Fall into Teaching Excellence | Highlights

The Center for Teaching Excellence empowers those in instructional roles - whether new to teaching, new to TAMU, or those seeking fresh approaches - with the evidence-based knowledge, practical tools, and community needed to foster effective and engaging teaching and learning practices. Our Teaching Excellence Sessions are tailored to help faculty and staff through interactive workshops on building pedagogical skills, connecting instructors across colleges/departments, sharing inter-disciplinary experiences, and exploring new ways to foster student success.

Join us this fall to reflect on your teaching applications, refresh your current strategies and practices, and reimagine new and innovative possibilities for your classroom. The following are our featured highlights amongst our array of workshop series and topics.

​To view ​a catalog of ​all our upcoming workshops and events, please visit our CTE TAMU Public Calendar.

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Classroom Methods and Strategies

Date & Time	Session
Tuesday, August 5th 9:00 am - 10:00 am	Empower and Engage: High-Impact Teaching for Student Success Join us for an interactive, informative session designed to transform your teaching to support student success. High-impact practices, such as community-engaged learning, collaborative projects, writing-intensive courses, and capstone seminars, are instructional practices that have been widely shown to benefit students from diverse backgrounds
Tuesday, August 19th 10:00 am - 11:30 am	Exploring Motivation and Personal Accountability of Today’s Student: Instructional Strategies for Success This interactive workshop will explore the current struggles faced by students, contextualized within the developmental impacts of the pandemic and other social factors. Workshop participants will examine challenges related to accountability and motivation in today’s student population.
Thursday, August 21st 9:00 am - 10:00 am	Strategies and Approaches: Helping Students Understand the Nature of Participation and Discussion in the College Classroom Participation and discussion are crucial components of the college classroom. They foster critical thinking, promote active learning, encourage collaboration, and build students’ confidence and sense of belonging.

Canvas Essentials and Organization Series

Date & Time	Session
Tuesday, August 5th & Wednesday, August 6th 10:00 am - 11:30 am	Introduction to Canvas In this session, we will look at how hard work at the beginning of the semester can have benefits later in the semester. Participants will review some steps that can make the process of setting up a Canvas course less confusing. A review of the Start of Semester checklist will be done during the session. Join us as we go through the steps to set up your Canvas course for the semester. You will have the opportunity to experiment with a few steps from this list.
Friday, September 5th 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm	Canvas Gradebook Setup In this session, participants will review a step-by-step process to create a gradebook that accurately tracks students’ progress in the class, integrates with their teaching methods, and supports effective grading communication for their students.
Wednesday, October 22nd 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm	Course Organization Series (Part 1): Mastering Canvas Modules Kick start this semester with us as we explore the significance of structured course content and discover strategies for maintaining consistency and accessibility in your Canvas modules. Enhance your course management skills with practical tips and best practices!

Pedagogy and Course Design Series

Date & Time	Session
Friday, September 19th 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm	Reimagining Assignments: A Partnership Between Instructor and Artificial Intelligence Join our workshop to discover the transformative potential of AI in education. You’ll learn to recognize the value of integrating AI into classroom assignments, review effective methods for adapting these assignments, and explore practical examples that foster critical thinking. This session is designed to equip educators with the tools and insights needed to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes through Artificial Intelligence integration.
Wednesday, Nov 5th 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm	Course Design Fall 2025 Series: Session 1 - Crafting Learning Outcomes, the Foundation of a Course Introduction to the course design cycle and learning outcomes as the foundation for a well-aligned course. Discover tools that support outcome creation/revision. Plan with course context such as level and class size in mind. See examples and practice writing/revising learning outcomes and receive feedback. Additionally, explore ways to share learning outcomes with students through Canvas. Begin working on your course alignment map.
Wednesday, Nov 19th 2:00 pm – 3:00pm	Course Design Fall 2025 Series: Session 3 - Creating Learning Experiences Learning experiences are the ways students engage with content, instructor, and peers to achieve outcomes. Explore approaches that actively engage students and promote deep learning. Review tools that support student demonstration of achievement. Learn how addressing concepts like accountability, relevance, transparency, sequencing, and feedback impact student success. Examples for both traditional and digital classrooms will be offered. Advance your course alignment map.

Digital Accessibility Series

Date & Time	Session
Wednesday, September 10th 12:30 pm - 1:15 pm	Digital Accessibility Series Fall 25 – Session 1: What is Digital Accessibility? The recent Title II revision (the Final Rule) mandates that all digital content comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA standards by April 24, 2026. This first session emphasizes the importance of digital accessibility and its impact on ensuring all students have access to content. This workshop will cover key accessibility standards and their impact on course content.
Wednesday, September 24th 12:30 pm - 1:15 pm	Digital Accessibility Series Fall 25 – Session 2: Creating Accessible Content with Microsoft Word and PowerPoint The recent Title II revision (the Final Rule) mandates that all digital content meet accessibility standards, ensuring usability for all users. Get ready for this mandate by elevating your document accessibility skills with this second workshop of the Digital Accessibility Series. Participants will explore common accessibility challenges in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint files and gain hands-on experience with practical remediation techniques.
Wednesday, October 8th 12:30 pm - 1:15 pm	Digital Accessibility Series Fall 25 – Session 3: Enhancing Accessibility of PDF Files The recent Title II revision (the Final Rule) mandates that all digital content meet accessibility standards, ensuring usability for all users. Part of the Digital Accessibility Series, this session focuses on PDF files. PDF files can be among the most challenging to remediate. In this session, we will address the common challenges associated with PDF remediation. The workshop will explore typical accessibility issues found in PDF files.

Artificial Intelligence and Classroom Technology

Date & Time	Session
Tuesday, September 2nd 10:00 am - 11:00 am	Perplexity AI for Teaching and Research: A Practical Introduction This workshop introduces faculty to Perplexity AI, an AI-powered research assistant designed to streamline information discovery and enhance productivity in both teaching and scholarly work. Participants will explore how Perplexity can support classroom instruction, curriculum development, and academic research by generating concise, well-sourced responses to complex queries. Through hands-on demonstrations and real-world examples, faculty will gain practical strategies for integrating this tool into their academic workflows while considering ethical and pedagogical implications.
Friday, September 12th 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm	Introducing Generative AI in the Classroom  This workshop is designed for faculty members who are at the initial phase of integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into their classrooms. The objective of this workshop is to provide educators with some strategies to effectively develop assignments that incorporate AI concepts. Additionally, it will offer guidance on conducting activities that enhance AI literacy and promote critical thinking among students within an academic setting.
Wednesday, November 5th 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm	AI Tools to Help Boost Classroom Engagement  Discover how to use Generative AI tools to boost classroom engagement. This hands-on workshop will equip you with practical skills to create dynamic and interactive learning experiences. Participants will explore some AI tools including Notebook LM and HeyGen, each designed to enhance classroom engagement and capture student attention effectively.

Upcoming CTE Workshops: