Summary

In this presentation, Davida Jordan examines how crossword puzzles can become meaningful teaching and learning tools rather than simply fun classroom activities. Drawing from her experiences teaching ESOL, she explains how crosswords can encourage students to revisit vocabulary and concepts while practicing problem-solving, reading, and critical thinking in a different format.

Crossword puzzles can also encourage students to move beyond literal or linear thinking. A clue may require learners to consider a word, concept, or idea from another perspective before finding the answer. This process can help students become more comfortable with uncertainty, make connections between ideas, learn from mistakes, and experience the satisfaction of solving a challenging problem.

The session highlights several additional benefits, including learner autonomy, classroom equity, novelty, engagement, and a sense of mastery. Students can work independently or collaboratively and move through a puzzle at their own pace. Crosswords can also remove familiar material from its original context, giving students an opportunity to see whether they can recognize and apply what they have learned in a new situation.

Jordan demonstrates several tools instructors can use to create their own puzzles, including Flippity, Crossword Labs, Wordwall, Discovery Education’s Puzzlemaker, WordMint, and The Teacher’s Corner. Participants also complete a PCC-themed crossword and discuss ways puzzles might be used for warm-ups, review, pre-assessment, formative assessment, additional practice, or activities for students who finish other work early. The session encourages instructors across disciplines to experiment with crosswords as a flexible and approachable way to support learning.

Presentation Outcomes

• Explain how crossword puzzles can support learning beyond simple vocabulary memorization.
• Use crossword puzzles to encourage critical thinking, flexible thinking, literacy, problem-solving, and connections between concepts.
• Recognize how puzzles can support learner autonomy by allowing students to work independently, collaboratively, and at different paces.
• Use crosswords to help students practice applying familiar concepts when information is presented in a new or less familiar context.
• Identify opportunities to use crossword puzzles for warm-ups, review, pre-assessment, formative assessment, additional practice, or enrichment.
• Adjust puzzle difficulty through strategies such as word banks, fill-in-the-blank clues, scaffolding, repetition, and different clue formats.
• Use free or low-cost tools such as Flippity and Crossword Labs to create customized crossword puzzles for different disciplines and learning goals.

Post generated by CTLE Web Designer Gem on 08/16/2026

Summary

This session introduces restorative practices and explores how instructors and academic professionals can use them to strengthen connection, belonging, and community 海棠直播. Bonni Goldberg presents the session as an introduction designed to give participants a foundation for further learning and practice, particularly as part of culturally responsive teaching.

The presentation describes restorative practices as rooted in Indigenous traditions that emphasize interconnectedness, community well-being, harmony, and the relationship between individuals and the communities to which they belong. Participants learn how circle practices create structured opportunities for people to speak, listen, share experiences, and build relationships.

The session distinguishes restorative practices from approaches that are used only after conflict or harm occurs. Restorative circles can also be used proactively for community building, academic instruction, social-emotional learning, check-ins, problem solving, decision-making, and conversations about challenging topics. Instructors are encouraged to consider how these practices might support both classroom relationships and course content.

Participants observe and experience a community-building circle using a fishbowl format. The demonstration includes establishing circle agreements, using a grounding activity, completing a check-in, sharing stories about belonging, listening without interruption, reflecting on what resonated, and discussing how storytelling can strengthen community. The session emphasizes that participants may always choose to pass and that circle agreements should support both participation and personal boundaries.

The presentation also encourages instructors to think intentionally about when and how restorative practices are introduced. Circles can begin with low-stakes prompts and develop as trust grows. They may also provide an established structure that instructors and students can return to when difficult events, conflicts, or important conversations arise. Participants are invited to continue exploring restorative practices through additional learning and a possible community of practice 海棠直播.

Presentation outcomes

• Describe foundational ideas and purposes of restorative practices.
• Explore the relationship between restorative practices, culturally responsive teaching, connection, and belonging.
• Recognize restorative circles as tools for both proactive community building and responding to challenges or harm.
• Identify common elements of a restorative circle, including agreements, grounding, check-ins, storytelling, reflection, and closing activities.
• Experience or observe a community-building circle using a fishbowl format.
• Consider how storytelling and intentional listening can strengthen relationships within classrooms and departments.
• Explore ways restorative practices can be incorporated into course content, student feedback, classroom community, and difficult conversations.
• Consider further study and practice of restorative approaches within the PCC community.

Summary

This Anderson Conference panel explores student mentoring through the experiences of people who have been both mentees and mentors. Efrain Rivas-Flores brings together former participants in PCC-connected TRIO mentoring programs to discuss how mentoring influenced their education, careers, confidence, and commitment to supporting other students.

Panelists describe being drawn to mentoring because they wanted to give back to their communities and provide the kind of guidance they had received or wished they had received as students. Several discuss their experiences as first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students and the importance of having someone who could help them navigate high school, college applications, scholarships, higher education, and career decisions.

The conversation emphasizes that effective mentoring begins with relationships. Mentors benefit from getting to know each student as an individual, including their goals, strengths, challenges, communication styles, and preferred ways of learning. Rather than focusing on deficits, panelists encourage mentors to recognize and build on students’ strengths. They also note that trust and connection take time and cannot be forced.

Mentoring does not require a formal mentor title or having all the answers. Panelists describe mentoring as listening, guiding, connecting students with resources, creating a safe place to ask questions, and walking alongside students as they make their own decisions. Mentors can also support students whose cultural backgrounds differ from their own by approaching relationships with curiosity, listening to students’ experiences, and recognizing the many ways people can find points of connection.

The panel also highlights the lasting impact of mentoring on mentors themselves. Former mentors describe how the experience helped shape their career paths, strengthen their communication skills, deepen their understanding of student needs, and inspire continued work in education and student support. Many continue to mentor informally through teaching, coaching, advising, and community involvement.

Presentation outcomes

• Explore mentoring from the perspectives of people who have experienced both sides of the mentor-mentee relationship.
• Recognize the importance of trust, listening, empathy, and relationship building in effective mentoring.
• Consider how mentoring can support first-generation, low-income, underrepresented, and historically underserved students.
• Identify strategies for adapting mentoring approaches to individual students’ strengths, goals, communication styles, and needs.
• Understand that mentors do not need to share a student’s cultural background or have all the answers to build meaningful relationships.
• Explore how mentoring can strengthen student belonging, confidence, self-advocacy, and educational persistence.
• Recognize that faculty, staff, teachers, advisors, and community members can serve as mentors without holding a formal mentoring title.
• Reflect on how mentoring can positively affect the mentor’s own professional development, career direction, and connection to community.

• Gretchen Gebhardt, Online Learning and Part-Time Geology and General Science Faculty
• Greg Kaminski, Online Learning
• Paul Montone, Part-Time English Faculty and Online Learning
• James Pepe, Instructional Technology Specialist at Sylvania
• David Vasquez, Instructional Technology Specialist at Cascade.

Summary

This Anderson Conference session explores ways instructors can vary their feedback strategies to support student learning, connection, and belonging. The presenters demonstrate approaches ranging from written comments and rubrics to annotations, audio, and video feedback, while considering the strengths and limitations of each method.

The session begins with text-based feedback and emphasizes that feedback can do more than tell students whether an answer is correct or incorrect. Personalized explanations can help students understand mistakes, review key concepts, prepare for another attempt, and feel that an instructor is actively present in their learning. Instructors can also use individual discussion responses, private comments, or global feedback to recognize student contributions and encourage deeper conversation.

Participants explore several options for providing feedback directly on student work. D2L annotation tools allow instructors to highlight, underline, draw, and add notes to submitted files. Google Docs can support comments and real-time conversations with students, while handwritten digital feedback can recreate some of the experience of marking papers with a pen. Rubrics provide another option for making expectations clear and giving feedback connected to specific criteria.

The presenters also demonstrate how audio and video can make feedback more personal. Hearing an instructor’s voice or seeing their face can help humanize an online learning experience, communicate tone, and strengthen connection. Audio and video may be especially useful when responding to sensitive topics or when a written response may not communicate encouragement, empathy, or nuance as effectively. The session emphasizes that feedback videos do not need to be polished or perfect. Natural delivery can help students see their instructors as human and may encourage students to take their own learning risks.

The session includes practical demonstrations of D2L, Kaltura Capture, Video Note, VoiceThread, rubrics, and annotation tools. Participants also see feedback from the student perspective, including where students locate overall feedback, rubric results, inline annotations, discussion comments, and quiz feedback. By varying feedback methods and choosing strategies that fit the assignment and student needs, instructors can create more meaningful interactions while supporting both learning and belonging.

Slides:

Presentation outcomes

• Identify reasons for providing personalized and in-depth feedback to students.
• Compare text, rubric, annotation, audio, and video approaches to student feedback.
• Consider the benefits and limitations of different feedback strategies for different assignments and student needs.
• Use feedback to strengthen instructor presence, student connection, and a sense of belonging.
• Explore D2L tools for providing individual, global, inline, rubric, and quiz feedback.
• Consider audio and video feedback as ways to communicate tone, encouragement, and more personal responses.
• Explore Kaltura Capture, Video Note, VoiceThread, Google Docs, and digital annotation tools for providing feedback.
• Understand how students locate and interact with feedback in D2L.

Summary

This Anderson Conference session explores how student-authored homework problems can be used as a formative assessment strategy in STEM courses. Stephanie Bryan introduces renewable assessments, which differ from traditional disposable assignments because student work can continue to have value beyond the course in which it was created.

Bryan describes how she asks chemistry students to create their own homework problems based on course learning outcomes. Students are encouraged to connect chemistry concepts to their majors, personal interests, real-world experiences, or creative ideas. This approach brings a wider range of perspectives into the classroom and gives students opportunities to make course content meaningful to them.

The presentation walks through the assessment process from beginning to end. Students first review the learning outcomes and examples, create a draft problem and solution, and participate in peer editing. They then revise their work and post final problems in D2L. The grading rubric emphasizes original connections, explanation of thinking, peer review, and risk-taking rather than heavily penalizing mistakes.

Bryan also discusses how student-authored problems can reveal misunderstandings before a summative assessment. Examples from chemistry courses show students connecting concepts to nursing, health care, popular culture, storytelling, and other interests. The strategy can increase student engagement, provide a creative outlet in STEM, support culturally responsive teaching, and allow students to approach an assignment at different levels of understanding.

The session also addresses considerations for reusing student-created work. Students retain copyright to the work they create, so instructors need permission before reusing it. Additional considerations apply when student work will become part of an openly licensed educational resource.

Slides:

Presentation outcomes

• Describe the difference between renewable assessments and traditional disposable assignments.
• Explore student-authored homework problems as a formative assessment strategy in STEM courses.
• Consider how students can connect course concepts with their interests, majors, experiences, and cultural perspectives.
• Review a process for introducing, drafting, peer editing, revising, and assessing student-created problems.
• Use formative assessment to identify student misunderstandings before summative assessments.
• Consider how creativity, risk-taking, culturally responsive teaching, and differentiated instruction can support student learning in STEM.
• Recognize copyright and licensing considerations when reusing student-created work or incorporating it into open educational resources.

Summary

This Anderson Conference session explores how traditional group projects can be redesigned as collaborative assignments that work well in a remote learning environment. Michael Meagher shares a model from his Health Studies courses that emphasizes clear structure, student choice, equitable participation, and alignment with course outcomes.

Meagher distinguishes a collaborative assignment from the group projects many students have experienced negatively. In his model, students work on the same topic alongside a team, but each student completes their own research and receives an individual grade. This structure allows students to benefit from collaboration without making their success dependent on whether every group member participates equally.

The session walks through the behind-the-scenes planning that supports the assignment. Students select preferred topics through a Google Form, and teams are created with student interests and communication styles in mind. Class time is intentionally reserved for collaborative work so students are not expected to coordinate additional meetings around different work, family, and school schedules. Each group also receives a shared Google document containing instructions, resources, timelines, peer-reviewed articles, and links to the tools they need.

Students research topics related to stress and health, respond to questions about a peer-reviewed article, create a slide to share their findings, participate in a collaborative sharing day, and complete a self-evaluation. Groups also choose a 鈥渟omething extra鈥� component, which might include a video, interview, activity, or another way of exploring their topic.

Throughout the session, Meagher encourages faculty to begin with a course outcome, identify real or perceived barriers to collaboration, provide students with meaningful choices, and design the experience so students can succeed even when participation within a group varies. The goal is to create a collaborative experience that supports learning without repeating the frustrations often associated with traditional group projects.

Slides:

Presentation outcomes

• Distinguish between a traditional group project and a collaborative assignment designed around individual student success.
• Identify course outcomes that may work well with a collaborative learning activity.
• Explore strategies for organizing collaborative assignments in remote learning environments.
• Provide students with meaningful choices in topics, participation, and project components.
• Use designated class time, shared resources, and clear timelines to reduce barriers to group participation.
• Design collaborative work so one student’s grade is not dependent on another student’s participation.
• Consider behind-the-scenes preparation that can make collaborative assignments more equitable and positive for students.

Summary

This Anderson Conference session shares practical strategies for helping students find and use the support available to them without overwhelming them with information. Lauren Hull examines common barriers students face, including difficulty locating resources, balancing school with work and family responsibilities, navigating technology, understanding course expectations, and knowing when or how to ask for help.

The session begins with strategies instructors can use before a course starts. Hull recommends personalizing basic-needs statements, providing transparent course details, and using frequently asked questions to break important information into manageable sections. She also discusses placing student support resources near the beginning of the syllabus rather than burying them at the end, helping students encounter that information before a challenge arises.

Hull demonstrates ways to make early course activities more purposeful. A syllabus scavenger hunt can ask students to locate policies, accommodations, mental health resources, technology assistance, textbooks, deadlines, and other important information. These activities give students practice finding resources before they need them.

The presentation also focuses on maintaining connection throughout the term. Weekly check-in surveys can give students a lower-barrier way to communicate questions, challenges, and concerns. Mid-course evaluations allow instructors to respond to student feedback while the course is still happening. Hull also demonstrates D2L tools such as Intelligent Agents and Class Progress, which can help instructors identify missing work, monitor engagement, send reminders, and begin supportive conversations with students.

Supporting students also requires sustainable workflows for instructors. Hull recommends scheduling dedicated times to review student progress, using reusable communication templates, maintaining records of outreach, and automating appropriate reminders. These approaches can help faculty provide consistent support while recognizing their own workload, limits, and need for well-being.

The session closes by encouraging faculty and staff to notice the parts of their work that bring them joy. Student feedback, meaningful connections, professional learning communities, and reminders of past successes can help educators reconnect with the purpose of their work while continuing to develop responsive approaches to student support.

Slides:

Presentation outcomes

• Identify common barriers that can make it difficult for students to locate, understand, and use support resources.
• Use course details pages, personalized basic-needs statements, FAQs, and resource-forward syllabi to make support more visible.
• Develop meaningful course introduction activities that help students locate important policies and resources.
• Use surveys and check-ins to maintain communication and gather student feedback throughout the term.
• Explore D2L Intelligent Agents and Class Progress as tools for monitoring engagement and providing proactive student support.
• Use communication templates, scheduled progress reviews, and other workflows to make student outreach more sustainable.
• Approach student progress information as an opportunity for inquiry, connection, and support rather than simply as a monitoring tool.
• Reflect on faculty well-being, empathy fatigue, and practices that help educators reconnect with joy and purpose in their work.

Summary

This Anderson Conference session explores generative AI through the lens of student voice, writing, learning, and equity. Melissa Goodman Elgar brings an anthropological perspective to questions many instructors are facing as students increasingly use AI tools for writing. Rather than presenting a single solution, the session invites educators to consider what they value about student writing and how AI policies can support learning while recognizing that these technologies are now part of the educational landscape.

The session distinguishes between generative AI, which can produce text from a prompt, and tools that help students edit or refine writing they have already created. Participants discuss concerns such as plagiarism, accuracy, critical thinking, attribution, and the possibility that AI-generated work may bypass important learning objectives. At the same time, the conversation recognizes that AI tools can provide useful support when instructors and students understand how and why they are being used.

A central theme is authentic student voice. Participants consider how instructors come to recognize a student’s writing through personal details, tone, experience, and ways of expressing ideas. Generative AI may produce polished writing while removing some of the individuality that helps instructors see a student’s thinking and development. Goodman Elgar encourages faculty to consider writing not simply as a finished product, but as a form of self-expression and a process through which students develop their identities and abilities.

The session also examines academic language and the power structures connected to expectations about “correct” writing. Students may enter college with different linguistic, cultural, socioeconomic, and educational backgrounds, and conventional academic language can present its own barriers. Participants are encouraged to make expectations transparent and think carefully about which forms of writing and AI assistance are appropriate for different assignments rather than assuming one approach will work across every discipline or course.

Finally, the presentation connects writing with the learning process itself. Goodman Elgar asks instructors to consider what cognitive skills their assignments are designed to develop, including synthesizing information, summarizing complex ideas, making connections, and expressing an emerging understanding. The session frames thoughtful AI use as an equity issue: students should have access to useful tools while still having opportunities to build confidence, develop functional skills, and discover their own voices.

Presentation outcomes

• Explore faculty perspectives and concerns about generative AI and student writing.
• Distinguish between generative AI tools that produce text and tools that support editing or refinement of student-created writing.
• Consider how generative AI may affect authentic student voice, self-expression, and instructors’ ability to observe the learning process.
• Examine academic language expectations through an anthropological and equity-focused lens.
• Reflect on the skills and learning processes that writing assignments are intended to develop.
• Consider appropriate boundaries and expectations for AI use across different disciplines, assignments, and learning outcomes.
• Explore ways to make expectations about writing and AI transparent to students.
• Identify approaches that support student confidence, identity, functional skills, and thoughtful use of AI tools.

Summary

In this Anderson Conference keynote, Adam A. Smith invites faculty and academic professionals to reflect on the pressures they carry while supporting students, colleagues, families, and their communities. Using the familiar instruction to put on your own oxygen mask first, Smith encourages educators to make space for their own well-being so they can continue doing meaningful work without constantly operating at their limits.

Smith asks participants to recognize the strengths and assets students bring to higher education. He describes today鈥檚 students as increasingly first-generation, BIPOC, and shaped by experiences that may differ from traditional expectations of college students. Rather than approaching students as problems to fix, he encourages educators to recognize their resilience, creativity, empathy, problem-solving abilities, and lived experiences.

The keynote also emphasizes community and shared responsibility. Smith discusses coalition building as something that can begin with simple relationships, conversations, and people supporting one another. Using the example of birds rotating leadership in a V formation, he encourages colleagues to share responsibility rather than allowing the same people to remain at the front carrying the greatest pressure.

Participants are also encouraged to reconnect with the reasons they entered education and to recognize the impact they make each day. Smith recommends keeping an impact journal to record meaningful interactions, contributions, and reminders of why the work matters. He closes by comparing a strong educational community to the interconnected Pando forest, where individual trees are supported by a shared root system beneath the surface.

Presentation outcomes

• Reflect on the personal and professional pressures educators experience while supporting students and colleagues.
• Consider self-care, rest, and boundaries as important parts of sustaining meaningful work in education.
• Recognize the strengths, resilience, creativity, and lived experiences students bring to college.
• Explore an asset-based approach to teaching, advising, and supporting students.
• Consider how coalition building and shared responsibility can strengthen relationships and reduce individual burden.
• Reconnect with the personal purpose and values that brought participants to work in higher education.
• Use reflection practices, such as an impact journal, to recognize daily contributions and maintain connection to purpose.

Summary

In this introductory module, Jamie Heberlein provides a foundation for understanding trauma and trauma-informed care. The session defines trauma as an experience that overwhelms a person’s ability to cope and emphasizes that the same event may affect people in very different ways. A person’s history, relationships, culture, environment, access to resources, and interpretation of an experience can all influence whether an event becomes traumatic and how its effects are experienced.

The presentation also examines different forms of stress, including positive, tolerable, and toxic stress. Tolerable stress is temporary and supported by relationships and resources, while toxic stress involves prolonged activation of the stress response without enough protective support. Participants consider the importance of supportive relationships and learn how trauma can also occur across communities and generations through historical trauma, intergenerational trauma, unresolved grief, systemic barriers, and cultural experiences.

The session then shifts from understanding trauma to understanding trauma-informed care. Trauma-informed practices are not therapy and are not intended to excuse harmful or unacceptable behavior. Instead, they use an understanding of trauma to create environments that are safer, more empowering, and less likely to cause additional harm. Organizations are encouraged to realize the widespread impact of trauma, recognize possible signs and symptoms, respond by integrating trauma knowledge into practices and policies, and actively resist retraumatization.

Participants are introduced to six principles that support a trauma-informed approach: safety; trustworthiness and transparency; peer support; collaboration and mutuality; empowerment, voice, and choice; and cultural, historical, and gender responsiveness. The session encourages faculty and staff to examine their own departments and consider small, practical changes within their control. Heberlein closes by emphasizing compassion, relationships, positive intent, and curiosity about the needs or experiences that may be influencing a person’s behavior.

Presentation Slides:

Presentation Outcomes

• Define trauma and recognize how an individual’s experience of an event can shape its physical, emotional, social, and other long-term effects.
• Distinguish among positive, tolerable, and toxic stress and explain the role supportive relationships can play in buffering stressful experiences.
• Recognize individual, collective, historical, intergenerational, and systemic forms of trauma and consider how cultural context influences experiences of trauma and healing.
• Describe resilience and post-traumatic growth while recognizing that recovery is influenced by relationships, resources, environment, access, and other surrounding conditions.
• Distinguish trauma-specific services from trauma-informed practices and recognize that trauma-informed care does not require faculty and staff to provide therapy.
• Apply the principles of safety, trustworthiness and transparency, peer support, collaboration and mutuality, empowerment and choice, and cultural, historical, and gender responsiveness.
• Use a trauma-informed lens to approach behavior with compassion and curiosity while maintaining appropriate expectations and accountability.
• Identify small changes within a classroom, department, or workplace that can reduce harm and support a more trauma-informed organizational culture.

Post generated by CTLE Web Designer Gem on 08/16/2026