, publications, or something else entirely. I’d love to see a step on that road being a bigger focus on producing material that we might share to the wider iteach community via the Articles feature.
Schwartz: Looking ahead, I am excited to continue working with our community in the new year and possibly develop a panel or presentation on concrete things we might do to engage our students in the general education or lower division prerequisite "classroom" (F2F or online) more effectively. Beyond that, I am already mulling over ideas for proposing another similar learning community for the 2022-2023 AY.  The cross-pollination possibilities offered/brought about by learning communities like these is fantastic and a good way to break out of our various silos here at MSU.
If you are interested in learning more about this year’s Learning Communities at MSU you can see the full list here. If reading this story peaked your interest in #iteachmsu Groups, you can view all the current groups here. Looking for a group on a particular topic or practice, but don’t see one - start it! Any MSU user can create a group, just login to iteach.msu.edu with your MSU netID to get started. Easy to follow instructions for starting a group are here. 

For their work as part of the Leadership Academy 2020 cohort, the Professional Growth Group aimed to develop a series of workshops to provide professional development opportunities to their fellow graduate students based on community feedback. In the process of narrowing the focus of their efforts for the eight week period of the Academy, the Professional Growth Group determined that not everyone has access to information about pursuing alternative academic careers. Being that the current academic job market offers increasingly fewer opportunities, more graduate students are seeking information about alternative options. As such, our group decided to produce a series of workshops for students across all departments that prepared students to pursue alt-ac careers and allowed them to be exposed to alt-ac careers before leaving graduate school. Through this work, we hoped to destigmatize the process of seeking alternative careers to academia and provide a safe space for students whose networks may not be as supportive of this decision.  While we wanted to target our workshops at graduate students, we also wanted to network with people on campus who either already provide workshops and spaces for more professional development or those who have the authority to help further this work. As such, in addition to the widely circulated flyers for two workshops that we would host during the period of the Academy, we developed an online space on iteach.msu.edu for graduate students to connect and access alt-ac resources.
On February 25, 2020, the Professional Growth Group hosted two workshops: 1) Leveraging your Membership, which focused on teaching students to leverage their service experience to transferable skills to add to your CV or resume; and 2) Translate Your Thesis to the World, which helped students learn to describe their research in three minutes using only a single powerpoint slide. We had a total of five students attend, and received generally positive feedback. Both presentations were recorded and uploaded to our iteach.msu.edu page so students who were unable to attend the workshops in person could have the opportunity to interact with us and each other virtually. We also began to reach out to campus offices who might want to connect with our group and help us circulate existing campus resources. Looking forward, if we have the opportunity to continue our work on this project we would develop a series of interviews of podcasts of MSU grad student alumni who have careers in alt-ac,  host additional workshops, and extend our recruitment of our online group to encourage more active discussion about pursuing alt-ac careers among students. 
 
Powerpoint with Short Video Presentation: https://iteach.msu.edu/posts/preview_attachments?post_id=1507 

In the beginning, there was a graduate-student-led effort called Inside Teaching MSU (ITMSU) that originated out of the MSU Graduate School. ITMSU was an effort dedicated to promoting teaching excellence through conversation and sharing practices for graduate teaching assistants. The goal also was to create a platform for individuals to share their experience and best practices across disciplinary and institutional silos. 
ITMSU used three primary social software platforms to build digital community around teaching and learning: microblogs (Twitter), Facebook, and a university hosted blog. Through its user-generated blog, ITMSU also aimed to challenge the conventional ideas of who is an educator and where learning takes place. Any member of the institutional community was encouraged to submit an idea related to teaching and learning for the blog and educators across levels and roles took up this opportunity. This is also where the hashtag “#iteachmsu” was born and continues to this day to be not only a way to digitally tag post and build community, but also serves as a rally cry of sorts. Users who post with the hashtag are stating “I teach MSU”. 
On such a large campus, it can be difficult to fully recognize and leverage the MSU community’s teaching and learning contributions, especially when so much of our institution is decentralized - leaving colleges, departments, and units to manage their own educator development. After seeing the success of the ITMSU effort, other institutional partners joined in collaboration to strategize how an initiative like ITMSU could be launched institutionally to better align educator professional development across roles on campus, create a space to amplify the great work already happening to support student success on campus, and help individuals connect with one another. The result is the #iteachmsu Commons at iteach.msu.edu. 
The #iteachmsu Commons provides an educator-driven space for sharing teaching resources, connecting across educator networks, and growing teaching practice. The site has been in development led by a team of administrators, staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students with regular feedback and insights provided by a similarly diverse Advisory Group of staff, students, and faculty. This is congruent with ITMSU’s original aim to challenge traditional conceptions around who teaches. The founding partners of the #iteachmsu Commons, Academic Advancement Network, The Graduate School, and The Hub for Innovation in Learning and Technology, believe that a wide educator community (faculty, Teaching Assistants, Undergraduate Learning Assistants, instructional designers, academic advisors, librarians, coaches, et al.) helps learning happen at MSU. 
The site is now live, so if you contribute to the teaching and learning, and thus student success, mission of Michigan State University we hope you consider joining the community at iteach.msu.edu. To do so, visit iteach.msu.edu and click the “Log in” button in the upper right-hand corner. Use your MSU netID to log on with Single Sign-On. Now you have full access to contribute to the Commons! Build your bio. Share updates, questions, and celebrations via posts. Add to articles with your practical insights or scholarly work. Connect with others! Right now, anyone can visit the Commons and consume content, but only members of the MSU community with a netID can log in and contribute at this time.

An Overview of the Syllabus and its Role at MSU
In this resource, we describe the purpose and history of the syllabus and describe the required and recommended elements of syllabi at Michigan State. We end with links to MSU’s many existing syllabus guidelines and resources. While what to include in your syllabus is flexible, we encourage educators to keep students’ needs in mind and think about how your syllabus can contribute to their learning. 
What a syllabus is
A syllabus is a synecdoche for a course of study—a part of the curricular experience that represents the whole. They are often the very first course texts our students encounter and, accordingly, they frame and preface learning in powerful ways. On one hand, they communicate practical and structural details—where and when a course meets, what to read, and how to contact an instructor. But they also express intellectual and discipline-specific expectations. 
As a special genre of educational texts, syllabi have taken various forms and played various roles over many centuries. In the 17th century ‘syllabus’ was synonymous with ‘table’ or ‘index.’ They served as a structural preview for manuscripts or a list of speakers and topics for a lecture series—they were a means of organizing texts, ideas, and experience. Although that core function remains, post-secondary syllabi have expanded significantly in volume and purview over the past forty years. 
What a syllabus needs at MSU
There is no universal definition or template for contemporary syllabi. There are, however, some critical things that effective syllabi share. At Michigan State University, our Code of Teaching Responsibility states  “Instructors [are] responsible for distributing a course syllabus (either in print or electronic form) at the beginning of the semester [that] minimally includes:

instructional objectives;
instructor contact information and office hours;
grading criteria and methods used to determine final course grades;
date of the final examination and tentative dates of required assignments, quizzes, and tests, if applicable; 
attendance policy, if different from the University attendance policy and especially when that attendance policy affects student grades;
required and recommended course materials to be purchased, including textbooks and supplies; and any required proctoring arrangements to which students must adhere.”

If you are creating a new course or new to teaching at MSU, it can be helpful to request sample syllabi from your Departmental Chair, from past versions of the course you're teaching or even adjacent courses. These samples can help you learn more about general and discipline-specific expectations within your department. Syllabus templates are also available from different colleges; for example, CANR has a downloadable template.
Additional considerations
Beyond the fundamental requirements listed above, contemporary syllabi often include additional information or passages. We encourage MSU educators to consider including the following policies, keeping empathy and flexibility in mind: 

notify students about MSU’s religious observance policy
describe available mental health resources 
include equal opportunity/affirmative action and inclusion statements
include statements on civil discourse and the civil discourse policy
consider including your attendance policy
acknowledge the indigenous land(s) on which their teaching will occur
provide an accessibility statement, link to the Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities
list institutional resources to support students
describe policies for student athletes
explain the technologies students will be required or asked to use
describe the instructor’s communication preferences or instructions for scheduling office hour appointments
describe COVID-specific health and wellness guidelines or emergency measures
provide information about academic dishonesty
provide study or writing tips and link to the Writing Center
include other course- or college-relevant policies 

Some instructors include these and other statements in a ‘policies’ section, while others prefer to write a shorter syllabus that refers students to other course documents containing these and other course and university resources. 
Flexibility for students
It's best to communicate expectations in the syllabus for students that need to miss class or discuss adjustments to due dates with you for excusable reasons, such as religious observance, bereavement, health, or athletic competition. We strongly recommend that educators consult the university’s academic calendar and a current interfaith calendar when planning your course and make accommodations for students’ religious observance, or when courses directly conflict (e.g. final examination conflicts). Educators should make every effort to avoid scheduling exams and oral presentations during days of religious observance. It's best to remember that if the absence is excusable, and you'd do it for one student, you should apply your method consistently for all students. Your syllabus should include when and how to contact you to make arrangements for excusable absences. Instructors should provide a university expectation/deadline by which students need to inform instructors of an accommodation (i.e., 2 weeks after the start of the semester) in the syllabus, and this expectation be iterated during the first day of class. We encourage you to be flexible and empathic with students, and to act consistently and equitably. 
Innovative models for syllabi
Many educators, especially over the past few decades, have experimented with syllabi and created texts that reach far beyond basic documentation. For instance, some instructors use a fill-in-the-blank syllabus whereby students are asked to expand a set of learning objectives or required texts in order to customize their learning. The ‘annotated syllabus’ model gives students the opportunity to make suggestions for the syllabus at the beginning of the course, making it more of a living document.  Others have reconfigured the syllabus as a course textbook and used it throughout the semester to support learning (instead of just the first week). Other models reimagine the aesthetic potential of the document, approaching it as a graphic novel (Barry, 2017), mixtape, or chapbook (Lockett and Wong, 2018). Although their approaches differ, these educators have questioned the role and conventions of syllabi and found creative ways to expand the educational potential of these ubiquitous texts. 
Additional MSU syllabus resources 

MSU Syllabus Checklist with in-depth descriptions of potential sections of the syllabus.

Syllabus Checklist (2-page version)


Revised MSU Syllabus Checklist for [Fall 2020] online and hybrid courses
Inclusive Pedagogy Syllabus & Template
Civil Discourse Syllabus
Discourse Policy on Syllabus
Attendance Policy on Syllabus
Syllabus Resources from the Office of the University Ombudsperson
Generative AI Syllabus Guide  (with examples and sample language)
Calendar of Religious Observances from MSU's Office of the Provost
Guidelines for Online Camera Policies
Advice for MSU students about using a syllabus

Additional readings

Rocha et al. (2022) The syllabus as curriculum: A reconceptualist approach.  
Hsu (2020). A celebration of the syllabus.
Germano and Nicholls (2020) Syllabus: The remarkable, unremarkable document that changes everything.
Lockett and Wong (2018). Reframing syllabi as aesthetic encounters.
Barry (2017). Syllabus: Notes from an accidental professor.

This week, we are featuring, Dr. Megumi Moore, Associate Director for Graduate Student Life and Wellness. Dr. Moore was recognized via iteach.msu.edu's Thank and Educator Initiative! We encourage MSU community members to nominate high impact Spartan educators (via our Thank an Educator form) regularly!
Read more about Dr. Moore’s perspectives below. #iteachmsu's questions are bolded below, followed by his responses!
You were recognized via the Thank an Educator Initiative. In one word, what does being an educator mean to you?  
Human
Share with me what this word/quality looks like in your practice?
To me, the most important part of being an educator is showing up and creating an environment where everyone’s humanity is recognized and valued. That is the foundation for any experience to be meaningful and for it to be potentially transformational. In terms of content, I think it’s important to talk about things that are humanizing. External expectations set by institutions, disciplines, cultures, etc. often teach us to attach our sense of self-worth to our products and our performance, a mindset that has a dehumanizing effect on us. How can we remain connected to our true selves and live out of them consistently even when our environment is compelling us to do otherwise? Being an educator means providing opportunities for people to be connected to others, to themselves, and to ideas in a way that affirms and reinforces who they are while inviting them to bring their best and true self to the work they are doing. 
Have your ideas on this changed over time? if so how?
My ideas on what education is and how it’s done have definitely evolved over time. I used to have a very limited understanding of teaching and learning, focusing on formal educational settings and academic products like grades and term papers. The older I’ve gotten, the more I realize how ridiculously inadequate that idea was. My experiences in formal and informal education settings have continued to shape my own practice. The more I am in humanizing educational settings, the shaper my ideas and practices become. 
Tell me more about your educational “setting.” This can include, but not limited to departmental affiliations, community connections, co-instructors, and students. (Aka, where do you work?)
I am the Associate Director of the Graduate Student Life & Wellness office. I lead workshops on well-being and leadership for graduate students and occasionally faculty and staff as well. I also mentor several graduate students who work in my office and provide consultations for individual students to help them find resources or address challenges related to their experience as grad students. Many of the programs in my office are led by graduate students for graduate students, and my role in those programs is to support those leaders. Graduate students have so much to offer the institution and each other, and I am a firm believer in giving them platforms to operate as full partners in our work. 
What is a challenge you experience in your educator role?
Like many others, I have really struggled in the virtual world we live in at this point in the pandemic. I miss in-person workshops and meetings for the energy and creativity that comes from being in the same room with other people. I’ve been surprised by how much quality connection can happen while staring at a set of screens, but it’s a constant challenge to not be discouraged by all that is lost when we are remote. 
Any particular “solutions” or “best practices” you’ve found that help you support student success at the university despite/in the face of this?
I have found it helpful to begin workshops by verbally acknowledge the limitations of the virtual environment and setting a very authentic tone. I am also intentional about sharing my own frustrations with our current circumstances – it is unique to all be going through something like a pandemic together, where the stressor is the same for everyone. The impact of that stressor is incredibly different for everyone, but I have found that starting with the commonalities has helped create a meaningful sense of community. I’ve also spent more time creating workshop series where the same group of students will be together for 4-6 weeks so that folks have a chance to build community together.
What are practices you utilize that help you feel successful as an educator?
It’s really crucial to get feedback in many forms and in many ways! It’s important to keep pushing myself to learn and grow as an educator. Everyone has a distinct style of communicating which works well in some settings and with some people, and I’m constantly trying to modify my own style while still being true to myself. I think the best educators are those that can read the room and make adjustments to connect with many different kinds of people. I also try to prioritize my own wellness and well-being so that the best version of myself shows up more often than not. If I let myself get run down or tired, I am more likely to miss things both in preparing for workshops and in facilitating. Good group facilitation is a very immersive experience and I need all of my senses and skills to be sharp.
What topics or ideas about teaching and learning would you like to see discussed on the iteach.msu.edu platform? Why do you think this conversation is needed at msu?
I only familiar with a few pages on the iteach platform, so I am not entirely sure what is there. I’d be interested in topics like the role of emotional intelligence in teaching and learning and how to develop some of the “invisible” skills of being a responsible and responsive educator (e.g. reading a room, setting the tone, knowing when and how to diverge from your plan). 
What are you looking forward to (or excited to be a part of) next semester?
Like everyone, I’m hoping for more in-person options! I’m also excited as it will be my second year in this position.  The first year of any job is exploration of the role and learning what it entails. The second year, you’re able to build on the foundation you have explored. There is still so much to learn but the learning curve is not quite so steep. 

The "Welcome to My Classroom" series functions like a pedagogy and practice show and tell where educators from throughout MSU's ecosystem share something from their teaching and learning practice. Today, Casey shared the ways he has adapted two of his XA courses to be designed with generative AI integrated from day one!

Here are some key take-aways from Dr. McArdle:


Be open and honest with students, don't run and hide. Being open for students to bring up their concerns so they can be addressed together is critical.
Intentionality is key. Work with your units and/or curriculum committee to develop policies that work for program learning outcomes and goals. (Every decision should connect intentionally back to your learning outcomes and goals)
Inputs matter.  If users aren't exact with inputs, generative AI will pull data and make a guess. "“Generative AI enables users to quickly generate new content based on a variety of inputs. Inputs and outputs to these models can include text, images, sounds, animation, 3D models, or other types of data.” - NVIDIA
Know your limits. When it comes to using these types of systems, understand their limitations. Even ChatGPT acknowledges it "may occasionally generate incorrect information", "may occasionally produce harmful instructions or biased content", and "has limited knowledge of the world and events after 2021"
MSU has LOTS of resources! Chech out MSU's generative AI resources on iteach.msu.edu! You may be intersted in Michigan State University on Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) [playlist], Generative AI Use Codes [article], Generative AI Syllabus Guide [playlist], and ChatGPT FAQ for MSU Educators [article]. 

Resources for Continued Growth:
To support your ongoing professional development please consider these resources:

Slide Deck: Access Casey’s Welcome to My Classroom slide deck which has an overview of MSU’s guidance on generative AI, examples of how Casey acknowledged AI in his conversations with learners, and examples of AI-integrated activities from two courses, by logging into Google with your MSU netID.
Online Discussion: Based on the content of Casey’s presentation, you may be interested in joining the asynchronous online discussion happening in the “AI & Education” group on iteach.msu.edu. Login with your MSU netID to connect with fellow educators, exchange ideas, and seek further guidance.
Recording: In case you missed the session or would like to revisit it, you can view the full recording on MediaSpace (also embedded below).

Center for Teaching and Learning Innovation’s (CTLI) Welcome to My Classroom with Dr. Casey McArdle session on 09/14/23.

This week, we are featuring Brittany Dillman, MAET Graduate Certificate Program Coordinator, within the Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology and Special Education at MSU. Brittany was recognized via iteach.msu.edu's Thank and Educator Initiative! We encourage MSU community members to nominate high-impact Spartan educators (via our Thank an Educator initiative) regularly!
Read more about Brittany’s perspectives below. #iteachmsu's questions are bolded below, followed by their responses! 

You were recognized via the Thank an Educator Initiative. In one word, what does being an educator mean to you?  
Love.
Share with me what this word/quality looks like in your practice?
Being an educator is an act of love. I have always known this, but I don’t think I have always been able to (brave enough or self-secure enough) enact this in ways that I do now. 
Have your ideas on this changed over time? if so how?
In previous versions of my educator self, I put content first. Now, I put learners first. This includes checking in with them kindly, sharing myself and my humanity (flaws, quirks, and challenges), and giving them lots of chances. I have learned so much from the work of Lisa Laughman and the MSU Health4U program about emotional wellness to help me make the shift from content first to learners first.
Tell me more about your educational “setting.” This can include, but not limited to departmental affiliations, community connections, co-instructors, and students. (Aka, where do you work?)
I am the Graduate Certificate (GC) Programs Director for the Master of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) program in the College of Education at MSU. This is my favorite job in my life (so far). In my position, I work very closely with my team to create and maintain curriculum, advise GC students, teach online and hybrid master’s-level courses, support a group of phenomenal adjunct instructors, promote our program and the amazing work of our instructors and learners via social media, recruit students, and anything else that comes up.
What is a challenge you experience in your educator role?
The biggest challenge we face in our program is the increasing prices of MSU tuition and the barriers that cause for potential learners, particularly those learners of color or disability. Our program is phenomenal and students are consistently, incredibly pleased with their experience with us, but the cost is prohibitive for too many learners. In addition to our “assigned duties,” my colleagues and I are looking for grants and other ways we can support our students financially. We haven’t had the success that we want with this, but are continuing to explore big and small ways we can support our learners.
Any particular “solutions” or “best practices” you’ve found that help you support student success at the university despite/in the face of this? What are practices you utilize that help you feel successful as an educator?
I work with an amazing team (program staff and adjunct faculty) and we intentionally focus time and energy on how we work as a team, building our team’s strength, and ways we can improve as a team. This provides the foundation for all of our other work. You’ll notice that most of my answers center around how my team functions because that is what supports me as an educator.

We have a shared mission and vision that we all believe in and buy into. We have it on our website, in our presentations, and on our meeting agendas. We use that to guide us in our decisions. I feel like that sounds a bit cheesy, but it’s true and it really helps!
We believe in and use backward design for course design, and also for program design and decisions to move us forward. So, we make decisions that lead us toward our mission and vision.
Along the way, we make mistakes and so we iterate. One of our instructors emailed me yesterday and wrote, “You are masters of iteration!” We aren’t perfect, but we try to get better.
We rely on each other and our strengths. I bring organization (and spreadsheets!). Other colleagues bring creativity, writing, and networking/connections. We don’t pigeonhole ourselves into these archetypes, but we build off of the best of what we can each bring.
We push each other, question each other, and engage in critical questioning with our ideas. We do this in safe and kind ways, but it helps us all get better when one person asks a question like “have we considered this other way?”
We treat each other, our learners, and instructors, as human beings who are amazing and flawed. We respect each others’ humanity and help when we can. It’s not perfect, but we do our best.

What topics or ideas about teaching and learning would you like to see discussed on the iteach.msu.edu platform? Why do you think this conversation is needed at MSU?
Because my program is educational technology, there is often an assumption that we know everything - all the tools, apps, programs, and all the tricks and shortcuts. We don’t. We ground our program in pedagogy and thoughtful design based on the TPACK Framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). I wish all Spartan educators would approach curriculum, design, teaching, instruction, and assessment from a thoughtful, human-centered perspective. How do you design your course to best fit your content, your context, your students, your available technologies, and pedagogies? Then, how do we teach in alignment with this? Then, how do we assess students? Then, how do we improve the whole cycle for the next round? Will specific technologies be a part of this process? Of course! But my wish is that we can keep students at the center of all our work. Two of my favorite MSU events that do this are the Accessible Learning Conference (held in the fall) and the Spring Conference on Teaching, Learning, and Student Success (held in May annually). So, if you are seeking fellow Spartans with this perspective, I recommend starting in those places.
What are you looking forward to (or excited to be a part of) next semester?
So much! 

My colleagues and I have been taking some Quality Matters courses to learn more about their research, best practices of online education. So, I am excited to use some of my new knowledge this fall with students and experience the impact of some of the design decisions we have made based on our new and improved knowledge.
I haven’t taught, yet, in 2021 (based on my work schedule and some course buyouts) so I am excited to teach this fall. Our program shifted to a program-wide ungrading philosophy and practice in Fall 2020 and I am excited to get “back” into that now that we’ve had a chance to iterate and improve it.
I am looking forward to my children starting school (they just turned 5) and to experience their continued growth and learning...and being a parent of kids who are in school (a new experience for me)
Finally (and maybe most of all) I’m looking forward to fall weather. I know we need to appreciate all of Michigan’s amazing seasons, but fall is my favorite! I look forward to crisp days, colorful leaves, apple cider, donuts, and pumpkin spice flavored everything for the few short weeks it’s with us. I’m so sorry that pumpkin spice has gotten such a bad reputation in the last few years (though pumpkin spice flavored goat cheese does take the trend a smidge too far for even me). So, if there are fellow fall and pumpkin spice lovers out there who want to connect (or talk about pedagogy and teaching), please email me: dillmanb@msu.edu 



Don't forget to celebrate individuals you see making a difference in teaching, learning, or student success at MSU with #iteachmsu's Thank an Educator initiative. You might just see them appear in the next feature! Follow the MSU Hub Twitter account to see other great content from the #iteachmsu Commons as well as educators featured every week during #ThankfulThursdays.