Teaching Conversations

All full-time and part-time faculty are invited to participate in the Teaching Conversations program, a series of six workshops across the full academic year offered online through Zoom.  

The Teaching Conversations (TC) program offers workshops topics covering multiple areas of the learning and teaching experience at UNG while fostering camaraderie and promoting teaching excellence and professional development. One of the most beneficial aspects of the program arises in the sharing of experiences and insights from our classroom practices.  

Certificates

In order to qualify for a program certificate, Teaching Conversations participants must attend a minimum of four of the six sessions offered during the academic year and answer some reflective questions about each session. After attending the required number of sessions, faculty must complete a two-page assessment of how program content influenced practices. If you must miss a required session, please make every attempt to contact CTLL prior to the session or up to a week after the session so alternative accommodations can be made. In most cases, you will be requested to register for another upcoming session if possible. A certificate cannot be earned by anyone who does not attend at least three sessions in person.

Register for and attend at least four of the six sessions.
After the session, provide a substantial response to open-ended questions posted as a quiz in eLearning (D2L). The questions are designed to provide self-reflection. You can respond to questions up until the start of the next session. In the case of the last session, you will have until Friday, May 15, 2026, to complete the questions.
After responding to four sessions, write and submit to eLearning (D2L) a two-page assessment of how these sessions influenced your practices. Submit this two-page assessment in the Assignments folder by Friday, May 15, 2026.

Agenda and Calendar

**Fall 2025**
Date	Facilitator	Topic	Location
Date Wednesday, September 3, 2025 Noon to 1 p.m.	Facilitator Susan Brantley and the CTLL Faculty Fellows	Topic Risk-Taking and Falling Flat: Unexpected Lessons Learned from Failure In this session, we will explore examples of pedagogical approaches that CTLL coordinators have attempted to implement but found challenging (sometimes failing!) and discuss how we’ve adapted and improved these ideas to make them more effective moving forward.	Location Zoom
Date Wednesday, October 1, 2025 Noon to 1 p.m.	Facilitator Alison Hite and Lori Furbush	Topic Getting D2L to Work for You In this session, we’ll uncover some of D2L’s hidden gems and explore practical ways to turn these often-overlooked tools into powerful assets for both you and your students.	Location Zoom
Date Wednesday, November 5, 2025 Noon to 1 p.m.	Facilitator Ralph Hale and Kelly McFaden	Topic Using AI to Enhance Pedagogy and Support YOU: In Class and Out At this session we will discuss the ways faculty can use AI to leverage and enhance their pedagogy as well as facilitate the non-academic parts of our jobs that seem to take up a disproportionate amount of our time.	Location Zoom

**Spring 2026**
Date	Facilitator	Topic	Location
Date Wednesday, February 4, 2026 Noon to 1 p.m.	Facilitator Ralph Hale and Susan Brantley	Topic Approaching Alternative Assessments in the World of AI In this session, we will explore strategies to create assessments and evaluate students to ensure they are genuinely engaging with and understanding the material, rather than relying on AI to complete their work.	Location Zoom
Date Wednesday, March 4, 2026 Noon to 1 p.m.	Facilitator Kelly McFaden	Topic What to Expect When You’re Expecting Conflict: Approaches to Navigating Challenging Conversations with Students There are many situations which necessitate initiating and facilitating challenging conversations with students, from issues of plagiarism or AI to times when students question the value of course content or assignments. While we cannot guarantee an outcome, this session will review some basic techniques and approaches to navigating these challenging conversations in these unprecedented times.	Location Zoom
Date Wednesday, April 1, 2026 Noon to 1 p.m.	Facilitator Lori Furbush and the CTLL Faculty Fellows	Topic Managing Burnout for Faculty and Students Let's get real about burnout. In a world that asks so much of us, how do we protect our spark? This session will explore what burnout is, why it happens to us, and how we can create a life and career that we don’t have to recover from.	Location Zoom
Date Friday, May 15, 2026	Facilitator	Topic Reflective Analysis Due	Location