Workshop Program

Please plan to arrive in Northfield in time for the 5:00pm start time on Sunday, October 25^th, 2026.

All workshop activities take place in the Weitz Center for Creativity Larson Meeting Room (236), unless otherwise noted below.

Sunday, October 25^th

Participants arrive and check into their hotel (Fairfield Inn & Suites). Transportation to the workshop location is available for participants who requested walking accommodation.

Provenance: John McDaris, Carleton College
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2:00 – 4:00 PM (Optional) One-on-one Mentoring Sessions with Conveners (Weitz 236)

• Schedule an appointment or drop by to get curriculum coaching from workshop experts or to complete your pre-work.
• Coffee and snacks available

5:00 – 6:00 PM Welcoming Remarks, Introductions, and Icebreaker -- Facilitator: Cailin Huyck Orr (Weitz 236)

• welcome_matlab2026.pptx (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 2.9MB Oct25 26)

6:00 – 6:45 PM Keynote Speaker: Lisa Kempler (Weitz 236)

Teaching for the Future: What will I do next? (Acrobat (PDF) 5.4MB Oct26 26)

6:45 – 7:20 PM Dinner (Weitz 236)

7:20 – 8:00 PM Convener Panel (Weitz 236)

• Dessert and coffee available

8:00 PM Networking

• Riverside Bar and balcony open at the Fairfield hotel every day until 11pm

Monday, October 26^th

Breakfast at your hotel or in town. Transportation to Weitz is available for participants who requested walking accommodation.

8:30 – 8:45 AM Introduction and Goals for the Day — Facilitators: Cailin Huyck Orr, Lisa Kempler (Weitz 236)

Quick tech check

• Internet access: Eduroam or Carleton's guest network
• Log-in to find the workshop workspace and your personal workspace
• Instructions for editing workspaces

8:45 – 10:15 AM Invited Talks: Session 1, Facilitator: Kelly Roos (Weitz 236)

Presentations (55 minutes) 

• Anita Omo-Okhuasuyi - A Year with MATLAB and GenAI: Transforming How Students Learn Engineering Programming (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 1.3MB Oct26 26)
• Michael Wright - Meeting students where they are: evolving the use of Matlab for students from non-quantitative backgrounds (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 2.3MB Oct22 26)
• Burak Aksoylu - Linear Algebra Through the Lens of Code (Acrobat (PDF) 237kB Oct25 26)
• Adrián Quesada Martínez - Teaching Critical Computational Thinking with Two Generative AI Tools, MATLAB Live Scripts, and App (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 9.8MB Oct26 26)
• Christina Reynolds - Designing Virtual Physics Labs with MATLAB (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 53.6MB Oct25 26)

During talks , participants are encouraged to record their impressions on: (in personal workspaces)

• Teaching strategies you've used worth keeping
• New approaches from the educator talks to consider for your courses
• Surprises or new learnings
• Unsolved teaching and learning challenges

Table Discussions (25 minutes)

• Share briefly learnings from the talks: Approaches that work, new ideas, unsolved challenges
• Each table crafts a sample computational learning outcome/goal for two course types:
  • Broad intro to engineering computing/programming course
  • Engineering- or Science-focused course with computation serving a supporting role
• Monday table notes pages

Group Report Out (10 minutes)

• A representative from multiple tables reports on 1-2 notable learnings from their table, one from each course type

10:15 – 10:30 AM Break

10:30 – 11:45 AM Learning goals, outcomes, tasks, and assessment (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 793kB Oct26 26), Facilitator: Michele McColgan (Weitz 236 and additional spaces)

Presentation on learning goals (10 minutes)

Introduction to Affinity Groups (5 minutes)

Affinity working group discussions (40 minutes)

• Discuss:
  • Desirable learning outcomes in general vs. computation courses (and which are easier and harder to achieve)
  • Specific learning outcomes for a course you teach

Individual Work (5 minutes)

• Draft 1-2 learning outcomes for one of your courses or teaching activity in your personal workspace.

Group report out (15 minutes)

• Return to Weitz 236 at 11:30 to report working group discussion results to the full group. (Consider showcasing 1 participant's learning outcomes).

11:45 AM – 1:00 PM Lunch (LDC Dining Hall)

• We will walk as a group from Weitz to the LDC. Transportation is available for participants who request walking accommodation.
• We will go through the check-in and food lines, then gather to eat in reserved rooms at the back of the main hall.
• If you want coffee after lunch, please take it with you from the dining hall.

1:00 – 1:45 PM MATLAB Teaching Tools, Speaker: Evan Cosgrove and Nirav Acharya (Weitz 236)

1:45 – 2:30 PM Practice with Live Scripts, MATLAB Online, and GenAI (Weitz 236)

2:30 – 2:40 PM Break

• 2:40 PM – Photo in the main workshop room
• Refreshments and snacks available

2:45 – 3:30 PM Invited Talks: Session 2, Facilitator: Kelly Roos (Weitz 236)

Presentations     

• Kendra Murray - Using SERC's MATLAB teaching activities in an undergraduate "MATLAB for the Geosciences" course (Acrobat (PDF) 11.2MB Oct26 26)
• Xiangyu Meng - Enhancing Control Engineering Education with MATLAB Live Scripts (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 12.8MB Oct22 26)
• Richard Blackmon - An Evolving Approach to Teaching Introductory MATLAB: Programming, Applications, and AI (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 964kB Oct22 26)
• Margarete Jadamec - An Approach to Teaching Programming to Geology Students: Understanding Geodynamics Through MATLAB (Acrobat (PDF) 6.9MB Oct26 26)

During talks, participants are encouraged to record their impressions on: (in personal workspaces)

• Teaching strategies you've used related to GenAI
• New GenAI approaches from the educator talks to consider for your courses
• Surprises or new learnings about GenAI in courses
• Unsolved teaching and learning challenges

3:30 – 4:00 PM Affinity Group Discussions: Assessment of Learning Outcomes, Facilitator: Ben Bratton (Weitz 236)

• Groups will discuss techniques, strategies, and challenges for assessment and also identify assessment challenges.
• Participants are encouraged to use their workspace page to keep notes and work on assessment in their course or activity.
• Affinity working group discussions
  • What approaches and tools do you use to assess student performance and learning?
    • Are these approaches effective?
  • What challenges do you have assessing student performance relative to your planned learning outcomes?
  • What techniques and tools can you adopt to help?
• Individual Work
  • Spend the final minutes of the session thinking about an assessment plan for a course or teaching activity. Use your personal workspace page to keep notes.

4:00 – 4:15 PM Effective Teaching Activities, Peer Review, and Curriculum Development at the Workshop, Facilitator: Dan Burleson (Weitz 236)

4:15 – 5:30 PM Affinity Groups: Teaching Activity Development, Facilitators: Lisa Kempler and Dan Burleson (Weitz 236 and additional spaces)

• Make a contract: Spend a few minutes in your working groups sharing your specific plans for your curriculum development
• Work individually to develop your ideas, working towards creating a plan and a presentable curriculum module/teaching activity on Tuesday morning.
• Use your personal workspace page for notes and resources.
• Consider how you will transfer your ideas to a structured format for sharing: Live Script, Teaching Activity, other deliverable

5:30 – 6:00 PM Logistics and Roadcheck (Weitz 236)

• Information on reimbursement for stipend recipients
  • If you do not already have a W-9 or W-8 BEN on file with Carleton, be on the lookout for an e-mail from the Business Office.
  • Example email from the Carleton College Business Office (Acrobat (PDF) 1.2MB Oct27 25)
• Tomorrow
  • Tomorrow's program
  • Shuttle for participants who requested a ride to the workshop will leave the hotel at 8:15 AM.
  • Luggage van will leave hotel at 8:15 AM. We will bring your bags to the Weitz room.
  • Shuttle to the airport will leave at the conclusion of the workshop at 2 PM. This is the only return shuttle.
• Leaving Wednesday? Connect with others if you want to coordinate travel to the airport.
• Road check  -  Complete the survey before leaving Weitz.
  • Dinner is at 6:30. You can walk from here or by way of the hotel.

6:30 PM Dinner The Grand Event Center: 316 Washington St, Northfield, MN 55057

• Directions from the Fairfield Hotel
• Directions from the Weitz Center

Evening Networking

• Riverside Bar and balcony open at the Fairfield hotel every day until 11pm

Tuesday, October 27^th

Breakfast at your hotel or in town and presumably, hotel check-out. Shuttles will be available for carrying luggage from the hotel to Weitz. Transportation to Weitz is available for participants who requested walking accommodation.

8:30 – 8:45 AM Roadcheck Summary, Facilitator: Cailin Huyck-Orr (Weitz 236)

8:45 – 9:00 AM Overview of the Day, Facilitator: Lisa Kempler (Weitz 236)

9:00 –10:15 AM Individual Preparation: Teaching Activity Development and Completion, Facilitator: Lisa Kempler (Weitz 236 and additional spaces)

• Use this time to complete your teaching activities.
  • Adding code to your activity page? Here are some ways to do it:
    • Serckit provides code highlighting for many languages (including MATLAB).
      • Note that this requires editing your activity page in HTML mode.
      • Serckit also supports mathematics display using LaTeX or ASCIIMath notation.
    • For sizable amounts of codes and to maintain a single source location, consider hosting your code on File Exchange:
      • MATLAB File Exchange — Get and Share Code
• Participants should prepare to present their curriculum plans in an easy-to-follow format
  • Examples: live script, slide, teaching activity, grader problems, etc. — for sharing with your group
• Ask for help, get tools questions answered, test your code.

10:15 – 10:30 AM Break

• Participants who received workshop stipends should take a few minutes to complete a W-9 or W-8BEN when contacted by the Carleton Business Office. Follow the instructions on Submitting Reimbursement and Receiving your Stipend.

10:30 – 11:45 AM Affinity Groups: Teaching Activity Sharing and Feedback (Weitz 236 and additional spaces)

• Working group participants will meet to review their curriculum/teaching activities and get feedback and ideas from their peers.
• A subset of participants will present — 5 minutes to present, 10 minutes of feedback/discussion.

11:45 AM – 12:00 PM Affinity Group Report-Out, Facilitator: Lisa Kempler (Weitz 236)

• Select 1 presenter from each working group to highlight.
• Affinity group highlights/report out page

12:00 –1:00 PM Lunch + Teaching Activity Wander + Informal Show & Tell (Weitz 236)

• Participants with activities to share will discuss them at their tables for discussion with table visitors.
• Select presentations may be shared with the room on the big screen.
• Box lunches provided.

1:00 – 1:45 PM Workshop Synthesis and Next Steps, Facilitator: Cailin Huyck Orr (Weitz 236)

• Thinking about your own experience since Sunday evening
  • What's one way your teaching has changed or evolved?
  • Describe something you learned re: Teaching, tools, etc.
  • What will you bring back to your department, program or institution?
• End of Workshop Evaluation

2:00 PM Shuttle to Airport (main entrance of Weitz at 3rd Street E and College Street S)