For seamless transitioning, please login to Kirkwood MyHub and NeoEd. Faculty Professional Development Opportunities for Spring 2026 are listed below. We offer a limited number of on campus/Zoom options.
In Person/Zoom Trainings
Accessibility Workshops
Dates: 1/16, 2/3, 3/3, 3/16, & 4/7
Join our comprehensive PDF Remediation session designed to empower you with the knowledge and skills needed to make your PDF documents accessible to all. In this hands-on workshop, you will learn the ins and outs of PDF accessibility and how to tag scanned PDFs. At the end of the workshop, the participants will learn; • The importance of PDF accessibility and its impact on diverse user groups. • Explore the principles of accessible PDF design and content creation. • Learn to identify and address common accessibility issues in PDF documents. • Master the use Adobe Acrobat, for PDF remediation. • Gain practical experience in creating accessible headings, lists, tables, links, artifact, images! • Explore Adobe acrobat tools for handling complex PDFs, including tagged scanned PDFs. (1 hour)
Dates: 1/7, 1/8, 1/14, 2/4, 2/10, 3/4, 3/5, 4/1, 4/2, 4/8, 5/6, & 5/7
We invite faculty and staff to join our "Fix Accessibility Issues" Open Lab Session, where you can get hands-on support to address accessibility challenges in your course materials. This session is designed to help you enhance the accessibility of your content for all students, including those with disabilities. Whether you need assistance with adding alternative text to images, creating accessible documents, or ensuring your videos are captioned, our team is here to guide you. Bring your course materials and accessibility questions, and we’ll work together to implement improvements to make your course more inclusive. (1 hour)
Dates: 1/20, 1/21, 2/16, 2/17, & 3/17
Can all your students truly see what you’re asking? Alt text turns images into accessible information for students using screen readers. In this workshop, participants will learn how to craft effective alt text specifically for assessment questions, understand how it differs from alt text in general course content, and ensure every student can fully engage with quizzes, diagrams, and charts. Make your assessments inclusive, so every student has a fair chance to succeed! (1 hour)
Teaching and Learning
Dates: 2/20 & 4/24
In this slightly more advanced Panopto session, our focus will be engagement. Learn ways to move your video materials beyond a passive, sit & get approach. Use the quizzing function to gather responses from students. Add a video with quiz to your Talon course to use as a low-stakes graded activity. Gather questions and feedback from students using the comments feature on the video player. Explore ways to keep your learners active while watching your video content - help them to practice, review and even submit their own video assignments. (1 hour)
Dates: 1/27 & 3/18
As AI tools become more accessible, faculty face challenges ensuring student work reflects genuine learning. This session offers strategies to design authentic assessments that reduce AI misuse, build student accountability, and responsibly integrate AI into coursework. Attendees will leave with practical ideas for designing assignments that promote critical thinking and preserve academic integrity. (1 hour)
Date: 3/31 & 4/15
Got another accommodation letter and wondered how those decisions are actually made? Here’s your chance to step behind the curtain and flip the script by becoming an “Accommodation Advocate for an Hour!" You’ll dive into real-life scenarios, collaborate in small groups to decide what’s reasonable through an interactive process, and explore how accommodations create meaningful access in the classroom. You’ll also hear powerful student stories about how the right support transformed their experience at Kirkwood. It’s interactive, eye-opening, and a great way to build empathy while strengthening the support we provide our students. (1 hour)
Dates: 1/28, 1/29, 2/11, 4/14, & 4/15
Even small design mistakes in Talon can create confusion, lower engagement, or create accessibility barriers for students. This workshop helps faculty identify common pitfalls in course structure, navigation, and content delivery, and provides practical strategies to fix them. Participants will learn how to create clear, organized, and accessible courses that enhance student learning and make course management easier for instructors. (1 hour)
Dates: 1/14, 2/5, 3/2, 4/6, & 5/5
Creator+ is a set of tools integrated into TALON that can be used to make content more interactive for students. In this session, participants will learn how to incorporate Creator+ “elements” and “practices” into their TALON courses. Creator+ “elements” include things like accordions, flip cards, hot spots, and carousels. Creator+ “practices” include question types such as true-false, multiple choice, sequencing, and sorting. Participants will get the opportunity to practice using Creator+ tools and will gain access to a variety of examples. (1 hour)
Dates: 2/9 & 4/7
In the era of large language models (LLMs), students can easily generate high-quality summaries and critiques, leading to a crisis in the way faculty assign and assess reading. This workshop moves beyond superficial solutions by exploring the cognitive science of reading. We will analyze seminal models (like the Simple View and the Construction-Integration Model) to understand what a skilled reader actually does: build coherence, monitor comprehension, and integrate new knowledge. Participants will leave with a practical toolkit of five "AI-resistant" reading strategies designed to shift student effort from simple extraction to deep, strategic engagement. (1 hour)
Dates: 3/10 & 4/8
This session will help participants understand the importance of early identification and prompt response to community concerns. Attendees will learn to recognize signs of distress, such as mental health, changes in academic performance, and disruptive behaviors. Participants will discuss strategies for responding to individuals who display concerning or disruptive behaviors in the classroom and other settings. Additionally, college policies regarding disruptive behaviors and resources available to support faculty and students will be reviewed. (1 hour)
Dates: 1/23, 2/19, 3/25, & 4/23
With H5Ps recent addition to the Talon platform, the opportunity to create interactive elements is more accessible to all instructors and course designers. Content can be presented in new ways that ask the learner to be involved in the learning process, offering choice to learners and providing opportunities for students to reflect on their learning. In this session, we will explore the various activity types and discuss possible applications for both online and face-to-face courses. Bring your laptop, and get started creating interactive elements for your courses. (1 hour)
Dates: 4/16
Artificial intelligence offers powerful tools to support neurodivergent individuals by recognizing their strengths and reducing barriers to success. This presentation will explore common challenges neurodivergent people face in educational and professional settings, as well as the unique abilities they bring to these spaces. It will then introduce AI-driven strategies that can be used to create more effective learning and working environments. By implementing these approaches, educators and staff can design experiences that not only support neurodivergent individuals but also enhance success for everyone. (1 hour)
Dates: 1/26, 1/29, 3/23, & 3/26
Small design choices can make a big difference. Neurodiverse students—such as those with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and anxiety, often experience course structure and instructions differently. In this session, faculty will explore how clear organization, predictable layouts, and flexible ways to engage with content can reduce barriers and support student success. Grounded in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, this workshop offers practical strategies that benefit all learners. (1 hour)
Starting Date: May 7
Participants in this workshop will share strategies for meeting essential Quality Matters standards in their online or hybrid courses and also complete a self review of their course applying these standards. Participants MUST have taught a hybrid or online course in the past 18 months. Workshop materials are provided. This is an official Quality Matters workshop. Please note this course is offered asynchronous online. Please disregard the posted meeting times.
*A minimum of 5 people need to register otherwise it gets canceled. (8 hours)
Dates: 3/21 & 4/23
The Health, Safety, and Well-Being Workshop offers opportunities to learn about the best practice to prevent and manage challenging situations that could occur during study abroad programs. (1 hour)
Dates: 2/5, 3/5, 4/2, & 4/30
Dr. Lori Brown has been championing global connections at Kirkwood for 18 years. As a Management faculty member in the BIT department and former Associate Dean at the Iowa City campus, she's passionate about expanding students' horizons through international collaboration.
Lori is launching a Community of Practice focused on Virtual Exchanges. Whether you're an experienced virtual exchange facilitator looking to share insights and discuss challenges, or curious about how to get started connecting your students with partners around the globe, this community is for you.
Virtual exchanges allow students to engage in collaborative projects with peers internationally (and nationally), building intercultural competence and global perspectives without leaving campus. Through Lori's work as a Quality Fellow (IQ), she's creating pathways for more Kirkwood faculty to offer these high-impact learning experiences. (1 hour)
Cookies and Conversation
Date: 4/22
Many students struggle with Time Management, especially in online courses. Rebecca Farrier, Honor student, has put together a document that faculty can use to more clearly communicate time expectations and requirements for online courses. Join Rebecca and Emily for conversation of how the document can be used and other techniques that can help support student time management. (1 hour)
Reading Circles/Book Clubs
Dates: 4/2 & 4/9
Why does one of the wealthiest nations in the world allow so many of its people to live in poverty? In Poverty, by America, Pulitzer Prize–winning sociologist Matthew Desmond challenges us to see poverty not as an inevitable problem but as a condition maintained by choices, systems, and benefits that many of us take for granted.
Join your colleagues for a thought-provoking book group that will explore questions of inequality, justice, and the role of higher education in shaping a more equitable society. (2 hours)
On Demand Trainings (offered via Discover)
This one hour course will walk you through the process creating an alignment document. Rooting every aspect of the course—materials, activities, and assessments—in the learning outcomes, results in a minty fresh learning experience, where clarity and purpose refresh the student's journey like a cool, invigorating breeze. (1 hour)
Discussions are often used in online courses to encourage student-student interaction, but can many times feel forced or inauthentic. This course will explain several considerations and practices for creating more authentic connections and interactions between students in asynchronous learning environments, and also provide some more creative ways to use the discussion tool in Talon. (1 hour)
This training has been developed to provide faculty, administration, and staff information about the design, development, and delivery of a competency-based education (CBE) course for students. The training has two parts—the first part is completed asynchronously in TALON (about 5 hours) and the second part is completed synchronously via Zoom (1 hour). The training addresses the following topics: CBE basics (definitions, implications, backward design), logistics and expectations for developing a CBE course, logistics and expectations for facilitating a CBE course, documentation, roles and responsibilities, assessment, and feedback. (6 hours)
This intro session to Panopto, Kirkwood's video platform, will provide the steps needed to deliver, make and manage videos. We will cover accessing Kirkwood's Panopto site, using the Panopto web-based Capture program, the feature-rich video player, and how to best share videos in your Talon courses or anywhere. (1 hour)
Kirkwood serves many students from diverse cultural backgrounds. This course will help you better understand cultural differences and provide practical skills for improving cross-cultural interactions inside and outside the classroom (1 hour)
Creating effective assessments is a key element of course design. This course will explain best practices and examples for implementing different types of assessments across all delivery mediums. Please note – these practices are focused on course-level assessment only. This course does NOT cover college-wide assessments or assessment data. (1 hour)
If you are interested in adopting OER (Open Educational Resources, free alternatives to traditional textbooks), but don't know where to start, this is the course for you! You will walk away from this course with a solid understanding of what constitutes an OER, the benefits to students and faculty, the basics of open licensing, and the best ways to locate OER for your courses. (1 hour)
In this session you will be introduced to Honorlock, our remote proctoring partner. You'll come away with all of the skills and knowledge needed to enable and configure Honorlock for Talon and third party exams (1 hour).
This course is a hybrid course that has been developed to provide faculty, administration, and staff training about how to design, develop, and deliver a hybrid course for students. The course has three parts (Parts I and III are completed asynchronously and Part II is completed synchronously) that address the following topics: documentation and logistics, design strategies, technology, communication, assessments, and best practices. Participants in the training will not only learn about how to build a hybrid course, but they will also experience a hybrid course from the student perspective. (3 hours)
Imposter Syndrome and Stereotype Threat are two powerful psychological phenomena that affect performance, confidence, and well-being across academic, professional, and personal settings. Throughout this course, we'll explore what these experiences are, how they develop, and most importantly, how to recognize and navigate them effectively. (1 hour)
In this session you will review the current accessibility issues present in your PDF documents, learn how to address these issues, and implement fixes. Accessibility means removing barriers individuals might face when interacting with your materials. We will show you how to use Ally, a tool built into Talon, to scan and review current materials. And we'll demonstrate how Adobe Acrobat Pro can be used to address any issues. (1 hour)
In this session you will review the current accessibility issues present in your PowerPoint documents, learn how to address these issues, and implement fixes. Accessibility means removing barriers individuals might face when interacting with your materials. We will show you how to use Ally, a tool built into Talon, to scan and review current materials. And we'll demonstrate how Microsoft PowerPoint can be used to address any issues. (1 hour)
Review the current accessibility issues present in your Word documents, learn how to address these issues, and implement fixes. Accessibility means removing barriers individuals might face when interacting with your materials. These individuals will encounter different barriers due to permanent or temporary disabilities, neurodivergent conditions, and learning preferences. (1 hour)
Creating an inclusive community and sense of belonging in the classroom requires the instructor and other students to recognize and confront their own conscious and unconscious biases. This on-demand course will provide practical suggestions for managing bias in the classroom. (1 hour)
One of the descriptors of Quality Instruction is, Provide regular and substantive feedback and opportunities for student reflection. We know that feedback is key for student growth and learning. There are several methods and tools that can be used to provide regular and substantive feedback to students. This course will provide suggestions and best practices for providing effective feedback to students. (1 hour)
Microaggressions are everyday slights, insults, invalidations and offensive behaviors experienced by individuals from marginalized groups. This course will help you recognize microaggressions, their impact on students/colleagues, and how to respond. (1 hour)
This self-paced on demand course introduces you to writing effective alt text to make online content more accessible and foster a stronger sense of belonging. You'll learn when and how to describe images like photos, charts, and logos so all students, including those using screen readers, can fully engage with your course materials. By the end, you'll know how to write clear, useful alt text and create accessible content that supports all learners. (1 hour)
The 4 Connections are an evidence-based approach that can be integrated into your teaching strategy to enhance student success, retention, and inclusivity. This course will explain each of the 4 practices and provide practical examples of how Kirkwood faculty are implementing these strategies based on feedback from Kickoff Day in August 2023. (1 hour)
This course features 3 Kirkwood faculty members walking you through their online and hybrid courses in Talon, focusing on some best practices for structure, layout, design, aesthetics. (1 hour)
An introduction to Remind and how instructors are using it
with their students. Communicating with students is at the heart of what we do
as educators. Text-based communication through Remind offers a safe,
private and robust method for reaching students in a way that aligns with their
expectations and preferences. (1 hour)
The Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) framework is an evidence-based strategy to improve accessibility, equity and connections with students. It is rooted in the idea that increased clarity in communicating the purpose, task, and criteria for course activities and assignments improves student success. This course explains the rationale and research behind the framework as well as practical examples that can be implemented into your courses. (1 hour)
Time management isn't a skill though that comes easily to everyone or is often explicitly taught. According to a 2023 survey by Inside Higher Ed/ College Pulse, 47% of undergraduate college students find it a challenge to balance schoolwork with other responsibilities. This session will look specifically at time management and the challenges that students at community college can face while navigating their personal lives and their commitment to their education. (1 hour)
In this session, you will be introduced to the Talon Instructor Dashboard reports. The data can help you take actions to fix hidden course issues, or connect with students in need of support. You might also come away with additional report requests to be added to the dashboard, or special reports your program would find useful. (1 hour)
This webinar will showcase how to implement Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles effectively in the classroom. Participants will learn strategies for creating inclusive, accessible, and engaging learning environments that cater to diverse student needs. By exploring case-based scenarios, attendees will see practical applications of UDL in real-world settings, focusing on how to support students throughout their learning process and beyond traditional assessments. (1 hour)
Communication - something we all do and seek to improve. This course offers practical tips for communicating with clarity, empathy, and confidence across all types of interactions with students. (1 hour)