Course Design Clinic
Two Upcoming Course Design Clinic Offerings
August Clinic
Join us for this two-day, hands-on workshop
August 13 & 14
Location: 101S Newman
8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Lunch Provided
Keynote speaker: Ateba Whitaker
The Waldo Effect: Teaching with Presence, Purpose, and Permission to Be Real
Keynote Description: In higher education, it’s easy to default to performance—delivering the “right” slides, managing outcomes, checking boxes. Somewhere in that process, educators can lose sight of themselves—and students can struggle to connect: to the material, to the experience, and to the person leading the course. But when we lead with authenticity, something deeper happens. We do more than just teach—we build trust, spark curiosity, and create spaces where real learning sticks.
The Waldo Effect invites faculty to consider what becomes possible when we stop performing and start showing up—fully present, purpose-driven, and unapologetically ourselves. When we teach from that place, students don’t just absorb content—they connect with us, engage more fully with their own learning, and remember the experience long after the course ends.
Drawing from years of experience in both large lecture halls and intimate seminars, Ateba Whitaker shares hard-earned lessons about visibility, voice, and vulnerability in the classroom. Faculty will leave with renewed clarity, inspired purpose, and tools to design courses that reflect not just what they teach—but who they are: real.
December Clinic
Join us for this condensed, one-day, hands-on workshop
December 18
8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Lunch Provided
What is Course Design Clinic?
Course Design Clinic, hosted by the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), is a hands-on workshop that guides instructors through the process of building or refreshing their course.
During the session, you will be guided through several stages of course design to include:
- Identifying goals and learning outcomes
- Planning for assessment of student learning
- Designing individual instructional activities and individual class meetings
- Organizing the syllabus and schedule
Through working with CETL and staff from partnering units, you will receive guidance on rigorous instructional design, assignment design, assessment strategies, active learning strategies, and the technological tools available to you when moving through all stages of course design and implementation, including Generative AI. The goal of this clinic is to get you to think through multiple levels of granularity for your course and complete much of the planning at once while having instructional experts on hand. You will leave the clinic well on your way to having a complete course, syllabus, and task list for implementation.