TLC Programs
The TLC provides a variety of programs and adds new programs on a regular basis. The TLC serves the needs of both faculty and graduate students and has two separate program tracks to address the specific needs of each group. Eligibility to participate in a program is listed directly under each category. Please consult the descriptions before registering.
Note: Not all workshops are offered each semester. Check the current schedule & registration for a list of workshops offered this semester.
You may select a topic from the following drop down menu or scroll through the entire programs catalog which is listed below.
TLC Programs Catalog
» Fellows
Faculty’s enhancement of instructional skills is directly related to the success of their students. Many faculty at UNLV have embraced this idea and have engaged in numerous professional activities that lead them to the successful implementation of new approaches and techniques.
Among the hundreds of UNLV full-time and part-time faculty who over the past few years have participated in TLC’s program, a significant number have reached a unique milestone --- they have attended and completed at least ten (10) faculty development program.
To recognize this outstanding achievement, the TLC has established the TLC FELLOWS Program. TLC Fellows receive a special certificate and are recognized at a festive reception in their honor. A display board bearing Fellows’ names and photos is located at the TLC (LLB 3241).
( Web site )
» Teaching Enhancement Workshops
Academic Career Review
Take a thorough look at your career to date, and start the planning process for the rest of your academic career: promotion, tenure, job change.
Are They Learning? — Classroom Assessment Techniques
Learn simple ways to access ongoing information about what students are actually learning & how they view your course– it's good for teaching & it's important at evaluation time!
Case Studies—Create Your Own
Identify key elements of your course: concepts, ideas, practices, etc. that you want your students to master. Then create a well-structured and easy-to-manage case study that your students can work through to enhance their learning.
Cooperative & Collaborative Learning
Learning intensifies when students work with each other. Explore approaches that facilitate students' engagement with the material and its applications as well as with learning.
Creating Grading Rubrics Online & On Paper
Rubrics provide guidance in planning, teaching, and assessing a course. Learn to create a rubric that is helpful for both you and your students whether you are teaching face-to-face classes or online with WebCampus. Learn to customize rubrics for a variety of purposes.
Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum
Critical thinking skills are essential to students' success in all academic endeavors, and they need, therefore, to be part of most, if not all, courses. In this workshop you will start development of strategies to integrate critical thinking skills building into your courses.
Curriculum & Program Development
Learn and brainstorm effective approaches to curriculum and program development and revision that improve overall operations and performance. This is a hands-on session on the non-administrative aspects of development. Information about administrative matters will be distributed.
Faculty Working with Students with Disabilities
A collaborative workshop with the Disability Resource Center
Learn about the right way to accommodate all students in your course, including those with disabilities to ensure academic success. Find out about the rules and procedures that will save you time and energy.
Freshman Student Characteristic
Freshman students present a unique set of attributes and challenges. In this session you will discover how to assist them in transitioning from high school to the college academic environment, how to design learning opportunities for students without "real world" experience, and how to differentiate between "traditional" and "non-traditional" students.
Grades - To Curve or Not to Curve?
Examine several distinct ways to create a reasonable and workable grading system that is based on sound evaluative criteria rather than on simple mathematical formulas.
International Students: Meeting Teaching & Learning Challenges
Learn about cultural differences that affect students in your courses; consider approaches that foster inclusiveness and ways to work effectively with international students from a variety of countries.
Is There Life Besides Multiple Choice Quizzes? — Testing Options
In this workshop you will explore the many and varied ways to test student learning, evaluate the relative merits of each testing method, and consider the appropriateness of each method for specific teaching/learning situations.
Learning & Teaching Styles
If teaching is facilitating knowledge rather than disseminating information, a clearer understanding of the relationship between them can lead to improvement in our students' performance.
Online Teaching
Technology -- hardware, software, and gadgets -- is just a set of tools. Their value to teaching & learning is tied directly to their pedagogical applications -- can they facilitate deeper learning, expedite activities, increase scope of resources? This workshop helps faculty become sophisticated adapters of learning technologies.
Peer Review of Teaching
Collegial conversations about teaching are an important way to help us teach as well as we can. Rather than being a "threatening" approach, peer review, when done well, is a way to enhance, calibrate, and enjoy our teaching. Don't wait to be told to do it, take the initiative and do it well!
Plagiarism — Deterring It (in collaboration with the Library)
This hands-on session will focus on mechanisms to deter intentional and unintentional plagiarism, and on ways to identify and confirm information sources.
Problem-Based Learning
Explore an integrated approach ensuring that students take responsibility for their own learning while increasing their engagement with the course content and its applications to "real life."
Research Assignment Design (in collaboration with the Library)
Frustrated by your students' research work? Take a proactive step in helping them develop skills to function effectively in the information age via the design & redesign of research assignments.
Service Learning
Service Learning (SL) is a form of experience-based learning that ties real-life work experience directly to the content of a college course. This workshop introduces faculty to the simple mechanisms that allow for a smooth integration of SL into any course, in any discipline.
Session Planning
Shorter sessions (75 minutes), longer sessions (3 hours) --- whatever the length of your course’s sessions, the challenge is to have the session moving in the desired direction, keep the students engaged, and accomplish your instructional goals. In this workshop you will learn and begin to plan the use of successful session development strategies.
Teachers as Mentors
Studies have repeatedly shown that students' academic success and persistence (i.e., "retention") are positively influenced by a mentoring relationship between teacher and students. In this workshop you will learn the basics of mentoring students, how to recognize specific purposes for mentoring, and how to identify opportunities for mentoring within the courses you teach.
Teaching Adult & Non-Traditional Students
Compare and contrast teaching and learning paradigms as they apply to traditional vs. adult students. Discover simple ways to bridge the differences when both groups are present in a course.
Teaching & Mentoring Graduate Students
Graduate students have some specific needs and expectations that are distinctly different from those of undergraduates. Explore and consider ways to increase and improve your graduate students' motivation and academic performance
Teaching Large Classes
This workshop focuses on practical approaches to reduce the negative aspects of large classes, and increase student involvement and learning. This workshop is appropriate for anyone teaching 40 or more students in a course.
Teaching/Faculty Portfolios
Learn to record, document, and validate your teaching. A solid portfolio will enhance your teaching, support you in personnel decision or hiring junctures, and provide needed documentation for award candidacy.
Time Management for Faculty
Explore practical ways to juggle your various responsibilities–teaching, research, service and life away from work, while enhancing quality and satisfaction levels.
Working with At-Risk Students
A number of known risk factors affect many of our students. These range from academic factors, to financial and social ones. In this session you will learn approaches and techniques that help you ensure that students will thrive in your courses regardless of any risk factors.
Writing Assignments Across the Disciplines
You don't have to be an English major to be able to help your students develop good written communication skills, especially in discipline-specific content. Learn of smart, not more time-consuming, ways to integrate meaningful written assignments into your courses.
Writing Effective Learning Objectives
The success of any course depends, to a large extent, on the effective formulation of learning objectives --- what students will know and/or be able to do as a result of successfully completing the course. In this workshop you will learn the secrets to writing effective learning objectives and will draft some for a specific course.
» Technology Enhancement Workshops (return to top)
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Eligibility: Full-time faculty and PTIs, including GA-PTIs who are the instructors-of-record for their course(s). Also eligible are GAs who either accompany their supervising faculty, or whose supervising faculty have already been trained.
Concept Mapping & Inspiration
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Link to Current Schedule & Registration
Concept Mapping & Inspiration™
Learn to transform verbal information into graphic representation with concept mapping. Building and demonstrating relationships among concepts can be done by individuals or groups at varying degrees of complexity. Participants will use Inspiration™ software to develop concept maps and insert them into PowerPoint™ presentations, WebCampus (WebCT Vista 4), or teaching Web sites.
E-Mail Management for Teachers
The use of electronic mail, most commonly known as "E-mail," as an integral part of a course or as simply a means of communication, presents new challenges to the teacher. Not the least of these are the amount of time involved and issues of civility. This workshop helps teachers meet these and other challenges of E-mail management.
e-Packs— Adoption & Adaptation
Consider the prudent process for incorporating a suite of prepared learning materials into your course, including quiz & test banks, lecture notes, sample syllabi, animations, and more. Learn the process for reviewing, evaluating, adopting, and editing publisher originated online course packages. This session may include interaction with publishers' reps.
Password Protection of Course Materials
Learn to protect files and folders on the PC and online. A detailed demonstration of password protecting access to computer drives, files, and folders as well as folders on the UNLV web server includes: 1) password, privacy and publishing issues, and 2) security and archival procedures.
The Syllabus on Paper & Online
Consider basic concepts and approaches to creating an interactive syllabus that supports student learning and enhances teaching effectiveness.
Teaching with PowerPoint — Beyond the Basics
Prerequisite: You should be familiar with creating a basic PowerPoint presentation–adding text, inserting clip art & graphics, slide transitions, animations & working with slide masters.
(Go to http://oit.unlv.edu/training/index.html for information on Campus Computing Services' training schedule.)
Now that you have used PowerPoint to outline lectures, learn to create dynamic presentations that transform your instruction by utilizing infrequently-used features that engage students. You will construct a "progressive" series of slides and will get a rubric for its evaluation.
Introduction to Flash Animation
Flash has become the ultimate tool for developing interactive educational multimedia on the Web. In this introductory hands-on workshop, participants will be introduced to Flash’s drawing tools, timeline, layers, symbols, and tweening techniques as they create a simple animation from start to finish.
PowerPoint Beyond the Basics: Teaching with Animation
Learn to incorporate images, text, and motion paths to create engaging presentations that show process, relationship and hierarchy through animation. Prerequisite: Prior experience creating a basic PowerPoint presentation (adding text, inserting clip art and graphics).
» Instructional Web Development (return to top)
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Eligibility: Full-time faculty and PTIs, including GA-PTIs who are the instructors-of-record
for their course(s). Also eligible are GAs who either accompany their
supervising faculty, or whose supervising faculty have already been trained.
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Link to Current Schedule & Registration
Instructional Web Site Development # 1: Getting Started
A teaching Web site is a valuable tool in any educator's toolkit. Learn how to format text, create links, and add images to your educational Web site in this two-day, hands-on workshop.
Prerequisite: Web Page Publishing Workshop
Instructional Web Site Development #2: Template Creation with Tables
Ever wondered how to control design and layout of your online pages? Find out how to create complex page designs using tables--while building a basic educational template at the same time! Prerequisite: Instructional Web Site Development #1.
Instructional Web Site Development #3: Time Saving Strategies
Unlike printed materials, educational Web sites need to be updated constantly. In this hands-on workshop, learn how to manage and update your Web site quickly and efficiently using such time-saving strategies as cascading style sheets and server-side includes.
Prerequisite: Instructional Web Site Development #2.
Introductory Web Graphics
Learn where to find and download simple clip art, banners, buttons, and photos as well as how to create you own images using free or inexpensive graphics software. Topics also include graphic file types, optimizing and resizing.
Multimedia Fundamentals for the Web
Considering video or audio in your educational Web site? While multimedia presentations can be useful in an online environment, there are many issues to contemplate. This workshop will explore standard terminology, editing tools, plug-ins/players, conversion methods, and file compression. Emphasis will be on how to use these approaches and methods to add educational content to your faculty Web site or WebCampus course.
Preparing Course Content for the Web
Learn the basics of preparing course content for either a traditional Web site or for WebCampus. This overview will show how to repurpose content from popular office applications (including Word and PowerPoint) as well as how to find and save images from the Web. Also learn the basics of how the Web works, file naming conventions and Internet best practices. Note: Highly recommended for those planning to engage with either Web page/site development or with WebCampus.
Teaching With Your Web Site
This presentation offers basic tips and strategies for including educational content (such as lessons, quizzes and tutorials) in a traditional Web site. Other topics include usability, organization, interactivity and design. Prerequisite: Web Page Publishing (Limited to 16 participants)
Web Page Publishing
Interested in developing an initial Web presence? In this introduction to educational Web development, learn the essentials of publishing a simple contact page to the UNLV faculty server. Identify basic elements of an informational faculty page, understand the essentials of HTML page development, then walk through the process of connecting to your Web hosting account using standard software. Note: This session is a pre-requisite for the hands-on "Instructional Web Site Development" series.
» WebCampus (WebCT Vista 4) Basics (return to top)
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Eligibility: Full-time faculty and PTIs, including GA-PTIs who are the instructors-of-record for their course(s). Also eligible are GAs who either accompany their supervising faculty, or whose supervising faculty have already been trained.
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Link to Current Schedule & Registration
NOTE: This three-part mini-course is to be taken in its entirety.
Learn how to use the new WebCampus (WebCT Vista 4) course management system. This three-part mini-course must be taken in its entirety. Topics include communication tools, developing and organizing course content into learning modules and using the grade book.
» WebCampus (WebCT Vista 4) Modules (return to top)
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Eligibility: Full-time faculty and PTIs, including GA-PTIs who are the instructors-of-record for their course(s). Also eligible are GAs who either accompany their supervising faculty, or whose supervising faculty have already been trained.
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Link to Current Schedule & Registration
Prerequisites: Completion of the WebCampus (WebCT Vista 4) Basic Series or WebCampus (WebCT Vista 4) Fundamentals.
Building Assignments and Creating Groups in WebCampus (WebCT Vista 4)
Learn to use the WebCampus (WebCT Vista 4) Group Manager to create and organize class groups. Discover how to create and grade group assignments or individual assignments. Find out how to make completed assignments viewable to the entire class by using the publish feature.
Communicating with Students in WebCampus (WebCT Vista 4)
Learn how to use a variety of tools and methods for communicating with your students. The Announcements, Calendar, and Mail tools enable you to post important announcements and events to the class. The Discussions tool allows students to post their thoughts about a topic you choose. For real-time communication, such as a brainstorming session, you can use the Who's Online and Chat tools.
Creating and Managing Assessments in WebCampus (WebCT Vista 4)
This is a two session workshop. The first session focuses on creating questions for an assessment (quiz or test or survey) and concludes with creating a specific assessment into which you can add the questions you have created. The second session focuses on applying settings to the assessment you have created and concludes with exploring the ways you can grade student responses and view statistical reports on student performance.
Managing Your WebCampus (WebCT Vista 4) Course
Learn how to use Manage Course tools and utilities to manage the availability of content by hiding items and setting release criteria. Learn to configure section settings to meet specific design or instructional objectives; and efficiently use the File Manager to upload files and to manage multiple files and folders.
Managing your Vista Grade Book
Become comfortable working with the Grade Book as you learn to navigate the Grade Book screen and tailor it to your needs. After setting up the Grade Book, you will learn how to view, enter, change, and manage grades. You will also discover how to manage students with the Grade Book, including sending mail, and granting or denying access to the course. Learn to access audit trails and individual performance reports.
Organizing Content in WebCampus (WebCT Vista 4)
Learn how to organize content within learning modules. Learning modules allow you to structure content and activities in discrete units, in a defined sequence. You can include syllabus and content files, as well specific activities such as individual assignments or discussion topics, within the learning module.
» Part-Time Instructor Professional Enhancement Program (return to top)
» Advisor Certificate Program (return to top)
Each academic year, the TLC offers a series of workshops to help academic advisors gain proficiency in helping the students in their charge succeed academically. A special certificate will be awarded to those who complete all six sessions of the series of this program which is co-sponsored by the Advising Council and the TLC.
» Graduate Student Professional Development Program in College Teaching (return to top)
» Intensive Introduction to Teaching Workshop (return to top)
A two-day, 7:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. workshop is available to all graduate students enrolled in a degree program at UNLV in the fall semester. This workshop covers basic pedagogical topics as well as course management issues.
The workshop is presented once a year in late August.
You can pick up a special registration card at the TLC on the third floor of the Lied Library, the Graduate College or the Graduate Lounge in the Lied Library.
Program highlights include the following topics, among others:
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Learning Styles -- why it matters that people learn in different ways
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Course Development
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Syllabus Development
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Assignment Development
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Assessment -- Finding out what students actually learn
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Smart Uses of PowerPoint
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Testing Options
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Working with difficult students & Situations
and more . . .
» TA/GA Excellence in Teaching Awards (return to top)
The program was established to encourage and recognize conspicuously effective teaching by GAs. It is co-sponsored by the TLC and the Graduate College.
Four awards of $500 each and four awards of $100 each are awarded annually to individuals who have been nominated by a faculty member, have submitted a teaching portfolio, and have been chosen by a faculty selection committee. All nominees receive a Certificate of Merit.
The annual program is run every spring and is open to all current UNLV graduate teaching assistants (or GA-PTIs) who meet all of the following requirements:
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Are full-time UNLV graduate students at the time of nomination and awarding;
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Have taught at least a total of two (2) courses or labs during the two years ending in December of the awards' academic year, including summers;
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Have been solely responsible for the teaching assignments.
Nominations are solicited in January of each year. Nominations can be made by direct faculty supervisors, other faculty members in the nominee's major department, department chairpersons, graduate advisors, or deans.
» Teaching Forums (return to top)
A series of monthly sessions especially developed for TLC's Graduate Student Professional Development Program (see above), the EPY 101 Instructor Enhancement Program (see above), and the PTI Professional Enhancement Program (see above). Each monthly hands-on session is focused on a single pedagogical topic.
» Foundations in Learning Technologies for Graduate Students Certificate Program (return to top)
An innovative program designed to introduce graduate students to emerging learning technologies that they will be able to use in their professional lives either in academe or elsewhere. Workshops and special events offered year-round. Participants must be enrolled in the TLC's Graduate Student Professional Development Program. (see above).
» Graduate Student Academic Career Planning Workshop (return to top)
Offered occasionally, this is a two-part special program for those contemplating an academic career. BOTH parts must be taken. The workshops focus on skill building, professional portfolio development, and resource research. The program is a collaboration between the TLC and Career Services. Priority registration for graduate students enrolled in a doctoral program.
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