TEACHx 2026

As AI reshapes the technological landscape, students across all disciplines need opportunities to build 21st‑century skills, including AI literacy. Foreign language courses, which already foster communicative and intercultural competence, are uniquely positioned to support these skills. This poster explores whether AI‑mediated language practice can simultaneously strengthen students’ linguistic abilities and their understanding of AI tools.
 
This session presents an activity from a beginner‑level Spanish course in which students interacted with an AI chatbot configured to act as a conversational partner named Alberto. Using a carefully designed prompt, students engaged in exchanging personal information, preferences, and emotional states while practicing targeted vocabulary and grammatical structures. The chatbot provided metalinguistic feedback, highlighted errors, encouraged self‑repair, and offered explanations and new vocabulary as needed.
 
The poster also reports findings from a mixed‑methods study examining student perspectives and experiences with AI tools in the language classroom. Survey data and analysis of AI–student interactions indicate that learners recognize the linguistic benefits of AI‑mediated practice and generally support its integration into both their college experience and language study. At the same time, they acknowledge important concerns about accuracy, privacy, and the role of AI in learning. These insights offer guidance for instructors seeking to incorporate AI responsibly and effectively in foreign‑language pedagogy.

This poster session introduces audience members to the principles of Writing Across the Curriculum / Writing in the Disciplines (WAC/WID) and the ways it takes shape across programs at U.S. universities. It also highlights work from the International WAC/WID Mapping Project, United States Branch, Phase Three, which investigates how WAC/WID is being implemented at institutions throughout the country.

WAC/WID centers on both “writing to learn” and “learning to write” in ways that support diverse student experiences. Rooted in principles similar to Universal Design for Learning, WAC/WID employs flexible, scaffolded approaches that enable students to develop and demonstrate knowledge through varied modalities. Participation in WAC/WID coursework fosters learning across the curriculum.

Through open discussion with presenters, audience members wi

Presenters will discuss an assessment of students’ research skills and professional development competencies, tied to National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) career-readiness, when completing the master’s research project (MRP) sequence. The MRP is the culminating work product of Northwestern’s Master of Science in Higher Education Administration and Policy degree and represents student success as well as success after graduation.


The 3-course MRP sequence begins with students developing their own research questions based on their interests and career aspirations in higher education. Faculty guide students in making sense of uncertain, emerging phenomena within the practice of higher education. Students write a literature review; develop a plan for data collection; collect data; and summarize, interpret, and make recommendations through a written and oral presentation. We capture how master’s level academic pursuits are closely tied to career-readiness—for the past 15 years, job placement has been 90+% within 90 days of graduation.

Institutions do important work preparing students with relevant skills for the workforce, yet many students still struggle to gain access to professional opportunities. In a job market increasingly shaped by automation and AI-driven tools, students can apply more efficiently, but not necessarily more effectively. Access to opportunity continues to rely heavily on confidence, relationships, and social capital, areas that are often assumed rather than explicitly taught.


This interactive session explores the gap between workforce preparation and workforce access, focusing on how faculty and staff across roles can help students navigate uncertainty and enter professional spaces more confidently. Drawing from an academic career development perspective, the session invites participants to examine how relationships shaped their own career pathways—and how similar access is (or is not) made visible to students.


Through guided reflection and small-group activities, participants will explore the limitations of telling students "just network" without modeling it or providing opportunities to practice alongside them. Attendees will leave with practical, low-lift strategies they can embed into everyday teaching and interactions to help students translate skill development into real access and economic mobility.

In today’s fast-paced, algorithm-driven media environment, students often prioritize speed over reflection. Instructors of a Spanish bridge course noticed how this can limit students’ ability to engage deeply with complex texts, complicating their progression to more advanced language courses. This poster session presents curricular changes and shares findings from a year-long study using social comics to help develop students’ attention to detail as a foundation for critical media engagement. 


Examples of student work, along with qualitative and quantitative survey data, demonstrates that analyzing the language of comics—framing, sequencing, visual rhetoric, silence, and authorial choice—provides an enjoyable yet rigorous structure for deeper engagement with texts. Students not only analyze but also create their own comics, applying the aforementioned strategies to produce thoughtful, multimodal work in small groups. 


Additionally, these analytical practices transfer beyond the classroom since students learn to examine how layout directs attention, how images shape interpretation, and how design influences emotion—skills essential for navigating social media, digital storytelling, and AI-generated content. By strengthening close reading, students simultaneously develop intercultural competence, critical thinking, and creativity, while gaining confidence to navigate ever more complex media contexts.

This presentation will summarize content from a Library GenAI student workshop offered in Winter and Spring quarters 2026, Generative Artificial Intelligence and You: The Role Humans Play in GAI Use; this is the latest iteration of the student workshop three librarians have offered since Fall 2023. The intent is to share talking points and takeaways instructors can also share with their students about the option to use AI in their learning process, the need to recognize what AI is useful for, as well as its limitations, and the active role students need to play to ensure ethical, responsible, and effective use.  
 
 
Information included will be: 
 

• the workshop learning objectives,
• then and now: how student use of GenAI has changed since 2022 and what has stayed the same,
• the role that GenAI tools play and what roles students need to play,
• how to determine which GenAI tool to use,
• a summary of best practices for writing prompts, verifying outputs, and complementing GAI content with Library resources.

Large-scale immigration enforcement initiatives do not stop at the targeted communities. They enter classrooms. This session presents findings from two qualitative studies examining how Operation Midway Blitz shaped educator well-being, instructional decision-making, and professional practice in Chicagoland schools. Drawing on focus groups with teacher candidates and interviews with practicing educators and community experts, the research explores how educators navigated political tension, emotional strain, and shifting student needs while sustaining instructional quality.
Participants describe changes in curriculum, classroom climate, family communication, and professional identity. They also identify the formal and informal supports that enabled them to continue teaching effectively in a climate of uncertainty.
Aligned with the conference theme of "Leading through Uncertainty", presenters will share a practical support framework for teacher preparation programs and school leaders to better equip educators during large-scale social and political disruption.
Attendees will leave with research-informed strategies for supporting educator well-being, strengthening trauma-informed practice, and preparing teachers to respond ethically and instructionally when policy enters the classroom.

This poster demonstrates how students and instructors can turn primary materials from digital collections into compelling essays and stories. Using Canopy IIIF, developed at Northwestern University Libraries, they can quickly create digital humanities projects that place cultural heritage materials at the center of scholarly work. Attendees will see the full process, from selection to publication, and leave with a ready-to-use model for course design centered on these materials.

This poster presents the updated "Northwestern Principles of Inclusive Teaching” resource and its implementation. Participants will learn how to collaboratively execute our multi-year “4R” (recruit—review—revise—reach) cycle for updating and promoting a scholarly resource for educators. We will educators. We will review the resource, highlight key revisions, as well as present the development and stewardship process led by educational developers at Northwestern University. Quotes from contributors and reviewers will provide insights into the scholarly, collaborative creation and revision process. We will share the multitude of ways in which these inclusive teaching principles were disseminated to educators for practice and application, including as course material for the Reflective and Effective Teaching Certificate Program. The session aims to inspire other educational developers and communities of practice to write, re-write, and promote their own evidence-based guides to advance learning and teaching by leveraging insights and adapting strategies presented.

Developed by students pursuing a Masters in Nursing Science, the Health Equity and Advocacy Learning (HEALs) workshop is an innovative learning experience that highlights best practices to address health inequities through advocacy. Each session focuses on a health inequity topic and offers expert community members and health care professionals an opportunity to share their unique advocacy experiences. The inaugural HEALs Workshop focused on women’s cardiac health. Twenty-seven attendees participated in the virtual workshop. The HEALs workshop highlighted the value of including technology-enabled communication platform to create meaningful educational experiences to build real-world advocacy skills related to women cardiac health all while centering and highlighting the expertise of community members and health care professionals. This workshop supported the development of practical advocacy skills for attendees while fostering inclusive dialogue within an academic settings.