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Workshops and Events

Upcoming Workshops & Events

WINTER MINI-TERM 2024

Faculty are invited to apply for one or two seminars designed to assist them with integrating AI use into one or more of their writing assignments in any discipline.

See this page about the “Integrating AI into Writing Assignments” seminars. Deadline to apply is January 2, 2024. 


FALL 2023 & SPRING 2024

AI & Writing Pedagogy Faculty Learning Community

Are you interested in integrating AI into writing assignments in one or more of your courses?

You’re invited to join a Faculty Learning Community for instructors across all disciplines who wish to better understand how to navigate the use of generative AI (GENAI) in classes in which they assign writing. We will engage in collaborative work together to:

  • explore attitudes toward the integration of GENAI tools into our teaching,
  • discuss ways to facilitate students’ development of AI literacy,
  • discuss emerging strategies for ways to integrate GENAI with written assignments of any type,
  • discuss how these strategies may work or are working in our classes, and
  • engage in hands-on practice with GENAI resources.

We’ll get started in late October and then will meet once a month after that–in November, February, March, and April.

See this page for more information and the plan for each of the sessions. 


Past Workshops & Events

Recurring Workshops & Events

We regularly partner with the Graduate School to provide workshops for graduate students. See the Graduate and Professional Student Professional Development page.

In collaboration with the UT Libraries, we co-host a “Writing Blitz,” a paper-writing marathon, around mid-term each semester. At this event, research librarians and writing tutors are on hand from late afternoon to midnight to assist students through the process of working on a paper in any subject.

Look for announcements on UTK’s Events Calendar each semester.

Special Workshops & Events

In Summer 2020 we offered a series of Zoom workshops to assist faculty in all departments with the process of (re)designing classes to include online and hybrid instruction. The focus was on best practices and methods for becoming more efficient and effective in responding online to student writing:

  • Best Practices for Responding to Student Writers
  • Commenting on Drafts with Online Tools: Using PowerNotes
  • Helping Students Respond to Each Other: Effective Peer Review

In Spring 2020, we hosted a workshop on “Helping Students Write Their Way into Disciplinary Knowledge: Principles of Smart Teaching,” which featured guest speaker Elizabeth Wardle from Miami University, Ohio, and was designed for faculty in any discipline who assign writing in their courses. We explored research-based principles of learning, focusing on types of knowledge, the role of prior knowledge, and feedback and practice. Participants drafted a “learning principles pledge” to apply to their own course and assignment designs.

Wardle also delivered a lecture, “Honoring Learning in Liminal Spaces: Helping Student Writers in the Humanities,” in which she described the “threshold concepts” framework and what it tells us about the liminal nature of deep learning. She gave an overview a case of a student writing and learning across a humanities major and discussed principles for designing courses and programs that encourage deep learning.


On October 11, 2019, we hosted a dedication ceremony to re-name our Center in honor of our major donor, Judith Anderson Herbert. Read more about Mrs. Herbert and some of the ways she and her husband Jim are helping to support UT writers.


Supporting Graduate Students as Writers: A Lecture and Workshop was a workshop designed for faculty who serve as chairs or advisors to graduate students in any discipline, including international graduate students whose first or strongest language is not English. Michelle Cox from Cornell University shared a framework resources for working with graduate writers. Contact us at writingcenter@utk.edu for access to the resources Professor Cox shared.


In Fall 2019 we hosted a faculty seminar, Exploring Best Practices in Writing Instruction: Investigating Practices, Values, and Beliefs about Writing in Your Discipline