Spring 2025 Faculty Learning Community (FLC) offerings
Interested in gathering with an intimate group of fellow instructors a few times a semester to talk about your teaching? Want to stay up-to-date on conversations in teaching and learning? If so, we welcome you to join our faculty learning community (FLC) program! All faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students with an interest in teaching are welcome to join us.
Our common read for spring semester: A Pedagogy of Kindness (author Catherine Denial) articulates a fresh vision for teaching, one that focuses on ensuring justice, believing people, and believing in people. Offering evidence-based insights and drawing from her own rich experiences as a professor, Denial offers practical tips for reshaping syllabi, assessing student performance, and creating trust and belonging in the classroom.
UA library link: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail.action?docID=30858598
[Note: The library has a limited number of copies. Please use the download PDF chapter link to save to your hard drive. The pdf does not expire. The download limit resets each day, so it might take 3 days to download the entire book. You do need to close your browser to reset the download limit each day. Please do NOT use the download book function.]
We will also have a variety of other topics.
FLCs will meet 6 times during spring semester. Meetings are the weeks of January 27, February 10, February 24, March 17, March 31, and April 14.
A registration link for spring FLCs will be sent out the week classes begin.
Please email Kate Bunton (bunton@arizona.edu) with any questions.
Preliminary Spring Schedule (more offerings coming soon):
| Days/Times | Topics and Facilitators |
Tuesday 10:30-11:30am Zoom | Explore the concepts found within Catherine Denial’s A Pedagogy of Kindness with others! Her book explores ways to be kind to yourself as the instructor, demonstrate kindness to your students through your syllabus, to sit with the many ways kindness and learning can be achieved in assessment, and to establish kindness as a principle in your classrooms. This FLC hopes to take these larger concepts and turn them into practical and small changes that you can bring into your personal approaches to teaching. Florian Hafner |
Tuesday 12-1pm In-person location TBD dates: 1/28, 2/11, 2/25, 3/18, 4/1, and 4/15 | Playful Pedagogy in the Higher Ed Classroom This 6-week series will explore how incorporating play can motivate, engage, and connect your students while helping you achieve your learning outcomes. Through hands-on activities, you’ll reflect on your relationship with play and how you might authentically integrate it into your teaching practice. Come prepared to play and explore innovative strategies to foster student engagement and spark joy in your teaching practice. Jessica Hill |
Tuesday 12:30 – 1:30 pm Jan. 28; Feb. 4; Feb. 11, Feb 18, Feb. 25 (first 5 weeks) | What’s in a Rubric: Assessing Students Transparently and Meaningfully Join our Faculty Learning Community focused on mastering the art of creating and using rubrics to enhance assessment in your courses. This collaborative group will explore strategies for designing rubrics tailored to a variety of assessment purposes, from formative feedback that supports student growth to summative evaluations that measure learning outcomes. Through engaging discussions and practical examples, we will break down the different types of rubrics—analytic, holistic, and single-point—highlighting their unique benefits and applications in the classroom. Participants will gain hands-on experience in developing rubrics aligned with their instructional goals and will learn how to use these tools effectively to foster transparency, consistency, and meaningful feedback in the assessment process. Aimee Mapes and Emily Jo Schwaller |
Wednesday 11:30-1:00pm IN PERSON lunch provided
Registration: https://bit.ly/4go6cxk | Creating Inclusive and Equitable Learning Environments for Native American students The Graduate College and the Agnese Nelms Haury Program for Environment and Social Justice are sponsoring a new FLC that supports the success and wellbeing of Native American students. Participants will build a community of practice that explores culturally relevant, Indigenously focused mentorship models and teaching strategies. This safe and empowering space will develop your mentoring and leadership praxis and build a circle of advocates for Indigenous student success. Maggie Pitts and Frans Tax
** 90-minute meetings in Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. will accommodate participant schedules |
Thursday 9:30-10:30am IN PERSON
| Explore the concepts found within Catherine Denial’s A Pedagogy of Kindness with others! Her book explores ways to be kind to yourself as the instructor, demonstrate kindness to your students through your syllabus, to sit with the many ways kindness and learning can be achieved in assessment, and to establish kindness as a principle in your classrooms. This FLC hopes to take these larger concepts and turn them into practical and small changes that you can bring into your personal approaches to teaching. Brian Moon |
Thursday 2-3pm Zoom | Quality Matters The purpose of the QM FLC is to provide support for faculty who want to align their course materials, activities and assessments with their learning outcomes or to submit their online course for QM review. The QM Met standard allows students to know that their course has been reviewed by a QM expert and meets the requirements set out by the University and the national QM organization for quality online instruction. Faculty can highlight on the annual review or promotion packet that they met the standards on the rigorous rubric required to meet QM expectations.
|
TBD | CIRTL FLC This FLC is for postdocs enrolled in the CIRTL Postdoc Pathways Program and runs concurrently with the 8-week CIRTL course, An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching. Kristin Winet |
TBD | Teaching with AI: A practical guide to a new era of human learning by Jose Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson. This text is available through the UA libraries: Click Here Gretchen Gibbs and Emily Jo Schwaller |
FAQs
Our learning communities are open to anyone who is interested in teaching and learning in the UArizona community! We encourage all faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students to participate.
Click the REGISTER button at the top of the page. You will be taken to a Qualtrics survey to fill out. Once you register, you are registered for the entire semester.
Participants can register for more than one group; however, sessions are capped at 12 in order to facilitate intimate, meaningful conversation. To register for more than one session, you will need to fill out the registration form twice.
Yes! Active participation is expected from all community members, so please plan to contribute your ideas, questions, examples, and curiosities at each session.
Yes! Participants who attend at least 5 of the 6 sessions will receive a certificate to demonstrate their continuing professional development in Edge Learning.
We offer FLCs that are in person, hybrid, and on Zoom. We are also offering asynchronous learning communities for the first time this semester.
Please contact Kate Bunton (bunton@arizona.edu) to discuss any accessibility needs you may have.