Join us for an interactive session exploring how AI can be used as a tool for critical literacy. Across subjects, teachers want to support students in expanding their communicative abilities in different contexts while also gaining awareness of underlying assumptions and expectations around language. As professors in Developmental Education, we have been using generative AI tools in our classrooms because we want our students to be digitally prepared. At the same time, we want to find balance between the positive uses of AI and concerns about how AI's can impact language by homogenizing our communication. Participants will try some of the activities from our classroom, using generative AI tools to remix texts and analyze the results to gain insights. We will demonstrate how using AI to adapt text can help students compare language contexts, enhance communication skills, and critically examine the rules around language use. Join us for an engaging session where we explore the transformative power of AI in language analysis. This interactive experience is designed to provide hands-on practice with generative AI tools that can help students analyze the contexts for language use and apply various stylistic transformations.
One way to develop a more learner-centered atmosphere, where the students' needs are the focus of instruction, is by using a more learner-centered syllabus. Such syllabi should reflect the instructor's evolving understanding of and commitment to their students as they learn in a social and ever-changing world. This interactive presentation will promote the conference themes of Accessibility, Inclusive Teaching, and Universal Design for Learning by showcasing the characteristics of a learner-centered syllabus as well as the ways in which the instructor of a Black Feminist Though-informed, global health course has modified their course policies and assignments to address the needs of their students. The Northwestern Principles of Inclusive Teaching (2021) and Cullen and Harris™ (2009) framework for assessing learner-centeredness through course syllabi will be used to identify the ways in which the instructor's course has changed between Fall 2021 and Winter 2024. The features of this interactive presentation will include observing a dialogue between an educational developer and instructor as well as a mind mapping activity about constructing "knowledge-sharing"™ assignments. Discussion topics include: mental health days, grading grace periods, flextime, accountability days, allyship, and artificial intelligence.
Join us for an exciting session where we will explore how an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based assessment platform can truly elevate student engagement! We are thrilled to introduce the beta version of PAPPL (Personalized AI-Powered Progressive Learning), a robust tool that aids students by providing personalized AI-generated hints tailored to their interactions with the questions to help provide a personalized learning experience. Instructors will also benefit from valuable analytics, all designed to foster a supportive learning environment. By merging cutting-edge AI technology with inclusive teaching strategies, PAPPL offers customized feedback and tracks each student's progress on their journey to mastery. This tool not only alleviates burnout but also empowers students, boosting their confidence throughout their learning process. We look forward to engaging with you as we present PAPPL's capabilities, including how students can interact with this tool and what analytics can be generated by this system. Whether you are an instructor or a student across all levels and majors, join us in exploring a tutor powered by AI and thoughtful assessment to create meaningful learning experiences. Come and be part of this engaging discussion!
Student success tends to be measured through assessment and grades. In this interactive presentation, we'll focus on how we can promote student success by providing students with metacognitive feedback. Metacognition plays a key part for learning and growth urging us to consider how our feedback can help both us and our students think about their learning process and success in the course. During our time together, you will learn about the value of encouraging metacognitive reflection for students, explore strategies and strengths of various feedback practices, and reflect on how your feedback impacts student learning. We will also practice composing metacognitive feedback and discuss practical ways of implementing it in your own classrooms.
Recent updates to the Department of Justice digital accessibility regulations mandate that all public institutions comply with WCAG 2.1AA standards by April 2026. This has prompted universities to find swift and effective ways to ensure all their digital materials meet these standards. For many institutions, this is a daunting task that is challenging to tackle alone.
Although these updated regulations do not yet apply to private institutions such as Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, they are anticipated in the future. Both universities aim to be well-prepared when the regulations take effect. As similar institutions located in the Chicago area, Northwestern and the University of Chicago have formed a collaborative partnership to share successful strategies for improving digital accessibility on their campuses.
This presentation will explore the approaches, tools, and outcomes related to ensuring the accessibility of Canvas course sites and documents at both institutions. It will also highlight how their collaboration has facilitated the implementation of effective accessibility solutions.
Adult learners returning to undergraduate education often have nonlinear pathways and may struggle to articulate how their experiences align with future goals. To support these students, Northwestern University's School of Professional Studies incorporates ePortfolio completion in their capstone course, fostering self-awareness and professional readiness.
A successful ePortfolio strategy starts by understanding the student's current identity and future aspirations post-graduation. This approach enables learners to delve into their learning experiences, reflect on the methods they employ, and apply knowledge practically. The process of creating an ePortfolio is emphasized as being just as crucial as the final product.
Presenters will cover strategies and challenges associated with adult learners' ePortfolios. They will share best practices from both faculty and student perspectives and involve participants in discussions on integrating ePortfolios within their own programs.
In 2023, the Surgeon General warned about America's "epidemic of loneliness," including international concern with England and Japan appointing Ministers to combat the challenge. Loneliness is extreme among college students. According to a survey by Active Minds and Timely Care (February, 2024), nearly two-thirds of college students reported feeling lonely. International students are even more likely to be lonely, yet the cause is not just from missing their families, but rather a mix of factors based on the feelings of "outsiderness" from lack of adjustment to local cultural norms. Some interventions have been tried for university students, and most concentrate on counseling and peer support without long-term outcome impact. However, interventions for combating loneliness in older populations have shown success, including initiating social contact with community engagement projects. We propose to try similar interventions, like having university students, and specifically international students, work with mission-driven organizations to create community impact. We believe providing them with community engagement with nonprofits will lead to a decrease in loneliness. This work has proven effective with older populations.
This is an interactive session and the participants can offer opportunities of their own for alleviating the challenge of loneliness or suggestions on how to explore the concern.
Professor, Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications
Candy Lee is a professor at Medill, teaching in journalism and in integrated marketing communications. Previously she was vice president of marketing at The Washington Post, overseeing multiple functions, from marketing to research, and originating innovative programs.Prior to joining... Read More →
Wednesday May 21, 2025 3:40pm - 4:25pm CDT Lake Room
It's difficult to know where to funnel your energy when someone or something is constantly demanding your attention- especially as grad TA's. How do we set ourselves up for success? How do we accomplish what we need to do and do it exceptionally well? How can we be masters of time? In this talk, I will share real tools that you can take with you to downsize your stress, organize your day, and determine what your priorities and boundaries are.
In today’s rapidly changing educational landscape, fostering active participation and enhancing student engagement remains a focal point in higher education. This session will explore EchoPoll’ impact on student engagement, providing case studies of demonstrated success, and how the solution’s interoperability with Echo360’s Learning Transformation Platform™ (LTP™) - the Echosystem™ - is transforming the future of education.
Through the power of the EchoSystem, the world’s and only first Learning Transformation Platform, Echo360 has delivered a wholistic approach to student engagement with EchoEngage. By leveraging real-time, interactive polling technology, EchoPoll, one of the two EchoEngage solutions, instructors around the world are transforming traditional classroom dynamics into a more accessible and personalized exchange of ideas.
EchoPoll empowers instructors to integrate data-driven engagement strategies into lectures in a new way, seamlessly adding polls, quizzes, and surveys into their live and recorded lessons. This real-time interaction, which can always be captured and distributed for asynchronous engagement and review, not only provides immediate feedback on student understanding but also promotes critical thinking and semester-long discussions. This technology ensures that every voice is heard, regardless of class size, and allows students to respond anonymously, which can improve participation rates and reduce the barriers to speaking up.
During the spring 2024 quarter, a PhD candidate and music theory professor teamed up to conduct a teaching experiment across four sections of 2nd year music theory (including two sections taught by graduate students). The question: Could a card game improve students' retention and recall of music theory terminology definitions? This digital poster will describe the terminology card game, present the process and results of our teaching experiment, and outline plans for future modification/implementation.
Can a student's belief affect their behavior and learning? Research supports that self-efficacy can predict performance and account for poor performance when students have the required skills needed to learn. In this presentation, we will evaluate and explore our own self-efficacy as well as gain a general understanding of the impact of self-efficacy on learning. Then, we will discuss ways that we, as professors, administrators, parents, teachers, aunts, uncles, and others, can increase the development of belief in oneself and others. Lastly, we will work on setting two concrete goals with an action plan to implement steps to reach those goals. If a person's belief, or self-efficacy, that they can succeed influences learning, we must implement strategies to build self-efficacy.
Susan Schulhof is an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education. She has been working in the Early Childhood Education field since 2001 with previous experience in Elementary Education and Social Work. In addition to teaching and leading others, she was an Assessor and Training... Read More →
Thursday May 22, 2025 8:30am - 9:15am CDT Wildcat Room
This session presents the Digital Accessibility Coach (DA Coach), an AI-powered assistant designed to support faculty and staff in ensuring digital accessibility compliance within university course materials. Developed by the Innovation in Digital Accessibility (IDA) Working Group, this initiative aligns with ADA Title II regulations, providing a scalable solution for achieving 100 percent accessibility compliance across diverse pedagogies and course materials.
Participants will explore the AI-driven accessibility assessment tool, built using Python and API integrations, which provides one-on-one personalized support for digital accessibility learning and compliance. The DA Coach will guide users through step-by-step accessibility checks, improving usability, user experience, and WCAG compliance through an iterative design process.
This approach not only enhances faculty accessibility practices but also drives long-term student success in a fully digitally inclusive learning environment.
Director of Information Systems, Security, and Compliance, University of Illinois Chicago Division of Specialized Care for Children
Andrew Nichols is the Director of Information Systems, Security, and Compliance at the University of Illinois Chicago Division of Specialized Care for Children. With extensive experience in higher education IT leadership, he oversees enterprise information systems, cybersecurity strategy... Read More →
Thursday May 22, 2025 8:30am - 9:15am CDT Big Ten Room
This presentation explores a novel approach to leveraging AI in education, not as a replacement for critical thinking, but as a catalyst for it. We'll delve into a case study where students used AI Large Language Models (LLMs) to analyze a business case, and then reflect on the AI's strengths and weaknesses. The surprising outcome? Students produced unusually insightful and lengthy reflections, demonstrating a level of engagement and ownership rarely seen in traditional assignments. This presentation will unpack the pedagogical principles behind this success, focusing on how AI-assisted assignments can naturally incorporate spiraling, spaced repetition, and agency -- three key elements for deep and lasting learning. Participants will leave with practical strategies for designing their own AI-enhanced assignments to promote deeper learning in their classrooms.
I did a study to investigate how learners with diverse cognitive abilities process data stories presented through infographics, focusing on the impact of visual and verbal data representations. Conducted in a controlled lab setting using an eye tracker, the experiment examined how individual cognitive differences -- such as working memory, visuospatial abilities, and inhibitory control -- affect infographic comprehension. I used Machine Learning algorithms to analyze learners' eye movement data and explored how they engage with data presented through both visual (graphs, charts) and verbal (textual descriptions) formats.
The results suggest that learners engage more effectively with data stories when critical information is communicated verbally rather than through data visualizations, especially when the content requires comprehension of complex data relationships. Furthermore, the findings emphasize the need to minimize seductive details in graphical representations, as these details can distract learners and hinder their ability to extract key information.
The study also highlighted important implications for educators and developers. Teachers should implement strategies to enhance learners' visuospatial abilities to improve overall engagement with graphical content. Developers should consider using eye-movement data to create adaptive infographics that cater to individual cognitive strengths, ultimately improving accessibility and comprehension for all learners.
Mellon Postodctoral Fellow, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences
Hi!I am Kristine, and I’m excited to share with you my presentation, "Designing Data Infographics for Adaptive Learning: Enhancing Engagement." This presentation is based on my research aimed at understanding how people generally comprehend visual data and make decisions in learning... Read More →
Thursday May 22, 2025 10:45am - 11:30am CDT Rock Room
From Succession to Squid Game, from Game of Thrones to Severance, we live in a culture saturated with stories. As educators, technologists, and researchers, we're frequently told that using stories will keep our audiences engaged when we need to convey information in a presentation or instructional-based format. How do we do that, though? We're not all natural-born storytellers, but there are effective, powerful frameworks that can help us tell compelling stories regardless of the subject.
After reviewing the four cornerstones of narrative, we'll cover two key frameworks for engagement through storytelling: Campbell's Hero's Journey and the Pixar Storytelling Framework. Participants will take what they have learned about the Pixar storytelling framework and apply it to a segment of content from their own area of expertise. After a brief working period, participants will be asked to share their work with the session audience for feedback. Each participant will leave with the experience of applied knowledge and be better able to tell stories in their own higher education environments.
Brian Klaas is the Assistant Director for Technology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Teaching and Learning. He also has a faculty appointment in the School's R3 Center for Innovation in Science Education. He teaches graduate level courses on communications... Read More →
Fluency in software is often assumed before students enter a course, but when students are challenged to perform concrete tasks, they struggle to work independently. In general chemistry lab courses we prioritize learning Microsoft Excel for data analysis and visualization early in the first quarter. While many students report prior experience with Excel, they struggle to execute the tasks required in a science lab course. To better support all students, we have integrated an in-class "data analysis" lab that allows them to gain fluency in the software with the support of their peers and teaching assistants. This requires some class time is devoted to active learning of the software; it also requires adequate training of the TAs. In this presentation, we will detail how we prioritize what tasks are done in class and what is expected to be independent work. While our example is in the teaching of Microsoft Excel, we aim to discuss objectives more generally to help participants assess their own relationship to the software of their choice. Bring your laptop!
Associate Professor of Instruction, Northwestern University
Veronica Berns (she/her) earned her BA in Chemistry at Northwestern University in 2009 before her PhD in Inorganic Chemistry at University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2014. Her doctoral thesis focused on the way atoms pack together in solids, specifically in compounds with multiple... Read More →
