Welcome to Spring 2025 Professional Development Week (PDW)!
Theme: Embracing Resilient Educators
Focus on the workshops that best suit your professional development goals and schedule. A wide range of offerings is provided, so pick the ones that will benefit you the most.
Tired of the same old textbooks? Discover the transformative power of Open Educational Resources (OER). Learn how to create more engaging, equitable, and affordable courses using OER. This workshop will explore how to locate and adopt OER texts and materials that align with your curriculum, understand the different types of open licenses and their use in your course, and innovate ways to integrate OER to enhance digital accessibility and ensure all students have equal opportunities to learn.
High school students in college classes can present some unique challenges. This workshop will outline some of the needs of high school students and how their college professors can meet them where they are. It will also go through tips and strategies for teaching high school students both on the college campus and in a high school setting.
What is Neurodiversity? Myths,misconceptions and facts about the 1 in 5 who learn differently. What we can do to make education more accessible. Strategies and Information.
At the request of faculty, the eLearning team will be available to provide tips and tricks to help you prepare to teach a pooled Colorado Online class. We will walk you through finding your required course materials, investigating what teaching resources are available, building your course shell, and answering questions - this is a hands on opportunity to get assistance and build your actual course! - NOTE: I talked to Katie about this a few months ago. We planned two, two-hour sessions on Wednesday - one during the day in person, and one in the evening on Zoom.
Ready-to-Teach" courses and programs ensure instructional and design preparedness, promote continuity in assessments, and reduce last-minute instructor and scheduling crises. By establishing uniform expectations, this approach fosters collaboration and consensus among chairs, faculty, and instructors, while alleviating the stress for new instructors—without sacrificing their autonomy. Skeptical? Join us for an engaging discussion on how this stabilizing design framework can enhance both instructional quality and faculty satisfaction.
There are a lot of big promises with AI (automatically send lecture notes and an encouraging reminder to a student who is marked absent? yes please!) but many of them are not available or are costly. We will look at a few AI tools that can help immediately with the more repetitive tasks of teaching: making activities/worksheets, creating lecture notes, and grading. We will also compare the free and paid versions of these tools so you can make an informed choice on whether it is worth purchasing.
Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI) is a crucial component of online education, ensuring meaningful engagement between instructors and students. In Desire2Learn (D2L), RSI can be achieved through various methods such as providing direct instruction, offering timely feedback, and facilitating group discussions. Utilizing D2L’s tools effectively can help instructors maintain consistent and impactful communication with their students.
Are you ready to create a more engaging and transformative learning experience for your students? Join us for a dynamic, interactive session where we’ll explore High-Impact Practices (HIPs) — proven teaching strategies that boost student success and can be adapted to any discipline. This session will provide you with practical insights into how HIPs can enhance your teaching, foster deep learning, and empower students to thrive academically. Let’s dive into what works and how you can implement it in your courses!
Instructors & faculty are often the ones on the front line, dealing with students in crisis. An event this fall has encouraged me to research practical tips for dealing with distressed students. This workshop will focus on discussing best practices and will have a segment dedicated for faculty to share ideas and stories. While not pedagogical in nature, having a 50-minute timeslot would allow for ample discussion.
Confused by faculty load? Don’t be! Join the PPSC Faculty Load and Compensation (FLAC) team for an infobite where you can learn how (and why) load is calculated. Participate in activities designed to demystify load and overload and help you better understand how pay makes its way to you!
One of the complaints about AI is that it is being used to do the tasks we actually want to do (like making art) and not the tasks we want to avoid (like washing the dishes). But, you CAN get AI to wash your dishes in academia if you know the right way to ask! This infobite will focus on its practical applications in automating the mindless, repetitive, or boring tasks in and out of the classroom.
Within the STEM field some think that we're dealing with raw data and DEI isn't as big a deal. But the fact is that the STEM field has been built by people of all backgrounds. By looking at how those backgrounds shaped their discovery, we can show our students how their diverse backgrounds can contribute to the world of science and technology.
Join me to learn about how the Perkins Grant can support your CTE program. In this session, we will cover program eligibility requirements, eligible and ineligible projects, the proposal process, and answer any questions you may have related to Perkins funding. This session is ideal for CTE department chairs and deans. FY26 call for proposals will be released shortly after PDW, so now is the perfect time for a refresher.
Associate VP for Instructional Services and Credit for Prior Learning Gary Walker will give updates on the latest in credit for prior learning (CPL) at PPSC. This info session is ideal for department chairs and faculty, but all are welcome to attend. There should also be time at the end of the session for Q&A and discussion.
With Science, Engineering and Math, one tends to forget that we have definitions in STEM. We can call those definitions concepts with logic and connections. How one organizes notes can be a strategy for teaching and helping student with memorization.
This workshop will help staff and instructors understand how to report disruptive behavior to the Dean of Students' office. Instructors and staff will learn considerations that should be addressed in reports and what they can expect from the Dean of Students' disciplinary process.
This InfoBite is for anyone who wants to support English Language Learners (ELLs) at PPCC. Attendees will learn what assistance is available and will acquire strategies for supporting ELLs in their classes. All attendees will receive a document providing practical ways they can help ELLs be successful at PPSC.
As instructors and advisors, you want to point your students to resources that will help them reach their academic and career goals. In this session, you will learn about TRIO Student Support Services, a federal grant with a 25-year record of success at PPSC! TRIO supports eligible students to succeed in their classes, graduate, and transfer to four-year colleges and universities through providing a variety of tutoring, advising, and mentoring services. You’ll come away better informed about TRIO and how to direct your students to this valuable resource.
Come learn about the mathematicians, the doctors, the inventors, the engineers, innovators, artists, and activists who made an impact in so many different fields of study about whom the students in your classes should know. Launched in the Fall of 2024, join us as we continue to grow this organic project to determine the inspiring and too often forgotten national, regional, and local voices in American history across the disciplines—the sciences and the arts—whose examples can help us to create a more equitable, welcoming, and inspiring culture for our students here at our college and in our classrooms. We want to know more about the diverse people in American history about whom we should know because their words, ideas, actions, accomplishments, stories, and dreams made—and are continuing to make—an impact on the trajectory of our country. Help us to continue to develop, grow, and update the list that we started in the fall of 2024 of the too often forgotten Americans about whom we should know in your discipline and others that will inspire our students.
Dive deeper into the ADA Reasonable Accommodation process for students and how accommodations are handled in classroom, internship, and clinical settings. Explore the role of Accessibility Services and faculty responsibilities when you have concerns about how accommodations should be implemented in your courses. Through the ADA and the Fundamental Alteration Review Process, we can support our students and maintain the integrity of our curriculum. This workshop uses case studies to encourage participation and questions.
B.L.A.Q.: The Ultimate Guide to Dynamic Prompts unlocks the full potential of AI language models. Learn to craft prompts that adapt, evolve, and engage in various conversations. Discovering the secrets to creating compelling narratives, generating creative ideas, and even automating tasks. Whether you are a seasoned AI enthusiast or just starting out, this book is your key to mastering the art of dynamic prompting.
