Lumen Circles: Professional Growth Through Community of Practice
Join a 9-week virtual fellowship where faculty explore evidence-based teaching practices and grow through reflection and collaboration.
Lumen Circles are faculty professional development experiences that use virtual learning communities to connect faculty members with peers and help them hone their expertise as student-centered teachers. Grounded in evidence-based teaching practices and self-reflection, Lumen Circles work well for any faculty member, in any discipline, and at any stage of career.
Fellowship Programs
Evidence-based Teaching with Generative AI
Wanting to use Generative AI appropriately with students? This circle invites faculty to explore generative AI in the context of evidence-based teaching practices. Throughout the fellowship, educators will learn how AI tools can help them personalize learning, enhance engagement, provide students with valuable feedback, all while learning about and following evidence-based teaching practices. This Circle is for faculty who are new to teaching with Generative AI.
Advanced Generative AI for Teaching & Learning
The Advanced Generative AI for Teaching and Learning fellowship explores the transformative power of using AI from a wide range of perspectives – from prompt engineering, to creating with images, audio, and video, to creating custom chatbots and analyzing data for your course. Throughout the fellowship, you will learn how AI tools can help you make learning more engaging, save time on administrative and other tasks, as well as help students prepare for their future AI use in the workplace. This Circle is for faculty who have been using Gen AI in their teaching materials, with students, and want to deepen their Gen AI use and practice.
Fostering Belonging for Student Success
The Fostering Belonging for Student Success Circle is about creating environments where all students feel they belong and can thrive personally and academically. We do this by building skills around evidence-based teaching practices that help us teach inclusively and effectively. By engaging in a community of practice, you will share ideas with others in your Circle and bring your learning into the classroom to ensure students feel they belong in your class.
Course Design for Student Success
Lumen Circle’s Course Design for Student Success fellowship encourages educators to use innovative, evidence-based strategies to create courses where each student feels included and empowered. The Circle curriculum examines the advantages of backward design and universal principles that ensures a learning landscape where faculty listen carefully and respond constructively to students, and students take ownership of their learning and content mastery.
Evidence-based Teaching
This circle delves deeply into Lumen Circles’ evidence-based teaching framework and how it supports student success. Faculty fellows will practice evidence-based teaching strategies and reflect on their impact. Through learning by doing and experience-sharing, faculty will explore backward design, learning outcome alignment, differentiated instruction, assessment design, and other evidence-based practices that contribute to improving learning and teaching effectiveness.
Online Teaching Foundation
Designed for faculty who are newer to teaching online, this circle focuses expressly on the online modality and provides opportunities to explore and apply best practices that align with Lumen Circles’ evidence-based teaching framework. Faculty fellows will practice highly effective teaching strategies for the online modality and reflect on their impact. Through learning by doing and experience-sharing, faculty develop their teaching capabilities with techniques that engage students in the online setting and support their success.
Teaching with Active Learning
This circle provides opportunities to explore strategies and tools to engage students more actively in the learning process, whether educators are teaching face-to-face, online, and/or hybrid classes. Faculty fellows will practice active learning strategies aligned with Lumen Circles’ evidence-based teaching framework and reflect on their impact. Through learning by doing and experience-sharing, they will also enrich their understanding of effective student engagement techniques and how to make learning interactive to support students’ success.
Teaching with OER & OER-enabled Pedagogy
This circle invites fellows to explore how to apply evidence-based teaching strategies in the context of using OER and OER-enabled pedagogy. Through learning by doing and experience-sharing, faculty develop their teaching capabilities with techniques that use the principles of open education to engage students and strengthen their success. Learn to use and create openly-licensed content in concert with students.
How Do Lumen Circles Work?
- Set goals. Identify how you want to develop your teaching practice and pedagogical profile.
Build skills. Virtual, workshop-style learning opportunities expand your teaching repertory, help you work smarter through teaching “hacks,” and deepen your understanding of evidence-based practices.
Teach and reflect. Apply what you’re learning, consider how it’s working for your students and where to improve.
Share via virtual learning circles. Connect with peers, exchange feedback, and collect new ideas through expertly-facilitated learning circles. Our user-friendly platform makes it simple to connect and collaborate.
Recognize growth and progress. Track progress towards goals and see your teaching evolve as you incorporate new practices with students.
Pick the Offering that Works for You
We offer Lumen Circles experiences with different areas of focus, levels of depth, and duration.
- Lumen Circle Fellowships: Build skills in targeted areas, apply what you’re learning, and collaborate within a virtual learning circle
- Collaborate with peers through institutional or departmental cohorts
- Register as an individual faculty member and connect with peers from various institutions and departments
What’s Your Role?
Your connection with students is paramount to their success, but knowing how to reach them can be challenging. Lumen Circles provide opportunities to expand your teaching repertory in areas you want to grow. You can join colleagues to learn, share ideas, compare experiences, and be part of a thriving community focused on evidence-based teaching for today’s students.
Lumen Circles compliment your center’s resources and priorities. Some centers offer a full menu of programs but struggle to generate meaningful evaluation data. Others cater to new faculty, but they sometimes overlook faculty who are later in their careers. Still others struggle to meet the needs of part-time faculty or graduate students. We can tailor offerings to fit the faculty members you want to reach with skill-building and professional growth focused on teaching practices that impact student success. We also offer flexible options around pricing and scale.
Recognizing student success is a result of faculty success, Lumen Circles can help you provide a broader foundation of faculty support to transform teaching and learning with a focus on evidence-based instructional practices. We can also help you track alignment and measure progress towards institutional and faculty goals for improving teaching practice.