The institute is designed for you to attend during the mornings for focused, structured learning and work time. This attendance is a critical part of the program. Afternoon times are unstructured work time that allow you to complete all required elements of the “homework” in a supportive virtual environment, as well as to ask questions of the facilitators or get extra help as needed.

Your group members will serve as resources for you throughout the program, and afterwards. You’ll be expected to communicate with your groups directly if you are unable to attend a portion of the program and also to share notes and resources with each other as needed. 

Participants who attend 80% of all four morning sessions will receive a letter of completion as documentation of their work during the institute. If you have an extenuating life circumstance which causes you to miss some of the institute please communicate this with us during the institute. 

While attendance at afternoon working sessions is not mandatory, these sessions represent an approximation of the amount of work (1.5 – 2 hours) you will need to complete after the synchronous program each day. The afternoon sessions are intended to be beneficial to you in terms of getting together informally with your peers or working alone, with CTAL staff ready to assist you. 

We will not be recording any of the synchronous sessions from CDI for a few reasons:

• All participants should feel the freedom to discuss potentially sensitive and personal teaching and learning related issues and challenges.This aligns with CTALs confidentiality policy.
• Slides, resources, and worksheets for the entire institute will be available in your participant folder
• Groups are intended to function as they would in any university classroom and we expect you work with your peers just as you would ask students to do in your courses.
• If you have any questions or need additional support, CTAL staff are available during afternoon working sessions on Days 1- 3 of CDI to help you cover anything you miss or need to discuss further.

CDI is designed to be a complete, intensive institute which follows a specific sequence in order to help you successfully backwards design or redesign a course you are teaching. We work hard to update our instructional materials, resources, and worksheets to provide you, and your students, with support to design your course. Additionally, this institute should be considered useful professional development for “future you” meaning all information presented has been curated to remain relevant to your future course design efforts. In this vein, we ask that you show both your peers and the CTAL team the collegial respect to attend all synchronous morning sessions.