Classroom & Webinar Courses

Course Description: The Microcredentials Summer Institute is a faculty development initiative designed to support the intentional integration of microcredentials into course and curriculum design. Over five live sessions, a cohort of faculty members will learn to align microcredentials with student learning outcomes, enhance career readiness, and strengthen curricular relevance. Participants will design assignments, communication strategies, and assessments to incorporate microcredentials into their Fall 2025 courses. Insights and materials from the Institute will contribute to UTSA’s self-paced course Navigating Microcredentials: Design and Teaching Strategies and support long-term instructional innovation across colleges.

Time Commitment
Participants are expected to commit to:
- Five live synchronous sessions held from July 8 to August 22, 2025. ***The first live synchronous session will be July 8th at 10:00am. The other four sessions will be scheduled with participant input.
- Complete the course development activities between sessions, including integrating microcredentials into Fall 2025 courses.
- Implement the microcredential-enhanced course and basic data collection in collaboration during the Fall 202 semester.

Course Completion Requirements
To successfully complete the Institute, faculty must:
- Attend at least 3 of the 5 live sessions.
- Submit key deliverables, including: a) A revised course outline or syllabus with embedded microcredential(s); b) One microcredential-aligned assignment or project; c) A lesson plan and communication strategy; d) Collect and share course implementation data (qualitative or quantitative) during the Fall 2025 semester; e) Participate in at least one reflective activity to contribute insights to UTSA’s self-paced course Navigating Microcredentials: Design and Teaching Strategies.

Incentives/Certifications upon Completion
Participants who meet the completion requirements will receive a $1,000 stipend (funded by the STRADA Beyond Completion Challenge grant). Faculty will also receive a Certificate of Completion.

Opportunities for continued engagement include co-authoring a blog post, presenting at a teaching symposium, or contributing to future OER development.

Creating an effective learning environment for all is important to us. To request an accommodation, please email DigitalAccessibility@utsa.edu one week prior to your scheduled training.

Course Objectives: By attending this course, participants will be able to:
1. Align microcredentials with course and program learning outcomes to enhance student engagement, skill development, and career readiness.
2. Design course components (e.g., assignments, assessments, lesson plans) that intentionally integrate selected microcredentials.
3. Develop a communication and engagement strategy to help students understand the value of microcredentials and motivate completion.
4. Identify data collection methods that assess the effectiveness of microcredentials on student outcomes.
5. Contribute to a shared knowledge base by creating artifacts and reflections for inclusion in UTSA’s self-paced course Navigating Microcredentials: Design and Teaching Strategies.

Target Audience: Faculty

Enrollment Type: Open (Anyone can enroll)

Six Faculty Champions share their teaching practices using AI in their classes. This panel provides perspectives from Humanities and Social Science professors on the pros and cons of AI in pedagogy.

Creating an effective learning environment for all is important to us. To request an accommodation, please email DigitalAccessibility@utsa.edu one week prior to your scheduled training.

Join us for this hands-on webinar, where you'll learn how to evaluate and improve the accessibility of your PDFs! We'll introduce you to essential tools and resources, giving you the confidence to create documents that everyone can access. Plus, take advantage of follow-up office hours to get personalized support and answers to any lingering questions.

Creating an effective learning environment for all is important to us. To request an accommodation, please email DigitalAccessibility@utsa.edu one week prior to your scheduled training.

Did you know scanned PDFs are challenging for many users to read and limit engagement? Do you have Word documents and PowerPoints that need to be converted to PDF? In this interactive training, we’ll cover two key topics in PDF accessibility: working with scanned PDFs and converting files accessibly. Learn to save PDFs correctly, identify scanned PDFs, and use Adobe Acrobat tools to make files searchable, editable, and exportable for a better user experience. Note: This is a hands-on training, so bring your (suspected) scanned PDFs to apply the skills you’ll learn!

Elevate your presentations with accessibility in mind! This training will teach you how to design visually appealing slides that meet accessibility standards while leveraging built-in tools to ensure everyone can fully engage with your content. Let’s make your presentations shine for all audiences and create an effective learning environment for everyone. Note: This is a working training. We hope you will bring a few PowerPoint files to follow along as we go through this process. Learners will be able to design PowerPoint presentations that adhere to accessibility standards.

Exploring creative and effective writing assignments that engage students and enhance their critical thinking and communication skills. Join us for this faculty panel discussion for HCAP faculty.

An interactive Q&A session facilitated by Eric Silva and Diana Amis focused on best practices for Simple Syllabus, aimed at streamlining course management and enhancing student engagement. Simple Syllabus integrates with Canvas, enabling instructors to create, duplicate, and deploy syllabi quickly and easily. (Target Audience HCAP Faculty).

Participants will get an overview of this UTSA standardized student response system on how to get started using it in their classroom and in Canvas. The iClicker 6.0 Cloud Platform is deployed in all general academic classrooms. Website resources will be shared for best practices for instructors and how to instruct students on creating their iClicker account. The course will also will provide some general pedagogical approaches while implementing the iClicker cloud platform in your class.

Creating an accessible learning environment is important to us. To request an accommodation, please email DigitalAccessibility@utsa.edu one week prior to your scheduled training.

Labster is an advanced virtual lab simulation tool that allows students to perform experiments and practice laboratory skills. Learn how Labster can be used with all course modalities for various types of assignments, including pre-labs and case studies. Join us for our introductory session to learn more about using an interactive lab tool to help keep your students engaged.

In this workshop, faculty will learn about Labster's award-winning virtual lab catalog with simulations in Biology, Chemistry, and more. Faculty will additionally practice hands-on experience exploring the Labster resource page that allows faculty to locate specific objectives to implement into their course. The Labster's resources page has everything faculty will need to know, including the blog, podcast, news, course packages, faculty support materials, and more.

TutorMe is a tool available to the UTSA community through Blackboard courses. Join us for this workshop to learn how easy it is for instructors to enable to TutorMe and for students to navigate this service. Enabling TutorMe in your courses increases student access to free tutoring services. Come to this workshop ready to see the capabilities of TutorMe and ask any questions you may have.