Professional Development Workshops
CETL provides a variety of faculty development programs to help you design your courses, improve student engagement, create better student learning outcomes, and enhance your teaching career.
Workshops and online courses help you learn more about specialized topics related to course design, teaching practices, or student learning.
Fall 2025 Offerings
Online Quality Initiative Training
This professional development was developed as part of the larger Quality Online Initiative to enhance student learning in online space and comply with federal mandates on instructional practices.
Essentially, members of the development team want to enrich the student experience, improve online teaching effectiveness, close equity gaps, and increase student success and belonging in online courses offered at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
To create robust training, the following considerations were made:
Choose evidence-based standards, tools, and strategies while adapting to local context (integrate use of local language and initiatives)
Be clear about criteria and ensure understanding among involved groups; Online Course Quality Standards work together as the foundation of new course design and development
Build in support and a culture of continuous improvement; show strategies, examples, etc.
Provide opportunities for progression
Integrate quality standards and rubrics into professional development
Realize the standards and tools will change with time; don’t treat as one-and-done but as ongoing
Recognize these quality standards have application beyond online courses
The training will be available beginning October 2025 and will feature two one-hour synchronous sessions that comprise module one. This will be followed by 5 asynchronous modules available on demand via D2L. Upon completion of the programming, faculty will be given a badge indicating they have successfully completed the training needed to teach online courses at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Dates: TBA
If you are interested, a registration link will be available soon.
Interactive Teaching Strategies for Student Engagement in Zoom Classes
Facilitated by Dr Mohammad Elhess
As the online program became the primary mode of teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, many believed that simply using Zoom would be enough to engage students. However, now that we are beyond the emergency shift to online learning, some students still express feeling distant or disengaged, struggling to stay focused without the traditional classroom setting. How can we, as educators, create online spaces where students feel genuinely involved and connected, despite the physical separation?
In this workshop, I will present targeted strategies to enhance student engagement in Zoom, grounded in research Egbert & anday-Shukla (2024) on student engagement and feedback from my own students. Drawing from Egbert's and anday-Shukla's principles, we will explore how to create an inclusive, interactive online environment that fosters active participation, community building, and the use of AI tools for personalized learning. Key takeaways will include:
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Creating a Sense of Community in Zoom:
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Active Participation Using Zoom Tools
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Personalizing the Learning Experience on Zoom
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Connecting Learning to the Real World
By the end of this session, participants will have concrete strategies they can apply immediately in their own Zoom classrooms, with or without AI tools, to create a more dynamic, personalized, and connected online learning experience.
