Information for Afternoon Mini-Workshop Conveners

It is our goal to support all workshop conveners in designing, planning, and executing workshops that follow best-practices. To that end, this page provides information about those best practices and the Serckit tools that can be used before, during, and after your workshop. If you have any questions about how to implement these features, contact your web team support person.

Jump Down To: Tools to Support Best-Practices | Other Resources | On-Site Logistics | Deadlines | SERC Support Staff

2024 Afternoon Workshop Leader Webinar

Click to view or download the webinar screencast (MP4 Video 151.3MB Apr1 24)

Afternoon Workshop Leader Webinar Slides (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 1.5MB Mar29 24)

Related Resource

EER 2023 Workshop Planning: What we’ve learned from 2022 workshop evaluations (Acrobat (PDF) 49kB Apr5 23)

Workshop Best-Practices

Planning an effective workshop is much like planning an effective learning experience for students in the classroom and lab. What goals do you have for the participants? How will the workshop effectively engage participants and ensure that the goals for participants are met? How will you assess whether participants have benefited from the workshop? Here are some best practices that have been gleaned over more than a decade of running workshops in On the Cutting Edge and InTeGrate.

Tools to Support Best-Practices

Serckit (formerly the SERC CMS) was designed with support for these best-practices in mind. Through Serckit, you have access to a variety of tools to facilitate the run up to, execution of, and follow-up to your workshop at the Rendezvous.

Action Plans

If you wish, you can have participants complete an Action Plan for what they will do with what they learned in your workshop. We have a generic Action Plan Template (Microsoft Word 26kB Jun15 15) that you can use directly or customize for your workshop. If you want to make use of the Action Plan in your workshop, let your web team support person know so they can build the necessary upload form in your workshop site.

End of Workshop Evaluations

All workshops are required to have an End of Workshop Evaluation and you will be provided with a form to use. This exit survey will be tied to your workshop goals and is designed to get formative feedback on the workshop format and how it serves participants' overall meeting goals, as well as feedback for you. Your web team support person will build a form in your workshop site with standard questions.

Attendance

Since Rendezvous participants don't have to register for the afternoon workshops ahead of time, we need to have a way of knowing who participated. Copies of this Attendance Sheet (Acrobat (PDF) 76kB May31 16) will be provided for your workshop. Attendees should complete this as they come in so that the support person can pick them up after the workshop has gotten going. The information on these sheets will be used to create an email list for the attendees associated with your workshop so that communication can continue after the event.

Other Resources

You can read more about the lessons learned over the years of Cutting Edge and InTeGrate workshops on those project websites:

Logistics

On-Site

Each workshop room has Wi-Fi access and a projector. Please bring your own laptop to use for presentations (including adapters). Also, plan to bring any supplies you might need.

Deadlines

  • April 19: As soon as you can, prior to the May 6 Early Bird Registration Deadline: Have a clear program that can be published on the website; communicate with SERC support on features that are needed. (this will help potential participants know what to expect at your workshop as they register)
  • June 7: Have finalized program with details, including but not limited to, details down to the half hour on the live page; communicate with SERC support on features that are needed.
  • July 5: Finalize details of workshop support with SERC support staff (sooner is better this is the absolute last date to make requests). Requests made after this date may not be honored.

SERC Support Staff

Note: these assignments are for pre-Rendezvous support only. You may have a different support person during the Rendezvous.

SERC Implementation Team Support Staff

  • Mitchell Bender-Awalt - mawalt AT carleton dot edu
  • Monica Bruckner - mbruckne AT carleton dot edu
  • Holly Kelchner - hkelchner AT carleton dot edu
  • John McDaris - jmcdaris AT carleton dot edu
  • Rory McFadden - rmcfadden AT carleton dot edu

Monday workshop staff assignments:

  • LGBTQ+ Representation in the Geosciences... Showing Our Students That They Belong! - John
  • Guiding Students to Use Evidence to Support their Scientific Reasoning - Mitchell
  • The Wow Factor: Cutting rocks to engage students - Holly
  • Improving Food-Energy-Water-Nexus-based Education: Defining new research directions from problems of practice - Monica

Wednesday workshop staff assignments:

  • Environmental Ethics: Theory and practice - Rory
  • Sustainability: Intentional integration - Monica
  • Facilitating Effective Group Projects in Geoscience Courses - Mitchell
  • H5P Activities for Summative and Formative Assessment in Online and Web-Enhanced Courses - Holly
  • Pedagogies and Practices for Boosting Spatial Understanding of Fluid Earth Processes - John

Thursday workshop staff assignments:

  • Developing Dispositions to Help Students Succeed in the Workforce - Rory
  • On the Air: Exploring air pollution sources - Rory
  • Making Sense of Your Course Evaluations - Holly
  • Conducting Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in Your Courses - Mitchell
  • Soil Science: Bridging Geology and Environmental Science in a Sustainable World - Monica