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.
