For several years now, each fall I've taught two sections of XCOR 1000, and every fall I've done the same tidy thing: merged the two sections in Brightspace. If you've never done it, merging combines two course sections into a single course so you only have one set of content to maintain. For two identical classes, it's a small act of self-preservation — one gradebook, one set of modules, one place to post an announcement.
I still recommend it. But last fall I learned that merging comes with a catch now that the College of Arts & Sciences has begn requiring the use of Simple Syllabus.
In the 1986 film Highlander, the Quickening is a powerful mystical energy surge that happens when one Immortal beheads another. The victor absorbs the life force, knowledge, and power of the defeated.
Here's the thing about how we merge sections on our campus. Brightspace doesn't blend two classes into some neutral third space. It picks a winner. Every student from one section gets poured into the other — the "primary" — and the primary's identity takes over. My sections were 9 and 16. Brightspace moved everyone from 16 into 9. Section 9 lived. Section 16, for all practical purposes, lost.
Which is where the Highlander problem starts. There can be only one.
Simple Syllabus links a specific syllabus to a specific section based on the CRN (Course Record Number), so students get exactly the version built for their class, and as a result, the instructor can see who has opened it and how far they have read. In a course where "did you read the syllabus?" is a real question and not a rhetorical one, that's data I actually want.
But after the merge, there could be only one syllabus, and it belonged to section 9. So my section 16 students opened their syllabus and found someone else's schedule waiting for them: Monday at 11 instead of Monday at 1. Same course, same content, wrong meeting time.
The second cut was quieter. My section 16 students were never recorded as reading section 16's syllabus, because section 16's syllabus was no longer theirs to read. They read the syllabus for section 9, and my Simple Syllabus dashboard told me that a big chunk of the class had skipped the assignment.
None of this makes merging a bad idea. The efficiency is real, and I'm not giving it up. But you need to plan for this conflict between Brightspace and Simple Syllabus, and you need to give up that built in tracking that Simple Syllabus offers.
Merge away. Just know going in that when two sections become one, there can be only one syllabus.
We opened this year's planning retreat the way I'd been turning it over in my head for weeks beforehand: not with the calendar, not with the budget, but with a question. Before we reviewed a single program or sketched out a single offering for next year, I asked everyone around the table to share one specific moment from the past year when they felt our mission was most present in their own corner of the work.
I'll admit I wasn't sure what I'd get. It's the kind of prompt that can produce a polite generality — I think we really lived the mission this year — and leave it there. But that isn't what happened. What came back were stories. Particular ones. A moment with a particular person, on a particular afternoon, that someone had clearly been carrying around for a while without quite having had the occasion to say it out loud.
I've been doing this work long enough that I didn't expect to be surprised by what I heard. And in a sense I wasn't. The three things I took away from that hour aren't new. I could have written them on a notecard two years ago. What was different was how clearly they came into focus when they arrived attached to real moments instead of stated as principles. So I want to set them down here, less as discoveries than as reminders.
The first is that we are a safe space. Our values statement has said as much since 2015: we commit to "a nonjudgmental, safe, collaborative, and supportive environment for faculty to think, experiment, work, and thrive." But hearing it in the stories reminded me how much of that safety is unglamorous. Sometimes the safety we offer is the safety to try a new assignment and have it flop. Sometimes it's the safety to admit you don't understand the new gradebook. And sometimes it's just the safety to close the door and vent for fifteen minutes before going back out to do the work. None of that shows up in an annual report. All of it matters.
The second is that this work is reciprocal. It's easy, in a center like ours, to slip into the posture of the people who know things helping the people who need to know them. The stories cut against that. We are not a one-way valve. The faculty member working through a teaching challenge with one of us is, at the same time, teaching us how teaching actually goes in their classroom. I find that worth holding onto, because it changes the spirit of the encounter. We're not dispensing. We're in it together.
The third is the one that points outward, and the one I keep coming back to. We can do more — and I think we should do more — to support educators across our region. Our mission is bound up in Xavier's larger commitment to a more just and humane society, and that commitment doesn't observe our building's walls. There are faculty at schools near us doing this work with far less support than we're fortunate to have, and the dissemination of what we learn is already written into our values. I don't have a fully formed plan yet. But I left the retreat convinced that the next chapter of our work is at least partly about the people we haven't met.
None of this required a retreat to know. But it did, apparently, require a room full of people willing to say here is the moment it felt real to me. I'm grateful they did. As we prepare for the coming year, I want to keep those three things close, not as a poster on the wall, but as a set of questions we keep asking ourselves: Are we still safe? Are we still learning? And are we reaching far enough?
Underground Kingdom (Choose Your Own Adventure #18) by Edward Packard, published by Bantam Books, 1983.
If you grew up reading Choose Your Own Adventure books like I did, you remember the opening line. Every single book started the same way: You are the hero of this adventure. Not a character the author invented. Not someone you were following from a safe distance. You. The book handed you the story and told you to drive.
Most job postings don't work that way. They're written like traditional novels: the plot is already determined, the role is already defined, and the search process is really just casting — finding the right person to play a part that someone else wrote. There's nothing wrong with that model. It works. It's how CAT+FD has always structured our Faculty-in-Residence positions, but this time around, we decided to try something different.
This time, you write the next chapter.
What's Different
The new Faculty-in-Residence position does not have a predetermined area of focus. That's a significant departure from how this position has worked in the past. Previous FIRs were appointed to support a specific programmatic need that CAT+FD had already identified — New Faculty Support, Service-Learning, Part-time Faculty Support — a focus area we chose in advance and then found the right person to lead.
This appointment inverts that. We are inviting applicants to propose an area of faculty development they are already passionate about, already engaged with, and genuinely well-positioned to support. CAT+FD will then shape the responsibilities of the appointment around the successful candidate's proposal.
What We're Hoping to Hear About
Journey Under the Sea (Choose Your Own Adventure #2) by R.A. Montgomery, published by Bantam Books, 1976.
We're genuinely open on this. The call for applications names a few possible directions — artificial intelligence in teaching and learning, faculty mentoring and peer support, student mentoring and advising as pedagogy, grant writing and management — but those are merely examples. They're areas that have come up in our recent conversations, not a ceiling on what we're willing to consider.
What we're actually looking for is a proposal that identifies a real need in the Xavier faculty community and makes a credible case for why you are the right person to address it. That means thinking seriously about what knowledge or experience you're bringing, what programming might realistically look like given the scope of the position, and who across campus would benefit.
The position is a 12.5% appointment with one course release per year, for a three-year term with the option to renew. It's designed to bring a faculty colleague into the work of CAT+FD in a meaningful, sustained way. The person we appoint will spend a few hours a week in the Center, attend staff meetings and our summer planning retreat, and take the lead on developing and running programming in their proposed area.
Who Should Apply
The Abominable Snowman (Choose Your Own Adventure #13) by R.A. Montgomery, published by Bantam Books, 1982.
The formal requirements are what you'd expect:
at least three years of full-time teaching at Xavier;
a record of engagement with CAT+FD;
evidence of scholarly activity; and
a collegial reputation that makes cross-disciplinary collaboration natural rather than forced.
Tenure is preferred, but not required.
But I want to speak past the formal requirements for a moment, because I think the person we're looking for might not immediately see themselves in a list of qualifications.
In Choose Your Own Adventure, the books were always careful to remind you that you weren't just in the story — you were driving it. That required a specific kind of reader: someone curious enough to explore, confident enough to make a choice, and self-aware enough to know something about what kind of adventure they wanted to go on.
That's who I'm hoping applies for this position. Not necessarily the person who has always wanted a faculty development role, but the person who has been quietly doing faculty development work for years without anyone giving it that name; the colleague other people come to when they're trying to figure out how AI is changing their classroom; the one who's been running an informal reading group; the person who thinks deeply about how we mentor graduate students or advise undergraduates through hard moments; the grant writer everyone asks for help and who's never had the support or the platform to do that work at scale.
If any of that sounds like you, we'd like to hear from you.
How You Can Apply
To apply, submit a letter of application that includes a detailed proposal describing your proposed area of focus, along with letters of support from your Department Head or Division Chair and your College Dean. We're accepting applications on a rolling basis throughout the summer, with a final decision before the start of the Fall 2026 semester.
If you have questions before applying, or if you want to talk through an idea before you've fully committed to a direction, reach out. That kind of conversation is part of what this process is supposed to feel like.
There are a lot of possible endings to this story. We're hoping you'll help us write a good one.
Ash Wednesday was February 18. Ramadan began the following evening, on February 19. That means that as you're reading this, some of your Christian students are in the middle of a forty-day season of fasting and sacrifice, and some of your Muslim students are in the middle of a month-long fast that, depending on the day, has them going without food or water from before sunrise until after sunset. Those two groups are sitting in the same seats, turning in the same assignments, and taking the same exams.
I've been thinking about fasting lately because two of the world's major religious traditions are doing it simultaneously, right now, in your classroom.
Ash Wednesday was February 18. Ramadan began the following evening, on February 19. That means that as you're reading this, some of your Christian students are in the middle of a forty-day season of fasting and sacrifice, and some of your Muslim students are in the middle of a month-long fast that, depending on the day, has them going without food or water from before sunrise until after sunset. Those two groups are sitting in the same seats, turning in the same assignments, and taking the same exams.
I bring this up because I think most of us, if we stop and think about it, genuinely want to be the kind of teacher who knows what's going on in our students' lives — not to make excuses for them, but to understand them.
What Ramadan actually involves
For students observing Ramadan, the fast itself is only part of the picture. Many are also attending Tarawih prayers in the evening, which can run well past midnight, and waking before dawn for Suhoor, the pre-fast meal. A student who looks like they're barely keeping their eyes open in your 8 a.m. class on a Wednesday may have gone to sleep at 2 a.m. and been back up at 4:30. They're not being lazy or disengaged. They're practicing their faith and trying to be your student at the same time.
There's also a cognitive dimension worth knowing about. Fasting affects concentration, memory recall, and processing speed, particularly in the afternoon. A student sitting for an exam at 2 p.m. while fasting is doing so under conditions that are genuinely more demanding than usual. That's not an excuse — it's context.
Compassion isn't the opposite of rigor
I've written before about the assumptions we make about students and how those assumptions can inadvertently make things harder for the students who are already working the hardest. Religious observance is another one of those places where a small amount of awareness goes a long way.
You don't need to redesign your course. A brief acknowledgment, a bit of flexibility around exam timing where you can manage it, or even just letting a student step out for a few minutes — these are small things that communicate something important: that you see them as a whole person, not just a student ID number. That's not soft. That's good teaching.
It's not just Ramadan
Ramadan gets attention partly because of its length and visibility, but religious observances that create real scheduling conflicts for students happen throughout the year:
Lent, also currently underway (through April 2), is observed across many Christian traditions — Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, and others. Practices vary, but the season carries genuine spiritual weight for students who observe it seriously.
Passoverruns April 2–9 this year, overlapping with Easter on April 5 — a meaningful convergence. Seders on the first evenings can mean travel or late nights, and the dietary restrictions last the week.
Looking toward next fall, the Jewish High Holidays occur early in the fall semester. Rosh Hashanah is September 12–13; Yom Kippur is September 21, and involves a 25-hour fast. Students observing these days will miss class during the first few weeks of term — the weeks when we're building the foundation for everything that follows.
Durga Puja (October 17–21) and Diwali(November 8) are significant observances for Hindu students, often involving family travel and community commitments that compete with late-semester academic pressure.
And Shabbat, observed by Jewish students and some Seventh-day Adventist students from Friday evening through Saturday, can complicate weekend exams, Saturday office hours, or assignments due Friday night.
This isn't meant to be a comprehensive calendar — it's just a nudge to remember that the religious landscape of any given classroom is probably more diverse than it appears.
One simple thing
Consider adding a brief statement to your syllabus inviting students with religious observances to speak with you early in the semester, for example:
I recognize that religious observances may occasionally conflict with course requirements. If you anticipate a conflict, please reach out to me as early as possible so we can discuss options.
This puts the responsibility appropriately on the student while signaling that you're a reasonable adult they can actually talk to.
Xavier's mission calls us toward a more just and humane world. That work starts in how we treat the people in our classrooms — all of them, with all the fullness of who they are.
As November arrives, I want to acknowledge both the richness and the intensity of this time in our academic lives. As faculty, we are juggling advising appointments, planning final projects, responding to crises both small and large, and somehow still finding ways to support our students through their own unique challenges. This month, CAT+FD offers spaces designed specifically for this moment: quiet writing time, conversations about AI and pedagogy, opportunities for mindfulness, and collaborative problem-solving with colleagues who understand exactly what you're experiencing.
I also want to remind you that professional development isn't just another item on your to-do list. It's one of the most generous things you can do for yourself during a demanding season. Whether you drop in for twenty minutes of the AI session between classes, join your colleagues for writing or meditation, or simply show up to a brown bag to remember you're not alone in this work, these gatherings are here to support you.
For any event below, click on the link for more information. Some events require registration. You can find all of our upcoming events on the CAT+FD Calendar. If you want to learn about other ways to keep up with everything happening at CAT+FD, check out this post on the CAT Food Blog: CAT+FD Event Information, Served Up Your Way.
WEEKLY OPPORTUNITIES
Coffee & Chat, every Monday, 10:00-11:00: Faculty can spend some time with members of the CAT+FD staff in our Conference Room for refreshments and conversation.
Walking Club, every Tuesday & Thursday, 8:30-9:00: All members of the Xavier community are invited to gather outside the Fitness Center to get in some steps together.
Quarter of Quiet, every Wednesday, 2:00-2:15: Members of the Xavier community are welcome in the Chapel's Meditation Room for 15 minutes of unguided contemplation.
NOVEMBER OPPORTUNITIES
Fall Faculty Writing Group Lunch, November 03 at 11:00 AM, Mellon Seminar Room Each Monday, the Xavier Faculty Writing Group gathers in the Mellon Seminar Room to dedicate one hour of sustained writing. During this time, each member works on their individual writing project in silent fellowship with other group members. This gentle accountability serves as an effective means of motivating faculty to maintain progress on their scholarly work without feeling as if there are competing priorities that should take precedence.
Advanced Zoom Workshop: Breakout Rooms & Enhanced Features, November 05 at 2:00 PM, Mellon Seminar Room This hands-on workshop is designed to help participants master Zoom's advanced meeting tools. This session will cover essential techniques for creating more interactive and engaging virtual sessions, including how to effectively use breakout rooms to facilitate small group discussions and collaborative work. This workshop is limited to members of the Office of Student Affairs in the College of Pharmacy.
SERG (Science Education Research Group), November 05 at 3:30 PM, NCF 568 Join faculty from across disciplines for an informal discussion focused on teaching and learning. Each monthly SERG meeting provides an open space to share questions, concerns, and suggestions about pedagogy with colleagues in a supportive, multidisciplinary environment. Topics are participant-driven. Whether you're exploring new teaching methods, facing classroom challenges, or want to share successful strategies, all faculty are welcome. Registration is not required.
Faculty Portfolio Working Group, November 06 at 1:15 PM, Online Members of this year's Faculty Portfolio Working Group meet to discuss their monthly assignments and progress. This closed working group supports faculty in creating online portfolios that document the breadth of their academic work. Now in its third decade, the group evolved from the original 1994 Course Portfolio Working Group to its current focus on comprehensive faculty portfolios.
Fall Faculty Writing Group Lunch, November 10 at 11:00 AM, Mellon Seminar Room Each Monday, the Xavier Faculty Writing Group gathers in the Mellon Seminar Room to dedicate one hour of sustained writing. During this time, each member works on their individual writing project in silent fellowship with other group members. This gentle accountability serves as an effective means of motivating faculty to maintain progress on their scholarly work without feeling as if there are competing priorities that should take precedence.
Deep Dive: AI Drop-ins, November 11 at 1:15 PM, Mellon Seminar Room NOT another AI Roundtable! Unlike traditional workshops, this drop-in format is designed around your specific questions, challenges, and curiosities about AI. Come and go as your schedule allows during our two-hour window. Whether you have 20 minutes between classes or can stay for the full session, you'll find targeted support for your AI-related interests. This collaborative format allows for deeper, more personalized discussions than traditional workshop Q&As. Registration is preferred, but NOT required.
Part-time Faculty Brown Bag, November 11 at 3:00 PM, Online All part-time faculty are encouraged to attend this virtual meeting to discuss end-of-semester tasks and challenges.
Fall Faculty Writing Group Lunch, November 17 at 11:00 AM, Mellon Seminar Room Each Monday, the Xavier Faculty Writing Group gathers in the Mellon Seminar Room to dedicate one hour of sustained writing. During this time, each member works on their individual writing project in silent fellowship with other group members. This gentle accountability serves as an effective means of motivating faculty to maintain progress on their scholarly work without feeling as if there are competing priorities that should take precedence.
Fall Faculty Book Club, November 17 at 5:00 PM, Mellon Seminar Room The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development hosts an annual Fall Faculty Book Club. This professional development initiative brings together a small cohort of faculty to read and discuss a carefully selected book focused on teaching, learning, and higher education pedagogy. For our 18th year, we are reading The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI by Tricia Bertram Gallant and David A. Rettinger.
Faculty Portfolio Working Group, November 18 at 11:00 AM, Online Members of this year's Faculty Portfolio Working Group meet to discuss their monthly assignments and progress. This closed working group supports faculty in creating online portfolios that document the breadth of their academic work. Now in its third decade, the group evolved from the original 1994 Course Portfolio Working Group to its current focus on comprehensive faculty portfolios.
End-of-Semester Mindfulness Check-in, November 19 at 1:00 PM, CAT+FD Conference Room Do you have a regular practice of meditation, contemplation, or something else that feeds your soul? If not, would you like to cultivate one? Mindfulness supports our teaching and learning as university professionals. It also promotes the success and well-being of students, and it makes all of us more effective instruments of Xavier’s mission. Faculty, staff, and students are welcome.
New Faculty Brown Bag, November 20 at 12:15 PM, Mellon Seminar Room This year's cohort of of first-year faculty will meet to discuss successes and challenged during their first semester teaching at Xavier and will learn about faculty updates and Interfolio.
Fall Faculty Writing Group Lunch, November 24 at 11:00 AM, Mellon Seminar Room Each Monday, the Xavier Faculty Writing Group gathers in the Mellon Seminar Room to dedicate one hour of sustained writing. During this time, each member works on their individual writing project in silent fellowship with other group members. This gentle accountability serves as an effective means of motivating faculty to maintain progress on their scholarly work without feeling as if there are competing priorities that should take precedence.
OUTSIDE OPPORTUNITIES
CAT+FD is not a sponsor of any of the following. These links are provided to share additional professional development activities.
8th Annual Sparking Success Faculty Development Conference, Tulane University, January 7-8, 2026. Tulane University’s Center for Engaged Learning and Teaching (CELT) invites proposals for interactive breakout sessions for the 8th Annual Sparking Success to be held Thursday, January 8, 2026. Sparking Success encourages faculty, staff, and graduate and professional students to come together, build community, and find inspiration for enhancing our lives on campus.
AAC&U Conference on Learning and Student Success (CLASS 2026), Tucson, AZ, April 16-18, 2026.The theme for this year's AAC&U CLASS conference is "courageous care" in recognition "that transformative education emerges when institutions genuinely prioritize student and educator learning, well-being, belonging, and success." The conference takes place from April 16 to 18 and can be attended in person or online.
4th Annual Teaching and Learning with AI Conference, University of Central Florida, June 11-13, 2026. The call for proposals is now open for the 4th annual Teaching and Learning with AI: A Sharing Conference Between Educational Practitioners, hosted by the University of Central Florida. This in-person event will bring together instructors, higher education professionals, researchers, librarians, and policymakers to discuss best practices and the use of AI in classrooms and across campuses, colleges, and universities.
Brightspace D2L Academy. The D2L Academy is a version of Brightspace available to all members of the Brightspace Community where you'll find Premium (paid) content like Certificate and Subscription Training Courses, as well as FREE Courses, Downloads and Teaching Tools. The D2L Academy is also where you can connect with Brightspace Guided Training, and the Product Idea Exchange (PIE).
Every August, I get to experience one of the highlights of my role as Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development: welcoming our newest faculty members to Xavier. There's something energizing about our New Faculty Orientation (NFO), bringing together scholars from different disciplines, watching them discover what makes this university special, and seeing the connections start to form.
Two weeks ago, over two intensive days, our CAT+FD team, along with dedicated Xavier community members, had the privilege of watching 17 exceptional new colleagues begin their journey at our institution. These two days are about transformation, connection, and laying the groundwork for the innovative teaching and scholarship that will shape our students' futures.
From seasoned scholars embarking on new chapters to freshly minted Ph.Ds., each new faculty member brought their own spark of curiosity and expertise. Watching them connect with our existing community, ask thoughtful questions, and share their visions for their work here reminded me exactly why I love what we do at the Center.
But enough about the process. Let me introduce you to the 17 remarkable individuals who are now a part of the Xavier family:
Established in 1994, CAT+FD is one of the older centers for teaching and learning (CTL) in the country. This is perhaps not surprising considering Xavier's commitment to excellence in teaching. Over the coming year, we will be posting a variety of reflections about the evolution of CAT+FD on this blog.
A special logo for our trigintennial! Original by Jim Rose. Adapted by Bart Everson.
By now, everyone at Xavier knows that the university will be celebrating its centennial in 2025. Not everyone may realize that CAT+FD is currently celebrating its 30th anniversary. (I think it's a shame we've let a word like trigintennial fall out of common use.) Since this is my first year as director, I thought I'd use this space to reflect on how things have changed over the past 30 years.
Established in 1994, CAT+FD is one of the older centers for teaching and learning (CTL) in the country. This is perhaps not surprising considering Xavier's commitment to excellence in teaching. Over the coming year, we will be posting a variety of reflections about the evolution of CAT+FD on this blog. If you're interested in a deep dive into the history and evolution of CTLs in general, pick up a copy of Mary C. Wright's excellent Centers for Teaching and Learning: The New Landscape in Higher Education (2023, Johns Hopkins University Press).
The first edition of the CAT News Report. Click the image for a PDF of the newsletter.
CTLs came about, in part, through the recognition that while graduate programs were doing excellent work developing their students into expert scholars in their disciplines, they were not always doing a good job of developing their students into expert teachers. However, because of the timing, the earliest CTLs placed a lot of emphasis on what would eventually become know and educational technology, or EdTech. In the inaugural issue of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching News Report, Dr. Ann Barron, then interim director, explained that the the new Center was committed "to advancing the art of teaching — at ALL levels — in a technological age," an interesting and significant distinction. That issue includes an article about the first Kellogg Mini-grant awards, which supported faculty interested in revising one of their classes, and an article about using Apple's HyperCard to create "multimedia courseware".
The link between CTLs and technology should not be surprising. Consider the year CAT+FD began (for newer readers, CAT+FD was originally just CAT). 1994 was a particularly significant year in terms of publicly available technology. That year, Netscape Communications released Netscape Navigator, which would become the first widely used web browser; Sony released the PlayStation, which, now in its fifth generation, is still one of the most widely used gaming consoles; Sun Microsystems introduced the Java programming language, one of the most influential programming languages; and Kodak released its DC40 camera, one of the first consumer-level digital cameras. The world changed that year, and CTLs like CAT+FD stepped up to help faculty adapt to those changes.
The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development (CAT+FD) at Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA) is proud to announce that we have received the 2024 D2L Excellence Award for our work on #LearnEverywhereXULA (LEX) and #LEX Advanced. The D2L Excellence Award recognizes leaders, educators, and trainers who have used D2L Brightspace to help further the innovation, progress, and betterment of learning experiences in their organizations.
The Challenge: Advancing Faculty Expertise Through Instructional Continuity
We were faced with the challenge of preparing faculty for effective online instruction amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly because D2L Brightspace was new to us.
Our Solution: #LearnEverywhereXULA (LEX) and #LEX Advanced
To address this challenge, CAT+FD developed two innovative programs:
#LearnEverywhereXULA (LEX): This self-paced online course helps faculty members develop high-quality, well-designed courses in Brightspace. It is based on the eight General Standards for Higher Education set forth by Quality Matters. By completing the course, faculty gain the skills and knowledge they need to create effective online learning experiences for XULA students.
#LEX Advanced: This program goes beyond the basics, helping instructors explore advanced features in Brightspace. These features allow faculty to increase their presence in their courses, streamline workflows, and improve overall efficiency. Ultimately, this leads to more user-friendly, accessible, and effective online courses.
The Results: Increased Proficiency and Improved Courses
Thanks to #LEX and #LEX Advanced, XULA faculty have become more proficient in using Brightspace to deliver high-quality online instruction. This has led to increased use of the platform's tools and better alignment with Quality Matters standards.
A Note of Thanks
The CAT+FD team is grateful to D2L for recognizing our work and awarding us with the 2024 D2L Excellence Award. We would also like to acknowledge Drs. Jason S. Todd and Tiera S. Coston for their contributions and help in developing #LEX and #LEX Advanced.
For More Information
Xavier faculty who are interested can use this enrollment request form to request enrollment in the #LearnEverywhereXULA course.
Traditional testing relies on multiple choice, true/false, and written response type questions. In authentic assessments, students apply concepts to real world situations by completing meaningful task-based assessments. This type of assessment engages a variety of skills and effectively measures higher levels of learning than traditional assessment.
Authentic assessments are widely viewed as pedagogically superior, yet multiple-choice assessments are often preferable to instructors and students alike.
In an Inside Higher Ed opinion piece, Eric Loepp challenges instructors to rethink the premise that multiple-choice questions cannot meet the standards of authentic assessment. He argues that there are situations where higher-order multiple-choice questions can be used for assessment. If this has piqued your interest, you can read more in his “The Benefits of Higher-Order Multiple-Choice Tests” opinion piece for more information.
Image credit: Exam by Alberto G. licensed under CC BY 2.0
