Concurrent Sessions

2026 CHIIPs Concurrent Sessions

 

Concurrent I

12:20 - 1:10

 

• (137A) It's a Beautiful Day in the Classroom Neighborhood: How a Laptop-Free Zone Created Space for Connection
• (137B) Running on Empty: Recognizing and Responding to Student Overload and Burnout
• (215) From Analysis to Decision: Using Decision Readiness Gates to Drive Student Engagement and Commitment
• (225) Stop Teaching Content, Start Designing Learning: A Human-Centered 5E Approach

• Room 137A

  It's a Beautiful Day in the Classroom Neighborhood: How a Laptop-Free Zone Created Space for Connection

  Elizabeth Davison, ETSU

  What happens when screens are set aside and students are invited to be fully present with one another? This session explores one instructor’s experience implementing a laptop-free classroom and the ways it fostered student engagement, handwritten note-taking, and a stronger sense of classroom community. Grounded in self-determination theory, particularly the need for relatedness, this presentation examines how intentional classroom environments can create space for connection and belonging. Participants will learn practical strategies for implementing laptop-free zones, consider benefits and challenges, and discuss how reduced digital distraction may support deeper engagement and peer interaction. Through presenter examples and collaborative audience discussion, attendees will leave with adaptable, human-centered ideas for cultivating a classroom “neighborhood” where students feel more connected.

• Room 137B

  Running on Empty: Recognizing and Responding to Student Overload and Burnout

  Deidre Johnson & Kate Emmerich, ETSU

  Faculty frequently encounter students who appear disengaged, unprepared, or unmotivated, but these behaviors often reflect underlying cognitive overload, burnout, or emotional distress. Drawing on decades of combined experience in mental health counseling and academic support, this session translates what students disclose in support settings into actionable insights for the classroom. Participants will learn to distinguish between different types of student struggle and respond with strategies that are both empathetic and academically rigorous. Through interactive case analysis and response practice, attendees will develop practical language and low-burden interventions they can immediately apply in their courses. This session supports human-centered teaching by equipping faculty to recognize hidden barriers to learning, identifying ways instructors might inadvertently be contributing to these issues, and learning strategies to build trust and create classroom environments that foster both well-being and academic success.

• Room 215

  From Analysis to Decision: Using Decision Readiness Gates to Drive Student Engagement and Commitment

  Paul Byrum, ETSU

  This interactive session introduces a practical instructional intervention—decision readiness gates—that helps students move from analysis to committed decision-making. Many students remain in analysis mode, avoiding trade-offs and delaying commitment. This session demonstrates how structured constraints can shift student behavior toward clear, accountable decisions.

  Participants will engage in a live decision lab using a mini-case adapted from an MBA strategic leadership course. They will experience the intervention as learners, progressing through individual and team decision gates that require explicit trade-offs and commitment.

  The session emphasizes human-centered instructional practices that foster trust, engagement, and psychological safety while maintaining rigor. By making thinking visible through structured writing and shared decisions, instructors can create deeper engagement and more meaningful learning.

  Participants will leave with a ready-to-use toolkit, including a replication guide, facilitation prompts, and a portable decision lab structure adaptable across disciplines.

• Room 225

  Stop Teaching Content, Start Designing Learning: A Human-Centered 5E Approach

  Jean Swindle, ETSU

  As higher education continues to evolve across online, hybrid, synchronous, and asynchronous environments, faculty are increasingly challenged to design learning experiences that prioritize engagement, curiosity, and meaningful knowledge construction over content delivery alone. This interactive workshop introduces participants to the 5E Instructional Model—Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate—as a human-centered framework for course and lesson design across modalities. Participants will bring an existing lesson, module, or unit plan and engage in a guided redesign process that emphasizes learner agency, inquiry, collaboration, and authentic application. Drawing upon constructivist learning theory and contemporary research on active learning and online pedagogy, the workshop demonstrates how the 5E model can move students beyond seeking the "correct answer" toward deeper understanding of how knowledge is constructed, processed, and applied. Faculty will leave with a revised instructional plan, practical implementation strategies, and new insights from colleagues across disciplines and teaching contexts.

 

Concurrent II

1:20 - 2:10

 

•  (137A) CHATS - Connecting Humans and Telling Stories: A Classroom Approach to Practice Human Connection
• (137B) Using Guided Inquiry to Put Students at the Center of Learning
• (215)  Beyond Hours Logged: Embedding Intentional Reflective Practice in Experiential Courses
• (225) Not Just Feedback: Screen Recording as One-on-One Teaching in the AI Era

 

• Room 137A

  CHATS - Connecting Humans and Telling Stories: A Classroom Approach to Practice Human Connection

  Leah Wilson & Travis Proffitt, Emory & Henry University

  CHATS (Connecting Humans and Telling Stories), developed in partnership with Mount Rogers Community Services and Emory & Henry University, is a methodology focused on building more resilient communities by bringing groups together and providing opportunities to foster genuine connections. In these interactive sessions, participants practice skills for listening, curiosity, challenging assumptions, and multiperspectival thinking in ways that are scaffolded and lower-risk. This framework can support teaching, advising, staff development, student leadership, and community-facing dialogue. At E&H, faculty have begun adapting CHATS practices in classroom and other academic spaces. Ongoing assessments reveal high levels of participant agreement that this framework increases curiosity, helps participants make new connections, supports acceptance, encourages perspective-taking, and builds trust in learning spaces. In today’s session, participants will have the opportunity to learn about this approach, participate in a CHATS session, and leave with the tools and lesson plan to facilitate the session themselves.

• Room 137B

  Using Guided Inquiry to Put Students at the Center of Learning

  Patrick Brown, ETSU

  Guided Inquiry is a teaching method that puts the student at the center of their own learning. Using carefully scaffolded questions, students explore data to create their own understanding of concepts and ideas. Most Guided Inquiry methods utilize a learning cycle approach to take advantage of the way the human brain naturally makes meaning from new information. In this session we will explore various ways that Guided Inquiry can be implemented both in-person and asynchronously online. We will also complete some Guided Inquiry activities from a variety of academic disciplines.

• Room 215

  Beyond Hours Logged: Embedding Intentional Reflective Practice in Experiential Courses

  Audrey Besch & Kelsey Shubert, ETSU

  While experiential learning requires structure, documentation, and accountability, the emphasis on hour completion can sometimes overshadow opportunities for students to pause, reflect, and process their learning experiences in real time (Woodall et al., 2026). Drawing from reflective practice literature and relational teaching approaches (Tan et al., 2026), this session will explore how embedding intentional reflective spaces can support student well-being, professional identity development, communication skills, and engagement within experiential learning placements. Using capstone undergraduate Human Services experiential learning courses as a case example, presenters will discuss the creation and implementation of reflective practice meetings, highlighting lessons learned, semester-to-semester adaptations, and emerging assessment data from student reflections, pre/post meeting feedback, and site supervisor evaluations. Attendees will leave with practical and scalable strategies for embedding reflective practice into experiential and applied learning environments in ways that support both student engagement and instructional sustainability (Denami & Adinda, 2023).

• Room 225

  Not Just Feedback: Screen Recording as One-on-One Teaching in the AI Era

  Jason Horne, ETSU

  Students like hearing someone talk about their work. Not read it. Not score it. Talk about it, the way an advisor would across a desk. That experience is hard to deliver in a 30-person seminar, impossible online, and increasingly suspect when students assume their instructor outsourced the reading to AI.

  This session reframes recorded feedback as a 3 to 6 minute one-on-one conference. The instructor opens the paper, reads aloud with the cursor moving, reacts in real time, and signs off. Personality is a feature, not a bug. Voice, pacing, humor, and "I don't know about this paragraph" are what no rubric or LLM can fake.

  After several years of recording these in graduate Educational Leadership courses, the presenter will share what makes a recording feel like a conference, not a verdict. Attendees will watch samples, record a 60-second mini-conference, and leave with a plan.

  * Device recommended

 

Posters

2:20 - 3:10

• Poster 1

  Reading Before Writing: Human-Centered Strategies for Helping Students Enter Difficult Texts

  Jill Channing & Alison Maddux, ETSU

  Many college students are asked to write about complex texts before they have been explicitly taught how to enter, question, and make meaning from those texts. This poster presents a human-centered approach to reading instruction that helps students slow down, notice confusion, build confidence, and use reading as a foundation for stronger writing. Drawing from Reading Apprenticeship, Writing Across the Curriculum, transparent assignment design, and research on high-impact practices, the poster offers practical strategies instructors can use across disciplines. These include guided first reads, confusion logs, annotation conversations, “read-to-write” journals, model think-alouds, and low-stakes writing prompts that help students move from comprehension to analysis. The poster argues that reading support is not remedial. It is an equity-minded, trust-building teaching practice that helps students participate more fully in college-level learning.

• Poster 2

  Guided Self-Assessment in Quantitative Public Health Courses

  Mildred Maisonet, ETSU

  This poster presentation describes a guided self-assessment assignment approach designed to strengthen reflective learning and error recognition in quantitative public health courses. Students first complete and submit applied assignments independently. After submission, they receive a detailed answer key and complete a structured reflection identifying differences between their work and the key, explaining the source of errors, and describing what they would do differently in the future. Reflection prompts encourage students to evaluate conceptual misunderstandings, calculation mistakes, data interpretation issues, and data management practices. The activity changes assignments from being focused only on grades to opportunities for students to reflect on their work, recognize mistakes, and improve future performance. This approach is intended to support practical skill development and encourage students to engage more actively with feedback. The poster will describe the structure of the assignments and reflections and provide examples of how students evaluated and learned from their errors.

• Poster 3

  Creating Access Through AI: Women's Health Cases for Every Learner

  Karen Carver & Christina Dzioba, ETSU

  Graduate nursing students often experience uneven access to women’s health learning opportunities due to a shortage of qualified preceptors. To supplement traditional clinical rotations, faculty developed an interactive, AI‑driven standardized patient assignment for an online graduate course in Summer 2026. Using SchoolAI, instructors created adaptive women’s health case scenarios that respond dynamically to each student’s interviewing approach, physical exam reasoning, and clinical decision‑making. While students continue to engage in real‑world patient care under preceptor supervision, these AI‑based encounters provide an additional, consistent space to practice sensitive skills and demonstrate competency. The AI transcripts also give faculty greater visibility into students’ thought processes, offering a scalable mechanism for evaluating clinical reasoning within an asynchronous online model. Early feedback indicates increased engagement, improved confidence in history‑taking, and deeper reflection on decision‑making, expanding access to meaningful women’s health learning experiences.

• Summer Institute Quick-Shares #4 - #

  Under Development - please check back!

  [4] TBD
  Karen Carver, Ph.D., APRN, FNP-C
  College of Nursing

  [5] From Service Hours to Ours: Scenario-Based Reflections as a High-Impact Teaching Tool
  Deidre A. Rogers, Ed.S.
  Dept. of Counseling & Human Services; Course: Intro to Service Learning

  [6] Thinking in Pictures and the Mad Dash
  Cathy Galyon, Ed.D.
  Dept. of Early Childhood & Elementary Education

  [7] A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Creative Strategies to Enhance Critical Thinking
  Erin Mauck, DrPH
  Dept. of Community & Behavioral Health

Concurrent III

3:20 - 4:10

• (137A) Reflect, Redesign, Reclaim: Faculty Journeys with Generative AI in the Classroom
• (137B) Relationship-Building for Student Engagement
• (215) Is Vlogging Reflection? Exploring Novel Approaches to Encourage and Facilitate Reflection in Higher Education
• (225) Microdoses of Change: Fostering Student Professional Identity and Professionalism  

• Room 137A

  Reflect, Redesign, Reclaim: Faculty Journeys with Generative AI in the Classroom

  Ruth Facun-Granadozo, Narges Sareh, Natalie Beach, & Tsitsi Nyabando, ETSU 

  Amid the rapid expansion of generative AI in higher education, faculty are navigating new tensions between efficiency, academic integrity, and meaningful learning. Through a collaborative self-study, a group of five instructors reaffirmed their commitment to high-quality learning while intentionally positioning AI as a tool—both for their own pedagogical practice and for student learning. Through iterative redesigning of assignments and instructional approaches, they sought to sustain joy in teaching, protect professional judgment, and model thoughtful, ethical AI use. Findings highlight how faculty resolve—grounded in reflective practice and intentional pedagogy—can transform AI from a perceived threat into a resource that enhances learning.

• Room 137B

  Relationship-Building for Student Engagement

  Heather Osborne, ETSU

  This interactive session will explore how intentional relationship-building can support student engagement in college classrooms. Through reflection, role-play, and guided planning, participants will explore how trust, humor, warmth, and approachability can help students feel more willing to participate, collaborate, and take intellectual risks. Participants will leave with practical strategies for creating classroom relationships that support belonging, accountability, and meaningful engagement. 

• Room 215

  Is Vlogging Reflection? Exploring Novel Approaches to Encourage and Facilitate Reflection in Higher Education

  James Boone, ETSU

  Reflection leads to deeper learning and facilitates critical thinking. Purposeful and structured reflection is important in novice and developing students. While several theoretical frameworks exist that can inform and help such structure in higher education, one challenge with written reflection is that it lacks emotional content. Edge-emotions – feelings generated by being on the edge of one’s comfort zone – can be tapped via reflection exercises. Edge-emotions are a potential doorway to deeper reflection. Vlogging is a short duration video recording that can engage the learner in critical self-reflection. With smartphones, tablets and computers readily accessible, vlogging can be easily used in an array of methods.  This presentation explores a novel approach to incorporating reflection that facilitates learning while taking less time, and the ability to capture emotions that written reflection activities may be unable to capture. It is well-received by students, is efficient and has the ability to foster professional development. 

• Room 225

  Microdoses of Change: Fostering Student Professional Identity and Professionalism  

  Karilynn Dowling-McClay & Michele Williams, ETSU

  Successful workforce entry demands more than the specialized knowledge that is accumulated through higher education. We envision how our students will embody professional traits when they leave the classroom and enter their chosen field, but to what extent are we guiding learners through the growth process that is needed to consistently and authentically meet those expectations? This session introduces the concept of student professional identity formation and demonstrates its applicability to academic success and workforce readiness in all levels of higher education. Through this session, attendees will gain an understanding of how student professional identity formation runs deeper than reactive responses to outward displays of (un)professional behavior and encompasses the internalization of the shared knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs of a profession. Attendees will leave with small, easily actionable teaching strategies that can be used to inoculate learners against professional identity formation missteps.