Thrive Symposium Schedule

Time

Building/Room

Session Name

Presenter/s

10:30 - 11:45 AM

Lampros 105

Strength of Weak Ties: Fostering Civic Responsibility in the Everyday Classroom

Regardless of our disciplines or the courses that we teach, we can all employ basic classroom strategies that will imbue our students with a sense of civic responsibility and care toward each other. This session highlights how we might use our classroom opportunities to weave connectivity among students for the sake of democratic ideals.

Leah Murray

Lampros 205

High Impact Educational Experiences for Us All!

What Were You Wearing?: Challenging Rape Myths Through Community Engagement

This presentation covers the implementation of a community-engaged learning course to address myths surrounding sexual violence. The course culminated in the students creating a "What Were You Wearing?" exhibit, showcasing outfits worn by sexual assault survivors and their stories. The event included a pledge to believe victims and presentations by Safe Harbor Crisis Center, Ogden PD, and Northern Utah Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (NUSANE). In this presentation, Dr. Sperry and Dr. Wood present quantitative and qualitative data and pictures from the event to reflect on the wins, the losses, and the lessons learned.

Letters and Learning: Using pen-pals to connect graduate students

Commonly considered a lost art, letter-writing can be a useful instrument that allows college students to make connections with the subjects they study in the classroom. Although most social institutions have become digital and conduct the majority of their communications through paperless mechanisms, hand-written letters remain a primary function of communication in correctional facilities (namely detention centers, jails, and prisons). Due to difficulty accessing American correctional facilities for research purposes, letters act as a valuable tool in helping students understand the intricacies of day-to-day life in confinement. Through writing letters in real-time, the concepts taught in textbooks and lectures come to life through written correspondence. This presentation will discuss pen-pals as pedagogy, letters as a tool for the incarcerated, and the pen-pal process (including recruitment, guidelines, and boundaries). Outcomes and reflections from both students and their system-impacted pen-pals will be discussed.

Kathryn Sperry & McKenzie Wood

Lampros 201

The Transformative Tide: The Transition from the Information to AI Age in Academia

This presentation provides you with a comprehensive overview of the shift from the Information Age to the AI Age in academia. You can expect to gain practical insights, strategies, and inspiration to navigate this transformative journey and harness the full potential of AI in their teaching endeavors.

Ty Naylor

12 - 1:15 PM

Lampros Creative Corridor

Food and Friends - Purple Love Lunch

Mingle and connect with colleagues over lunch.

1:30 - 2:45 PM

Lampros 205

Now What?: If Classroom Conflict Escalates 

Faculty are the managers of their learning environments, but classroom management training is not always readily available. What happens when conversations and classroom behavior escalates beyond reasonable discourse and dialogue? The Office of Equal Opportunity and the Dean of Students Office will share next steps and resources available to faculty.

Paige Davies & Alexandra Bablis

Lampros 201

Tools to Build Authentic Student Engagement 

The workshop will address the importance of infusing fun elements into the learning environment as a subset of authenticity. You will explore creative ways to make announcements, incorporating humor, character animation, and personalized video messages to infuse a sense of play into the educational experience. You will leave with a toolkit of strategies to enhance student engagement authentically, recognizing that even small, intentional efforts can yield substantial rewards in creating a vibrant and connected learning community.

Jamie Wankier

Time

Building/Room

Session Name

Presenter/s

10:30- 11:20 AM

Lampros  201

But Make it A Game

This session explores gamifying the classroom and discusses strategies for turning class content into engaging activities that specifically initiate Universal Design by activating course content through expressive responses. This session itself will be gamified, and you will be invited to share your own ideas for games based on your own course or discipline.

Kellie Bornhoft

Lampros  205

8 Billion Plus

There are more than 8 billion people in the world, and every single one is a unique blend of their identities and experiences. By exploring how these identities and experiences shape every single person, we then also look at how variations can lead to people being viewed differently in different social contexts.

Kathleen Paco Cadman

11:30 - 12:20 PM

Lampros 201

Active Learning Roundtables

• "Is This Real?" Utilizing Virtual Reality as an Active Learning Strategy: This roundtable experience will provide information, first-hand interaction, and engaging examples of utilizing virtual reality as an active learning strategy.

• "Want to Play Cards?" Using a Deck of Cards as an Active Learning Strategy: This workshop uses playing cards to make learning fun and engaging. Instructors will create interactive games that help students develop critical thinking skills and apply them to real-world scenarios. These games can be customized to fit different subjects and learning levels, making them suitable for students of all ages and backgrounds.

Tyandra Perez, Connie Merrill & London Lowe

Lampros 205

Increasing Immediacy in Online Teaching 

Teacher immediacy is defined as "verbal and nonverbal behaviors that decrease the perceived psychological distance between the students and the teacher." In online courses, it can be challenging to connect with students and increase immediacy. This presentation will share strategies to increase immediacy in online environments while also discussing key themes resulting from semi-structured student interviews over two semesters.

Anne Bialowas

12:30 - 1:20 PM

Lampros 201

Using AI to Freshen Up and Refine Course Assignments 

AI continues to baffle educators as we try to figure out how to embrace it in the teaching and learning process. This workshop will guide you through how to use an AI program to freshen up or refine an existing assignment that you have in your Canvas course. Please bring your laptop to work with our instructional designers.

Gisela Martiz & Shandel Hadlock

Lampros 105

Assisting International Students' Transition to Weber State

The presentation will provide strategies and resources to faculty to assist international students in adapting to the academic, social, and cultural norms of studying in the US. 

Kacy Peckenpaugh

Lampros 205

Nontraditional Students’ Preferences for and Experiences with Course Delivery Methods

This project explores the unique benefits and challenges of different class formats and designs for nontraditional students. With non-traditional students being a group particularly vulnerable to retention and degree-completion problems (e.g. Taniguchi & Kaufman, 2005; National Center for Education Statistics, nd) and with Weber State being over half non-traditional students (Weber State Nontraditional Student Center, 2022), the information garnered from this study is key for discussions of student success and retention. The multi-stage project includes surveys of WSU students and a national student sample, as well as focus groups of nontraditional students at WSU. Initial results suggest that nontraditional students must take into account a wide variety of factors when determining class format.

Hailey Gillen Hoke

1:30 - 2:20 PM

Lampros 201

How To How To: Using Digital Tools and the Protege Effect to Boost Student Learning

This GIFTS session focuses on an instructional video assignment that uses the protege effect to help students share their talents and be creative as they teach each other important clinical skills. Using Adobe Creative Cloud, students collaborate with a classmate to create a fun and engaging “how to” video. Students then share their work during the “movie premiere” module. This is a chance for the students to learn from each other and create personal and academic connections. Although this assignment has been created for dental hygiene students, it can easily be adapted to other disciplines. This assignment has become a highlight of the course.

Shannon Smith

2:30- 3:20 PM

Lampros 205

Building Thinking Classrooms

Students rarely learn anything unless they think about, analyze, question, and do what they are trying to learn. Listening to a lecture yields minimal success, and the students have to work harder to learn the material than attempting the concepts personally under the direction of the teacher. This presentation will discuss the presenter’s success by switching places with students. Instead of presenting math concepts at the board, the students are arranged in random groups of 2 - 3, given the tasks/problems, and put  at the board with a marker to solve the problem. The feedback from students is that  they enjoy coming to class, meeting and working with their peers, and bouncing ideas of how to solve problems off of their classmates. Engaging students in Thinking Classrooms has greatly increased student success, confidence, and enjoyment.

Lance Powell