Celebrating Excellence in Teaching Methods and Innovations at KU


KU Center for Teaching Excellence Celebration of Teaching Poster session and reception recognizing the work of KU faculty and departments to innovate leanring.

A Celebration of Creative Ideas & Pedagogy

At the Celebration of Teaching see and hear from CTE program participants on how they innovated and transformed courses to meet the needs of today's students.

Fractured Fairy Tales

Andrea Meyertholen, associate professor in the Department of Slavic, German, and Eurasian Studies, talks about her experience creating the course, GERM 145 through the CTE Course Design Institute. In the final project of GERM 145, students reinterpret fairy tales to convey updated social and moral messages.

Redefining SPLH 571: A New Approach to Teaching and Assessment

Courtney Summers, a lecturer with Speech-Language-Hearing: Sciences & Disorders Department, discusses changes made to SPLH 571 during the May 2023 Center for Teaching Excellence Course Design Institute.

Course Transformation Reflections

Take a look at a few reflections from more than 60 posters displayed at the Celebration of Teaching.

Photo of Hyesun Cho

Incorporating service learning into a course requires a lot of effort, but the rewards are worth it! Teaching has become even more fulfilling for me as I enjoy learning from my students.


Hyesun Cho
Faculty Seminar on Diversity and Inclusive Pedagogy

Hyesun Cho, a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching, presents the poster titled: Promoting Advocacy for Multilingual Learners through Service-Learning.

The poster, a part of CTE’s Faculty Seminar on Diversity and Inclusive Pedagogy, communicates how active listening played a significant role in the successful outcomes of Curriculum & Teaching 823.

By fully engaging with their students during class discussions and considering their perspectives, Cho fostered an inclusive learning environment where students felt valued and understood.


Photo of Eric Thomas

Changing the class from a strictly lecture format to an interactive class that encourages small-group discussion has improved student learning and collaboration.


Eric Thomas
Course Design Institute

Eric Thomas, a lecturer with the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications, shares his course design poster titled: Bringing small-group writing to a large lecture classroom.

The poster, a part of the CTE Course Design Institute, shares his experience of implementing small group writing activities in a large lecture classroom for the course Media & Society (JMC 101).

Through engaging strategies like in-class writing, quizzes, and pair-and-share activities, Thomas was able to create a dynamic classroom experience where a class of 470 students could regularly practice writing about the course content, earn credit for various academic work, and foster new connections within the large class.


Photo of Nisha Fernando

Albeit experimental, not using traditional grading systems in both courses opened more opportunities to two-way dialogues more than a one-way, didactic delivery.


Nisha Fernando
Course Design Institute & Course Transformation Grants

Nisha Fernando, an associate professor with the Interior Architecture Program, shares a course transformation poster titled: Stress of Grades: Alternative to Grading For More Engaged Learning.

The poster represents Fernando's work in the Course Design Institute and Course Transformation Grant programs at CTE and summarizes her experience redesigning two courses (IA 341 and IA 409) without using traditional grading systems.

The findings from her experiment revealed that the qualitative and flexible approach allowed Fernando, to cater to different student learning styles. It encouraged students to focus on their learning and valued the ability to modify work based on feedback.