Program for 2026 Provost’s Showcase of Scholarly Teaching

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The Office of the Provost, in cooperation with the Graduate School, developed the Graduate Student Resource Center (GSRC), which seeks to help graduate students succeed academically and professionally. Between teaching, research, coursework, and department activities, graduate school is one of the busiest but most transformative times in a student's life. The GSRC helps demystify this process of earning a graduate degree, providing a web of support through our workshops and website. GSRC travel grants and other activities provide tools to use on the daily journey through graduate school and students' path forward in their lives and work. Please visit our website at https://gsrc.fsu.edu/.

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Doctoral students are implicitly expected to value teaching but by being primarily trained as disciplinary researchers, they do not often get explicit training on how to engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning. As a result, they may encounter SoTL as a set of products (journals, methods, conference tracks) rather than as a way of thinking. This presentation will highlight how a new doctoral course in curriculum & instruction titled "Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Teacher Education" positions SoTL as a component of academic identity development. The face to face course seminar enrolls doctoral students preparing for faculty roles in teacher education across disciplines/majors (e.g., early childhood, special education, second language education, mathematics education). The teaching innovation centers on treating SoTL as an epistemic apprenticeship. Students engage in scaffolded cycles of inquiry while explicitly surfacing tensions around rigor, legitimacy, and reward structures. This course functions simultaneously as content, model, and method. Students examine the science of learning as a foundation for effective teaching, experience SoTL principles embedded in the design and delivery of the course itself and engage in guided SoTL investigations that address authentic instructional questions within their own discipline. Effects include greater epistemic clarity, stronger argumentative coherence, and increased transfer of SoTL reasoning into students' disciplinary research and teaching practices. Outcomes for students have included publications of SoTL projects in peer-reviewed journals and presentations at national and international conferences. As a poster presentation, the session will engage participants through informal, small-group and one-on-one conversations focused on key design decisions, instructional artifacts, and student work samples. Attendees will be invited to discuss how SoTL is embedded within the course structure and to reflect how similar approaches might be adapted for their own disciplinary or doctoral contexts.

This poster demonstrates how outcomes data can drive program reflection and improvement across 55 sections of IDS 1002 Gateway to Garnet and Gold. The course is part of the FSU Next Pathway Program and fulfills the ENGAGE 100 requirement. Each section is led by an undergraduate peer leader, which strengthens student connection and expands the program’s reach. At the same time, the peer led model introduces natural variation in grading and feedback. To support peer leaders and ensure consistent learning experiences, the program requires a clear, unified assessment structure. Program level learning outcomes are mapped to Canvas Outcomes, and shared, student friendly rubrics are embedded into assignments across all sections. The structure increases transparency by offering students clear expectations and a better sense of how their work aligns with the criteria. Peer leaders apply a shared vocabulary for feedback and evaluation, reducing variation in grading and improving consistency across sections. Early results support that students engage more confidently when criteria are transparent. Peer leaders report less grading ambiguity and more time for individualized feedback. Aggregated outcomes data highlights both student strengths and areas that require additional support. This information helps identify which assessments effectively measure the intended learning outcomes and which tasks may need revision to improve alignment and clarity. These insights guide adjustments to assessments, refine assignment prompts, and support targeted professional development for peer leaders. The poster will include rubric examples, outcome level performance snapshots, and short cases showing how data informed adjustments to assessments and course activities. To engage attendees, an interactive component will invite them to review anonymized outcome patterns and consider where introductory students may benefit from additional instructional support. A comparison with actual data will highlight practical ways programs can use outcomes analysis to guide reflection and decision making at scale.

This design case traces the trajectory of a faculty-instructional technologist collaboration in high-enrollment online and hybrid courses. Using timeline mapping, the case introduces how an informal pedagogical conversation between faculty-instructional technologist evolved into an ongoing course redesign process and helped surface an innovative activity already implemented across multiple terms and modalities. In these courses, students are encouraged and incentivized with extra credit points/percentages to ask thoughtful questions and reply to their classmates using Canvas Discussions; an integrated, asynchronous communication tool that affords threaded posts and replies. One of the primary goals of this activity is to foster student-student interaction at scale and swiftly shift course-related questions from individual, one-on-one communication to a shared/collective and secure space occupied by student-driven discussions that are available to all students, TAs, and the course instructor. This poster presentation focuses on the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of student-initiated discussions in high-enrollment online and hybrid courses in which Canvas served as the learning management system. In addition, I will share brief student engagement indicators at the course level and describe how assessment was handled. The evaluation centers the point/percentage-based value of the activity and whether to shift from student-initiated to a more structured, faculty-initiated, chapter or module level discussions. Overall, implementing student-initiated discussions helped surface students’ questions and informed course redesign and student expectation management decisions for the Spring 2026 iteration of these courses. In this session, I will engage audience by inviting them to share types of communication methods they make available to their students in online and hybrid courses; particularly in high-enrollment courses, whether and how they integrate TAs into communication processes as well as third-party applications provided and secured by their college/institutions to support student-student learning interactions.

Simulations play a crucial role in social work education and often involve role-playing with peers or standardized patients (actors), providing a realistic, immersive learning environment. The Child Welfare Immersive Collaborative Simulations event (CWICS) is a four-hour multidisciplinary in-person event offered to undergraduate and graduate students at Florida State University and Florida A&M University. Within the four hours, students were guided through three modules, with debriefing sessions following each. During the first two modules, students were assigned professional roles (e.g., nurse, child protective investigator) to either interact with actors or observe the role-play and review case documents. In the final module, students watched a forensic interview video. The goal of the event was to introduce students to trauma-affected casework while learning to balance the priorities of an interdisciplinary team. Additionally, students were able to practice leadership, communication, and critical thinking in a real-life case scenario within a safe learning environment. Evaluation findings indicated that students’ knowledge and skills in interprofessional collaboration increased post-event. Qualitative findings also indicated that students found the actors, debrief sessions, and the immersive nature of the event to be the three most effective aspects of the simulation. Students also expressed a need for additional supplemental documents (e.g., information about the case and role descriptions) as part of their pre-work training to better prepare them for the details of the case. To boost audience engagement during our poster presentation, the presenters will use gamification techniques and encourage the audience to answer questions about experiential learning, interprofessional collaboration, and child welfare.

(1) This presentation focuses on the presenting knowledge gained during a qualitative research study about the integration of Mursion, a virtual simulation platform, within Reading Endorsement courses for Preservice Teachers (PSTs). (2) The primary goal is to demonstrate how virtual simulations can facilitate practice-based teacher training without the immediate stakes of a live K-12 classroom. PSTs developed lesson plans to teach foundational reading skills such as phonics and fluency. Next, they used the Mursion environment to teach these lessons to a diverse group of five middle-school avatars. These avatars, controlled by a blend of artificial intelligence and human simulation, provide PSTs with the opportunity to practice real-time instructional adaptation and classroom management. (3) Findings from this qualitative study indicate that Mursion simulations act as a critical transitional practicum. PSTs reported increased instructional confidence and a heightened ability to respond to student needs. The safe, controlled environment allows for intentional risk-taking and deep reflection, effectively bridging the gap between university coursework and the complexities of live classroom experiences. (4) If accepted, after presenting the research, we will lead the audience in a collaborative brainstorming session, challenging participants to identify how virtual simulation strategies can be adapted to their own unique teacher preparation contexts. We will specifically explore how to use these tools to improve student learning outcomes across specialized teaching disciplines.

Context for the Teaching Innovation: This presentation focuses on an innovative redesign of a fully online graduate-level Nurse Executive Leadership curriculum delivered to cohorts of 15-30 + students. The program serves practicing nurses preparing for executive and senior leadership roles and includes courses in finance, law, business, quality, safety, and executive leadership. Goals and Description of the Teaching Innovation: The goal of this project was to integrate Work Readiness (WR) competencies, AONL Nurse Executive Competencies, and AACN Essentials (2021) into a cohesive, evidence-based curriculum that prepares nurse leaders for today’s complex healthcare systems. Guided by WR frameworks—including Prikshat’s hierarchical model and Peersia’s demand–supply–equilibrium perspectives—the curriculum embeds cognitive, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and job specific skills. Key innovations include executive coaching, scenario-based learning, expert led discussions, reflective leadership development, and preceptorships with seasoned nurse executives. Assignments emphasize strategic planning, negotiation, and interprofessional activities. Stakeholder input from employers, community partners, and nurse executive experts ensured alignment with workforce expectations. Effects or Desired Effects of the Innovation: The WR centered curriculum aims to produce practice ready nurse executives who demonstrate strategic, system thinking, confident communication, empathy, professionalism, and adaptability. Early feedback indicates increased engagement, confidence, deeper reflection, and stronger application of leadership competencies to real world challenges. Long term goals include evaluating graduate outcomes and refining experiential learning strategies such as coaching and scenario-based activities. Plan for Engaging the Audience: The session will engage participants through an interactive discussion walking through the curriculum design process, analyzing sample experiential activities, and review of the WR competencies with participants’ to gain further feedback on program enhancement and future assignments. Specifically, how to further enhance student engagement in an online program, using creativity, art and music, aligned with real world competencies. Attendees will leave with practical tools and strategies for integrating WR and leadership competencies into graduate nursing curricula and provide insight for others to consider exploring the use of WR competencies in other programs.

Florida State University’s EdD Alumni Mentoring Initiative includes three components: individualized coaching consultations, monthly “roundtable” discussions, and an Alumni Coaching Council that meets bi-annually to foster alumni engagement and program development. In Fall 2024, 133 alumni from Florida State University’s EdD program were sent an email outlining the three components of the Alumni Mentoring Initiative, as well as a link to a Qualtrics survey where respondents could indicate their interests in participating in one or more of these three areas. 49 alumni (or 37%) responded to the survey, with 47 (or 96%) expressing interest in individual coaching consultations, 40 (or 82%) indicating an interest in joining the Alumni Coaching Council, and 29 (or 59%) offering to lead or co-facilitate one or more “roundtable” discussions. In this poster session, we will describe the individual components of the Alumni Mentoring Initiative, explain how it has supported student learning and engagement, and discuss the lessons that we have learned from implementation and our plans for programmatic improvement.

This work focused on an intentional and exploratory integration of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) into an introductory face-to-face computer systems course at the University of Southern Denmark. The course included one instructor, 10 teaching assistants and 93 undergraduate software engineering students. The goal of integrating GenAI into this course was to enhance teamwork and students' performance on formative practice tests. The findings indicated that students' formative practice test performance improved. However, across four interviews, the instructor and teaching assistants indicated that GenAI integration has both advantages and disadvantages. Further, GenAI integration started in the replacement phase of Hughes' (2005) technology integration model and moved up to replacement and amplification phase but could not reach transformation. We will prepare three versions of our explanations since not everybody may need to the same level of detail: 1) a hook (30-seconds) including a problem, its importance and one key takeaway; 2) a 2-min conversation including background, what we did, what we found and why all this matters; and 3) a 5-min version including background, theory, methods, limitations, and future steps. Finally, we will turn this into a dialogue by asking and answering questions such as "What brings you to our presentation?", "Are you more interested in methods or implications?", and asking for the audience's perspectives.

Introductory programming students are simultaneously those who stand to benefit most from AI-based support tools and those who are least equipped to judge when such tools are enhancing learning versus replacing cognitive effort. In Programming I, premature reliance on generative AI for code production can interfere with the development of foundational skills such as tracing logic, constructing algorithms, and debugging. However, attempts to prohibit AI use entirely are increasingly unrealistic. Over the past two academic years, we implemented a structured instructional approach that balances clearly defined boundaries on acceptable AI use with explicit opportunities for productive engagement. Students were provided with guidelines distinguishing supportive uses of AI from prohibited uses. At the same time, we redesigned low-stakes assessments to emphasize explanation-based evaluation through handwritten work and verbal interactions with teaching assistants, shifting the focus from code output to demonstrated understanding. This dual strategy acknowledges the reality of student AI use while reinforcing the central role of human reasoning in programming. Classroom observations and student performance trends suggest that requiring students to articulate their reasoning encourages more reflective AI use and reduces overreliance on automated solutions. Students demonstrated improved ability to explain algorithmic choices and identify errors, indicating stronger conceptual engagement alongside continued development of programming proficiency. This poster presents the instructional design, assessment strategies, and observed outcomes of this approach, offering practical insights for instructors seeking to integrate AI tools into introductory STEM courses without undermining the acquisition of core skills.

The Division of Undergraduate Studies’ Proactive Referral and Engagement (PRE) Program was established in 2018 as part of the University’s Strategic Plan to ensure student success. During the 2021-to-2025 timeframe, the PRE Program has continually innovated its assistance to student support programming, faculty, and students experiencing academic and/or personal challenges. When the campus community submits student referrals to the PRE Program early in the semester, it indicates care about student success and a belief that students benefit from the varied help that we provide. The PRE Program team creates benefits by: helping faculty and students identify when additional help may be needed; supporting instructors’ outreach to students for productive outcomes; and using multifaceted outreach and support processes to help students overcome academic and personal challenges. The PRE Program team personally and repeatedly communicates with our campus partners and each referred student. If appropriate for students’ needs, we help them schedule a session with the Academic Center for Excellence resources to identify learning barriers, develop a plan, and implement resources and services. The PRE team addresses students’ individual needs with academic-oriented services and concurrently connects students to academic departments, deans’ offices, withdrawal services, or other personal support services for specialized help. In this poster session, members of the PRE Program team will engage with showcase attendees by highlighting innovations to facilitate students’ successful academic recovery from absences, low scores, and personal challenges; and to make informed decisions based on institutional options. The poster will include historical and current data of programmatic innovations and outcomes represented in straightforward charts and visuals. The handout will include explanations of innovations, data charts, and annual outcomes.

This proposal presents a two-layered approach to instructional preparation in an undergraduate elementary science methods course for pre-service teachers (PSTs) with approximately 30 students across three sessions. The instructional team consisted of one faculty member, two graduate students who served as Instructors of Record (IORs), and two graduate students who acted as Teaching Assistants (TAs), all of whom are authors on this proposal. The instructional team met weekly to prepare for in-class instruction. The faculty member redefined the shared preparation area as a collaborative laboratory by dismantling the traditional hierarchy between faculty and students. She transformed the preparation space into a model for co-designing teacher preparation courses - with faculty and graduate students working together. In this space, the instructional team collaboratively adapted the course materials, slides, and pedagogical strategies to mirror the reform-driven practices they expected of the PSTs. The main objective of this co-design was to enhance instructional agency among two groups: graduate students and undergraduate PSTs. The instructional team moved beyond logistics to focus on three key areas for the two teaching layers – at the university and elementary levels. (1) Understanding teaching approaches, (2) deepening content knowledge for teaching, and (3) modeling reform-driven ways of teaching science. To accomplish these goals, the team met weekly to problem-solve around classroom tasks (i.e., classroom management, digital learning spaces, and grading) through a reflective, agency-centered, and emotionally grounded approach. This approach had dual benefits and empowered agency at two levels. First, the instructional team became more adaptive by reflecting on their practices and challenges, enhancing their support for PSTs. Secondly, the instructional team's transparency, reflectiveness, and collaboration encouraged the PSTs to take pedagogical risks in their own teaching. In the presentation, the instructional team will unpack the course preparation space as a co-design space through their reflections.

Discipline-specific thinking includes cognitive skills that must be practiced. It is possible for some learners to absorb the structure of a discipline-specific approach with years of exposure. In contrast, learning can be accelerated by explicit instruction and practice. Here, I describe the development and use of the Strategy for Evaluating Empirical Research (SEER), a tool that explicates a discipline-specific cognitive skill, to accelerate skill acquisition. Numerous STEM fields emphasize the importance of distinguishing between causation and correlation. Despite established instructional emphasis for this skill, students still need additional cognitive skill training. In modern neuroscience, it is standard practice to attempt to understand causal neural mechanisms regulating physiology and behavior. There are numerous research tools available that allow researchers to investigate nervous systems. To the untrained observer, these methods appear as though they will reveal the biological causes of physiology and behavior. However, this is only the case for some methods: some methods can be used to determine causal neural mechanisms, but other methods only permit observation of the neural correlates. Thus, a fundamental cognitive skill that needs to be trained in learners is when are causal claims permitted vs when they are not. Here, I describe the development and use of the SEER tool to facilitate cognitive skill development of students in an upper-level elective course, Social Neuroscience (PSB 4006). Students are assessed for their ability to evaluate causal claims in the scientific literature.

Entrepreneurship competitions have become a prominent feature of both entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial ecosystems. They provide structured opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs to test ideas, refine business models, and build credibility. Beyond financial rewards, competitions act as experiential learning laboratories, enabling participants to develop entrepreneurial skills, expand networks, and cultivate reputational capital (Aldrich & Yang, 2014; Anderson et al., 2014; Ross & Byrd, 2011). While much of the existing scholarship focused on business plan competitions (Watson & McGowan, 2019; Russell, Atchison & Brooks, 2008), today's landscape is more diverse, encompassing ideation contests, business model challenges, accelerator-linked events, and global competitions. This study develops a comprehensive overview of entrepreneurship competitions, exploring variations in design, judging, prize outcomes, and funding sources. Preliminary findings indicate that while significant diversity exists, universal best practices emerge across contexts, including careful judge selection and training, milestone-based prize deployment, safeguards for intellectual property, and transparent structures that maximize learning and fairness. Drawing on a comparative case study analysis of national and global competitions, and interviews with thought leaders, the study synthesizes insights that inform competition design. We argue entrepreneurship competitions are best understood not as isolated events but as intentional pedagogical interventions that advance entrepreneurial learning and ecosystems. The rapid expansion of entrepreneurship education across higher education and the interdisciplinary nature of entrepreneurship further amplifies the relevance of this topic. Entrepreneurship is now embedded across disciplines including engineering, the arts, health sciences, public policy, education, agriculture, and the social sciences, where students increasingly engage with entrepreneurial thinking as a means of problem solving, innovation, and societal impact. Within this context, entrepreneurship competitions function as shared, campus-wide learning platforms that convene diverse disciplinary perspectives around opportunity identification, resource mobilization, and value creation. Understanding how competitions are designed and governed is therefore critical not only for entrepreneurship educators, but for faculty, administrators, and program designers across campus who leverage these competitions as experiential learning mechanisms, translational research pathways, and bridges between academic knowledge and real-world application.

This teaching innovation was implemented in COM 4712: Writing to Persuade, a 15-week undergraduate course with 19 students taught in person at Florida State University. The goal was to transform abstract rhetorical theory into an immersive, experiential learning activity using a modified Dungeons & Dragons–style role-playing framework. Students created characters aligned with rhetorical factions—Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and Deception—and participated in a live role-play campaign titled The Trial of Silver Tongues. Guided by the instructor acting as Dungeon Master, students completed persuasive quests, rhetorical challenges, and collaborative storytelling activities that required them to apply rhetorical strategies in real time. Course materials included a custom Player’s Handbook, character sheets, a narrative campaign structure, and digital dice tools.The activity fostered strong engagement, critical thinking, and rhetorical agility. Students reported increased confidence in applying persuasive techniques and described the experience as memorable and enjoyable. Post-campaign reflections showed a stronger understanding of rhetorical appeals and their ethical implications, while the role-playing format also encouraged class bonding and creative risk-taking. This poster presents the design of the campaign, examples of instructional materials, and reflections on student outcomes. Attendees will be able to explore sample character sheets, faction structures, and rhetorical challenges used in the course, as well as discuss strategies for adapting role-playing frameworks to support active learning in writing and communication classrooms.

Our teaching innovations were inspired by the realities of teaching writing-heavy school psychology graduate-levels classes in Fall 2025, a time when generative AI exploded into the academic space with few guardrails. We were struck by the natural connections between our course content, research expertise, and AI. We integrated these with existing resources to develop and clarify expectations for writing and professional practice. For example, one course involved content related to the ethics and laws of school psychological practice, which provided a framework to discuss the ethics of AI use graduate school and professional practice and a development of a course-specific AI use policy. This policy included a required transparency statement to be included for any use of AI products. The second teaching innovation was opening a conversation with students about AI use in the classroom and measuring student perspectives. Using the framework of the ethics code of school psychology, faculty and students had a semi-structured discussion about the use of AI. After the discussion, students provided anonymous survey feedback and retrospective pre- and post- information on their perceptions of AI in the classroom through selected items from the faculty’s research area in writing. Half of students reported they had not ever had a conversation about AI in an academic space, and most reported there were no policies set in their classes. Students provided narrative feedback that included comments about how refreshing it was “to just talk about it.”. Most students felt the course-specific policies involving writing a disclaimer to acknowledge any AI use in an assignment seemed reasonable for a graduate level class, and after the conversation 33% of students included an AI-use transparency statement in subsequent assignments. This poster will engage instructors from different disciplines to consider how their course content may connect with AI use and what opening a conversation with students could look like in the classroom. We look forward to hearing other innovations in this area to further clarify expectations for our students.

AI is rapidly shaping how students and instructors navigate all aspects of learning, particularly written work. It is clear that students need guidance from their instructors on acceptable use of AI in the classroom. This transparent direction can empower students to use AI tools meaningfully, supporting a deep understanding of concepts rather than treating AI as a crutch to replace learning. Across the Fall 2025 semester, we gathered data and feedback from students in a large lecture course on their use of AI to complete written assignments. Eukaryotic Diversity (BSC3016) is a large (~200 student) upper-division biology elective course at FSU. Eukaryotic Diversity explores the evolution, physiology, development, and ecology of a wide range of organisms, from single-celled organisms to animals, plants, and fungi. This course offers multiple tools for assessment, including quizzes, tests, in-class work, and four written assignments completed outside of class. The goals of our work were (1) to identify acceptable AI use on written assignments, (2) assess how guidance on AI altered student use of these tools, and (3) characterize student perspectives on AI. Attendees will learn about our iterative process for clarifying the ambiguity of AI use on written work, informed by student feedback. We will share examples of AI language that instructors can integrate into their assignments. We will also share the data we collected on the evolution of student use of AI in their written work.

This session presents an examination of how metacognition and self-regulated learning (SRL) can be embedded within graduate course design rather than addressed through stand-alone strategy instruction. The teaching context is a graduate-level course on theories of learning and instruction that I designed and teach in both in-person and online formats, with enrollments capped at 25 students. The focal instructional artifact is a multi-draft theory application assignment in which students analyze learning and instruction as depicted in a popular film, supported by structured peer feedback and iterative revision across the semester. The pedagogical goal of this design was to support learners’ planning, monitoring, and reflection through core disciplinary work while minimizing extraneous cognitive load and performance-oriented uncertainty. Informed by research on metacognition, SRL, motivation, and learning theory, the assignment leverages sequencing, constrained scope, modeling of analytic writing, and targeted instructional framing. In-class augmentation of written directions emphasizes justification over correctness, clarified expectations for analytic reasoning, and positions peer feedback as a mechanism for calibration and sense-making rather than evaluation. Drawing on student work across drafts and patterns observed during peer feedback interactions, we will discuss evidence of increased conceptual integration across learning theories, improved alignment between analytic claims and supporting examples, and greater student willingness to revise interpretations over time. These outcomes suggest that regulatory processes can be meaningfully supported through design choices without adding instructional time, explicit metacognitive lessons, or increased grading burden. If accepted, the session will engage participants in a guided analysis of assignment materials using a concise metacognition and SRL design checklist. Participants will identify where regulatory support is already embedded in the assignment, examine how instructional augmentation amplifies these supports, and consider how similar design principles might be applied or investigated within their own courses. The session aims to support faculty by offering practical strategies for embedding metacognition and SRL through intentional course design.

This session describes an innovative approach to continuous formative student feedback implemented in undergraduate and graduate nursing courses. Courses were delivered primarily in person with moderate to large class sizes and supplemental use of the Canvas. The strategy, titled "Your Voice Counts" - Continuous Student Feedback, was developed to address the limitations of traditional end of course evaluations by creating a flexible, responsive learning environment that adapts in real time to the needs of each student cohort. The goal of this teaching innovation was to shift feedback from a delayed, summative process to an ongoing formative dialogue that empowers students and supports active learning. Faculty implemented an anonymous, low technology feedback method using a virtual bulletin board presented via a QR code at the end of each class session. Students provided respectful, constructive, and solution focused feedback related to course pacing, clarity, workload, and instructional strategies. Faculty review feedback after each class, make timely adjustments when feasible, and communicate changes or rationale back to students. This feedback loop was reinforced through weekly Canvas announcements to clarify expectations and address emerging concerns. The use of continuous formative feedback resulted in increased student engagement, reduced stress, improved perceptions of instructor responsiveness, and the development of a classroom culture characterized by trust and inclusivity. Students consistently reported feeling heard and valued, while faculty observed fewer reactive issues and greater alignment between teaching strategies and learner needs. The approach supports culturally responsive teaching by recognizing the classroom as a dynamic environment shaped by each unique cohort. This session will engage participants through brief case examples, guided reflection, and interactive discussion focused on adapting the strategy to diverse educational settings. Attendees will leave with practical tools and implementation strategies for incorporating continuous formative feedback to enhance student engagement and teaching effectiveness.

FSU’s online master’s degree in athletic coaching is a program designed to better equip students who coach athletes in any sport at any level. The program provides a wide variety of overarching courses that are topics coaches in any sport should possess knowledge and skills. One of the courses is Coaching the Athlete 360. This course teaches coaches helping skills (routed in counseling type skills for non-counselors). For the past two runs of this course (50 students), I have incorporated the DISC behavior profile as an assessment to guide students work. As a result of a tech fees grant, our master’s students receive this behavior profile free of charge within this course. DISC is one of the most widely used behavior profile across the globe, and the primary benefit of the tool is to create self-awareness. Recent research has shown building the coach-athlete relationship through self-awareness is a powerful tool when helping athletes perform at their best (Wheeler, 2022). By taking DISC, our coaching students learn what preferred behaviors they display to athletes and others and how they adapt those behaviors when coaching. Students then overlay their DISC results onto the helping skills assignments within the course. Through the semester, students use DISC to create an evolving communication philosophy statement then model this philosophy in a communication video portfolio aimed at practicing conversations with athletes on various helping topics. Students spend time receiving external feedback on their observable behaviors and learn how to identify others’ (athletes) DISC profiles so they can better adapt their own behaviors to help the given situation with athletes. For this roundtable, DISC will be explained within the context of the course, current students from the athletic coaching program who have completed the course will share their most meaningful work form this course and how they use what they learned about themselves now as coaches, and participants will get to explore what their own DISC profile may be through an interactive activity.

This presentation introduces an innovative activity implemented in a graduate‑level research methods course (~25 students) designed to help learners articulate and refine their research problems through the construction of causal diagrams. Students create an initial diagram that maps their primary research outcome and the direct or indirect factors they believe influence that outcome. They upload this diagram to CoPilot, using an AI prompt that guides the system to evaluate each causal link in the diagram. CoPilot also identifies common logical fallacies—including post hoc reasoning, oversimplification, reverse causation, and confounding variables—and labels each link with the critical‑thinking strategy reflected in the student’s reasoning (such as analysis, evaluation, deductive or inductive logic, or forward and backward inferencing).Beyond identifying errors, CoPilot provides mechanism‑focused explanations that help students understand why a link is valid or flawed and how hidden assumptions or missing steps weaken reasoning. The AI probes for issues such as incorrect directionality, missing mediators, or correlations mistaken for causation, prompting students to revise their diagrams with greater clarity and precision.A distinctive part of the activity is the diagram scoring and comparison feature. After evaluating the initial and revised diagrams, CoPilot generates a structured summary of the improvements made and the specific critical‑thinking skills responsible for those improvements. This reflective feedback loop strengthens metacognitive awareness by making students’ reasoning growth explicit and visible.Students find this AI‑supported process deepens understanding of causal logic, improves the precision of their research problem statements, and enhances their ability to identify and avoid common reasoning errors. More broadly, combining causal diagramming with AI‑mediated critique offers a domain‑general framework that supports problem‑solving across disciplines, helping learners break down complex issues and construct clearer explanations of the systems they study.Demonstrations and detailed examples of students' diagrams and AI feedback will be presented to engage the audience.

(1) This roundtable discussion draws on teaching practices implemented in SDS 3340: Introduction to Career Development, a variable-credit, in-person undergraduate course, with 20–30 students. SDS 3340 is a co-teaching course grounded in Cognitive Information Processing (CIP) theory and designed to support students at varying levels of career decisiveness as they engage in life and career planning. The course includes lectures, small-group activities, multimedia resources, and one-to-one consultations. (2) Within this context, I introduced an instructional approach that integrates evidence-based research literacy into career exploration activities. In a media environment where students frequently encounter career advice through social media and other informal sources, this approach aims to help undergraduates critically evaluate information and distinguish peer-reviewed research from popular narratives. Students were guided through structured reading and discussion of selected research articles, including work on the cultural context of career choice (e.g., Fouad & Byars-Winston, 2005), to examine how identities such as race, ethnicity, and cultural background shape career development processes. (3) The desired effects of this teaching innovation include strengthening undergraduates’ information literacy and supporting more identity-aware and contextually grounded career exploration. By engaging research evidence as a reflective tool, students are encouraged to connect theory, empirical findings, and lived experience in their career planning. (4) If accepted, the session will begin with a brief overview of the course context and a concrete example of the instructional sequence used in class. Participants will then engage in guided small-group discussions on questions such as how to scaffold research literacy for undergraduates and how instructors address students’ overreliance on social media information. As a PhD student and co-instructor, I would love to have this roundtable opportunity to actively invite feedback, strategies, and insights from our faculty, fostering a collaborative exchange around teaching in diverse social and cultural contexts.

The rapid emergence of generative AI tools has raised both opportunities and concerns for introductory STEM education, particularly in courses that emphasize foundational skills such as problem solving, reasoning, and programming. This roundtable session explores the integration of source-grounded AI tools, such as NotebookLM, into an introductory programming course as a structured and pedagogically guided support system rather than an unrestricted problem-solving shortcut. In this course, AI is intentionally positioned as a learning aid that operates within defined boundaries: students interact with an AI system trained only on instructor-provided materials, including lecture notes, textbook chapters, and curated examples. This approach enables students to ask questions, request clarifications, and summarize concepts while maintaining alignment with course-specific content and expectations. The tool is also used as a platform for explicit instruction on the capabilities and limitations of AI, emphasizing issues of hallucination, overreliance, and the distinction between conceptual understanding and answer generation. The session will examine how this structured use of AI supports student learning in three key ways: (1) reinforcing conceptual understanding through source-based explanations, (2) promoting responsible and transparent AI use practices, and (3) encouraging metacognitive reflection on when AI enhances learning versus when it undermines skill development. Classroom observations and student feedback suggest that when guided appropriately, AI can function as a productivity enhancer and study aid rather than a replacement for problem-solving effort. Participants will engage in a discussion of practical strategies for integrating source-grounded AI tools into introductory STEM courses, including establishing usage policies, designing AI-compatible learning activities, and addressing student perceptions of AI as both a resource and a potential crutch. The roundtable aims to foster dialogue on how educators can leverage emerging AI tools to support learning while preserving the integrity of core disciplinary skills.

This roundtable discussion will provide instructors with information about and practice with two printed example activities from my SLS‑3513 Strategies for Academic Recovery course (Anne’s College – CEHHS) that help students’ development of productive social, psychological and/or emotional skills in response to academically and/or personally challenging experiences. Although presented within an academic context, students quickly associate personal and professional benefits for using these skills in other contexts. Participants will practice and discuss two activities: 1. identification of students’ approach to conflict, 2. mindfulness techniques to improve students’ responses to stressors (e.g., anxiety, negative rumination). In addition to discussing their potential implementation with students, the attendees will gain experience with two activities that are supportive of a student’s progress with self-awareness, validation of emotional experiences, and evaluation of personal reactions and distortions. Moreover, I will share students’ feedback about their experiences engaging with these activities. Within the 50-minute session, participants will practice and discuss the two activities in this order: 1. students’ self-identification of approaches to conflict (e.g., activity, practice responses, 2-2:25pm); and 2. mindfulness techniques to improve students’ response to stressors (e.g., anxiety, negative rumination, 2:30 -2:55pm).

1. "History of the Russian Foreign Policy", cap 25 (20 undergrads and 5 graduate students); 2. taught in person; intermediate junior-senior level; to reconstruct the most important moments of the event based on the character/position of major participants, such as JFK, Khrushchev, Castro, McNamara's EXCOMM so the class, while playing roles, can analyze the calculated risk made by the sides/participants and make a convincing argument for this or that necessary action needed to avoid confrontation/prevent WWIII; 3. to evaluate the subsequent impact of the event on the USA-USSR international relations. 4. allowing students to ask "provocative" questions directed towards their counterparts.

In our interdisciplinary undergraduate program, we teach junior- and senior-level courses that enroll students with diverse disciplinary preparation and life pathways. In courses such as Contemporary Social Problems and Integrative Solutions (ISS 4304) and Integrated Studies Capstone (ISS 4950) (typical enrollments of 10–20 students in person and 20–30 students online), students arrive with heterogeneous prior coursework, academic identities, and aspirations. This diversity is a strength for interdisciplinary learning, but it also intensifies a familiar challenge: student-centered teaching requires early, actionable insight into what students know, value, and assume, insight that enables responsive examples, appropriate scaffolding, and formative feedback. We also pursue growth-oriented assessment, requiring early baselines and iterative revision/reflection. Our problem of practice is to learn about students quickly, ethically, and at scale, ideally in the first two weeks. This roundtable will share and solicit feedback on “rapid learner‑mapping” practices we have implemented and iterated, including pre‑semester surveys, early low‑stakes diagnostic assignments, brief micro-presentations connected to course themes, and individual or small‑group meetings. Our goals are to: (a) surface students’ interests, intellectual journeys, aspirations, and the mental models they use to reason about complex social problems; (b) translate that information into concrete course decisions (e.g., examples, pacing, scaffolding, group formation, customized assignments); and (c) support asset-based, growth‑oriented assessment by making learning visible through structured reflection and revision. The intended effects are stronger early engagement and belonging, more targeted instruction, and more valid evaluation of learning growth in heterogeneous classrooms. We will run a participatory roundtable in two cycles (0–25 and 25–50 minutes): we will briefly share our work, then invite participants to compare approaches and tradeoffs (time, scale, equity/privacy) and initiate a conversation to co-develop adaptable prompts and templates for learning about students early without overburdening anyone.

Food feeds my work. The LIT 3383 Women in Literature: Female Poets and Food course I designed combines my research in poetry and literary food studies. The twenty-student undergraduate class explores the rich tradition of female poets who address food in their writing. Rather than distinguish the poets by epochs or forms, they represent a buffet of social, cultural, and aesthetic perspectives. Together, these women exemplify how food transcends flavor to signify universal themes such as memory, family, cultural identity, place, death, desire, and others. As an instructor, my goal is to showcase how meals are similar to poetry––and learning––in that all are shared experiences that bring people together. My pedagogy focuses on the integration of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a framework to emphasize learner-centered engagement, representation, and expression. To foster engagement, students contribute to small group discussions centered on collaborative learning. Members chew over their ideas about the week’s poems as a way to hone their skills in communication and critical thinking. In terms of representation, I present poems in various formats to promote a deeper understanding of the genre. For example, students engage with videos of the poets reading their work and a guest speaker. The poems come alive when students witness the poets perform. Moreover, the personal interactions prompt them to reapproach the page with an enhanced recognition that the relationship between the poet and reader is not static but rather dynamic. As for expression, everyone has various ways to interact with our course. Students participate in daily free writing, movement-oriented activities, and oral presentations to share their knowledge. The implementation of UDL enables everybody to succeed. Similar to swapping recipes at the kitchen table, let’s exchange UDL strategies that can be incorporated into any classroom seeking to offer a nourishing learning experience.

This roundtable discussion will explore how faculty can integrate generative AI into courses across disciplines, with application in both in-person and online learning environments. The teaching contexts include upper-division undergraduate and graduate-level courses offered in face-in-face, hybrid, and fully online formats (20-60 students). The intended audience are instructors seeking pedagogically inspirational ways to incorporate generative AI into classroom activities and assignments. The primary goal of this teaching innovation is to use generative AI to enhance student preparation, expose learners to diverse perspectives, and promote transparency and reflection around AI use. Strategies to be shared include (1) using generative AI to help students prepare for negotiation and other group-based exercises by exploring positions, interests, and potential strategies; (2) structured “debates” with generative AI that challenge students to engage with alternative viewpoints, critique AI-generated arguments, and refine their own reasoning; and (3) reflective writing assignments focused on AI use, in which students document how they used generative AI, assess its strengths and limitations, and reflect on its impact on their learning and decision-making. Observed and desired effects of these approaches include improved student readiness for collaborative activities, deeper engagement with course content, increased exposure to multiple perspectives, and greater metacognitive awareness. AI-focused reflective assignments also provide instructors with valuable insight into students’ actual AI practices and perceptions, supporting more informed decisions about course design, assessment, and communication around academic integrity. The roundtable will be highly participatory. The facilitator will briefly share assignment examples and guiding prompts, then engage participants in discussion about adaptation across disciplines and modalities, including sharing tools, rubrics, challenges, and emerging questions related to teaching with generative AI.

This roundtable showcases an innovative service-learning model embedded in ENT 3515: Principles of Social and Sustainable Enterprises, an undergraduate course offered by the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship at FSU. Delivered in an in-person format, the course enrolls multidisciplinary students from across campus. In Fall, 28 students collaborated with seven local entrepreneurs, and in Spring, 24 students partnered with five entrepreneurs participating in the Leon Entrepreneurship and Adversity Program (LEAP), an initiative of the Jim Moran Institute. Each semester, students work in teams with entrepreneurs from underserved communities in the Tallahassee region. This classroom experience creates a high-impact experiential learning and service-learning opportunity that integrates academic content with meaningful community engagement. Students and entrepreneurs collaborate throughout the semester using a process-consulting approach to address real business challenges. This structure allows students to apply entrepreneurial tools and frameworks in practice while developing an entrepreneurial mindset grounded in empathy, critical thinking, and social responsibility. At the same time, entrepreneurs receive tailored support that advances their ventures toward sustainable growth and strengthens connections within the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. The effects of this teaching innovation are twofold. For students, the course provides hands-on, real-world learning experiences that deepen their understanding of entrepreneurship as a mechanism for social and economic impact. For community partners, the consulting phase of LEAP generates tangible value for small businesses and contributes to inclusive economic development in Tallahassee. The initiative thus intentionally aligns student learning outcomes with broader community and social impact goals. The roundtable will actively engage the audience through a facilitated discussion focused on program impact, implementation challenges, and lessons learned. Faculty, program director, a student, and an entrepreneur will participate in the conversation, and attendees will be invited to reflect on how similar service-learning models can be adapted to their own disciplinary contexts.

People are reading less (Bone et al., 2025). This is especially true of college students who are simply not engaged enough in doing their course readings (Kerr & Frese, 2016). We as graduate teaching assistants and professors should thus seriously consider how we can encourage students to read. After all, through engaged reading, we can spark students’ curiosity, drive their learning, and show them the value of reading not just for their classes but also for life. With this in mind, our roundtable will feature 5 instructors, one professor and four graduate teaching assistants, who will share different innovative and engaging in-class activities used to encourage reading the required material. These reading engagement activities have been implemented in the School of Teacher Education's required ESOL Endorsement courses that pre-service teachers take. The focus will particularly be on this Spring semester's TSL 4251 “Methods in Teaching English Language Learners in PK-12 Classrooms.”. Given that the courses provide students with crucial understanding of English learners and the instructional practices needed to work with them in content-area classrooms, we believe in designing reading engagement activities that first model evidence-based instructional strategies, ultimately helping students not only understand the material better but also build classroom community, show their creativity, and approach reading as both a fun and informative activity (Wang, 2012; Kerr & Frese, 2016). During the roundtable, we will share different techniques we have implemented such as argument mapping, collaging, graphic organizers, poster drawing, and reflections. In our discussion, we will give examples of these techniques and materials needed, showcase students’ work where possible, and invite audience members to consider how our reading engagement activities can apply to their teaching contexts.

In large in-person classes of over 100 students, it is often assumed that the only feasible teaching method is lecture-based PowerPoint presentations. However, while teaching Introduction to Neuroscience—a lower-division course with many non-STEM majors—I discovered that even in a large lecture hall, it is possible to build community and promote meaningful engagement. One surprisingly effective strategy I implemented was starting each class with a prompt on the board. These prompts encouraged students to begin thinking, reflecting, and talking with peers as they entered. Early in the semester, the questions were grounded in real-life experiences or abstract ideas that initially seemed unrelated to neuroscience. For example, in our unit on gross brain anatomy, I asked students to draw where they see themselves in five years. After completing the drawing, they reflected on the thoughts, emotions, and movements involved. Later, once they had learned relevant brain functions, students returned to their drawings and labeled the brain regions associated with planning, emotion, and motor control. This helped them connect abstract neuroscience concepts to their own lives in a memorable way. My goal with this innovation was to increase participation, deepen understanding, and humanize the learning environment. The result has been greater engagement and stronger classroom cohesion, even in large settings. If accepted, I will also share additional teaching strategies—some I have used, and others developed by colleagues and presented at conferences such as HiTOP. I hope participants will contribute to the roundtable by sharing strategies they have used, so we all leave with adaptable tools for our own classrooms.

This project explores a pedagogical innovation in MMC 4302 Comparative and International Media Studies, a 45-student upper-division course taught in-person during Spring 2026. The course restructures traditional semester design by inverting the typical learning sequence: rather than teaching theories first and applying them in a final project, students begin with a semester-long community-engaged “Big Idea Project” and navigate backwards to theory, deeply engaging through problem-solving. Drawing on Mary Helen Immordino-Yang’s work on engagement and transcendent thinking, the flipped classroom positions theories as “instruction manuals” students seek out in order to advance projects they care about, rather than abstractions to memorize. Student teams identify real international media-related problems in their communities, partner with relevant stakeholders, explore comparative international media cases, and design theory-informed deliverables such as social campaigns, media literacy toolkits, and education curriculum. In Spring 2026, three groups advanced their work to the School of Communication’s annual research conference, presenting posters on: (1) acculturation and loss of mother language in U.S. Hispanic families, (2) cultural imperialism manifested in K-pop group KATSEYE, and (3) lack of cultural sensitivity in the film Emilia Pérez. Participating students reported that they were self driven and enjoyed the work very much because they were “not just doing homework,” but building projects on topics that mattered deeply to them, illustrating the course’s goal of cultivating intrinsically meaningful, transcendent engagement with international media systems. I will engage the audience through a brief walkthrough of the six scaffolded milestones (problem finding, theory finding, case study, proposal, execution, and critical reflection), share excerpts and visuals from student posters, and facilitate small-group discussion around adapting this structure to different disciplines and class sizes. Participants will leave with concrete milestone templates, strategies for supporting community partnerships, and models for assessment that foreground reflection and process over summative grading.

With the rapid emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), both instructors and students are increasingly integrating AI tools into everyday teaching and learning practices. Alongside this growing adoption, scholarship has raised substantial concerns about the educational use of AI, including the potential loss of meaningful human interaction, overreliance on AI-generated outputs, the persistence of lecture-based instruction despite AI’s student-centered potential, risks related to privacy, data security, and surveillance, and the possible erosion of essential soft skills such as collaboration, creativity, and social communication. This discussion is situated in the instructional contexts of faculty members and graduate teaching assistants across disciplines at Florida State University. Designed for in-person or online classes of small to medium size, the session aims to move beyond abstract debates about AI by examining how related concerns arise in classroom practice and how instructors can respond in pedagogically grounded, human-centered ways. Drawing on instructors’ experiences and current research, the session highlights practical strategies for integrating AI while sustaining meaningful instructor–student interaction, ethical use, and student engagement. Rather than reporting formal data, the session emphasizes reflective teaching experiences, instructional design principles, and emerging strategies that address common challenges associated with AI adoption. The desired outcomes include increased instructor awareness of critical issues related to AI in education, greater confidence in making informed pedagogical decisions, and the development of context-sensitive approaches appropriate for the FSU teaching environment. The session will be conducted as an interactive roundtable in which participants engage in guided discussions around key concerns related to AI use in education. Attendees will be invited to share their own teaching experiences and collaboratively explore potential solutions tailored to their disciplines and classroom contexts. Through this exchange, the session aims to foster community dialogue and support thoughtful and responsible innovation in AI-enhanced teaching.

In an increasingly competitive and saturated sports industry, students must learn how to intentionally differentiate themselves beyond traditional credentials such as GPA and internship experience. This session presents an innovative, experiential teaching approach implemented across graduate-level sport management and business-related courses, including Professional Development in Sport, Practicum in Sport Management, Sport Analytics, and Advanced Sport Analytics. These courses typically enroll 25–60 graduate students, are delivered primarily in-person with supplemental online components and are designed to equip students with job-specific competencies for highly competitive positions within the sport industry. Each cohort also includes a diverse international student population, requiring instructional approaches that are sensitive to cultural, professional, and labor-market differences across countries. The primary goal of this teaching innovation is to equip students with the ability to clearly articulate, demonstrate, and communicate their unique value proposition to employers. To achieve this, the curriculum integrates a series of experiential learning strategies, including personal brand audits, competitive self-analyses, LinkedIn and résumé optimization workshops, mock interviews with industry professionals, and real-world networking simulations connected to career fairs, professional conferences, and practicum placements. Students are intentionally challenged to move beyond simply stating “what they want to do in sports” toward identifying the specific problems they solve, what differentiates them from peers, and how they effectively convey that differentiation in professional settings. The observed and desired effects of this approach include increased student confidence, stronger professional communication skills, clearer career direction, and improved employment-related outcomes such as internship placements, full-time job offers, and sustained alumni engagement. Student reflections consistently indicate a greater sense of ownership over their career development and a deeper understanding of how differentiation operates within a competitive labor market. This session will actively engage participants through guided reflection activities, live polling, and small-group discussions that mirror the classroom exercises used with students. Attendees will leave with immediately adaptable assignments, assessment tools, and instructional strategies designed to help students stand out in competitive industries, particularly sport, business, and related professional fields.

Many of the topics we teach in higher education have a social dimension, and most of the careers we prepare students for involve collaboration and/or working with stakeholders. In addition, students have different skills and strengths that can complement one another. For these reasons, team projects in coursework are often useful. As an example, I teach an introductory data analytics class in education, and one of my goals for the course is for students to develop their critical thinking around data in education and improve in the “soft skills” required for jobs, even in technical work like data analytics. Furthermore, in the field of education, students have vastly different skill levels in working with data, and working in teams can relieve the pressure to be good at all aspects of a project. However, over the years, I have taught students who are outspoken critics of group work because of past negative experiences. I once had a student repeatedly email me about her team project and concerns about her grade, but after she graduated, she emailed me to thank me for pushing her to stick with her group, because all the jobs she was applying for required a major team component. Still, I want to take students’ concerns into account, and I have updated how I grade team assignments to better capture the nuances of individual contributions. I now incorporate a peer assessment component into the overall grade, using Cornell University’s Group Work Evaluation Guide. In this roundtable, I would like to facilitate a discussion about team projects: how we can best help students see the career benefits of learning to work together and how we can best evaluate students’ effort and contributions.

This presentation highlights a partnership approach used in EME 6060 Collaborative Research, a graduate course in Instructional Systems & Learning Technologies. The course focuses on learning to collaborate in research contexts, covering issues such as co-authorship, project management, data management, leadership styles, and more. In Fall 2025, the course was redesigned to anchor learning within a research practice partnership model developed in coordination with teachers at the Florida State University Schools. This context provided students with a real-world environment in which to meet the course objectives while also engaging in design-based research and collaborative problem-solving. The primary goals of the instructional innovation were to help graduate students develop practical research skills, to deepen their understanding of partnerships with practitioners, and to foster ethical and reciprocal relationships with teachers. Students worked in small teams alongside FSUS teachers who were simultaneously participating in a professional development series on artificial intelligence in K12 settings and planning action research projects for their classrooms. Course activities guided students in identifying shared questions, co-developing small-scale studies, and planning for spring term implementation of AI projects and data collection. Because these relationships emphasized mutual benefit, the partnerships have continued beyond the end of the semester, with several projects moving forward into ongoing action research and program evaluation efforts. This approach produced multiple positive effects. Students reported a stronger sense of confidence in conducting collaborative research and gained clearer insight into the realities of school-based inquiry. Teachers noted that working with graduate students offered support for novel tasks related to using AI and planning for research. While there were various tensions along the way, each represented an opportunity to authentically explore aspects of collaboration. The continuation of the partnerships demonstrates the sustainability of the model. We will share a framework for our collaboration and invite others to consider how they, too, could develop a learning partnership.

This presentation explores how digital fabrication technologies assist designers in developing 3D prototypes influenced by mathematical principles and material properties. It is part of the IND 3440 Furniture Design course, aimed at sophomore students in the Department of Interior Architecture and Design and conducted at Studio D makerspace. Students utilize CAD software to create furniture prototypes and produce iterations through subtractive manufacturing techniques available at the studio. The primary objective is to transform 2D digital designs into tangible models, emphasizing the integration of mathematics and materials. This approach fosters experiential learning, helping students understand the relationship between mathematical concepts and material behavior, thereby improving their design skills and problem-solving abilities in practical contexts. The presentation will include descriptions, process images, and small prototypes made by students during the course. These examples will demonstrate the practical application of digital fabrication in furniture design and highlight the educational advantages of combining digital tools with material experimentation to enhance mathematical visualization within students.

My poster showcases the integration of engineering practices into pre-service STEM teacher education through innovations in ScooterBot design. ScooterBots are simple, vibration-powered devices constructed with bristle legs and small motors. This initiative was implemented in the FSU-Teach Research Methods course (ISC 3523c), providing future STEM educators with hands-on experience with iterative design, prototype testing, and data analysis. Following participation, students reported increased confidence in engaging with engineering design and data analysis.

The non-causal relationship between teaching and learning is clearly articulated in Vygotsky’s view of learning in which learners actively construct their own knowledge of the instructed material. To do so, students draw on a variety of resources such as textbooks, instructor slides, or digital platforms to clarify challenging grammar concepts. To better understand how students of basic French construct grammatical understanding, we devised a Gen-AI-supported assignment. In pre-class homework, students were asked to choose a Gen-AI tool and engage in an open dialogue with it until they felt they understood the distinction between the passé composé (simple past) and imparfait (past tense continuous). Then, students submitted their full AI–student interaction and completed a post-task survey evaluating the usefulness of initial AI responses, the extent of follow-up questioning, clarity of learning, remaining confusion, and trust in the AI’s explanations. In the following class session, students participated in a collaborative whole-class problem-solving activity. They reflected on how their understanding evolved through AI interaction compared with prior knowledge sources including instructor explanations or textbook. Additional survey questions examined students’ comfort with the assignment, tool selection, and their perceived mastery of the tense distinction. By analyzing students’ AI exchanges alongside their reported experiences, we gained insights into how they utilized Gen AI to make meaning, navigate confusion, and participate actively in their own knowledge construction in the language course. We further discuss students’ unique processes, outcomes and responses as well as implications and limitations of using AI tools to support language learning outside class.

Faculty and mentors across campus care deeply about supporting student growth, yet it can be hard to know what’s happening in other units or where students are getting help. This session addresses that gap by offering a unified, theory‑driven approach to student development that faculty can easily apply across a variety of instructional contexts, whether in small seminars or large lectures, introductory and upper‑division, or taught in person or online. Drawing on well‑established frameworks including Strayhorn’s concept of belonging, Astin’s Theory of Involvement, Tinto’s Integration Framework, and Chickering’s Seven Vectors, we demonstrate how classroom interactions can be intentionally structured to promote holistic student development. Using this multi-theoretical foundation, we will translate complex developmental theory into a simple, highly accessible toolkit of low‑effort strategies and campus resources that faculty can implement immediately into existing courses without major redesign. Examples include “relentless welcome” techniques that strengthen students’ sense of belonging, active‑learning strategies that increase involvement, and structured opportunities that connect academic and social systems. We will introduce a practical toolkit that maps each of Chickering’s Seven Vectors to quick faculty actions and relevant campus resources across academic and social dimensions. By adopting a student centered approach, faculty can gain clearer insight into students’ needs, build stronger mentoring relationships, and feel more confident supporting a diverse range of learners. This approach not only fosters greater connection and support for students but also increases faculty satisfaction and fulfillment in their daily interactions. These practices aim to strengthen students’ sense of belonging, engagement, and overall development. Attendees will leave with concrete, ready to use tools that can enhance student success while enriching their own teaching and mentoring practice.

Songs in the country music genre often deal with topics related to everyday life such as work, money, tradeoffs, and value. These topics are also the focus of economics, and as such, this work provides educators with example songs that can be interwoven into an introductory economics course such as ECO 2000 (Introduction to Economics), ECO 2013 (Principles of Macroeconomics), and ECO 2023 (Principles of Microeconomics), whether the class is in-person or online. The goal of using country music is to make economics more relatable to students by providing real-world examples and in the process provide deeper, long-lasting learning. Participants will be engaged by learning best practices of using media in the classroom and will also be able to watch and listen to selected songs which illustrate economic concepts.

(1) We will share teaching experiences using Quinncia, the AI-powered tool that assists Florida State University (FSU) undergraduate students in interviewing skills and resume development, especially those who are planning to apply to various healthcare/medical careers after graduation. FSU students can access the Quinncia program through the FSU Career Center which offers a unique ProfessioNole Ready Program that includes nine career competencies of career management, professionalism and ethical responsibility, communication, critical thinking and problem solving, research and innovation, teamwork, leadership, digital fluency, and global fluency. Since 2023, students enrolled in the following face-to-face classes PET 1081- LLC Colloquium for the Health Professions Learning Community (45 students), ATR 1800-Introduction to Athletic Training (110 students), and ATR 3942-Sports Medicine Practicum Formative Experience for Healthcare Careers (25 students) have been required to earn the badge that utilizes the Quinncia AI platform. (2) Within the ProfessioNole Ready Program, students are encouraged to earn various (i.e., Black, Garnet, Gold, and Artificial Intelligence) professional development “badges” which confirm career development skill acquisition. Upon meeting the requirements, students can add each badge certificate of completion to their resume and portfolio. (3) Students learn skills and develop competencies in resume enhancement, interviewing, networking, personalized career management, portfolio development, salary negotiation, and communication. Quinncia has been used as part of the Artificial Intelligence Badge ProfessioNole Program at FSU for several years. (4) We will share not only instructor’s motivation to use the tool and their perspectives, but also the results of student surveys collected in 2023-2025, where students provided feedback on their using the tool and focusing on what they found beneficial and what they found to be the least helpful. Helpful resources: Black Badge Modules & Activities: https://career.fsu.edu/sites/g/files/upcbnu746/files/ProfessioNole%20Ready%20Instructor%20Guide%202023.pdf

We created an asynchronous online course to help Anne's College faculty and teaching assistants excel in the dynamic world of online education. The course is relevant to those who are new to teaching online and to those seeking to enhance their skills. We provide practical insights and tools to foster engaging and impactful learning experiences for all students and make online teaching more professionally rewarding and less stressful. The course was piloted in Summer 2025. We received feedback from 15 faculty and made relevant changes. The course went live in Fall 2025 with seven modules: 1. Quality Online Teaching: The Big Picture, 2. Organize Your Course for Student Success, 3. Engage Learners with Online Activities, 4. Make the Most of Assignments, Assessments, Rubrics, and Canvas Gradebook, 5. Giving Feedback, 6. AI in Online Education, and 7. Trends and Issues. We also offer a series of mini-modules on a variety of topics that might be of interest to instructors. We call this series "In Case You Were Wondering":1. Video in Instruction, 2. Humor in Instruction, 3. Caring for Ourselves in Uncertain Times: A Self-Care Guide, 4. Universal Design for Learning (UDL), 5. Copyright in Online Learning and Teaching, 6. Cognitive Empathy, and 7. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). We hope this course encourages our instructors to audit their current course, reflect, self-assess the quality of their previous online courses, and decide what can be implemented in the future. We also hope to create a community of practice where faculty share their experiences, help each other when they have instructional challenges, and contribute to our efforts in providing the best learning opportunities to our students. During the presentation we will share our motivation for this course, module structure, engagement strategies, lessons learned during the pilot in Summer 2025 and course offering in Fall 2026, and plans for the future.

This presentation explores the implementation of a meaning-based approach to language teaching in Elementary Spanish courses at Florida State University. The instructional context includes multi-section, in-person introductory Spanish courses with approximately 20 undergraduate students per section, primarily fulfilling the foreign language requirement. While these courses traditionally emphasize explicit grammar instruction and rule-based language practice, our approach shifts the instructional focus toward meaning, comprehension, and communicative use of language from the earliest stages of acquisition. The goal of this teaching strategy is to support more effective and cognitively-engaging language teaching by prioritizing form–meaning connections rather than decontextualized grammatical explanations. We redesigned instructional activities from rule-based mechanical drills to activities that focused on comprehensible input, information sharing, and contextualized language use based on research in second language acquisition and bilingualism (VanPatten, 2015; Ellis, N. C., 2017; Truscott & Sharwood Smith, 2019). Grammar is introduced implicitly through meaning-focused interaction based on input-processing and usage-based accounts of language development that emphasize how learners build linguistic knowledge through exposure and use rather than explicit rule learning (Ellis, N. C., 2020; VanPatten et al., 2020). This instructional design enables our students to see firsthand the cognitive benefits of bilingualism (DeLuca et al., 2020; Bialystok & Craik, 2022) in the classroom. The observed effects of this approach include increased student engagement, improved comprehension and retention, reduced anxiety in early language learning, and earlier development of communicative competence. Preliminary classroom observations and student feedback suggest that students are better able to interpret and use Spanish meaningfully in a classroom context and use their new abilities to communicate with family and friends outside the classroom.This session will share examples of activities that model meaning-based instruction. Attendees will leave with concrete, adaptable strategies for implementing meaning-based approaches in language classrooms and other instructional contexts.

This poster presents an autoethnographic narrative that uses monster theory as a lens for understanding how classrooms shape voice, silence, and belonging. Beginning with Kafka’s The Metamorphosis as a conceptual doorway, I trace how “monstrosity” operates not as a creature but as a social verdict: a label attached to bodies and voices that do not fit the script of obedience. Drawing on postcolonial and critical pedagogy, I reflect on movement across two academic contexts, a gender-segregated, lecture-centered system in non-Western higher education and a dialogic doctoral seminar in the United States, where being asked to speak can feel both liberating and threatening. Through three narrative snapshots (the lecture as “constitutional reading,” disrupting silence through dialogic shifts, and the seminar question “What are your expectations?”), I argue that audibility is not merely personal confidence but a political condition produced by institutions. The poster concludes with pedagogical implications for creating classroom conditions where voice becomes possible without turning speaking into exposure. I also situate this narrative alongside scholarship on classroom silence, othering, and “monstrous” boundary-making across educational contexts.

"Paris World Capital" (FRT 3503) aims to develop digital literacy while exploring how Paris’ iconic monuments sustain the city’s appeal on the world’s stage. Through analysis and discussion of a range of materials ranging from printed text, art historical sources, digital media, film, social media, maps, and music, students in the course learn how Parisian landmarks anchor stories about France, past and present, that contribute to the city’s global cultural significance. The course is a collaboration with three FSU librarians who provide hands-on instruction on (i) AI tools and FSU Libraries search tools to find reliable, accurate, and verifiable information; (ii) digital platforms such as ArcGIS Storymaps to tell spatial stories about Paris that integrate maps, narrative, and images; (iii) rare books and maps in FSU’s Special Collections that can historicize and particularize perspectives on the city. The presentation will discuss how the collaboration has been effective and reflect on ways to improve the cross-college partnership. The presentation will also be an opportunity to gather feedback from advisors and faculty on campus on other ways to interpret digital literacy. To elicit audience engagement, attendees will complete a fun survey about Paris and their go-to sources to find information about the city. The in-person course taught in English caters to students from a range of majors. A class size capped at 20 allows for excellent faculty-student ratio. The course fulfills CoreFSU’s digital literacy and exploring human experience requirements. It also counts toward the French major and minor, as well as the new major in World Literatures and Cultures offered by the department of Modern Languages and Linguistics since Fall 2025. In January 2026, the course was awarded the MLA-EBSCO Collaboration for Information Literacy Prize at the Modern Language Association of America annual convention.

Integrating emerging technologies into courses can encounter resistance from faculty. To generate interest, we hosted an innovation demo day in Spring 2025, where faculty experienced various technologies firsthand, suggested classes for integration, and provided feedback on their experiences. Afterwards, two faculty members expressed interest in piloting the Virtual Reality (VR) headsets in their Fall 2025 courses. In the Fall 2025 semester, two faculty members and their students participated in the pilot. The first course, Social Work Professions (SOW 3203), is an introductory course that introduces the profession’s history, mission, core values, ethical principles, client systems, and practice settings. In this course, the delivery method required one student to be in the headset while the case was projected for the other students to see, creating a group-based decision-making activity followed by a debriefing/discussion session. The second course, Working with Families course (SOW 4414), is an advanced-level course, including both undergraduate and graduate students. In this setting, each student had a headset, and a group debrief followed. Both groups were exposed to the same case scenario of an initial child maltreatment investigation. Student evaluation results suggest that students had positive perceptions of VR use. Students perceived the experience as relevant to understanding their courses, engaged them in critical thinking, and exposed them to a real-life child welfare case. Instructors’ feedback also suggests increased student engagement and discussions. During the pilot course experiences and the innovation demo day, faculty expressed concerns about the limited response options for interacting with avatars and the limited final decision options. Acknowledging their concerns, we recommended that faculty move beyond treating VR cases as a siloed learning experience, but use them as supplemental learning tools without losing the human center. To engage the audience, the presenters will provide a short clip from the case, allow the audience to watch it, and discuss decision-making in child welfare.

Teachers of students who have visual impairments (TSVIs) and certified orientation & mobility specialists (COMS) are often evaluated annually using the same template that classroom teachers are given despite teaching in very different ways. Sometimes TSVIs and/or COMS are not evaluated at all. Their administrators are often not aware of the scope of their teaching or what being a "highly effective" TSVI and/or COMS looks like. This project will create modules that include video examples of teaching strategies administrators may be on the look out for when conducting annual evaluations so that they can provide helpful feedback to help TSVIs and COMS further their teaching strategies. Surveys and community conversations have been created to capture how professionals within the Blindness & Low Vision field feel about the current state of their evaluations. The effects of having administrators on the same page about what teaching strategies to look for, helps to ensure that students who have visual impairments are receiving the same quality education from their TSVIs and/or COMS regardless of the mode of delivery (itinerant, cluster, or virtual). This project will be shared through the Florida Instructional Materials Center for the Visually Impaired (FIMC-VI) and will provide administrators with CEUs as they complete the modules. This poster is a place for conversation related to experiences from teacher evaluations as well as to help further the ideas being generated to make sure the researchers are sharing their descriptions of teaching examples clearly for professionals outside of the field of Blindness & Low Vision.

My token-based extra credit model is designed to increase student autonomy, flexibility, and meaningful engagement. Rather than offering one-time extra credit assignments tied to specific grades or assignments, students earn tokens through a variety of course-related activities that emphasize application, reflection, and social engagement. After tokens accumulate across the semester, they can be redeemed at the end of the term in various ways that support students’ individual academic goals. The primary goal of this model was to decouple engagement from immediate grade pressure while still reinforcing core learning objectives. Learning is rarely linear, and students’ lives are often unpredictable. Traditional extra credit models assume stable circumstances and uniform needs that do not reflect students’ lived experiences. By allowing students to earn tokens throughout the semester and decide how to use them later, once they have a more holistic understanding of their performance, the model promotes academic autonomy, self-regulated decision-making, and flexibility (without sacrificing rigor). Token-earning assignments are intentionally designed to reinforce course concepts and foster consistent engagement with the instructor, peers, and material. Examples include attending office hours to build rapport, encouraging critical thinking through 1-1 discussions about course modules, submitting structured feedback to promote reflective learning and a positive classroom culture, and presenting brief hypothesis “blitzes” to apply course concepts through scientific communication. Implemented in Fall 2025, this model was associated with increased student engagement, stronger student-instructor relationships, positive student feedback (many appreciating the agentic and flexible nature of the system), and a steady increase in overall performance. This session will detail the model, provide concrete examples of assignments, and engage audience members in tailoring this system to their unique styles and curriculums.

According to a survey conducted by the American Psychological Association, over 70% of graduate students report experiencing stress that interferes with their functioning. While counseling and mental health training programs emphasize the development of clinical skills for working with clients, less attention is often given to helping therapists-in-training cultivate compassionate relationships with themselves. Training programs therefore hold a responsibility to cultivate a collective self-care culture to help students reduce self-criticism in order to maximize students’ potentials and performance. This poster presents an experiential activity designed for graduate students in doctoral-level Marriage and Family Therapy program. Ideally designed for small to medium-sized in-person classes, the session integrates concepts from Internal Family Systems (IFS) and self-compassion theory to frame self-care as both an internal reflective practice and a relational, community-based mindset rather than solely as an individual coping strategy. The session includes 1) psychoeducation on graduate student stress and key concepts from the IFS model, 2) a guided IFS-informed “mapping parts” mindfulness exercise, 3) small-group reflection and a collective self-compassion exercise. The intended outcomes of this activity include increasing students’ self-awareness to become a more competent therapist and strengthening a sense of community to prevent burnout. The poster session will introduce attendees to research on graduate student self-care and the application of IFS-informed reflective practices in the classroom. Attendees will be invited to share strategies they use to promote student well-being and create supportive learning environments. The guided meditation script and classroom handout will also be shared to support implementation across disciplines.