During the semester – after your proposal has been approved and your schedule has been set – CIRTL Central offers you a wide range of support. Proposers also have several responsibilities beyond running their course, event, workshop, or institute.
Planning Meetings
All cross-Network programming should model good pedagogy. This includes creating online sessions that are interactive, inclusive, and promote student engagement, discussion and feedback. CIRTL support staff meet with instructor teams 1-2 months in advance of their programming to talk through session plans, our support role, and questions that new-to-CIRTL instructors may have around providing programming to our cross-Network audience. These meetings are a valuable opportunity to get to know each other, to understand the logistics that CIRTL staff can support or manage during the term, and to talk through expectations around who does what.
Outreach
CIRTL Central promotes all cross-Network programming on our website, in our newsletters, and on Facebook and Twitter. Local programs are also encouraged to promote relevant programming to their local communities.
Registration and enrollment
Cross-Network events run on a drop-in basis, with no restrictions on who can attend.
Courses and workshops require registration, and CIRTL Central manages both the registration and enrollment processes. CIRTL’s goal in managing registrations is to prioritize member institution and alumni registrations. Students are accepted into CIRTL online courses and workshops in accordance with our Registration Acceptance policy (See “4. Access to courses” on our CIRTL Programming Policies page). All students registering through a university’s institutional registration system must also register at cirtl.net. It is the local institution’s responsibility to make sure these students register in a timely fashion on the cirtl.net website.
In-person institutes are required to have at least 10 seats reserved for CIRTL participants, with at least 3 CIRTL member institutions represented among attendees. Because institutes take place locally, institute hosts are required to manage their own registration process.
In-session support
Technical support
CIRTL staff work closely with course instructors, workshop facilitators, and event hosts to provide logistical and technical support, including help with Zoom, Moodle, and effective online teaching and learning strategies. CIRTL staff begin each course, workshop, and event with a brief introduction to CIRTL; beyond that, CIRTL staff can attend additional online sessions in order to provide technical support as needed.
Slides and recordings
Proposers may choose whether or not their program is recorded. CIRTL captions and shares select drop-in event recordings on our public YouTube channel. Course and workshop recordings are not shared publicly, but can be shared on Moodle pages or via email to attendees.
CIRTL staff also save all slides from sessions, including any notations made to slides during sessions (via discussion boards, for instance). After each class and workshop session, CIRTL staff shares slides with participants unless instructors request otherwise (in some cases, when instructors run workshops locally, for the cross-Network, and elsewhere, they prefer to keep slides private and may instead develop worksheets, FAQs, or one-pagers to share with participants instead).
Grades & attendance tracking in courses and workshops
Instructors are expected to provide feedback and grades (formal or informal) to their students. CIRTL staff can provide detailed attendance records to assist in this; instructors are responsible for identifying opportunities for feedback and responding to student questions in a timely manner.
CIRTL staff take attendance at every online session. CIRTL staff maintain rosters with detailed attendance notes for courses and workshops, which are shared with instructors via Google Drive at the start of each semester.
CIRTL staff contact students who miss the first session of a course to let them know that they’ll be dropped if they miss the second session too. After the second session, CIRTL staff can follow up with engaged students after each session if they miss a session or an assignment.