Sessions Abstracts - 2026

Universal Design for Learning offers guidelines for building flexibility into a course from the start: multiple pathways, multiple means of engagement, options built in rather than added later. This session starts from a question UDL guidelines alone don't fully answer: what happens when good design still isn't enough? Drawing on disability studies scholarship, we'll examine why even well-designed courses can plateau, not because the design failed, but because every design reflects decisions about what counted as variation, made by someone, from somewhere. We'll look at the small frictions this creates, the moments where a policy or deadline doesn't quite fit a student, even in an otherwise well-designed course, starting from what each of us has already noticed in our own courses. You'll leave with a clearer sense of where flexibility already exists in your own course policies and first-week adjustments ready to bring into fall planning, and with a way of thinking about access as something built together, continually, not delivered once and considered done. 

This session treats access not as a problem to solve once, but as a threshold concept, something that can shift how course design looks once it clicks. The outcomes below are entry points into that shift, not the shift itself. 

After this session, participants will:

• Recognize timelines and pacing as design choices, not neutral defaults 

• Identify where flexibility already exists in a current course policy 

• Curate concrete adjustments to bring into fall course planning

What keeps your students from deep learning in their disciplines? Often the barriers standing between classroom learning and the integration of new skills and knowledge cluster around threshold concepts that we have not identified. First proposed in the early 2000s as a frame to understand teaching and learning, “A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something.  It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress” (Meyer & Land, 2006).  

This hands-on workshop focuses on the discipline-specific concepts of what we teach, why we teach, and how we can engage with our colleagues in different subject areas so that learners can transcend the barriers by intentionally confronting and strategically breaking down whatever impedes students’ deep learning.   

Following a light review of threshold concepts (TC) scholarship (Myers & Land, 2003; McLean 2009; and Timmermans, 2019), and a live demonstration, participants will individually and collectively reflect on a threshold concept in their discipline that their students continue to grapple with. Then, in pairs, colleagues will apply the Decoding the Disciplines framework developed by Middendorf & Pace (2004) to their teaching context(s) to help facilitate an “Aha!” moment.  The workshop will conclude with a group debrief focused on both the process and the outcomes, as well as opportunities for participants to translate their reflections into action through continued collaboration with an Educational Developer, either through upcoming fall workshops or individualized consultations.   

After this session, participants will: 

Most university classrooms rely on a familiar, individualist loop: instructors deliver content, and students individually reproduce it for a grade. This session introduces a different starting point: Knowledge Building, a framework developed by Scardamalia and Bereiter where ideas are treated as "improvable objects" that a community works on together. We will examine the core principles of Knowledge Building, including community knowledge, epistemic agency, and idea diversity. Using a "Prompt Redesign Matrix" built around two questions, who sets the question and what happens to an idea once it's posted, we will diagnose a typical transactional discussion prompt and rework it, one constraint at a time, into a genuine knowledge-building task. Participants will leave with a redesigned prompt or assignment from their own course, ready to try this fall. 

After this session, participants will: 

• Distinguish individualist, content-reproduction models from collective, knowledge-building models of course design 

• Diagnose a discussion prompt or assignment using the Prompt Redesign Matrix, identifying whether it invites epistemic agency and cumulative idea-building 

• Redesign a prompt from their own course by shifting it along one or both axes of the matrix 

Are you curious about exploring certain patterns of learning in your courses? Ever wonder why certain pedagogical strategies seem to work for some students but not for others? What are other instructors doing that might work well in your classroom too? These curiosities are often the perfect starting point for pedagogical research projects that can contribute to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). SoTL allows us to put our pedagogical practices into a scholarly conversation with others. However, it can be daunting to know where to begin, especially if you are new to SoTL research. 

This workshop will guide our teaching and learning community on how to transform their everyday teaching curiosities into focused, researchable questions suitable for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) projects. Participants will be provided with a brief introduction to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and common frameworks used to ground SoTL research projects.  Participants will also be invited to reflect on their own teaching experiences and make note of instances that they would like to explore systematically through a SoTL project. This workshop is intended for faculty and educational staff at all stages of SoTL engagement, whether new to educational research or looking to refine existing study ideas. 

After this session, participants will:

• Gain an introduction to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and identify the types of research questions that can be explored through a SoTL project. 

• Reflect on teaching experiences to identify opportunities that could be systematically explored through a SoTL project.

"Should students use AI for this?" is often the wrong starting point because it forces a complex pedagogical relationship into a rigid, binary policy of compliance or prohibition. This session introduces a three-position "Discernment Framework" that distinguishes delegation, outsourcing, and doing-it-yourself as three distinct ways of working with generative AI. Rather than leaving students to guess at unstated expectations, this model treats discernment, knowing which posture fits a given task and why, as an explicit, teachable skill, grounded in a simple test: does AI use here bypass the actual learning the task is meant to develop? We will work through an "Assignment Audit," applying that test task by task to a real assessment, then translate the results directly into a student-facing syllabus statement. You'll leave with a completed audit of one of your own assignments and a draft syllabus statement ready to use this fall.  

Every classroom's assumptions shape who gets noticed, who speaks and who gets heard, who fades into the back row, and what counts as knowledge worth attending to. This session takes Hicham Benohoud's The Classroom, on exhibit at the Blackwood Gallery, as an entry point for noticing the unexamined in a space and practice you already know well. We'll move outdoors to reflect on the Blackwood's campus lightboxes, a different way of spending this time with each other, in service of a different way of thinking about teaching. Drawing on Jay Dolmage's (2017) work on position and positionality, we'll treat this movement, literally changing where we position ourselves in relation to a teaching space, as a way of revealing what stays hidden when we stay stuck. 

After this session, participants will:

• Identify hidden curriculum at work in a familiar teaching space 

• Apply concrete adjustments to classroom design ahead of the fall term

As one of the final sessions of Ready, Set…Teach!, this syllabus clinic invites participants to bring together insights from earlier discussions on threshold concepts, accessibility and generative AI. Participants will learn how the syllabus is a living document open to assessment and revision in its goal of aligning course design with pedagogical practice. Often the first point of contact between students and instructors, it is a foundational element in establishing a meaningful learning community with your students. In this session, we will see the role that our institutional policies play in establishing this document, and also have a chance to review some of the newest institutional policies. Whether you're revising an existing syllabus or starting fresh, this clinic offers a supportive environment to align your course materials with evolving pedagogical values and student-centered practices. 

After this session, participants will:

• Align syllabi with course design and teaching practices 

• Strengthen student-centered elements within a syllabus 

• Revise syllabi to reflect current institutional policies and pedagogical priorities