These guides offer information for new faculty as well as tips for effective teaching and technology integration.
This site will provide you with the information and resources you need to help you be successful and productive in your new position.
Many support units are available at NIU to assist new faculty in their teaching, research, scholarship and artistry. This guide provides a quick overview and contact information to the support units that new faculty often connect with for support.
This guide was created by University Libraries as a response to events surrounding the murders of unarmed Black people by police and the protests calling for an end to institutional racism in the justice system and beyond. While not exhaustive in its resources, the guide is meant to be a starting point to learn more about social justice and activism and to find information and community. The guide will evolve to include broader social justice resources for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).
Flexible Teaching is an approach to course design and delivery that helps students learn and succeed in any mode: face-to-face, online, or hybrid. It starts with the principles of course design to create a flexible, resilient course that can withstand any change in modality or delivery.
As you consider your options for delivering exams while teaching virtually, remember to exhibit equity, kindness, generosity and patience with your students. There are several options for you to rethink or deliver your exams via virtual instruction. You may want to consider one or multiple of these recommendations.
This guide is a brief compilation of teaching-related information from several sources, including instructional guidebooks from other institutions, journals, and contributions from master teachers and academic support units at Northern Illinois University. It is meant to be a quick reference and not a comprehensive source on teaching-related information.
Have you been invited to teach a course for the very first time and wondering where to begin? This guide provides tips and resources for getting started.
Whether you have been teaching for several years or are beginning to teach your very first semester, being prepared for the start of the semester will help make the transition successful for you and your students. The following is a list of strategies you can use the first day and into the first weeks of the semester that will help you create an engaging, motivating, and organized classroom environment.
You are encouraged to incorporate these academic support resources into your teaching and to refer students to utilize the services available for their academic success.
Design a course syllabus to best meet your teaching style, course content, activities, and departmental requirements. Consider creating a learner-centered syllabus that targets student learning and success!
Teaching for the first time at a new university can be enjoyable and daunting at the same time. Whether you are an experienced teacher or new to the profession, being prepared to teach at a new institution will help you transition and succeed in your new environment. This guide contains information on course policies, teaching policies, and teaching-related resources to help you start your teaching career at NIU successfully!
Teaching a course on short notice can be exciting yet overwhelming. As with teaching any course, careful planning is essential for a successful teaching and learning experience, especially when given little time to prepare.
This guide addresses two situations: being asked to teach a course that begins very soon, and being asked to take over a course that someone else was teaching, sometime after the semester has begun.
Handouts, activities and strategies for managing tense topics and difficult moments in the classroom and to foster dialogue, discussion and empathy.
The Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL) helps faculty explore and evaluate innovative ways to use learning technologies for teaching at NIU. Learning technologies include recommended and institutionally supported software and web tools to promote collaboration, enhance communication, share multimedia, teach online and more. In addition to supporting established learning technologies like Blackboard, CITL also works with faculty and administrators to pilot new tools.
Website on using Blackboard and various tools integrated into Blackboard.
This guide describes several common ways to use Kaltura to create, store, and publish video content in your Blackboard courses. This video can be used to present content, provide guidance, create teacher presence, prompt discussion, and enable authentic assessment. See the sections below for detailed instructions for uploading videos, capturing webcam video, indexing YouTube videos in your library, and capturing screen recordings. The final section describes ways that you might embed this content in your Blackboard course.
This guide describes several common ways to use Kaltura to create, store, and publish video content in your Blackboard courses. Students may be asked to submit video content as a part of an assignment, a discussion, a project, or even a test or quiz. Students can also use Kaltura for other projects, such as a portfolio or media demonstration.
Flipgrid is a free video discussion platform from Microsoft that helps educators see and hear from every student in class and foster a fun and supportive social learning environment. In Flipgrid, educators post discussion prompts and students respond with short videos, whether they are learning in class or at home.
There are currently three proctoring tools that NIU has an active agreement for, Examity, Respondus Browser/Monitor and ProctorU. All require that students use a laptop or desktop computer running Windows or MacOS, that they have a webcam and microphone and a reliable Internet connection. Students also need a clean, quiet place to take a proctored test and a form of identification.
This guide describes one approach to administering online exams using Zoom to allow instructors and TAs to proctor exams while students complete them online.
Microsoft Teams is a unified communications tool that allows for persistent 1:1 or group chat, video/audio calls and conferencing, and has integration with the full suite of O365 applications we've come to rely upon at NIU. If you're familiar with Slack or Discord, Teams has many similarities.
Learn the basics of using Microsoft Teams for Education.
This guide summarizes a solution for instructors who need a tool to allow them to record narration over a PowerPoint presentation. This approach is ideal if you were planning to present slides in your face-to-face course.
This guide summarizes a possible solution for instructors who teach lab courses in which students would in normal circumstances interact with lab equipment, conduct experiments, take measurements, analyze data, and generate a lab report.
Follow these practical tips for to create high quality screencast recordings.
Phone: 815-797-2477
Email: citl@niu.edu