We are located on the 9th floor of the Armour Academic Center, in what was previously METC space. You can contact us any time by emailing CTEI@rush.edu.
The Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation, under the division of Academic Affairs, supports and enhances teaching at Rush University by promoting teaching excellence and innovation, and student engagement throughout all learning experiences at the university. This is accomplished through faculty education and consultation, program consultation on curricular and programmatic enhancement, and support of the university’s mission regarding strategic teaching initiatives.
The center provides workshops on various subjects that provide new skills or enhance current skills related to teaching, and one-on-one support for faculty to improve their face-to-face, blended, or online courses. Additionally, the center offers regular training for online teaching through the Online Teaching & Course Design class (OTCD) at least 3 times per year in Fall, Spring, and Summer.
Center staff members provide services for colleges and/or programs that are considering changes to their curriculum or pedagogical practices. Those services can include support for new teaching modalities or assistance with curriculum development, mapping and alignment of content with objectives and assessments. The center assists colleges and/or programs with student learning outcomes and assessments by using student performance data to make decisions on curricular or pedagogical change to improve outcomes and assessment performance.
CTEI is a department focused on the use of technologies to enhance teaching and course experiences. The staff members provide primary faculty support of the university’s learning management system (LMS), as well as initiate and support educational technologies used in courses and programs. CTEI staff members regularly explore new and more innovative ways of teaching and remain current on the most up-to-date advancements in the educational technology landscape.
The center works with faculty members to ensure their online courses meet or exceed Rush University standards for online course design and online teaching. Center staff members work with colleges to provide support as requested, by college administrators and work in partnership with the units to ensure online courses are of the highest quality possible. The center is also involved in Quality Matters reviews of certain courses.
Are you Rush University Faculty? If so, find out how our faculty is involved in what we do and how you might be able to get involved as well.
Rush University is pleased to announce the CTEI staff will begin transitioning from our current Learning Management System, Blackboard, to Canvas. The transition to Canvas is underway and will begin with our Summer Pilot to Canvas for Summer 2021. The next phase will occur during the summer term to train and migrate faculty for FA21 courses. Please see our FAQ section below for additional information.
The Canvas LMS is a user-friendly, intuitive learning management platform that is extremely mobile friendly for faculty and students to access. Canvas allows faculty to build robust learning experiences designed towards student-centered learning for in person, online or blended courses.
CTEI is offering several ways for faculty to become familiar with Canvas:
Visit our Canvas Learning Management System Updates page for additional information and links.
We created an easy reference guide that compares features & tools in Blackboard to what is available in Canvas.
Here is the link to access and download the Canvas to Blackboard Comparison Guide.
Angela Solic and Micah Murdock, LMS Program Manager, are working diligently with each college’s Dean or Program Director on a Canvas course migration plan. If you have NOT received word on from your Dean or Program Director on migrating your course(s), please contact Angela Solic and Micah Murdock.
Otherwise an Instructional Designer will be assigned to your course. For the FA21 term Canvs migrations, you will should receive communication from an ID by the third week in June. If you have not received any communication regarding your FA21 Canvas course migration, please contact Angela Solic and Micah Murdock.
Please let your students know the following Canvas resources are available to them:
Students will need to log into O365 with their Rush email address and password to view the resources.
Beginning December 21, Rush will implement a retention policy for Panopto recordings. Any recording that has not been viewed by either students or faculty in more than three years will be removed automatically. Once removed, the recordings will no longer be accessible by either faculty or students and will not be recoverable.
This archiving will be a continuous process that is automatic by Panopto, so faculty members will need to be aware of the age of their videos, and they should download them when they are getting close to the three-year mark if they wish to keep a copy. Recordings that are more than three years old but are still in active use in courses will not be removed.
If you would like to keep any recordings that have not been viewed in more than three years from the dates of creation, please use these instructions to download them as MP4 files. For assistance, questions or concerns, please email CTEI@Rush.edu.
The next OTCD course is September 27 to October 31.
The course will be taught in Canvas, so anyone taking the course will get the learner’s experience of Canvas. OTCD will NOT cover how to use Canvas, but it covers the most effective practices of designing and teaching online courses.
The class is fully online and lasts 5 weeks. There are no scheduled meetings, but the course does require weekly interactions and engagement. Sign up here.
Visit CTEI’s Teaching Remotely site for resources and best practices on teaching and learning continuity during the COVID-19 response.
This webpage is a companion to the Blackboard resource called RUTR: Teaching Remotely. Access RUTR through Blackboard; it will be listed under courses that you are taking as all faculty members are students in this resource.
For additional information or assistance please reach out to CTEI@Rush.edu.
Angela Velez-Solic, Ph.D.
Lynette Washington, M.S.
Branka Manojlovic, M.A.T, B.S.B.A.
Margaret (Peg) Checchi, M.Ed.
Brandon Taylor, M.S. M.O.T.
Matt West, M.S., M.A.
Laura Smith