Dear graduate employee,
Welcome to the 2025-26 academic year from the Teaching Engagement Program and UO Online! We hope you’ve had a restful summer and are looking forward to a year full of inspiration for you and your students.
As we open our new term, we want to ensure that you are aware of the teaching-related services that are available to you, including key resources, events and workshops, TEP Tips, and award opportunities.
Sincerely,
The Teaching Engagement Program and UO Online
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The Fall 2025 Course Resources include key actions to take, important policies, and ready-made templates and importable modules for you and your colleagues to adapt. You can find these and other resources on our frequently updated GE Teaching Support Page.
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You are invited to join the Teaching Engagement Program’s Graduate Teaching Initiative’s (GTI’s) kickoff event for the 2025-26 academic year. The GTI is a certificate-of-completion program designed to support graduate students in developing a practice of teaching excellence. You can learn more about the GTI on its webpage. We welcome all UO graduate students with interest, including those who are working on or who have completed their certificates. Join us for pastries, coffee, and community with graduate students across campus!
Many UO faculty have students submit assignments through Canvas, our learning management system. This workshop will introduce you to using Canvas’s SpeedGrader for grading quizzes and assignments. We’ll look at details of how to use grading tools within Canvas and give you an opportunity to try them out in a closed Canvas sandbox, an error-proof place to practice.
Teaching in a new educational and cultural context can be rewarding and challenging. This 90-minute workshop supports international GEs in building confidence, adaptability, and practical strategies for success in U.S. classrooms. Together, we’ll explore core aspects of U.S. classroom culture—including participation norms, student-faculty dynamics, and expectations around communication. You’ll learn and practice student engagement techniques that promote active learning and inclusivity, and we’ll discuss how to foster a growth mindset—for both your students and you. Through reflection, dialogue, and hands-on tools, we’ll build community and share ways to navigate teaching challenges with confidence and care. Whether you're preparing to teach for the first time or refining your approach, this session will help you feel more empowered, prepared, and supported.
Getting feedback on their work is critical to student learning. Yet grading can weigh on faculty and graduate instructors. In this workshop you will examine methods to efficiently grade student assignments, while remaining fair, accurate and helpful. Note that this workshop is not exclusively for GEs. Faculty, staff, and others are welcome to join our discussion.
This introductory session will help instructors who are not yet familiar with digital accessibility learn where to start to make course materials accessible and what UO resources they can draw on for this work. The session will provide opportunities to review and get feedback on course materials.
Join us for an informal Zoom conversation about how your teaching is going: what’s working, what’s challenging, and what questions are on your mind. Whether you're navigating grading, classroom participation, cultural differences, or simply trying to stay balanced, this is a space to pause, connect, and reflect.
Hosted by a former international graduate student, this session is open to honest conversation and mutual support. I’ll also share some helpful teaching resources and would love to hear more about your experiences.
Come late, leave early—just drop in when you can!
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Science Teaching Journal Club: Mitigating Digital Distractions in Class
Thursdays from 9-9:50 a.m. in LISB 217 and on Zoom
Join the journal club to read and discuss articles from the research literature relevant to teaching and learning, especially (but not exclusively) in STEM fields. We’ll initiate a new recurring feature: Are You Sure? in which we look at new evidence relating to some long-accepted ideas about teaching and learning. Later, we’ll have a mini-concentration on an increasingly urgent problem for instructors: digital distractions in class and possible strategies for mitigating them. As always, we welcome participants from all ranks and disciplines to join us each week or to drop in for selected conversations.
This welcome meeting of our ongoing group is for instructors and staff who identify as neurodivergent (or those who hold identities within the umbrella of neurodivergence) to share community, learn more about the group, and provide input on timing for monthly meetings and the type of offerings you’d be most interested in. Find out more about the affinity group and either register or email Laurel Bastian for the Zoom link.
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Roll the Dice
Each issue, TEP provides a research-informed technique you can take straight to the classroom. Roll the dice is a fun and engaging way to host a discussion while randomly varying question types. It promotes recall, collaborative discussion, and exploring different perspectives.
Instructions: Each small group creates one six-sided die out of a piece of paper (or use store-bought dice or an online dice roller). Each number corresponds to a specific question you’ve prepared in advance. To ensure variety, organize your questions by type (e.g., 1 = describe, 2 = analyze, 3 = apply, 4 = argue, 5 = connect, 6 = choose a different perspective), and assign each type to a number on the die. When the die is rolled, the group answers a question from the corresponding category.
Hint: Have several questions prepared for each type so you can avoid repetition when a number is rolled more than once. If you are using this in a full group, as opposed to small group conversations, offer participants the option to pass.
Got a tip to share? Email tep@uoregon.edu with your questions or suggested topics.
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We extend warm congratulations to Brooke Frohock and Michael Cook, who are the 2025 recipients of the Kimble First-Year Teaching Award. The Kimble First-Year Teaching Award, named in honor of professor emeritus Dan Kimble, is jointly sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the Division of Graduate Studies, and the Division of Undergraduate Education and Student Success, and administered by the Teaching Engagement Program. The award recognizes outstanding teaching by graduate student instructors who have demonstrated a commitment to inclusive, engaged, and research-informed practice. The annual prizes typically are awarded to one first-time lab or discussion section leader and to one first-time sole instructor.
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We welcome your input to keep this newsletter informative and meaningful, so please send your ideas, resources, and suggestions our way. You can reach us at tep@uoregon.edu.
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