Teaching Excellence and Support

The teaching excellence and support team supports effective and innovative teaching in pursuit of transformative learning experiences. We accomplish this offering programs, consultations, and services for all faculty, instructors, teaching assistants, and other teaching staff related to teaching effectiveness, technology integration, and inclusive teaching. From July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025 we offered 156 programs on fundamental principles of teaching, innovative teaching and learning strategies, inclusive teaching and the use of technology for 1,201 participants. Tenure-track faculty (43%), instructional faculty (17%), clinical faculty (1%), limited-term faculty (1%), teaching staff (12%), and graduate teaching assistants (26%) participated in a total of over 2268 hours of professional development.

In addition to our typical curriculum focused on teaching excellence, inclusive teaching, and teaching with technology, CITL developed and delivered two new curricula on Teaching with Artificial Intelligence and Fostering Digital Literacy.

We collaborated with the Division of Outreach, Engagement and Regional Development to increase faculty support for community-engaged teaching, including creating a new community-engaged teaching toolkit and collaborating on professional development opportunities.

We also launched a new faculty community called enriching the design of general education and released an associated toolkit. The community was open to everyone teaching a general education course with the goal to foster a thriving and supportive community of practice that supported the philosophy and practices that define general education courses. The community met 8 times and included an ongoing asynchronous Microsoft Team.

We partnered with the Office of the Provost and the Division of Enrollment Management, Marketing and Communication to introduce thank a professor. This initiative provides a mechanism for students to share their appreciation for faculty who made a difference; in the first year, 84 nominations were submitted!

We provided individualized instructional support for faculty, instructors, teaching assistants and staff on teaching, inclusive teaching practices, and teaching with technology through over 1,614 consultations for 626 unique consultees from across 84 academic and support units. This includes brief exchanges (54%) via phone, email, or chat as well as in-depth and ongoing consultations (46%). Faculty can schedule a consultation with CITL staff using our convenient booking system.

In Fall 2024, we introduced the faculty teaching mentors. This team of 20 experienced and knowledgeable faculty (tenure track, instructional, or clinical) was available to provide advice, recommendations and mentoring to their colleagues on teaching.

Instructional Design and Development

The instructional design team supports excellence and quality in online course and program design and development. They accomplish this by partnering with academic units and faculty to collaborate on instructional design, pedagogy, delivery and technology resulting in effective and inclusive online learning experiences that promote active learning and student engagement. CITL’s instructional design team supports online program development and over the past year, in collaboration with 20 departments, supported online course design and development of 102 online courses from new designs to incremental revisions and course refreshes to ongoing course support.

Faculty from 10 departments requested 22 course design partnerships to design or improve their online or hybrid courses. 9 courses were reviewed for the Quality Essentials for Online Course standards of course design. Overall, 25 departments received instructional design support. 3 faculty were recognized with the Excellence in Online Teaching Award.

The team collaborated with the Graduate School and others to create the inaugural virtual Graduate Student Orientation in Blackboard. The orientation includes 6 interactive modules and features video vignettes of NIU staff and faculty. The orientation is now available to over 6,000 students. 

Online Learning

In its second year, the Office of Online Learning continued to refine processes and identify ways to better support the university’s online student population. The online learning team supports prospective students interested in 46 of the university’s online degree and certificate programs and supports continuing students in eight of our online programs all the way through to graduation.

Our process, which combines manual outreach attempts with complementary automated communications, provided prompt follow-up and outreach to 6,318 requests for information from prospective students. We made over 64,500 unique interactions with this population over the last year via phone, text, and email through Slate and Navigate.

This year, we introduced a range of new initiatives aimed at enriching the online student experience. Our team hosted 13 Admitted Student Webinars, offering incoming students valuable guidance through the enrollment process and helping them prepare for academic success. We also held three Virtual Open House Sessions in partnership with academic colleges, providing prospective students with the opportunity to engage directly with faculty, alumni, and current students.

To promote digital readiness, we developed a new digital literacy series designed to equip students with essential technology skills. In addition, we established the Online Student Advisory Committee (OSAC) to amplify student voices and enhance feedback channels. We also launched the NIU Online Student Facebook Group, creating a vibrant community space for online learners to connect, collaborate, and share resources. Finally, we made significant progress in redesigning the NIU Online website with a focus on improving usability and better serving both prospective and current online students.

2024-2025 Activities Summary Dashboards

Historical Dashboards

Also available are historical dashboards of programs, individual instructional support, appointments, digital media studio use, as well as online course design and development offered 2018 to present.