Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning (CITL)
The Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning is dedicated to promoting, enhancing, and assessing teaching effectiveness and student learning. We assist faculty, academic units, and teaching assistants in improving instruction. In addition to the events listed below, we are always available for individual consultations or special activities within a department or college. Most of the workshops count toward CITL certificate program continuing education credit. Please check back often to see what events have been added. Want reminders of what teaching sessions are coming up soon? Join our CITL listserv by sending an e-mail message (must be from your University of Illinois address) to listserv@illinois.edu, and in the body of the message write only the following: subscribe CITL
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
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Get up to speed on using the Pope Tech Canvas Accessibility Guide to make Canvas pages more accessible for everyone! In this hands-on workshop, we’ll start with an overview of the Pope Tech Canvas Accessibility Guide, how it functions, what the various errors, alerts, structural elements, and features mean, and how to fix these issues on a Canvas page.
Thursday, July 31, 2025
Thursday, August 7, 2025
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Learn the accessibility requirements for videos for your departmental or course videos and audio files. This training will cover video accessibility requirements, designing videos with accessibility in mind, captioning, audio descriptions, and transcripts, as well as what to look for when choosing software or a vendor for in-house or outsourced captioning.
Thursday, August 14, 2025
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This hands-on workshop will help you integrate Audio Description (AD) into your workflow, making visual content accessible from the start rather than as a post-production fix. You'll learn to replace vague cues like “As you can see here” with rich, meaningful descriptions that enhance accessibility and reduce technical hurdles.
Monday, August 18, 2025
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Get up to speed quickly on making your Microsoft Word documents accessible for everyone while meeting state and federal accessibility standards. In this hands-on workshop, we’ll start with a brief overview of common accessibility challenges in Word and then jump right into practice.
Tuesday, August 19, 2025
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Get up to speed quickly on the basics of making PDF documents accessible for all while meeting state and federal accessibility standards. For hands-on participation, you will need Adobe Acrobat Pro (not Acrobat Reader). U of I, UIS, and UIC faculty and staff can obtain Acrobat Pro free from the U of I Webstore: https://webstore.illinois.edu/shop/product.aspx?zpid=6065
Wednesday, August 20, 2025
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Learn the accessibility requirements for making your Moodle courses accessible. This hands-on workshop covers creating accessible navigation, headings, tables, lists, and hyperlinks, how to write alt text for images, generate and edit video captions, as well as the advantages (and limitations) of using Moodle’s accessibility checker and screen reader helper.
Thursday, August 21, 2025
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Get up to speed quickly on making your PowerPoint presentations accessible for everyone while meeting state and federal accessibility standards. In this hands-on workshop, we’ll begin with a brief overview of common accessibility challenges in PowerPoint and then dive straight into practical solutions.
Tuesday, August 26, 2025
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Get up to speed quickly on the basics of making PDF documents accessible for all while meeting state and federal accessibility standards. For hands-on participation, you will need Adobe Acrobat Pro (not Acrobat Reader). U of I, UIS, and UIC faculty and staff can obtain Acrobat Pro free from the U of I Webstore: https://webstore.illinois.edu/shop/product.aspx?zpid=6065
Wednesday, September 10, 2025
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Group learning can be very frustrating? This can happen for a variety of reasons that could come from how the group was structured, how group members behaved, or how the group’s progress towards its goal was monitored. When cooperative learning is well-designed it minimizes opportunities for students and instructors to experience these types of frustrations.
Tuesday, September 16, 2025
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Our selected book will be… Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College (Felten & Lambert, 2020) Online meetings are 10:00 -11:30 AM on Tuesdays - September 16 & 30 and October 14 & 28.
Friday, September 19, 2025
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Our selected book will be… Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College (Felten & Lambert, 2020) In Person meetings are 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM on Fridays - September 19 and October 3, 17, & 31.
Tuesday, September 30, 2025
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Our selected book will be… Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College (Felten & Lambert, 2020) Online meetings are 10:00 -11:30 AM on Tuesdays - September 16 & 30 and October 14 & 28.
Friday, October 3, 2025
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Our selected book will be… Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College (Felten & Lambert, 2020) In Person meetings are 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM on Fridays - September 19 and October 3, 17, & 31.
Tuesday, October 14, 2025
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Our selected book will be… Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College (Felten & Lambert, 2020) Online meetings are 10:00 -11:30 AM on Tuesdays - September 16 & 30 and October 14 & 28.
Friday, October 17, 2025
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Our selected book will be… Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College (Felten & Lambert, 2020) In Person meetings are 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM on Fridays - September 19 and October 3, 17, & 31.
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
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Are you concerned that your students may not be adequately engaged during their learning activities? Being fully engaged 100% of the time is not a realistic expectation, but there are a variety of ways to promote student engagement. We will focus on concepts underlying student engagement and practical strategies to engage our students across diverse formats.
Thursday, October 23, 2025
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CITL's Master Course in Online Teaching (MCOT) is a deep dive into online teaching strategies that extends what was presented during previous teaching academies. Prior participation in an instructional development series is not required but professional experience with university level instruction is strongly encouraged.
Tuesday, October 28, 2025
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Our selected book will be… Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College (Felten & Lambert, 2020) Online meetings are 10:00 -11:30 AM on Tuesdays - September 16 & 30 and October 14 & 28.
Thursday, October 30, 2025
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CITL's Master Course in Online Teaching (MCOT) is a deep dive into online teaching strategies that extends what was presented during previous teaching academies. Prior participation in an instructional development series is not required but professional experience with university level instruction is strongly encouraged.
Friday, October 31, 2025
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Our selected book will be… Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College (Felten & Lambert, 2020) In Person meetings are 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM on Fridays - September 19 and October 3, 17, & 31.
Thursday, November 6, 2025
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CITL's Master Course in Online Teaching (MCOT) is a deep dive into online teaching strategies that extends what was presented during previous teaching academies. Prior participation in an instructional development series is not required but professional experience with university level instruction is strongly encouraged.
Thursday, November 13, 2025
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CITL's Master Course in Online Teaching (MCOT) is a deep dive into online teaching strategies that extends what was presented during previous teaching academies. Prior participation in an instructional development series is not required but professional experience with university level instruction is strongly encouraged.
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
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Learning communities are a powerful way for people to come together to achieve common learning goals. However, fostering conditions that promote productive social knowledge construction can be daunting to even the most experienced facilitators. Please join us as we discuss effective ways to establish and grow valuable learning communities.
Wednesday, December 3, 2025
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Designing a new course or redesigning an existing one can seem like a long and winding journey. Principles of good course design can provide you with a roadmap to chart your course and know that you are on the right path. Join our interactive workshop where we will explore best practices in course design and perhaps spark your interest to explore these topics more deeply.
For more teaching information, visit our main CITL web site. To join our CITL listserv, send an e-mail message (must be from your University of Illinois address) to listserv@illinois.edu, and in the body of the message write only the following: subscribe CITL