TEACHx 2026

As generative AI tools increasingly shape how students approach writing, instructors face a key pedagogical question: how do we preserve the cognitive processes essential to learning while still preparing students to use emerging technologies responsibly? This session explores a teaching approach that intentionally balances AI-assisted ideation with handwritten in-class journaling to cultivate deeper thinking, ownership, and academic voice. Rather than banning AI or fully embracing automation, this model sequences technology alongside deliberate moments of cognitive pause. Participants will examine how structured notebook journals—where students sit with an empty page before drafting—can foster metacognition, reduce performance anxiety, and strengthen confidence. The session will also demonstrate how AI can be productively integrated for brainstorming, outlining, and idea generation without replacing critical thinking. Attendees will engage in a brief reflective activity that mirrors the journaling practice and leave with adaptable prompts, timing strategies, and classroom frameworks that can be applied across disciplines. This presentation reframes uncertainty not as a barrier to learning, but as a skill that can be intentionally taught through pacing, structure, and pedagogical design.

A growing movement has challenged the accuracy and equity of commonly-used grading systems, leading to  practices like standards-based grading, specifications grading, and ungrading as possible alternatives. While promising pedagogically, these practices are often difficult to sustain in reality.  This talk will focus on the role of gradebooks and the way they may nudge us either to continue old practices and discourage adoption of new practices or to lean into more promising practices. The talk will follow the author’s personal experience with alternative grading systems and with a beta-version of a gradebook designed to support alternative grading rather than traditional grading. 

Encouraging a group of students who are strangers to support each other and work through the anxieties and insecurities of learning together can be a considerable challenge for educators. While there is a significant body of research that supports the effectiveness of collaborative learning, Kaendler, Wiedmann, Rummel and Spada have demonstrated that an instructor’s ability to facilitate “quality” interactions between students in collaborative work is crucial for the success of this method (Kaendler et al. 2015). When done well, collaborative learning teaches students’ emotional resilience as they face their own social insecurities and supports inclusive classrooms by centering the identities and experiences of individual students within collaborative relationships. In this workshop, we will work on our ability to foster collaborative classrooms by first experiencing and creating collaborative learning for ourselves. We will introduce and experience 15 different techniques, ranging from quick collaborative brainstorming to in-depth, long-term collaborative learning reflections. We will then work together to document and review our learning. Participants will leave the session having identified cooperative learning strategies to apply to their own teaching and with a plan to address any challenges they foresee in using these strategies in their classrooms.