The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has released the full agenda for the Digital Learning Summit 2026, a free, statewide virtual conference that may be of interest to UTA faculty and staff engaged in teaching, digital learning, and student success initiatives. The fourth annual summit will take place Tuesday, February 10, and Wednesday, February 11, 2026, bringing together educators and campus leaders from across Texas.
Below is the official announcement from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
The Division of Student Success and Institutional Partnerships at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is excited to announce the full program schedule for the fourth Digital Learning Summit. The virtual conference will be held on Tuesday, February 10, and Wednesday, February 11, 2026.
The agenda reveals two days of innovative sessions and collaborative opportunities aligned with our theme, The Power of Practice – Transforming Experience into Innovation. The conference centers on cultivating agile, innovation-driven approaches that support student success, timely completion of credentials of value, and seamless transitions into high-demand careers, advancing the goals of Building a Talent Strong Texas.
Registration is open for this free virtual event. Please share this announcement with faculty, librarians, instructional designers, administrators, digital learning staff, and other campus leaders.
New: Digital Course Content Accessibility Exception Form
UTA has launched the Digital Course Content Accessibility Exception Request (DCAREQ) for documenting course materials that are inaccessible and cannot be remediated without compromising instructional integrity.
Use the form when:
A specific item cannot meet WCAG 2.1 AA without altering learning objectives
You need to document inaccessible content and outline plans for future remediation
Qualifying examples:
Construction drawings or landscape paintings that must be analyzed visually.
Musical scores that must be read as notation.
Examples that do NOT qualify:
Decorative images or illustrative examples (infographics), which can be tagged appropriately.
Handwritten mathematical formulas, which can be remediated.
What you’ll submit on the linked form:
Description of the item and its instructional purpose
Whether the resource was created at UTA or by a vendor
Whether you expect to remediate or replace it
A link to your syllabus
A faculty commitment to coordinate accommodations with appropriate campus units
This page provides UTA faculty with essential guides and training materials to effectively use aPlus+ Attendance, a powerful tool designed to streamline attendance tracking and reporting within Canvas. Whether you’re new to Attendance+ or looking to enhance your workflow, you’ll find step-by-step videos, written guides, and best practices to help you navigate features such as manual and code-based attendance recording, QR code options, gradebook integration, and reporting. Explore the resources below to ensure a smooth and efficient experience for both instructors and students.
These resources are from a workshop hosted by the UTA
Please find below some helpful resources for our UTA Faculty on the aPlus+Attendance Tool:
Recording from Training in November, 2025 (Length: 46:40 minutes)
Dr. Aguilar brings a unique perspective to the classroom—one shaped by personal experience, community engagement, and a deep commitment to preparing students for an AI-driven world. In this Q&A, he shares insights on teaching AI literacy, mentoring the next generation of technical communicators, and why transparency is our first line of defense against digital threats.
Q1: Your recent research highlights the dangers of AI scams. How has your knowledge in this area shaped your approach to teaching on this topic?
My approach to teaching about AI scams is to be transparent. I was a victim of a scam, and so were some of my close friends and family. AI scams are everywhere. Chances are if you’re reading this, a scammer has used AI to try to get something from you: your information, phone numbers, passwords, email addresses, bank account information, etc. AI scams come in all shapes and sizes but, for the most part, scammers use AI to expedite the scamming processes so that scams happen at scale. They use chatbots to automate fake postings on social media or to send mass text messages, profiling AI to screen personal information and rate the susceptibility of a potential victim, and voiceover to mimic the voices of loved ones. Research has shown that whatever data we have on the impact of AI scams is just the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of AI scams go unreported because people feel ashamed. I want to change that. It’s empowering to know that there are others that fell victim to a scam. It’s even more empowering to know that together we can prevent others from harm. So, my teaching about AI is shaped by not only my experiences with AI scams but also my expertise in communication and information design. I believe that our first line of defense is each other, and the classroom is a good place to start.
Q2: You emphasize the role of technical writing in increasing AI literacy. Why is technical communication such a powerful tool in combating digital misinformation and scams?
Technical communication provides a skillset to think critically about the needs of people and how technology meets those needs. I train my students to be leaders in their workplace and community by being a resource for their peers and employers. I want my students to be the ones who catch something that feels off, whether it’s a phishing attempt that’s slipped through IT in an organization or if their grandmother receives a threatening voicemail that she must deposit Bitcoin at an ATM to retrieve her bank account information. Technical communicators help others take a breath and assess the situation.
Q3: You’ve talked about learning from your students. Can you share a time when a student insight reshaped your teaching approach?
I can’t tell you how much I learn from our students. We have really ambitious pupils at UTA, and I’ve had to learn to step back and let my students explore their interests. When I was a graduate research assistant at Penn State, I was accustomed to guiding my students through meticulous guidelines that helped them understand the importance of professional writing in whichever industry they want to join. However, now that I’m faculty, I can make my classes more complex, and I’ve found that the complexity requires less strict guidance, especially for upper-level students. For example, I had a student in my advanced technical and business writing course who had trouble with the guidelines I provided for a project. This student is an aspiring screenwriter, and, like many other creative students, he saw little overlap between screenwriting and technical writing. I tried to give strict guidelines on how to apply business writing in creative space, but it wasn’t until I asked the student to spend a class period exploring the technical processes of screenwriting that a lightbulb finally went off. He came back with a project about union guidelines, contracts, and schedule of minimums that all screenwriters need to know. The thing is—as he told me—screenwriters typically don’t learn about these technical processes until they are looking for a job, and by that time it’s sink or swim. But he got the opportunity to explore these forms of writing in a classroom environment, and his project was all the more rewarding because it was self-directed. I learned a lot from him.
Q4: You’ve developed a framework for teaching AI literacy. Could you share a bit about how this framework works in practice?
There is no one who is completely AI literate, but you can be more proficient in certain areas of AI than others. My framework of teaching AI literacy begins at the community level. There are many avenues to increasing AI literacy at the community level (I, for example, hold workshops at local libraries to help people learn about scams), but at a university, the classroom is often the most effective place. In line with other parts of my teaching philosophy, I encourage my students to discuss their own experiences with AI. You’d be surprised just how much they know, but, because there is a stigma about AI use in higher ed, many students feel ashamed that they use AI. I see a patchwork of AI literacy among my students. Some are really good at prompt engineering, others at task management or project brainstorming, and others that have yet to adopt AI into their workflow for ethical or personal reasons. Often, these AI-adverse students are really good at pointing out the inconsistencies with AI in art and media. And then there’s me, a professor who studies AI scams, with knowledge on how AI scams work. My job is to stitch together this patchwork to get students to understand that we need each other if we are to navigate the age of AI. Then, I tell my students to go share that knowledge with their communities, and the patchwork hopefully builds a robust literacy slowly but surely.
Q5: You have an “Unrestricted Use of GenAI” policy in your syllabus. What does that mean for teaching and learning in your classes?
I don’t police my student’s use of AI for a number of reasons. I teach technical writing, which is an applied field in the humanities. My courses are designed for my students to self-direct each project according to their own aspirations, interests, and career goals. I have classes where a future lawyer will work through the same assignments as a future doctor, screenwriter, or data analyst. Each student brings themself into the very architecture of my assignments, and it’s here where I think AI has a serious limitation. AI can’t think for you. You can think with AI. It can help you brainstorm or even format and create the genre for an assignment (like a memo or a grant proposal). However, because my assignments are so self-involved, my students quickly realize that an AI can’t reproduce a project that reflects human desires, wants, and needs. Students will have to work with AI to create a project that can be used in the real world where real people communicate with each other to solve real problems. I don’t care whether my students use AI or not. I care if they invest in their own success, and AI can’t produce projects that do that kind of work without serious investment from the student.
Q6: How do you mentor students who are interested in connecting technical communication with ethics or advocacy?
I mentor by having my students critically align their personal interests and experiences with research in technical communication. My approach to ethics and advocacy is to localize those terms in good faith. I had a chapter published in The Routledge Handbook of Ethics in Technical and Professional Communication, this huge book that covers dozens of ethical approaches to the field. My chapter was on Chicano ethics, and I argued that there really is no such thing as a Chicano ethics, but local Chicano communities have built their own approaches that can inform technical communication scholarship. My graduate students respond well to this approach. I have pupils from all over the world—Kenya, Nepal, Canada, US Pacific Islands, you name it—and each one sees the world differently. I’m not an expert in what ethical technical writing looks like in their local contexts, but I can help them learn to articulate the ethics that recognize in research and writing. My grad students have a good track record of publications and conference presentations, and they have built their ethical frameworks with other scholars from their homes.
Q7: In a field that changes rapidly, how do you keep your teaching and research responsive to new technologies?
There’s an easy answer to keeping curricula and research relevant in a changing technological landscape, but the answer is hard to apply. Technical communication is a field in the humanities that centers teaching and research in rhetoric. I always tell my students that while AI is seemingly all we can talk about today, there will eventually be a new technological trend. Does that mean we throw out all what we know about AI when it fades into the background? My answer is no. To be valued members of an organization or society, we must learn to recognize that technological changes occur on the shoulders of past technological moments. I’ll give an example from my article about AI scams. In that piece, I argue that AI scams didn’t occur in a vacuum. Instead, scammers used decades of knowledge to train AI on how to scam specific people. For example, multi-level marketing (MLM) scammers target Latino communities more so than others, and AI scammers use MLM data to scale the scams in ways not possible with just human scammers alone. The same is true with any other technology. In instance, my PhD advisor at Penn State wrote a book in the early 2000s called Multiliteracies for a Digital Age, a book that future-proofed working with digital technologies by requiring users to think rhetorically about computers. Even 20 years later, when computers advanced beyond what was imaginable in 2004, that book is still used to teach people to see technological changes are evolutions, not revolutions, of one another. So, to answer the questions, I teach my students to look at the technological landscape as a living text with various stakeholders that weave in and out. Their job is to always read that text rhetorically and to never be captured by the latest trend. I want our students to be the first persons people think of when a new technology blindsides academia and industry like AI did a few years ago.
Q8: What keeps you motivated and inspired in your work at UTA?
The students keep me motivated and inspired. I can’t describe the privilege it is to work with the brightest minds our state has to offer. My classes have such a breadth of interests that range from the hard sciences to the arts. I feel their passion and optimism in each one of our class discussions and in each project. I’ve quickly learned that our students are ready for any challenge. They just need the right mentor to show them how to do the work. There is no better feeling than seeing that little light bulb go off when a student takes something I said in lecture or in my feedback. I know that they’ll come back with an amazing application to the idea I helped spark.
Many thanks to Dr. Aguilar for sharing his expertise with CRTLE and UTA!
About Dr. Gabriel Aguilar: Dr. Gabriel Aguilar is an Assistant Professor of Technical and Professional Writing at the University of Texas at Arlington. He specializes in communication in the borderlands and is an expert in public health and technical communication. His upcoming book, Humanitarian Health Communication, investigates the professional communication and design thinking of humanitarians at nonprofits. He also teaches classes at the undergraduate and graduate level that prepare students for their future workplace.
Step into an interactive space where faculty can explore digital tools and learn practical strategies for integrating technology into their teaching.
Starting January 2026, participate in five months of hands-on sessions featuring technology “recipes” you can practice and take back to your courses.
When & Where
Location: Trinity Hall, OIT Helpdesk, first-floor lobby, with breakout sessions in Rooms 112 and 105
Time: 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM
Session Length: 30 minutes each, with additional time available for practice and exploration as needed
January 2026 Topics
January 15th — Level-Up Your Career Portfolio Assignments with Adobe Express
Duration: 30 minutes
Empower your students to present their academic and professional achievements with confidence using Adobe Express (free to faculty and students at UTA). In this faculty-focused hands-on workshop, you’ll explore how to incorporate Adobe Express into portfolio-based assignments that encourage creativity, multimodal communication, and real-world skill building.
Build AI literacy for you and your students and learn strategies for guiding students through the design process, review ready-to-use templates, and leave with adaptable assignment ideas you can bring directly into your courses. Bring your own device (laptop, iPad, mobile device). Access Adobe Express before the workshop.
What to bring: Your own device (laptop, iPad, mobile device)
January 22nd — Supercharge Your Syllabus: Multimodal Design in Adobe Express
Duration: 30 minutes
Reimagine your syllabus as an engaging, accessible gateway into your course. This session introduces faculty to multimodal syllabus design using Adobe Express, offering tools and approaches to visually highlight key information, enhance clarity, and support diverse learners.
You’ll experiment with templates, explore best practices for visual communication in teaching materials, and walk away with a refreshed syllabus ready to energize your students from day one. Access Adobe Express before the workshop.
What to bring: Your own device (laptop, iPad, mobile device)
CRTLE + Research Faculty Facilitators – IRB Mentor Fellowship
The Center for Research on Teaching and Learning Excellence (CRTLE) and the Office of Regulatory Services (ORS) invite applications for two Fellowship positions as part of a new, joint IRB Mentoring Initiative. This new role is designed specifically to enhance faculty development in mentoring by supporting students conducting human subjects research by guiding them through the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process with clarity, empathy, and consistency.
Duration: 1 semester (Fall and Spring), eligible for renewal
Weekly Time Commitment: 3-4 hours per week
Stipend: $2,500 per semester [paid at the end of the semester]
Start Date: January 26, 2025
Proposal Due: January 15, 2025 (5:00 pm).
Position Overview
IRB Mentor Fellows will provide training and mentorship to students, helping them navigate IRB requirements and prepare high-quality protocol submissions. This initiative promotes excellence in faculty–student engagement and strengthens a culture of ethical, research-informed teaching across the university.
Serving as an IRB Mentor requires a time commitment of approximately 4 hours per week, which includes time reviewing student IRB applications, meeting with students for mentoring sessions, and creating/conducting outreach. Pending expected continued funding and as allowable by UTA human resources, IRB Mentor Fellows receive a stipend of $2,500 per semester, with distribution at the end of each semester, contingent on completion of the key expectations as listed below.
Mentors will serve a one-semester term, eligible for renewal. The start date for this program will be January 2026.
Key Expectations
Collaborative Engagement
Partner with CRTLE and ORS to model ethical mentoring practices and responsible conduct of research as well as provide guided coaching and targeted feedback to students on IRB submissions. Contribute to a university-wide culture of research integrity and student success. Communicating with CRTLE and ORS throughout the fellowship is a required activity to receive the stipend.
Mentorship Training & Support
Receive structured training and resources in mentoring best practices, virtual mentoring, and IRB procedures from CRTLE and ORS to effectively guide students through the IRB process. Attending the IRB training at the beginning of the fellowship (scheduled around the availability of IRB Mentor Fellows and IRB staff) is required to receive the stipend.
Office Hours & Technology-Enhanced Mentoring
Maintain and communicate flexible office hours for student consultations (in-person and virtual). Explore digital tools and strategies (e.g., Teams, Bookings, shared documents, virtual whiteboards) to support individualized, accessible, and efficient student mentoring experiences. Learn to use the UTA’s Microsoft Bookings tool to simplify scheduling student consultation appointment, manage availability, and minimize back-and-forth communication. Using the Bookings tool and holding office hours are required activities to receive the stipend. Read here for more on the more recent Bookings with Me tools. Read here for more on the Microsoft Bookings tool and how to request setup.
Targeted Outreach
Conduct virtual-only or blended/hybrid workshops and training sessions tailored for students on the IRB and preparation of high-quality protocol applications. Conducting at least one workshop during the semester is a required activity to receive the stipend. CRTLE can assist with technology and room bookings for these outreach events as well as support broad marketing and promotion of events.
Feedback
IRB Mentor Fellows will contribute one blog post (~700-1000 words) per term for the Pedagogy Next blog/website. This can also include an optional video. Contributing at least one blog post during the semester is a required activity to receive the stipend.
Professional Development
Gain recognition as an IRB Mentor Fellow and build skills in strategic partnerships, virtual engagement, advising, design and implementation of professional development, and the facilitation of research ethics processes and conversations. A written reflection on your experience, lessons learned, highlights of success, and recommendations for the future is required to receive the stipend.
Qualifications
Current full-time faculty member at UT Arlington committed to supporting student research and fostering ethical research practices.
Strong interest in improving student learning outcomes through innovative approaches and mentoring
Prior experience conducting human subject research and submitting IRB applications (at UTA) is required.
Technical skills, including familiarity with Mentis (IRB submission system), OneDrive, Adobe, and Microsoft Word.
Strong communication and presentation skills with the ability to work collaboratively.
Experience with mentoring and interest in virtual engagement.
Application Process
To apply, submit the following by January 15, 2025 to regulatoryservices@uta.edu. Use the following subject line in your email: Application: IRB Mentor Fellowship.
Detailed cover letter with your background related to human subject research and the IRB process, why you want to be an IRB Mentor, experience with CRTLE or faculty professional development related to teaching or mentorship, and ideas you would bring to the role.
Include a formal letter of support from your department chair, indicating that they are aware of the time demands of being an IRB Mentor Fellow.
Include a second letter from another colleague who can support your qualifications to be an IRB Mentor, including the criteria listed here.
What makes a great faculty mentor of students at The University of Texas at Arlington?
The Faculty Spotlight series showcases excellence in faculty teaching and mentoring. This post features Dr. Dereje Agonafer, Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at UT Arlington, and a Member of the National Academy of Engineering. Additional accolades include:
ASME Honorary Member, ASME and NAI Life Fellow, AAAS Fellow
Director, Center for Chip-to-Chiller Integration for AI Data Centers (C³I-AIDC)
Site Director, NSF IUCRC Center in Energy Efficient Systems
Director, Electronics, MEMS & Nanoelectronics Systems Packaging Center
For Dr. Dereje Agonafer’s students (Department of Mechanical Engineering), exceptional mentoring means someone who creates opportunity, instills confidence, and celebrates growth for students.
What to Know about Dr. Agonafer’s Exceptional Faculty Mentoring of UT Arlington students:
Mentoring Graduate Students: He has a university record for graduating 259 graduate students since joining UTA in 1999, including 42 PhDs. He is dedicated to training the next generation of engineers.
Active and Current Advising: He is currently advising a large cohort of students: 17 PhDs and 2 MS students, indicating sustained and active commitment to mentorship.
Career Placement and Impact: His students secure positions and make significant contributions in top-tier industry companies like NVIDIA,Intel, Microsoft, META, Google, Tesla, and GlobalFoundries; his mentorship and team approach directly leads to successful professional careers.
McNair Scholar Mentorship: He served as a McNair Scholar Mentor in both 2003 and 2004, indicating a commitment to mentoring underrepresented students in preparation for doctoral studies.
Research-Centric Training: His mentoring is deeply integrated with research through two major centers he directs: the NSF IUCRC in Energy Efficient Systems and the Electronics, MEMS and Nanoelectronics Systems Packaging Center. His latest initiative is Director, Center for Chip-to-Chiller Integration for AI Data Centers (C³I-AIDC), where major companies will participate in an initiative to address AI date centers requirement – chip to chiller. The new center will be 9600 sq ft with 1700 ton chiller and potentially 8MW of power. It will be anchored by two rows of 16 racks each provided by NVIDIA – which will be at the heart of all the research.
This gives students direct experience with multi-million dollar funded, industry-collaborative projects.
Direct Industry Collaboration: His students benefit from his deep industry connections (e.g., his 15-year career at IBM) and corporate research partnerships (like NVIDIA, Intel, Microsoft, META, Google, and TI), providing real-world problems, large equipment donations, and valuable professional networking opportunities.
Patent and Innovation Focus: Students have been involved in innovative work resulting in patents, such as the active cooling method developed by one of his PhD students, who is now a CEO of a company.
Empowering Students Through Trust and Real Experience
Dr. Agonafer’s mentoring philosophy begins with a simple belief: students learn best when they are trusted with real responsibility.
From leading hands-on research in state-of-the-art facilities to supporting professional networking, he ensures that every graduate student is challenged, supported, and empowered to take the lead. Whether in the lab or out in the field, students gain confidence because he gives them space to innovate and learn as emerging experts—not just trainees.
Given that, my graduate students travel extensively to conferences and present papers as well as publish papers. I tell them that looking for a job and school work are parallel processes—you don’t wait until you graduate to look for a job. I also encourage my graduate students to do internships, as it will usually lead to a job.
Many of Dr. Agonafer’s mentees step directly into high-impact and high-profile industry positions. Five PhD graduates have joined NVIDIA, a testament to the career-ready skills they developed under his guidance. He encourages students to work on real-world systems in real-time, offering mentorship that blends technical growth with professional readiness:
Guidance on how to communicate research to broad audiences
Encouragement to collaborate with industry engineers and partners
Support in navigating the transition from student to colleague
Mentoring Through Visibility and Advocacy
Dr. Agonafer actively champions his students by celebrating their successes publicly and helping them gain recognition for their contributions. Whether presenting at conferences, engaging in industry collaborations with partners like NVIDIA and Trane, or joining global research events, students feel seen and valued.
He uses his platforms—including LinkedIn and professional networks—to uplift student achievements so they are noticed by future collaborators and employers. Through his advocacy, doors open.
Building a Community of Support
His students often describe his lab not only as a workspace, but as a community:
A place where questions are welcomed
A culture rooted in respect and collaboration
A shared mission to grow and support one another
He builds mentorship networks that extend long after graduation, creating lifelong professional connections and supportive alumni relationships.
A Faculty Mentor Who Invests Time and Energy into UTA Students
President Cowley Visit of NH 115 Liquid Cooled Data Center with Dwayne Kalma of NVIDIA and PhD Students–April 4, 2023
His mentorship is grounded in advocacy and belief in every student who walks into his lab.
Celebrating Dr. Agonaferas an Educator and Mentor at UTA
We at CRTLE UTA are proud to spotlight and showcase Dr. Agonafer as a mentor and educator who places students at the heart of his mission. As a scholar and mentor at UT Arlington, he is someone who leads not through accolades but through unwavering dedication to helping others thrive.
Thank you so much, Dr. Agonafer, for the lives and careers you continue to shape.
You show us what impactful mentorship looks like at UTA and beyond.
*Note: This blog post was co-written with AI (ChatGPT) and CRTLE.
Links:
LinkedIn. Dr. Agonafer is prolific on LinkedIn and often shares updates on his student’s success.
This post was initially summarized by AI (Microsoft CoPilot) and then revised and rewritten by Dr. Laurel Stvan.
How can a familiar website like Wikipedia become a powerful engine for research, collaboration, and public scholarship in our courses? That question guided November’s Faculty Voices session, From Reader to Writer: How Wikipedia Editing Transforms the Classroom, held on November 19, 2025.
Hosted by CRTLE, the session was led by Dr. Laurel Stvan from Linguistics and TESOL and featured panelists and experienced educators Dr. Alicia Rueda-Acedo from Modern Languages and Dr. Christy Spivey from Economics. These veteran faculty members shared how course-based Wikipedia editing projects transform students from passive readers into active contributors to an ongoing collection of public, digitally shared knowledge.
Setting the Stage: Why Wikipedia Belongs in the Classroom
Dr. Laurel Stvan opened the panel by reframing Wikipedia as a dynamic collaborative research space rather than just of source of pages to read. And suggested that rather than being a place that they should avoid citing, it can be a resource that students and teachers can help shape. As ubiquitous as it is, Wikipedia still has uneven coverage, with pages that can be quite robust in some areas but sparse in others. This creates opportunities for instructors and students to fill the knowledge gaps with their own expertise. Using their access to the UTA Library’s resources and guidance from faculty experts, students can expand stubs of articles, translate materials from other languages, and even create new pages—which lets them jointly create a positive public impact.
She also introduced key areas of support that make this work manageable:
Wiki Education (free support for instructors): https://wikiedu.org/teach-with-wikipedia/
These resources help faculty design assignments that build research, writing, and digital literacy in meaningful, public-facing ways.
Medical Translation and Rare Diseases: A Case Study in Spanish
Next, Dr. Alicia Rueda-Acedo shared a compelling project from her Translation in Medical Settings course, where students translated English-language articles on rare diseases into Spanish. With an estimated 300 million people worldwide affected by rare diseases—and limited information available in many languages—her students’ work directly expands access to life-changing medical knowledge.
She used a structured, project-based workflow that mirrors professional translation:
Team roles: translator, terminologist, project manager
Careful quality control: only polished drafts are published to Wikipedia
A key innovation was the guided and intentional use of AI tools. Students compared translations produced by DeepL, ChatGPT, and Google Translate, evaluating each for accuracy, consistency, cultural nuance, and register. They concluded that while AI can accelerate work, human editing remains essential, especially for sensitive medical content. This emphasized the translator’s need for HITL: Humans-in-the-Loop.
Economics, Public Knowledge, and Student Empowerment
The third speaker, Dr. Christy Spivey, described how she has incorporated Wikipedia assignments across several Economics courses, including Economic Data Analysis, Human Resource Economics, and Healthcare in the Pandemic. She suggested that Wikipedia editing would typically account for 15–20% of the course grade and that instructors could set it up to span from six to twelve weeks, giving students time to research and revise carefully.
Her students move through a clear sequence:
Identify a topic connected to course content
Use Wiki Edu’s article finder to locate pages needing improvement
Conduct a literature review using UTA library databases
Draft revisions, complete peer reviews, and publish high-quality edits
Along the way, they complete Wiki Edu training modules on neutral writing, sourcing standards, and avoiding plagiarism. Spivey’s students have edited nearly sixty articles, created seven new ones, and added more than 500 references to Wikipedia articles. Quotes from their reflections showed an increased respect for evidence-based writing and a strengthened sense of responsibility toward the larger public of readers.
Addressing the Practical Questions
The panel addressed common concerns about group work, emphasizing that Wikipedia projects provide built-in transparency. Wiki Edu’s dashboard displays each student’s exact contributions—paragraphs, citations, formatting changes, and more—making assessment clear and fair. Faculty also use peer evaluations, assigned roles to group members, and assigned self-reflections to help ensure accountability.
Interestingly, students often enjoy Wikipedia-based group work more than traditional group projects. Because they are learning a new editing ecosystem together, teams naturally share knowledge and rely on one another’s strengths. They also recognize that their writing will live on a public platform, so this visibility increases motivation and care. Published articles remain accessible long after the semester ends, giving students an opportunity to revisit and update their contributions and to have other people build on their work.
Questions from the audience also explored how Wikipedia compares with other forms of classroom OER and how this student editing work also qualifies as experiential learning.
Continuing the Conversation
If you are interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course, Wiki Education offers one-on-one support, ready-made training modules, and customizable dashboards. Get started here:
For broader support with integrating experiential learning or open education initiatives into your course(s), contact UTA Libraries or reach out to CRTLE at CRTLE@uta.edu.
Three to Thrive: Small Changes. Big Impact. Three easy-to-implement teaching practices to improve the student experience. These tips are from the UT Arlington Student Experience Project, a group of dedicated faculty seeking to provding a supportive learning environment for students. Check out their tips below!
As the semester winds down, many students start to question whether they can still improve, catch up, or turn things around. This is exactly where The Power of Yet becomes transformative. When students shift from “I can’t do this” to “I can’t do this yet,” they re-open the door to effort, strategy, and growth—especially during the crucial final weeks.
For more information about SEP, visit our website page.
Welcoming Environment: Reassure Students That It’s Not Too Late
End-of-semester fatigue can make students feel like improvement is out of reach. A brief moment of reassurance can help them re-engage.
Try this:
Open class with: “What’s one thing you’re still working on understanding or something you just don’t get yet?”
Acknowledge the crunch openly: “This point in the semester is hard. Confusion is normal right now, and there is still time to make meaningful progress.”
Highlight campus resources that can support a strong finish such as Knack tutoring, office hours, review sessions, writing center, etc.
Why it works: Students feel seen, supported, and reminded that they’re not behind—they’re still in progress.
Growth Mindset in Action: Use “Yet” to Reframe Late-Semester Doubt
Students often decide they’re “just not good” at a topic after a tough exam or assignment. Reinforcing “yet” gives them permission to keep trying.
Try this: Share end-of-semester reframes such as:
“I haven’t mastered this unit yet, but I can improve before the final.”
“I’m not satisfied with my last exam yet, so I’m going to revisit my notes and practice examples.”
“My study strategies aren’t working yet, but I’m going to keep trying.”
Why it works: It turns doubt into direction and helps students claim the remaining weeks as an opportunity for growth rather than an expiration date on success.
Wise Feedback:Give Forward-Facing Guidance for the Final Stretch
Students finishing the semester need actionable, focused feedback—not generic encouragement.
Try this:
When returning an assignment or sending a class-wide message, use this framework: “Here’s where you are → Here’s what you can still accomplish → Here’s your next step.”
Use “yet” directly in feedback: “Your understanding of this process isn’t consistent yet, but here’s the part you’re doing well, and here’s the exact piece to practice next.”
Provide exam wrappers or short checklists that help students translate feedback into a plan for the remaining weeks.
Why it works: Students walk away with a clear path forward—one that feels achievable rather than overwhelming.
How can educators move beyond AI policy discussions to truly integrate these tools in ways that enhance learning, uphold ethics, and prepare students for an evolving workforce? That question anchored the AI Course Redesign Institute, held on October 31, 2025, in Trinity Hall 104 and online via Microsoft Teams. Organized by CRTLE, the full-day institute brought together faculty from across UTA for an energizing, hands-on exploration of responsible and practical AI integration.
Setting the Stage
Dr. Peggy Semingson opened the session by framing the institute around alignment, ethics, and action. Participants received AI teaching checklists, links to UTA’s official AI guidelines, and a collaborative Teams workspace stocked with templates and resources. The message was clear: AI is here, but intentional design—not novelty—must guide its use.
Career Readiness in the Age of AI
Nikki Dickens from the Career Center highlighted how employers now expect graduates to demonstrate not just technical literacy but also ethical and critical thinking skills in AI-mediated workplaces. She shared resources for crafting AI-aware résumés, preparing for interviews that include AI-based assessment tools, and leveraging platforms like Copilot and Adobe Express responsibly. Dickens encouraged faculty to embed these professional competencies directly into assignments, emphasizing authenticity over automation.
Next, Dr. Amy Hodges from the Department of English presented her “Responsible AI and the Future of Work” course model. Her approach reframes AI not as a writing shortcut but as a catalyst for higher-order thinking. Students engage in structured reflection on intellectual property, collaboration, and transparency while maintaining human authorship. Hodges urged faculty to rethink assessment design—retaining rigorous writing expectations but shifting the focus from output to process and reasoning.
Kaya Erdoğan introduced participants to Teachable Machine, a no-code tool for creating quick image and sound classification models. Through playful demonstrations, Erdoğan showed how faculty can use small-scale machine-learning projects to spark curiosity, introduce bias detection, and discuss the ethics of data labeling and accuracy. The activity reminded everyone that understanding AI begins with experimentation, not expertise.
In a session bridging art, design, and computation, Sharmeen Yousif from the College of Architecture, Planning and Public Affairs (KAPPA) shared how architecture students use generative tools such as diffusion models and GANs to explore design alternatives while measuring real-world performance—like daylight simulations and material sustainability. Her projects illustrated how AI can augment creative thinking while grounding innovation in verifiable outcomes.
Lunch Keynote: “Bubbles and Slop”
Pete Smith delivered a provocative keynote titled “Bubbles and Slop.” He examined the twin challenges of AI hype and data pollution—warning against both over-investment and uncritical adoption. Smith encouraged faculty to view AI through a dual lens: optimism balanced with skepticism. His core message resonated throughout the day—universities must help students navigate a landscape crowded with both promise and misinformation.
OIT Demonstration: Campus AI Assistants
The afternoon concluded with Lee Pierce and Mei from OIT, who offered a first look at UTA’s experimental AI assistants and course bots. These “role-aware” agents—dubbed Nebula One—can act as tutors or guided experts, prompting students to think before revealing answers. The presenters cautioned against reliance on AI-detectors, advocating instead for transparent student–instructor dialogue and evidence of authentic work through drafts, prompts, and reflection.
Key Takeaways
Across all sessions, a few consistent principles emerged. Faculty were encouraged to start small—perhaps by redesigning a single assignment—and to clarify expectations through assignment-level AI policies. Ethics and transparency are not add-ons but essential learning outcomes. An authentic assessment that values process over product reduces both academic integrity concerns and over-dependence on detection software. And finally, collaboration—with colleagues, students, and emerging AI tools—remains the most powerful way to experiment, reflect, and refine.
Practical Next Steps
Participants left the institute with a toolkit of ready-to-use templates, including a “policy ladder” detailing allowed, limited, and prohibited AI uses; sample rubrics emphasizing process evidence; and model assignments such as an AI ethics mini-essay, an ATS-aware résumé sprint, and a collaboration diary for tracking prompt logs and reflections. Each example reinforces the broader goal: designing learning experiences where AI supports creativity, analysis, and professional growth rather than replacing them.
Continuing the Conversation
For additional guidance and examples, see the Career Readiness Packet, which includes AI prompts and resources for exploring careers, writing application materials, and preparing students for the evolving workforce. This resource complements the AI Course Redesign Institute’s focus on aligning learning, ethics, and employability—helping faculty connect classroom innovation with real-world career readiness.
