Mini-Courses and Institutes

The Innovation in Learning Center offers a variety of mini-courses and institutes throughout the academic year.

SoTL USA | Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

The SoTL USA program seeks to provide faculty with the tools to design, develop, and implement scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research projects at South Alabama. Topics include:

Decoding the disciplines
What is SoTL
Generating your investigation idea
Designing your study and the IRB process
Planning your data collection and analysis

Click here to learn more.

Adobe Acrobat Pro Training Course

The primary goal of the Adobe Acrobat Pro course is to help you create accessible and fillable documents that will meet federal and university accessibility standards. When we follow accessibility guidelines for creating course documents we:

Improve the learner experience
Provide access to the content for everybody
Comply with the law
Add tools to our skill toolbox

Visit the Acrobat Pro training course website for more information and dates for the next course.

Panopto Training Course

Panopto is a video capture and management tool available to faculty, staff, and students at USA, and it is the primary application for creating and posting video content in USAonline. Users can record presentations that capture camera and/or desktop applications (including PowerPoint presentations), and later share them through embedded lessons, or as links. Panopto has a rich feature-set that includes editing, automatic captions, multi-angle sources, quizzing, student discussions, notes,etc. Instructors can even create assignment folders that allow students to produce and submit their own video-based assignments. The primary goal of this course is for you to learn how to create engaging and accessible videos to use in your courses. Participants who complete the course will receive a free Panopto Pack including: Lumens webcam, Lavalier lapel mic, ring light, and support arm for fixing your light to your desk. You will also earn a digital badge to connect to your LinkedIn profile.

Click below to see a past flyer for the Panopto Training Course:

Camtasia Training Course

Camtasia is a wonderful video editing tool for lecture videos and dynamic content. The primary goal of this course is for
participants to learn how to create engaging and compelling video content directed toward learning and instruction. After successful completion of the course, participants earned a license key for Camtasia and a digital badge, which can be connected to a LinkedIn profile.

Click below to see a past flyer for the Camtasia Training Course:

Careerizing the Curriculum

The Careerizing the Curriculum mini-course leads faculty to design career-focused activities that are discipline-specific and aligned with selected competencies and employer-valued skills. By engaging in synchronous and asynchronous activities, the faculty cohort will explore the importance of incorporating NACE competencies and the AAC&U employer-valued skills into existing curricula.

Click below to see a past flyer for Careerizing the Curriculum:

Summer Institute

The ILC Summer Institute is aimed at increasing student engagement and academic success through consistent design and equitable instructional practices that enhance courses of all modalities and disciplines. During this 4-week institute you will explore course content through synchronous and asynchronous team-based activities to develop effective courses that optimize the learning experience. This course generally runs from late June to early July.

Topics include:

Consistent Module Design
Transparent Assignments and Assessments
Inclusive and Motivational Instructional Strategies

Click below to see a past flyer for the Summer Institute:

Advanced Summer Institute

The ILC Advanced Summer Institute, Documenting Student Success, is an intensive, two-week Institute focused on assessment. This course runs twice during the summer. During this Institute, you will dive into your course activities and assessments to answer such questions as:

How do I develop reliable student assessments?
How equitable is my test design?
What types of alternative assessments might work for my discipline?

Click below to see a past flyer for the Advanced Summer Institute:

Strategic Course Design Mini-Course

The Strategic Course Design Mini-Course is a self-paced, online mini-course. Faculty can expect to devote about 20 - 30 hours in completing coursework that includes regular self-assessments and deliverables aligned with the course learning objectives and best practices for online instruction. This online course is offered periodically throughout the year. The overall goals of this course are for faculty to:

Implement essential course organization practices using Canvas and integrated technology in future courses;
Create a clear and consistent module design that encourages student engagement with the content, students, and instructor regardless of how the course is delivered.

Click below to see a past flyer for the Strategic Course Design Mini-Course:

Association of College and University Educators (ACUE)

The University of South Alabama partnered with ACUE to offer a course in Effective Teaching practices that helps faculty transform their teaching, overcome challenges they face in the classroom and provide strategies that lead to successful student learning. The program addressed essential pedagogical skills and knowledge in five units of study:

Designing an Effective Course and Class
Promoting Higher Order Thinking
Establishing a Productive Learning Environment
Assessing to Inform Instruction and Promote Learning
Using Active Learning Techniques

The goals of the Effective Teaching program at South Alabama are to:

improve student learning as faculty learn about, implement and assess instructional strategies proven to improve students' educational experiences
support faculty advancement through improved promotion and tenure packages, particularly in how faculty articulate a dynamic and evidence-based teaching philosophy and provide evidence of effective teaching;
enhance faculty productivity in their scholarship by developing new lines of inquiry through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Click below to see a past flyer for ACUE:

Questions about these courses can be directed to ilc@southalabama.edu.