TEACHx 2026

Can a mandatory, reading-heavy course actually be the highlight of a student’s week? In many required courses, students often feel like passive containers for information—what Paulo Freire calls the “banking concept” of education. This session explores how the Ways of Knowing course at Northwestern University in Qatar flipped this script. 
By integrating Freire’s problem-posing method, faculty and students transformed a daunting syllabus on colonial knowledge into an interactive laboratory for student agency. Presenters (faculty and students who have taken the course) will share how they utilized student-led facilitation (using Kahoot and role-play), sensory-based learning (field trips to the Bin Jelmood House), and creative expression (collaborative drawing) to build a community of inquiry. Attendees will benefit from the lessons learned of teaching a course in a postcolonial framework and how activities such as reading outside the classroom or visiting museums can balance the growing use of AI in education by prioritizing deep learning shared spaces experiences.  

Changing a culture doesn’t happen overnight, nor is it a solo venture. Historically, in academia, ensuring that educational materials are accessible has been an afterthought or seen as an add-on that leads to extra work. Knowing that accessible materials are necessary for many, beneficial for all, and legally required, Northwestern and the University of Chicago set out to change the culture around digital accessibility at their respective institutions to a more proactive approach that’s integrated into workflows…and it’s working!
This session will explore both universities’ journey toward creating a more accessible digital environment. Discussion will focus on each university’s unique, flexible, agile, data-driven approach that not only created initial success, but quickly adapted to amplify the success and build a movement that’s put the Chicago area at the forefront of accessible digital learning environment design. The presentation will also discuss the importance of partnerships both within and across institutions, and how to cultivate and sustain them. The lessons learned in creating this culture shift can be applied beyond accessibility and across course development.   

As generative AI increasingly automates the "final product," higher education faces a crisis of cognitive atrophy. When AI provides solutions instantly, it skips the "earned struggle" essential for long-term retention. This session introduces Somagraphic Learning™: a human-first visual cognitive framework designed to bridge the Clarity Gap between AI data volume and human sense-making capacity.


Moving beyond traditional "AI-first" workflows, this interactive presentation demonstrates how to reposition AI as a "Follower" rather than a "Leader". Participants will engage with the Shape-Emotion Grammar™, a pre-verbal language that uses perceptual cues like circles for safety, boxes for structure, and arrows for movement to anchor understanding before a single prompt is typed.


We will workshop a virtual "Attempt → Map → Refine" process, where learners externalize ideas through hand-drawn motion (on paper or digital whiteboards) before utilizing AI for optimization. By the end of this session, educators will possess a replicable strategy to protect the "Human Edge", ensure academic integrity through somatic principles, and foster a "soul-made" environment where technology supports, rather than replaces, the human mind.

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.

Loyal. Thoughtful. Compassionate. These are just some of the many characteristics of Generation Z, those born from 1995 to 2010. Despite some similarities with the Millennial Generation, Generation Z has a unique set of attributes, experiences, preferences, and expectations about how they communicate, learn, and engage with others. But, many of our structures, curriculum, environments, and pedagogies were developed with previous generations in mind, challenging us to re-conceptualize the way we design and deliver higher education for this generation.  
This session showcases the context within which members of Generation Z have come of age and what we need to know about Generation Z to best mentor, support, teach, and supervise them to leverage their potential for success. 
Major Themes: 

• Understanding Generations and Generational Research 

• Societal Influences Shaping Generation Z 

• Characteristics 

• Diversity 

• Motivations 

• Mental Wellbeing 

• Social Media Use 

• Communication Preferences 

• Learning Preferences 

• Aspirations 

• Social Issues and Concerns 

• Engagement and Creating Change 

 
Learning Outcomes: 

• Participants will be able to describe the context within which members of Generation Z have come of age. 

• Participants will be able to describe the characteristics, motivations, values, and preferences of the Generation Z cohort. 

• Participants will be able to differentiate between defining characteristics of Generation Z and those from older generations. 

Forget the “buzz” words—let’s be real! In this interactive space, we’ll draw on the arts, lived experiences, and research discussing the necessity of honoring mental health through creativity, community, and cultural literacy. The workshop is centered on engaging lessons that allow for creative expression and an interactive approach to teaching. We'll immerse ourselves in poetry and theatre as a way to develop our understanding of mental health and wellness in an arts-driven classroom. 


The session will have us up on our feet with theatre games, along with writing opportunities, to dig into self, community, and language with an emphasis on culturally responsive creative literacy and action. We’ll also share our creative work and connections to local organizations, engaging with colleagues to offer concrete ideas for integrating wellness and the arts in authentic and intentional ways.

How are Northwestern students actually navigating AI in their learning—and what does that mean for teaching?
In this panel, undergraduate and graduate students share candid perspectives on how AI shows up in their coursework, decision‑making, and sense of academic integrity.
Through concrete examples and reflection, panelists explore when AI supports learning, when it complicates it, and what clarity, trust, and assignment design matter most from an instructor’s point of view.
Moderator: Anna Luce, Lead Learning Engineer
Student panelists: Melanie Medina, Trinity Barnett, Gracie Shaw-Rothberg, and Mohamed Ibrahim. 

Celebrate the instructors who went above and beyond to create engaging experiences for their students using Canvas!

Two-stage assessments (2SAs) are a form of cooperative learning activities (CL) applied to evaluative contexts. In stage 1, students take an exam individually and discussion is prohibited–mirroring standard practices. However, in stage 2, students form small groups and complete the same exam collaboratively. Students are given time to discuss, to try to reach consensus. Typically, no between-stages feedback is provided. To incentivize discussion, stage 1 and 2 scores are weighted and combined (typically, 85%/15%), unless stage 1 is better (100%). Decades of research have evidenced the efficacy of 2SAs for motivation, engagement, emotions, and achievement. On average, students–even high baseline scorers–consistently show large performance and learning gains after stage 2 discussion, with most exceeding the top stage 1 score in their group. However, though 2SAs have been theoretically linked to CL, the literature would benefit from more explicit empirical connections to the CL evidence base, which has shown additional socio-emotional changes (self-concept and belongingness) as a result of high-quality group interactions in 2SAs. 


In this Lightening Talk, I will provide data from two large-enrollment classes that implemented 2SAs as the main form of assessment of student learning. One class is a Biology class (400+ enrollment), the other a Psychology class (100+). Both classes used 2SAs for multiple terms. Analyses of student belonging, performance changes, quality of cooperative discussions, and open-ended satisfaction data will be provided. In sum, data suggest students generated knowledge during their discussions (gains were more than just transmitting answers), enjoyed the activities,  and spontaneously remarked on many aspects of CL and 2SAs shown to promote deep learning.