Learn effective college teaching strategies, as well as the research that supports them, in this 8-module, self-paced, asynchronous online course designed for future faculty in STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and math). Originally created with funding from the National Sciences Foundation and iteratively updated to reflect contemporary teaching and learning topics, this course brings together faculty, staff, and other teaching and learning experts from across the United States to teach about: how to engage students in active learning in classrooms using strategies such as peer instruction and problem-based learning; developing methods to help your students think more like experts in their fields using inquiry-based labs and similar activities; turning your classrooms into learning communities through cooperative learning and using the diverse perspectives of your students; and using approaches like flipped classrooms that make it possible to build active and collaborative learning into your classes. Each module guides learners through lesson content, discussion prompts for deeper reflection, quizzes to reinforce key concepts, and assignments to translate what you’re learning into your personal teaching context.

Many CIRTL member institutions run cohort-based learning communities during the academic year around this course. If you are at a CIRTL member institution, find your institution’s CIRTL program here and visit their website to see if they are offering a learning community for local future faculty.

This course builds on “An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching”; the intro course is recommended, but not required, as a prerequisite for participating in this course.

Registration

This course is hosted on CIRTL’s Moodle site. Registration will open in January 2025

Accessibility

If you have access needs, please let us know what they are. The course is heavily video and text based; videos are captioned, and text is formatted for screen readers. Contact CIRTL’s help desk at support@cirtl.net to let us know how else we can help you have a successful experience.

Learning Outcomes

Associate: Evidence-Based Teaching

• Describe and recognize the value of realistic well-defined, achievable, measurable and student-centered learning goals.
• Describe several known high-impact, evidence-based effective instructional practices and materials and recognize their alignment with particular types of learning goals.

Associate: Learning Community

• Describe and recognize the value of learning communities, and how they impact student learning.

Associate: Learning-through-Diversity

• Describe the impact of diversity on student learning, in particular how diversity can enhance learning, and how inequities can negatively impact learning if not addressed.
• Describe and recognize the value of drawing on diversity in the development of teaching plans (including content, teaching practices and assessments) to foster learning.
• Describe several learning-through-diversity (LtD) techniques and strategies.