Learn evidence-based teaching fundamentals 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 core aspects of teaching: understanding how people learn, developing and assessing learning objectives, using active and inclusive teaching strategies to support all learners, and how to turn all these pieces into a coherent lesson plan. 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.

Registration

This course is hosted on CIRTL’s Moodle site. To take this course, you will need to access Moodle, enroll in the course, and then fill out a registration form to get access to course content:

1. Use an existing account to log into Moodle if you have one. If you aren’t sure if you have an account, or know you don’t, you can create a new account instead.
2. Log into your Moodle account and follow the instructions to enroll in this course.
3. Fill out the course registration form to tell us more about yourself and gain access to the course content.

Regardless of how you plan to engage with this course – individually and self-paced, as a participant in a local learning community, or as a facilitator of a local learning community – you need to follow those steps to enroll and gain access to course content.

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

All CIRTL Network programming is designed to help participants achieve familiarity with our Core Ideas. This workshop is designed around the following 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.
• Describe several assessment techniques 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.
• Describe several techniques for creating a LC within a learning environment, including strategies that promote positive interdependence between learners so as to accomplish learning goals.
• Describe several techniques and issues of establishing LCs comprising a diverse group of learners.

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.