Preconference Workshops
The Teaching Professor Conference offers a selection of 2.5 hour preconference workshops to further enrich your conference experience. The cost is $319 for each preconference workshop. The workshops are held Friday, June 5 in the morning and afternoon before the conference begins.
Enrollment is offered during conference registration.
If you have already registered for the conference and would like to add a workshop to your registration, call 608-246-3590 to enroll.
Check back soon to see who will be taking the stage!
Morning Workshop
Students Have AI—Now What? Designing for How Learning Actually Works
Michelle Blank & Jeremy Rentz
Friday, June 5
9:00 – 11:30 am
The rise of AI tools has amplified a longstanding challenge: students often rely on strategies that feel productive but don’t actually promote lasting learning. This workshop reframes the conversation around what we know works from learning science—approaches that make content stick while reducing busywork for you and your students.
When courses are designed around evidence-based learning principles, students develop cognitive skills that AI cannot replicate: deep understanding, critical thinking, and knowledge transfer. These same principles create more efficient teaching by focusing student effort where it matters most…on learning! In this workshop, we’ll explore research-backed strategies that help students move from surface-level engagement to deeper learning. We’ll model these approaches so you experience them as a learner before implementing them as an instructor. Attendees will leave with practical, adaptable course design elements requiring no full overhaul—just concrete activities, scaffolded assignments, and transparency tools. The result: Students who learn more deeply, retain content longer, and develop metacognitive skills to become expert learners in your field and beyond.
Dr. Michelle Blank Rentz loves being a bridge-builder between research and practice. As Senior Director of Academic Success at Goshen College, she gets to work both sides of learning by helping faculty reimagine their course design and develop as professionals while also coaching students on how to actually learn effectively. A lifelong learner herself, Michelle holds master’s degrees in Librarianship and Research, and Education, as well as a PhD in Curriculum, Instruction, and the Science of Learning. Her work focuses on faculty development, disciplinary literacy, equity pedagogy, and exploring how AI can serve as a genuine learning partner rather than a shortcut.
Jeremy Rentz is the Schantz Distinguished Professor of Environmental Engineering at Trine University. In this role he supports student learning by using exceptional slides, building connections with students, and getting out of the way so students can do some of the work in the classroom. In the professional development arena, Jeremy champions these teaching tools and other practical strategies by facilitating faculty discussions and workshops wherever teachers are striving to improve student learning.
Afternoon Workshop
Scaling Up with Universal Design for Learning…and How to Get Colleagues to Join You
Thomas J. Tobin
Friday, June 5
1:00 – 3:30 pm
To help make educational materials and practices inclusive and useful for all learners, this interactive workshop radically reflects on how instructors and designers can adopt Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in order to create learning interactions that provide students with more time for study and practice in their busy days: broaden our focus beyond learners with disabilities and toward a larger ease-of-use/general-inclusion framework.
Our workshop will contain three scaffolded elements: an overview of UDL, how to scale up UDL efforts beyond individual actions, and how to talk with colleagues in order to establish UDL communities of practice. Together, we’ll work through beginner, practitioner, and advanced-level UDL applications.
Thomas J. Tobin is an internationally recognized scholar, author, and speaker on technology-mediated education—especially copyright, evaluation of teaching practices, academic integrity, accessibility, and universal design for learning. Tobin helped found the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Teaching, Learning, and Mentoring. On Ed Tech Magazine’s Influencers “Dean’s List,” honored with the Wagner Leadership Award in Distance Learning Administration, and one of Eduflow’s global Top 100 Learning Influencers, Tobin serves on the boards of Advances in Online Education, InSight: A Journal of Scholarly Teaching, the Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, and the Oklahoma University Press Teaching, Engaging, and Thriving in Higher Ed series. His books include: Evaluating Online Teaching (2015), The Copyright Ninja (2017), Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in Higher Education (2018), Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers (2020), Implementing UDL in Irish Further Education and Training (2021), and UDL at Scale (2026).