CTL Workshops

Running from Sept 2026 – May 2027, the U of A is piloting LearnWise AI to support students and instructors right inside Canvas. Join this online information session to learn how it safely transforms Canvas course materials into active study and teaching support.

Maximize the impact of your face-to-face classroom time by exploring the art of the modern lecture. Learn how to structure your content for maximum retention, define your teaching persona, and seamlessly weave in interactive breaks to keep students engaged from the front row to the very back of the hall.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Apply evidence-based frameworks to structure your lectures into digestible segments.

• Select lecture breaks that fit the varying constraints of the physical classroom.

• Discover how your behaviour, tone, and personality shape the learning environment.

Prerequisite: Participants must have completed a Braiding First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Truths into Teaching Practice Foundations session within the last year.

This workshop is the first in a 4-part series of collaborative 80-minute sessions intended to offer space for instructors to take one of the possibilities identified in Braiding First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Truths into Teaching Practice to implementation. Consequently, participants must have completed the prerequisite, as stated above, in preparation for this NEXT STEPS Series.

Decolonization and Indigenization are complex, vital processes. It means confronting educational injustice by unsettling power structures and addressing the historical exclusion of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis voices. This is profound work, and it's best done together.

This series creates space for ethical engagement (Ermine, 2007) and is designed for educators who are ready to move from intention to implementation—and to engage in active, practical work alongside peers. Each session is intended to address specific aspects of the course development process.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this series, participants will be able to:

• Engage in decolonial practice by developing strategies to prioritize First Nations, Inuit, and Metis voice

• Explore shifting learning outcomes from traditional cognitive to include wholistic approaches that better align assessment with Indigenous philosophies and ways of knowing

• Consider pedagogical practices and philosophies that promote reconcili-action in University classrooms

It’s easy to miss a few key steps, even in an LMS you know–and in Canvas, those little things can make a big difference for students and for your workload. In this 20-minute webinar, we’ll go through the most common setup and design mistakes in Canvas, from confusing navigation to missing assignments and unpublished modules. Come learn how to avoid these roadblocks and make your course clear, consistent, and ready for students!

Stay for an additional 25-minute Q & A to discuss your teaching needs and share creative solutions and best practices.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this series, participants will be able to:

• Identify and fix common issues that prevent students from accessing content

• Simplify your course navigation to foster student satisfaction and success

Have you developed a personal Land Acknowledgment? Whether you’ve delivered it in writing or spoken words, you might wonder: what impact did it have? This Collaborative Learning Circle is an opportunity to share your personal Land Acknowledgement and discuss its impact as a decolonial tool.

Constructing and refining Land Acknowledgments can be a meaningful practice and learning opportunity. Not only does it encourage us to connect with the land we presently live, play, and work upon, but it also expects us to learn something about the people who lived upon these lands before colonization. Furthermore, Land Acknowledgements provide opportunities for non-Indigenous people to express their commitment to act in ways that support the goals of Truth and Reconciliation. Finding the words and your voice to express these sentiments in relational and authentic ways is far from easy. However, sharing your Land Acknowledgements with others can be illuminating, perhaps reinforcing or possibly contradicting previous learning but ultimately leading you toward greater confidence in using Land Acknowledgements as a genuine tool for Truth and Reconciliation.

Rather than skipping Land Acknowledgements altogether or rushing through a formulaic performance which is becoming ubiquitous across our teaching and learning spaces, we invite you to a collaborative learning circle. This circle is intended to be a supportive space to learn alongside peers, share challenges, and move toward intentional action together.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Reflect on & Refine Practice: Evaluate your current approach to land acknowledgments to identify ways to make them more action-oriented, authentic, and connected to your specific gathering/discipline

As generative AI becomes increasingly embedded in teaching and learning, this collaborative in-person gathering invites instructors to explore a different possibility: what it means to design and facilitate a fully offline course. Participants will share practical strategies, consider the pedagogical possibilities and challenges of an unplugged learning environment, and reflect on what this approach might make visible about teaching, learning, and assessment.

Hosted by the Centre for Teaching and Learning, this monthly gathering is a space for peer-led roundtable discussions to share collective practical expertise, questions, and practical needs of participating instructors. This group offers a dedicated sounding board to workshop your ideas alongside like-minded colleagues.

Dr. Ben Dyson from the Department of Psychology will lead the first session on low-tech game-based learning. Participants will actively engage in an analog game followed by a group discussion on the pedagogical values of using games in diverse teaching contexts.

Reflective writing can be a powerful tool for deep learning—it builds students’ self- and social-awareness while helping them connect course concepts to their own experiences. However, given its personal, open-ended nature, grading reflective work fairly and consistently can be challenging. In this session, you will learn how to design structured prompts and clear rubrics that guide students toward meaningful self-assessment while keeping your grading process transparent and manageable.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

•  Structure models and prompts to support student reflections.

• Evaluate various rubric frameworks to select the best fit for your course context.

• Identify strategies that encourage authentic student voice while navigating the impact of AI.

Join colleagues for an in-person, focused 90-minute working session to explore essential preliminary steps for assessing the absence, presence, and accurate representation of First Nations, Inuit and Metis People and Wisdom in your courses.

We begin by acknowledging the shared reality that many of our foundational educational experiences have not adequately prepared us for this vital work. This session is a supportive space to engage in the necessary reflective work and professional dialogue needed to uncover missing truths and identify new pathways forward

Together, we will use the powerful teachings of braiding to examine our current course curricula and pedagogies. We will begin to assess our current knowledge and access to resources (human, digital, print, etc) to develop a preliminary commitment to decolonize our courses. 

This 90-minute session is just the beginning of making a personal commitment to practice and thinking about ongoing peer support. Insights gained from this session will contribute to next steps in the Indigenization of specific courses in the Winter Term.

Please bring a laptop/charge cord and potential course syllabi for consideration.                               

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Establish the foundational knowledge and rationales for Decolonization and Indigenization in teaching and learning across diverse fields in higher education

• Apply Braiding Past, Present and Future, the Indigenous Strategic Plan, in an effort to responsibly unsettle taken-for-granted assumptions in our courses

• Begin to address gaps and opportunities for including First Nations, Inuit, and Metis wisdom, knowledge, people, and current realities into courses and programs

Gemini Notebook (formerly Notebook LM) is an AI-powered research and study assistant that turns your uploaded sources into summaries, study guides, and audio overviews. Combined with a Gemini Gem, Notebook can even power interactive case studies. In this in-person, 80-minute session, we'll explore practical and creative ways to support your research, course prep, and augment student learning. No experience necessary — just bring your laptop.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Identify use cases where Gemini Notebook can advance teaching, learning and research objectives

• Assemble a Gemini Notebook that fits a teaching, learning or research use case

• Recognize where outputs from Gemini Notebook warrant special review

Building a clear gradebook is the single most important thing you can do to ensure transparency and lower student stress. In this 20-minute webinar, we’ll share workflow and troubleshooting tips, and we will explore some best practices for creating your gradebook and assignments in Canvas. Stay for an additional 25-minute Q&A to discuss this tool in detail.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Organize your Canvas Gradebook in a way that is clear and transparent
• Adjust gradebook settings to streamline your workflow

Join colleagues for an in-person, focused 90-minute working session to explore essential preliminary steps for assessing the absence, presence, and accurate representation of First Nations, Inuit and Metis People and Wisdom in your courses.

We begin by acknowledging the shared reality that many of our foundational educational experiences have not adequately prepared us for this vital work. This session is a supportive space to engage in the necessary reflective work and professional dialogue needed to uncover missing truths and identify new pathways forward.

Together, we will use the powerful teachings of braiding to examine our current course curricula and pedagogies. We will begin to assess our current knowledge and access to resources (human, digital, print, etc) to develop a preliminary commitment to decolonize our courses.

This 90-minute session is just the beginning of making a personal commitment to practice and thinking about ongoing peer support. Insights gained from this session will contribute to next steps in the Indigenization of specific courses in the Winter term.

Please bring a laptop/charge cord and potential course syllabi for consideration.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Establish the foundational knowledge and rationales for Decolonization and Indigenization in teaching and learning across diverse fields in higher education

• Apply Braiding Past, Present and Future, the Indigenous Strategic Plan, in an effort to responsibly unsettle taken-for-granted assumptions in our courses

• Begin to address gaps and opportunities for including First Nations, Inuit, and Metis wisdom, knowledge, people, and current realities into courses and programs

Now that Reading Week is over, you might be getting ready to create your final exams online. In this 20-minute webinar, we’ll showcase all of the different question types available in the Canvas New Quizzes engine and how they appear on the students’ screens. We will also differentiate between questions that are graded automatically or manually.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Create different types of questions for your online quizzes
• Differentiate manually vs automatically graded questions

The relationship between artificial intelligence and assessment is shifting how instructors evaluate student work. When considering AI and grading, you stand at the intersection of effective teaching practices, the ethics of assessment, and workload management. This workshop goes beyond AI tools to evaluate which aspects of feedback necessitate the human touch — and which might benefit from AI-assisted processes.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Evaluate assessment and feedback tasks to distinguish where human instructor judgment is essential versus where AI assistance can safely improve grading efficiency and workload management.

• Design transparent, AI-informed feedback workflows

• Explore the ethics and implications of AI-assisted grading tools.

Get ready to adapt or transform your online learning spaces this Winter term! Through this interactive workshop, you will explore practical ways to create authentic instructor presence, build vibrant and connected communities, and design intentional learner-to-instructor, learner-to-learner, and learner-to-content interactions, both in synchronous and asynchronous online courses. By aligning engagement strategies with their unique teaching styles and disciplines, instructors will leave with an action plan to elevate student connection, motivation, and success in the online environment.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Analyze the impact of instructor presence on student motivation
• Examine strategies for effective online community building
• Implement interactive activities to foster authentic learner engagement