Upcoming Workshops & Events
SPRING 2024
Thoughtful Teaching with AI: A Craft Workshop for Busy Instructors
Do you want to help students engage critically with GenAI in your courses? Join us in a two-part hands-on Zoom workshop, co-hosted by Teaching and Learning Innovation, Digital Learning, the Judith Anderson Herbert Writing Center, and the Office of Innovative Technologies (OIT). In the first part of the workshop, we will review GenAI capabilities, examine ethical concerns, and sample a few AI-focused assignments, before giving you time to start crafting an activity or assignment for your own course. In the second part, you will have the opportunity to share your in-progress course activities with colleagues for review and feedback. By the end of the two-part workshop, you will have created a new assignment or class activity designed to cultivate critical AI literacy and advance student learning outcomes for students your courses. The workshop is open to UT faculty, staff, and graduate students. We are offering two options to accommodate Monday/Wednesday and Tuesday/Thursday schedules:
Option 1: Part 1 on Tuesday 4/16 and Part 2 on Thursday 4/18, 10:00 – 11:30am, via Zoom
Option 2: Part 1 on Wednesday 4/17 and Part 2 on Friday 4/19, 10:30am – Noon, via Zoom
Click the link below to register for this event!
Register for Thoughtful Teaching with AI Now
Interested in more events, resources, and opportunities related to AI? Click here to visit the Teaching with Generative Artificial Intelligence at UTK SharePoint hub (UTK login required), which has links to campus resources from TLI, the Judith Anderson Herbert Writing Center, Digital Learning, the UTK Libraries, and more!
Graduate Student Workshop: Preparing Materials for the Academic Job Market
How to prepare cover letters, CVs, teaching philosophy statements, and other materials for academic job applications.
Monday, April 1, 2024, 2:00-300 pm
Join via Zoom: tiny.utk.edu/jobmaterials
Presented as part of Graduate and Professional Student Appreciation Week (GPSAW) 2024, tiny.utk.edu/gpsaw
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 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