Development Opportunities
Cultivating Exceptional Teaching
The Teaching and Learning Center in the College of Business equips faculty and instructors with the tools and resources they need to be successful in the classroom. Through the opportunities outlined below, the TLC offers short- and long-term programming to meet the needs of all instructors.
All faculty and staff listed as the instructor of record for a College of Business course are eligible to apply for a TLC grant.
Teaching Grants
These grants are intended to be completed the semester prior to teaching the course. For example, if you receive the January grant, the changes should be made during the Spring semester with the course being taught in the following Summer/Fall semester.
New Course Development Undergrad & Grad | $500-$1,000
The New Course Development grant is for instructors who are teaching a new undergraduate or graduate course. The course needs to be new to the department or an established course that the instructor is teaching for the first time and would like to make significant revisions. Instructors will work through a course development process with TLC staff to outline course objectives, design, and assessments.
Recipients designing a new course will receive a $1,000 award and those revising an established course $500.
Learning Community: AI Literacy Module | $500
This learning community will create small working groups of instructors interested in co-creating an AI Literacy module designed to teach students basic AI skills. Skills may include things like responsible & ethical use, hallucination detection, bias and verification habits, and citation/disclosure expectations. Modules will walk students through these topics and culminate in an assessment (quiz, activity, etc.).
Learning community participants will work together to create the module and, hopefully, be transferable across multiple courses/sections within the college.
Learning Community: AI Teaching Grant | $500
This grant is intended to support instructors who are looking to significantly incorporate AI into at least one aspect of their teaching. For example, redesigning an assignment, adding a feedback loop, or creating a custom bot for your course would be examples of ideal grant outcomes.
Recipients will work with the TLC for 8 weeks (either Term A or Term B) on their grant. The award for this grant is $500, and it can be used to purchase a subscription to an AI platform.
Anticipated Timeline: 8 weeks-3 months
Applications due January 15 and June 15
Apply
Seacrest Fellows
The Seacrest Fellows program is for faculty who are interested in completing a scholarly project around teaching innovation and/or effectiveness. Fellows will spend two years collecting data, often from their own classroom(s), and sharing the results through internal workshops, pedagogical conference presentations and/or journal publications.
Fellows receive $3,000 per year, for up to two years, to complete their project. There is a possibility for an additional third year depending on the length and scope of the project.
Anticipated Timeline: 1-3 years
Applications due June 15
Learn More Apply
TLC Services
The Teaching and Learning Center offers a variety of services and resources that are always available to instructors in the College of Business. Listed below is a sampling of structured services, but faculty and instructors are welcome to reach out to TLC staff with questions or concerns.
Teaching Observation
Teaching observations provide an opportunity for instructors to get an outside perspective on their teaching. The teaching observation is a light-weight version of those previously offered as grants. Instructors will record 2-3 class sessions of their choosing and provide the recording links for review. Observers may be instructional designers, TLC staff, and Seacrest Fellows. Feedback will be compiled from observers anonymously and given to the instructor.
Observers will look at all elements of the course during the observation, and we ask instructors to provide 1-3 guiding items they wish to specifically be informed by the observation and feedback. These guiding items can be:
- Student engagement.
- Student experience. (How active or inactive are the students?)
- Teaching style and effectiveness.
- Teaching materials and tools.
- Suggestions for pedagogy, technology use, student engagement, materials, accessibility, etc.
Canvas Course Review
Instructional designers will examine your Canvas course for course design and information, digital accessibility, content and assessment, and interaction. The broad items the review seeks to inform are course functionality, the user experience, and how well the course supports learning. The instructional designer and the Teaching and Learning Center can then guide and assist the instructor for any remediation. Check the Canvas Review document for the specific items being reviewed. This document can also be used for instructors to self-check their course.
Teaching Technologies
In addition to general UNL academic technologies, the Teaching and Learning Center offers a variety of teaching tools available for free to all instructors. Tools include:
- ActiveClass a collaborative discussion board
- Perusall a social annotation platform
- Slido a synchronous, polling response tool
- Design Tools a Canvas plug-in to build high-quality courses
