2019 CSU Welcome Week: Creativity & Innovation Forum

Begin the day by preparing your mind and body!

Bring a mat or towel and wear loose-fitting clothing.

(Second session added due to popular demand.)

Begin the day by preparing your mind and body!
Bring a mat or towel and wear loose-fitting clothing.

 A hands-on, interactive workshop facilitated by Brian Pete, the author of Everyday Problem-Based Learning: Quick Projects to Build Problem-Solving Fluency.  Brian will share ways to integrate problem-based learning as a daily approach to help students learn authentic and relevant content and skills.  The participants will learn ways to help students learn how to develop good questions, launch their inquiry, gather & organize information, create evidence, present their findings and assess their learning.  

Get the scoop on Cougar sports for 2019-20! Who to watch, which will be the big games for each team, and how to get tickets and cheer on our student athletes.

What are common misperceptions about the CSU Foundation?

Everything you need to know about funding from a Foundation Account: what can these funds cover? how do I track a department balance? what's the process for requesting funds from an account?

Discuss the benefits, features, and functionality of Google Drive, Team  Drive, Google Docs, and much more!

Indoor picnic with boxed sandwiches, salads, drinks, and dessert. Info from a wide range of campus services and resources. Don't miss it!


UITS Help Desk    Aimee Becker
Campus Recreation   Lashica Thomas
Center for Servant Leadership  Chelsea Hix Powell
Staff Council   Samantha Gurski
Tower Day    Lauren King and Diana Riser
Printing Services    Beth Douglas
Bookstore   Michael Morgan
Center of Online Learning   Jennifer Knott
Human Resources   Carole Clerie
Campus Police     Michael Stewart
Leadership Institute    Breana Jones

How can we create a culture of well-being on campus?

Learn more about well-being programs at CSU and your opportunity to earn $100 through the USG Wellness program.

The educational landscape as we know it today in higher education has been changed forever because of the newest Generation entering our doors—The Z’s. This generation has never known the world without 24/7 access through technology. They view the world with a different lens. The question is: Do they really have a growth mindset which allows transformative learning to occur or does their mindset create barriers to learning and success.

This session will engage participants in dialogue that focuses on how to transform learning in higher education classrooms by exploring implications of student and instructor mindset. The research by Dweck (2016) will help us understand the impact of mindset on student learning. As faculty we strive to encourage students to reach their highest academic potential. However, understanding the continuum of fixed and growth mindset in the transformative learning process is the first step in creating a productive culture of mindset in our classrooms—whether online, blended or face-to-face. Because we know it takes more than faculty and student talk to ensure engagement and transformative learning, participants will take away action steps to support growth mindset, which has the potential to transform learning in higher education classrooms.

Over the past year, schools within the University System of Georgia have been engaged in significant policy debates. Come join me for an overview and discussion about policies that have been recently adopted by the USG and by Columbus State University, as well as draft policies currently under review and consideration by CSU. Some of these policies that will be discussed are:

Policy on Policies
Posting Policies
Freedom of Expression Policy
Externally Funded Positions Policy
Relocation Reimbursement Policy
Conflict of Interest and Committment (including submission of the Request to Engage in Outside Activity Form)
Volunteer Policy

All of these policies can be found on webpage of the Office of General Counsel (https://generalcounsel.columbusstate.edu/index.php). Take a look and come ready for a lively discussion!

The importance of attendance verification from the perspective of the Registrar, Director of Financial Aid and the Director of Military Enrollment. Federal laws and Board of Regents policies will be discussed.

1. Making faces for better collaborative learning Group work can be notoriously hard to manage when students don't (or won't) get along. We'll test a quick and easy strategy that neuroscience suggests should foster better relationships among group members.
2. Fundamental 5 Accessibility Tips for Office Docs Learn how to design simple Office documents with accessible images, headings, links, lists, and tables. Create a new mindset and habits for accessible content design. *Participants should bring their own device to receive the most benefit from the session.*
3. The Persistent HTML Editor It's everywhere you go in CougarVIEW - the HTML editor. Come learn some tips and tricks on how to get the most out of it.

The Green Zone is an initiative to support military affiliated students by providing a community of advocates across campus that are aware of the issues and concerns faced by our students.

While accommodations for students with disabilities are most easily seen in the online classroom, we will go further and “imagine” the 2030 face-to-face classroom that also meets the same federal IDEA guidelines but without draining the resources of centers for accommodation.

Participants will learn about simultaneous speech-to-text lectures, closed-captioned movies, sound bars distributed around the classroom; sound leveling, standard font size and style for visual presentations.

Do you have a topic that's just right for a 1 or 2 hour seminar? The new Area B may be for you. Starting Fall 2020, most first-year students will take PERS 1506 or 1507, and faculty are invited to propose seminar sections. This workshop will help get your proposal started.

This session will share three different lessons from an upcoming book designed to assist teachers in learning to Teach Mathematics for Social Justice. General strategies will be shared from the lessons that may be used across disciplines.

Participants will be guided through strategies for addressing social injustices as a goal for their courses while maintaining the cognitive rigor of their content areas.

1. Flipgrid and Loom - New ways to use video to communicate with students: Students don't always read emails or written feedback. Come learn about two tools that simplify making videos for communicating with students.  
2. Building your Creative Problem Solving Tool Kit: Come get one useful tool to quickly problem solve in one of the four stages of Creative Problem Solving.

Choose any two Roundtable sessions during this hour-long, rotating format. 
Topics below: 6-7 seats per Roundtable available on first-come basis.

Creating a Natural Critical Learning Environment 
Nicholas Bolden
Instructional faculty and staff will learn new pedagogical strategies that spark the highest levels of deep student learning in the sciences, social science, humanities, arts, business, engineering and other fields.
Designing Effective Teaching -- Toward a Fearless Teaching Framework
Hillary Fleenor, Yaojie Li, Fady Mansour
The Fearless Teaching Framework is constructed based on decades of educational theory and practice. As instructors apply evidence-based approaches in teaching, their increased knowledge and skills will promote class climates, content, practices, and assessments that motivate and engage students to learn.
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Proctoring but Didn't Know to Ask
Camille Hassenplug, Jennifer Knott
The CSU Testing Center and the Center for Online Learning are coming together to close the gaps in the proctoring process. Come hear about the signing up for proctoring, learn about online proctoring, and ask any questions about the process from both the Testing Center and COOL perspectives.
Game-based learning activities for your classroom
Joshua May
This session will provide faculty an overview of of gaming in high education classrooms and will outline several ways you can use game based elements and technologies to encourage student engagement and motivation in your course.
Help! My students don’t like active learning: Supporting Student Engagement 
Amanda Rees, Kimberly Shaw
Let’s talk about strategies to engage reluctant general education students in active learning. We’ll share a process that supports student buy-in.
Now, Now, Now: Maintaining relevance in an age of immediacy
Libby McFalls
We live in a world of instantaneous responses, gain knowledge on almost any subject at any time. How can university’s compete against our students’ seamless ability to watch video tutorials and learn from a simple Google search? Some programs and faculty are resisting this new distribution model, while others are completely embracing it. How do programs remain student-centered and adapt to meet the abundance of information? Read / Watch before session:

1. Teaching art or teaching to think like an artist? | Cindy Foley | TEDxColumbus  (Comfort with Ambiguity)
2. The Benefits of Boredom | Cindy Foley | TEDxWorthingtonED (Reasons for combating the urge to log onto a screen)
3. 11 References You Missed in Beyonce’s ‘Formation’ (Example for giving context - conversation starter)

Problem Solving... What's the POINt?
Amy Edge
Introduction of the problem solving technique called 'POINt', as well as a brief overview of all others.
Provide Students with a Living User’s Manual in Academic and Industrial Environments
Kerri Taylor
Immersive experiences equip students with chemical knowledge and soft skills critical to their degrees. Invited panelists, topical presentations, and regional field trips aim to emphasize research skills, quantitative reasoning, critical analysis of texts, and confrontation of ethics. Students connect their major to their future careers.
Standards-based grading in college courses
Mark McCarthy
In Spring 2019 I began basing course grades on the ability of students to meet the stated learning objectives of the course. While I continue to provide feedback on each assignment, grades are no longer a part of the coursework. What has been the response? How has it worked? Attendees can bring their course objectives and a major assignment description to see how this might work for them.
Take Some Time to Manage Time
Chelsea Powell
As William Penn said "Time is what we most, but what we use worst." This session walks participants through the Eisenhower Decision Matrix to help them utilize their time more effectively.
Teaching about Earth for a Sustainable Future: Materials for Faculty and Instructors
Stacey Blersch, Scott Gunter
This session will be an introduction to the online resource/network InTeGrate, Interdisciplinary Teaching about Earth for a Sustainable Future. Online teaching materials and modules will be presented, followed by a brainstorming/discussion on how the impacts of climate change and potential sustainable solutions can be incorporated into courses.

The American College Health Association identified poor sleep as one of its top health concerns for students and cited better sleep as one of five key benchmarks for improving academic success for its 2020 Healthy Campus campaign. Our own research has found that the detrimental effect of poor sleep on GPA is on par with marijuana use and binge drinking (Hartmann & Prichard, 2014). Poor sleep does more than hinder academic success; insufficient sleep causes accidents, impairs decision-making, and exacerbates psychological and physiological illnesses.

An Art Professor and an Instructional Designer meet up weekly for coffee while redesigning a face-to-face interdisciplinary creativity course to the CougarVIEW online platform.  

This session discusses how using an instructional designer can benefit the novice online course instructor.

This session introduces faculty and staff members to the high impact practice of education abroad (study abroad, international service-learning, and research/field experiences abroad).  The session encourages faculty and staff to reimagine their courses delivered in an international setting.  Attention will be given to J-term, Maymester, and City (Place) as Text as possible models of delivery.

This presentation will explain the 4 stages of the Creative Problem Solving Process: Clarifying, Ideation, Development, and Implementation.  

We will introduce hands-on activities, real world examples, and divergent and convergent thinking tools to foster creativity and innovation that can be put into action to support your personal and professional goals.

1. How can we use PechaKucha in the classroom (and what is it)?- PechaKucha is storytelling/presentation format to help increase efficiency and engagement in communication. Come learn about PechaKucha and how we might use it in the classroom.  
2. How to use Adobe Spark Create a presentation using Adobe Spark, which is not only free but makes sharing presentations as simple as sharing a web page link. Adobe Spark can be used to support effective learning.

Lunch provided! Update from Dean Cindy Ticknor about developments in Honors and opportunities to get involved. All faculty are welcome to attend.

Faculty DO have a role to play in promoting better sleep for students, which improves their cognitive functioning. How can you create classroom policies and set expectations that will reinforce the importance of sleep for your students' academic performance?

This orientation session will introduce you to the basics of using CougarVIEW (D2L Brightspace), CSU's learning management system, for your course. You will learn how to access your courses and be introduced to the most used functionalities such as the Grades, Discussions, Dropbox, and Quizzes, as well as the Common Course Template.
This session is a 45 minute introduction to CougarVIEW. The facilitator will also be available to answer questions and provide additional 1-on-1 assistance after the session.