Past Speakers

Taking Ownership of Your Learning and Making it Your Job is the First Step in College Success

Speaker: Jonathan Grant Brown

Workshop — Becoming an Interruption: The Journey from a Path of Destruction to a Path of Success

Student Motivation: Cultivating Positive Learning Environments Part 1

Motivation matters; it is a precursor to student engagement. Frequently, educators lament about “how to motivate students to care about their thinking.” While the literature is overrun with deficit thinking about students, their families, culture, socioeconomic background, and communities, this professional learning module provides a foundation for educators to reflect about how deficit thinking often permeates how we think about students and offers alternative practices in order to create positive learning environments. Grounded in culturally responsive pedagogy, this module assists participants to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship culture and the motivation to learn through diverse counterbeliefs and values that students and educators bring to a learning environment. Part 1 shares Ginsberg’s and Wlodkowski’s Framework for Student Motivation which includes: 1) establishing inclusion; 2) developing attitude; 3) enhancing meaning and 4.) engendering competence. Part one also offers tools for educators in how to facilitate equitable discussions in a multicultural environment.

Beyond Financial Aid: How Addressing Students' Basic Needs Can Support Student Success

Speaker: Priyadarshini Chaplot

An increasing number of students are juggling work, family, and education as they try to secure a career path with a living wage for themselves and their families. Add to the mix that tuition rates are rising faster than student aid can keep up and the reality is that larger numbers of students are experiencing larger amounts of unmet financial need. This need includes reliable and adequate access to nutrition, housing, childcare, transportation, and health care. To attend to these realities, many students balance decisions (e.g., work more, take fewer courses, borrow more, stop out, drop out) that can threaten their academic progress and success. Institutions that have intentionally and structurally mitigated these concerns have seen more students staying and completing their educational goals.

The keynote session will (1) provide a clear framework of four research-based strategies to strengthen students' financial stability and (2) share promising institutional examples from around the country.

Workshop: Beyond Financial Aid Self-Assessment

In this workshop, you will have a hands-on opportunity to roll up your sleeves and engage with a self-assessment tool that can help you clarify student needs, take stock of and organize your existing efforts, and identify opportunities to redesign practices and policies that can more holistically support Weber State students to success.

The Current State of Student Engagement: What Educators Can Do to Promote Positive Learning Outcomes for All Students

Speaker: Jillian Kinzie

The need to enhance student engagement in educational practices that matter for learning is a critical priority for increasing student success. Even more, colleges and universities must ensure practices and programs support students’ equitable progress towards achieving a high-quality 21st-century degree. This keynote will provide an overview of the state of student engagement in today’s learning quality and equity paradigm, focus on activities positively associated with student persistence, essential learning outcomes and workplace outcomes, feature Weber State’s recent results from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) to contextualize discussion, and highlight what campus leaders and educators can do to enhance the conditions for student learning and success.

Workshop: Incorporating High Impact Educational Experiences (HIEE) Inside and Outside the Classroom

Students get more deeply engaged in their education when they have hands-on opportunity for learning. When done well, participating in a high-impact practice (HIP), or in Weber State’s terminology, an HIEE, should provide students a developmentally powerful experience, replete with opportunities to apply, reflect and integrate what one is learning. While research shows participation in HIPs benefits all students, especially those from historically underrepresented groups, not all students participate. Even more, HIPs can vary in quality and may lack the curricular integration that facilitates a collective impact on student learning and success. This workshop will offer additional evidence about what makes HIPs effective and feature strategies for ensuring more students can take part. Participants will consider Weber’s HIEE “impact strategies” and taxonomy, and other lessons learned, and apply principles of assignment design, including clarity of purpose, task and criteria, to expand the delivery and enhance the effectiveness of high impact practices.

Mary-Ann Winkelmes' Workshops

Read Mary-Ann Winkelmes' Bio

Part 1: Transparency and Its Impact on Learning

Transparent teaching/learning practices make learning processes explicit while offering opportunities to foster students' metacognition, confidence, and sense of belonging in college in order to promote student success equitably. A 2016 AAC&U study (Winkelmes et al.) identifies transparent assignment design as a replicable teaching intervention that significantly enhances students' success, with greater gains by historically underserved students. This session reviews the study’s findings and foundational research, and it examines some sample assignments. Dr. Winkelmes invites participants to respond to this 2-question survey about student's learning by August 8.

Part 2: A Workshop for Designing Transparent Assignments

In this session, Dr. Winkelmes will walk participants through the process of designing/revising assignments (in small work groups) to make them more transparent, relevant, and accessible for students. Participants will leave with a draft assignment or activity for one of their courses or co-curricular educational experiences and a concise set of strategies for designing transparent assignments that promote students’ learning equitably. It is not necessary to bring an existing assignment to this session. It is helpful but not necessary to attend the prior session.

Joining a TILT SoTL Project: An informal Conversation

Dr. Winkelmes and Colleen Packer invite interested participants to consider a transparency-focused scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) project that explores the impact of transparent instruction on Weber State students and faculty. Participants will discuss how to use TILT Higher Ed surveys, and how their own reflections might contribute to a publishable study.

The Unwritten Rules of College: How Transparent Instruction Supports Student Success Equitably

Transparent teaching/learning practices make learning processes explicit while offering opportunities to foster students' metacognition, confidence, and sense of belonging in college in order to promote student success equitably. A 2016 AAC&U study (Winkelmes et al.) identifies transparent assignment design as a replicable teaching intervention that significantly enhances students' success, with greater gains by historically underserved students. This session 1) reviews the study’s findings and foundational research, 2) examines some sample assignments, 3) walks participants through the process of designing/revising assignments (in small work groups) to make them more transparent, relevant, and accessible for students. Participants will leave with a draft assignment or activity for one of their courses or co-curricular educational experiences and a concise set of strategies for designing transparent assignments that promote students’ learning equitably. It is not necessary to bring an existing assignment to this session.

You See Me: Cultivating Inclusion to Foster Student Motivation

Speaker: Yvonne Ortiz

A precursor to student engagement, motivation matters. Frequently, educators lament about “how to motivate students to care about their learning.” While the literature is overrun with deficit thinking about students, their families, culture, socioeconomic background, and communities, we will learn a framework for educators to reflect about how deficit thinking often permeates how we think about students and identify alternative practices to create positive learning environments.

Building Community and Student Rapport through High Engagement Strategies

Speaker: Jim Donohue

Since 2007, Jim Donohue has consulted at colleges and universities around the United States concentrating on student engagement and success initiatives. His passion for education stems from his belief that education is one of the only ways to change personal history. The large number of students whose dreams are deferred or lost all together when they find themselves unable to negotiate the transition to college and university campuses saddens him. He believes that by working collaboratively with students, campus educators and leadership it will be possible to enrich the lives of students and educators alike.

Workshop: High Engagement and Inquiry Strategies in Math

Teach Like a Puma

Speaker: Todd Zakrajsek

Todd is a faculty developer and college associate professor just trying to get students more interested in learning. His presentation, "Teach Like a Puma," focuses on the faculty's role in promoting student success in the classroom.