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  The Power of Connection: Fostering a Safe and Supportive Classroom

  Michelle A. Arroyo

  4-25-2025

  One of the most effective teaching practices is building strong relationships with students and creating a safe, supportive classroom environment. When students feel valued, respected, and comfortable, they are more likely to engage in learning, take risks, and persist through challenges. In my classroom, I prioritize getting to know my students personally, establishing consistent expectations, and fostering a culture where mistakes are seen as opportunities for growth. By emphasizing trust, encouragement, and open communication, I create a space where students feel safe to ask questions without fear, advocate for themselves, and develop confidence in their abilities. This approach is particularly crucial for students who struggle with self-doubt or fear of failure. When students believe their voices matter and that they are supported, they are more likely to try harder, challenge themselves, and reach their full potential.

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  Teaching With Roleplaying Games

  Bryan Blankfield

  4-25-2025

  Roleplaying Games (RPG) offer a uniquely dynamic teaching practice. Educational RPGs invite students to roleplay as historical figures or character types navigating complex scenarios. My students have roleplayed as golden age hip hop artists, presidential campaign teams, and citizens debating for/against Maya Lin’s proposed Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1980. Any scenario is possible! The length of these games can span from one class period to an entire semester. It just depends on your objectives.

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  Enhancing Engagement and Accessibility With AI, Dynamic Camera, & Multi-Device Integration

  Jorge Fonseca Cacho and Benjamin Cisneros

  4-25-2025

  One of the biggest challenges in both in-person and remote learning is maintaining student engagement. Traditional lecture recording setups rely on static cameras, keeping the instructor locked in one position. However, research shows that students are more engaged when instructors move naturally throughout the room, using gestures, proximity, and dynamic body language to reinforce key concepts. Our solution integrates the Insta360 Link AI-powered facial tracking camera, which autonomously follows the instructor's movement across the classroom. This allows for a more natural, interactive teaching experience where students remain visually and cognitively engaged. Paired with a Laptop for presentations, an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil Pro as an interactive whiteboard, along with the YoloBox Ultra streaming system, this setup creates a dynamic, high-quality learning environment where students—whether in class or remote—feel more connected to the instructor. This approach enhances focus, retention, and participation, making it far more effective than static recordings.

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  Enhancing Student Engagement and Support With a Discord Ticketing and AI-driven FAQ System

  Benjamin Cisneros and Jorge Fonseca Cacho

  4-25-2025

  As the CS 202 Coordinator overseeing seven sections per semester, I introduced a Discord-based ticketing system to streamline student support and engagement. Traditional methods like office hours and email often created delays, whereas the ticket system allows students to receive timely help from any available TA, regardless of section. To further enhance accessibility, we added a public FAQ channel that displays resolved tickets, helping students quickly find answers without combing through chat logs. This approach supports learners with shorter attention spans and builds a shared knowledge base. Additionally, we are compiling these interactions to train an AI chatbot capable of instantly answering common questions, allowing human staff to focus on more complex issues and continuously improving the course’s instructional support.

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  Designing Futures: Embedding Life Design Into Second-Year Seminar

  Janel Doll, Lauren Gatto, Chelsie Hawkinson, and Anne Jacklin

  4-25-2025

  In COE 202: Second-Year Seminar (SYS), students engage in Life Design to build purpose-driven academic and career pathways. We use design thinking to help students:

  • Identify values, strengths, and goals
  • Explore possible life and career directions
  • Reflect on academic choices in relation to future plans

  Life Design Portfolio — Includes:

  • Worldview & Lifeview reflections
  • Odyssey Plans
  • Decision-Making Matrix
  • Prototyping conversations and experiences

  Learning Outcomes:

  • Apply design thinking to life and career planning
  • Demonstrate reflective decision-making skills
  • Articulate personal and professional values
  • Connect coursework to long-term aspirations

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  One-Page RPGs: An Engaging Alternative to Group PPTs

  Bill Doyle

  4-25-2025

  Looking to increase student engagement and interest, I added the one-page RPG as an option my HON 110 students have for their group project. Ideally, student-designed games help them think more carefully about class readings and related contexts and connect meaningfully to that material in ways that make the Honors College’s second-year seminar a more memorable, transformative experience. These games also help students better understand a potentially unfamiliar genre. Finally, because materials are shared outside of class, there is a reduced stress level related to conventional, in-front-of-the-class, end-of-semester group presentations.

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  Oh, the Lessons You'll Teach! Bringing Dr. Seuss Into Graduate Field Work

  Megan Griffard

  4-25-2025

  Teaching Practice and the Need It Addresses

  • Incorporated classic Dr. Seuss children's literature into graduate Educational Policy and Leadership field experience coursework.
  • Used one story per class session to guide discussions and activities.
  • Connected themes from four Dr. Seuss books to students’ real-world work on school improvement initiatives.
  • Literature supported students’ year-long capstone projects, helping them

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  Co-Creating Learning Journeys

  Yvonne Houy

  4-25-2025

  Viewing education as a journey of exploration and discovery, I invite students to co-create our path. As a “guide on the side,” I help students build a foundation while encouraging autonomy through co-creation—where students contribute to course design, content, assessment, and learning activities. This collaborative approach fosters deeper engagement, critical thinking, and meaningful learning. Research shows co-creation improves academic performance, skill development, and student-staff relationships. Instructors can support this by framing learning as exploration, modeling curiosity, building inclusive learning communities, and offering flexible, student-driven curricular choices that include research, topic proposals, and the creation of assessments based on co-developed content.

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  How Not to Teach With Technology: a Lighthearted Look at Educational Technology Pitfalls

  Alethea Inns, Safiyya Bintali, Andrew Borts, Ted Weisman, and Lindsay Erdem

  4-25-2025

  Educational technology can be both a catalyst for engagement and a source of unexpected chaos. The Do's and Don'ts of Teaching with Technology: A Lighthearted Look at Educational Technology Pitfalls distills insights from IT support tickets, faculty consultations, and student feedback into practical (and lighthearted) DOs and DON’Ts. This poster highlights four key areas of tech use in higher education: Choosing the Right Tools, Setting Expectations, Avoiding Tech Overload, and Designing Intentionally, complete with comic-style illustrations and real-world wisdom. A companion guide, available via QR code, expands on these themes with additional examples, citations, and strategies for designing tech-enhanced learning that actually works.

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  Leveling the Playing Field: the Power of Pre-class Structure in Inclusive Education

  Andrew Kauffman

  4-25-2025

  Many students enter UNLV without prior instruction on effective learning strategies or class preparation, and their limited classroom contact hours further hinder the development of essential study and self-regulation skills. This challenge is particularly pronounced among students from underrepresented and underserved communities. To address this, I created structured pre-class activities designed to equip students with effective study habits and learning strategies that support their success both in and out of the classroom. Before each class session, students complete a “Pre-Class Guided Practice” handout, which includes an overview of the new material, clearly defined learning objectives, a QR code linking to short instructional YouTube videos I have created, targeted practice problems, and a reminder to complete a low-stakes pre-class Canvas quiz. These pre-class activities foster independent learning and skill development, allowing valuable class time to be dedicated to higher-level activities and more meaningful hands-on engagement rather than passive content delivery.

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  The “Presentation Log Report”: A Project Workflow That Supports Notes, Annotation, and Editing, From Project Inception to Final Presentation

  Julian Kilker

  4-25-2025

  My “presentation log report” practice repurposes presentation software to serve the function of the research report with the flexibility to transform a logbook into a final report. This practice is (1) accessible to students, (2) supports workforce skills, (3) models workflow stages, and (4) is resistant to Gen AI abuse. Using my Google Slides project template, students thoroughly log details of each project stage and then “collapse” this log into a final report. Presentation slides are ideal for structuring report sections and visual documentation of resources and data. Slides can be shared, supporting collaboration and peer review, and students can practice visual design skills to show the hierarchy of information—what’s more and less important—in their research writing. My template requires that students annotate their project resources with callouts, highlights, and captions, a process that encourages them to engage meta-cognitively with resources and is difficult to sidestep with current Gen AI tools.

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  When Realism in Testing Backfires: Lessons From an Unstructured Practical Exam Pairing

  Jennifer Nash

  4-25-2025

  Physical therapists must adapt quickly and independently in diverse neurologic settings. To reinforce diagnostic readiness and self-sufficiency, students were not assigned partners in advance and received their exam schedule only on the day of testing. This format was designed to challenge adaptability under realistic conditions, promote independent preparation across all course skills, and reduce reliance on rehearsed teamwork.

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  From Page to Perspective: Book Clubs & Book Reviews Enhance Learning in the College Classroom

  Kim Nehls

  4-25-2025

  Incorporating book clubs and book reviews into my International Business Capstone course (UNLV BUS 498) offered a dynamic and fun learning experience that enhanced both academic development and personal growth. Following this assignment, students demonstrated strengthened skills in critical thinking, collaboration, and global awareness.

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  No More Deer in the Headlights: Interview Practice With AI

  Helen R. Neill

  4-25-2025

  Ever had a student (or been the student) who froze like a deer in headlights during an interview? Been there. Whether it’s for a job, graduate school, or a conversation with a potential mentor, high-stakes interviews can spark panic. This teaching practice introduces AI-powered mock interviews to give students—both traditional and adult learners—a low-pressure space to prepare. Using AI, students rehearse:

  • Informational interviews
  • Job interviews
  • Graduate school and assistantship interviews

  Why it works: Students receive meaningful, low-stakes practice and instant feedback on tone, clarity, and content. They can revise, retry, and gain confidence with each round. This approach also supports responsible and effective AI use—an important skill as students transition into the workforce or graduate programs.

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  Supporting Effective Online Teaching and Learning

  Serena Scalzi

  4-25-2025

  Literature identifies numerous related concepts that support effective online education. These concepts include identity, mental models, social presence, motivation, social learning, self-regulated learning, communities of practice, cognitive load, and Universal Design for Learning. After a review of the literature, action research was conducted among participants from across the field of Online Education, including instructors, instructional designers, and embedded instructional technologists. This research collected and analyzed data regarding the practical application of these theoretical concepts, as well as the techniques, tools, and resources to support this application. The result of this action research project was a set of proven best practices in online teaching and learning.

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  Using a Fourth-Generation Behavioral Theory To Develop Competencies in Doctoral Public Health Students About the Application of Theory-Based Intervention Planning

  Manoj Sharma

  4-25-2025

  Asynchronous teaching is gaining popularity all over the world and at UNLV. In asynchronous teaching, both pedagogical robustness and the building of content expertise, especially for doctoral scholars, are mandatory. Since 2021, I have taught Advanced Applications of Social and Behavioral Theories (HED 762-1001) to public health students aiming to develop concentration-specific competencies set by the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH). The specific teaching techniques employed by me entail (a) the use of the fourth-generation multi-theory model (MTM) of health behavior change to motivate students not only to acquire knowledge and skills but also lead them toward behavioral incorporation; (b) pedagogical features for delivery as an asynchronous course with the organization in Canvas, recording all lectures beforehand in Panopto, incorporating case studies, interspersing optional live synchronous web meetings, and having skill-building activities in each weekly module aiding in flexibility to the scholars to pursue the course at their pace while still being structured; and (c) mastery of the content through participatory dialogue, building behavioral confidence, social support, and other constructs of MTM to develop requisite competencies. The course has been received very well by the students, with the mean course rating over the three years for the course on semester-end evaluation being 4.88/5.00, the instructor being 4.87/5.00, and overall being 4.88/5.00. The students apply the assignments developed in the course to publications, presentations, dissertations, and real-world settings. Instructors can reify multi-theory model (MTM) constructs and adopt some of the pedagogical features utilized in this course to their courses.

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  Helping Students Frame Their Educational Experiences

  Nathan Slife and Joseph Ervin

  4-25-2025

  What separates a good instructor from a great instructor? One crucial aspect of a great instructor is their ability to help students frame their educational experiences. This framing assistance occurs for both good and challenging student experiences. Instructors play an important role in helping students understand their educational experiences. An instructor may not recognize that they have such a role. We encourage instructors to be intentional about their role in students’ framing.

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  Real-World Applications: Strategies to Inspire Students to Learn Calculus and Differential Equations Through Modeling

  Aleksei Talonov

  4-25-2025

  Key elements of strategy to inspire students include:

  • Pre-Class Preparation;
  • Historical Context (Starting each lecture with a brief historical overview to provide relevance and context to the material);
  • Interactive Real-Life Problem Solving (Discussing the main concepts of the lecture and collaboratively solving challenging problems);
  • Proof Techniques (Demonstrating mathematical methods used to prove key statements from the current lesson);
  • Real-Time Feedback.

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  Using Game-based Learning as an Active Learning Technique in Nursing Education Classes

  Margaret Trnka

  4-25-2025

  In nursing education it is essential to prepare the students for complex clinical settings. The use of active learning activities such as game-based learning combines nursing content with gaming to increase engagement, knowledge retention, and critical thinking. This poster presentation shares information on game-based learning, how to use it, where to gather more information on the topic, and resources to implement game-based learning in the classroom. Game-based learning offers students an engaging and active way to learn in not just nursing education but all areas of education. Game-based learning is a strong activity that promotes deeper learning in both didactic and clinical settings.

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  Equitable and Efficient Exams in Large Courses

  Van Whaley and Dustin W. Davis

  4-25-2025

  How do we asses over 1,200 students six times a semester equitably and efficiently? Our program's need:

  • Assess learning equitably and efficiently in KIN 223 and 224 Human A&P I and II.
  • Set clear expectations, minimize anxiety.
  • Process > 7,200 exams per semester.
  • Give timely feedback quickly and progress through curriculum.

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  Thesis Equations: A Standard Formula to Help Craft a Thesis Statement

  MeAnna Williams

  4-25-2025

  Thesis Equations is an outlining method that can be used for writing argumentative papers. It proposes a formulaic structure that acts as a base for students to craft a simple thesis. Students need to know how to make a claim. With the emergence of AI use, and the decreasing knowledge of foundational practices, utilizing proper brainstorming and outlining skills persists to be a difficult task for student writers.

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  Uncovering Teaching Faculty Personas to Understand Comfort Levels in Using Technology in Their Online Classes

  Suzanne Becker and Ted Weisman

  2-2023

  Faculty’s knowledge about, and comfort with, the use of technology tools are key components in online teaching. Faculty are not only expected to be adept with basic computer functionality, like creating and editing documents and managing files, but also in navigating their institutions Learning Management System (LMS) and utilizing course teaching technologies and tools. Together these areas comprise a significant portion of design and facilitation of an online course and are related to learning outcomes. When engaging with the online learning environment, it is thus critical for each instructor to consider their personal level of comfort utilizing various online technology tools and resources. For faculty to be successful in the online classroom space, identification of individual needs and skills associated with teaching online must be determined, and resources curated. Over the spring and summer of 2022, 40 UNLV faculty across 10 colleges were interviewed about their experiences in online teaching with the aim to uncover prevailing themes that will serve to inform future interactions and professional development offerings. Growth through professional development, combined with use of online tools and targeted teaching resources by instructors can result in more robust course creation and preparation, elevated student support and learning outcomes, and enhanced student engagement and success.

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  AI and the Future of Academic Integrity

  Jesse Fitts and Rachel Bovard

  2023

  In this poster, we provide recommendations for assignment types in light of the AI chatbot ChatGPT.

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  Video Homework: Visualizing Homework Assignments to Help Comprehension

  Jorge Ramon Fonseca Cacho

  2023

  Multimodal delivery of information has been shown to be preferred to one mode of delivery. Instead of only providing homework assignments to students as a PDF, printed paper, or a Canvas LMS text prompt, we propose augmenting the assignments with a video explaining it verbally, or conversationally, and visualizing the assignment. Not all students process information the same way and some may be more responsive and engaged to audio visual content than just text such as visual learners or individuals who struggle reading long text prompts.

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  Counseling Skills for Educators

  Craig Hall

  2023

  The University of Nevada, Las Vegas is touted as a diverse campus. Indeed, students represent a wide range of demographics concerning race, gender, identity, socioeconomics, physical and mental ability issues, as well as non traditional students and those the intersectional representation of multiple demographic groups. It is incumbent upon educators to provide safe spaces for all students. This is an equitable practice. How can educators be more equitable? By using counseling skills in their education such as: empathy, active listening, belief in the capabilities of students, and avoiding labeling students. It must be noted that the use of counseling skills is not to have the ability to diagnose anyone. Rather, these skills can help students to not feel invisible while on UNLV’s campus.