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.  

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.

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.   

The claim that "crisis" and "opportunity" share a common root in Chinese is widely repeated but factually incorrect. Even so, crises carry a dual character: capable of genuine destruction while simultaneously compelling a reexamination of prevailing assumptions.


This webinar takes that duality as its premise. Rather than treating the so-called "reading crisis" in the age of AI as cause for alarm, the session approaches it as an invitation to more rigorous thinking. Drawing on current evidence about reading performance and evolving literacy practices, it redirects attention toward the fundamental question of what reading is for, a reframing that, in turn, opens more productive avenues for response.


The session concludes with concrete, classroom-ready strategies for higher education practitioners, offering substantive approaches to deepening comprehension and sustaining meaningful engagement with texts, as well as a demonstration of how AI, when thoughtfully integrated, may function as a resource in support of reading rather than an obstacle to it.

This interactive 45-minute session invites educators to actively build accessible learning materials using AI. Participants will follow along as we use tools like Claude and other AI platforms to create accessible PDFs, documents, and simple accessibility-focused apps that can be freely shared. Drawing from ongoing research and real-world consulting, the session emphasizes practical workflows grounded in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and core accessibility principles. Attendees will leave with concrete examples, reusable prompts, and a clearer understanding of how AI can support while not replacing ethical, inclusive teaching practices focused on human-centered critical thinking.

Graduate students in AI courses face a paradox: the very technology they are studying is generating an overwhelming flood of learning materials, making it harder, not easier, to learn. For working professionals balancing demanding careers, families, and graduate coursework, "overwhelm fatigue" is real — and it is undermining engagement with one of the most important topics of our time.
This session introduces a structured solution: a Claude-powered learning repository designed to give time-constrained graduate students a navigable, personalized entry point into generative AI concepts. Rather than confronting students with an undifferentiated mass of videos, blogposts, and references, the repository uses carefully designed prompts to help each student find their own path through the material.
The session includes a live demonstration — attendees will watch an actual interaction between the presenter and Claude in real time — and participants are invited to engage directly during the session. Attendees will leave with a replicable framework, available as a downloadable PDF, that faculty across disciplines can adapt to build their own Claude-powered course repositories.

Engage with innovative tools to master course and program design—plan learning with purpose, align objectives, and create courses and programs that work for both instructors and students. The Course Design Helper, Instructional Design Wizard, and Program Design Wizard are three free, user-friendly, publicly available tools that provide step-by-step guidance for course and program planning and development. See how they were created, how they have been implemented, and how you could use these tools and the principles behind them to support your own course and program design. Collaborate with colleagues to experiment with these tools, analyze case studies, and share best practices for course and program design. 

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.

Generative AI is a probabilistic engine; by definition, it can only predict the future based on the statistical averages of the past. As we face a new era of leading through uncertainty, how do we teach students to imagine futures that the data cannot predict?


This session introduces Speculative Pedagogy, moving the AI conversation from functional "prompt engineering" to critical "future building." Aligning with the AI, Digital Literacy & Innovative Learning track, this interactive presentation moves beyond theory into a hands-on "Future Archaeology" lab. Participants will act as archivists from the year 2050, "recovering" fictional artifacts—from AI-governed syllabi to manifestos for human-led research—to expose the hidden biases and limitations of today’s algorithmic world.


Rather than a standard lecture, this session utilizes a high-impact 15-minute "Sprint." You will use the Open Speculative Pedagogy Framework (OSPF) to prototype low-stakes, discipline-specific interventions that prioritize human agency over machine efficiency. You will leave with a versatile toolkit to help students interrogate the "black box" of AI, transforming technological "friction" into a powerful site of critical inquiry and creative resistance.

As U.S. college classrooms grow increasingly diverse, Spanish as a Heritage Language (SHL) courses must be intentionally designed for accessibility, inclusion, and digital readiness. This 45-minute interactive presentation showcases the redesign of course materials, Canvas modules, and policies in an SHL track using Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Open Educational Resources (OER), and critical AI literacy.


Guided by UDL, the course integrates multimodal OER, scaffolded academic literacy supports, transparent assignment design, and flexible assessment options to address heritage learners’ uneven reading and writing development. The Canvas site was streamlined for clarity and accessibility, and policies were revised to emphasize flexibility, growth, and equity.


To prepare students for a rapidly evolving world, the course also incorporates structured, ethical engagement with generative AI tools. Drawing on digital competency guidance from UNESCO, students critically evaluate AI outputs, examine linguistic bias, and use AI as a tool for revision and rhetorical analysis.


Participants will engage in brief collaborative activities to redesign assignments and reflect on inclusive AI practices. Attendees will leave with practical strategies for implementing UDL principles, enhancing digital literacy, and creating more accessible, student-centered learning environments.

As digital accessibility requirements under WCAG 2.1 AA and ADA Title II become increasingly stringent, higher education institutions face significant challenges in providing compliant audio descriptions (AD) for visual-heavy instructional videos. This session presents the results of a pilot project that established a cost-effective, scalable workflow for creating ADs in educational videos in collaboration with human describers/reviewers and Artificial Intelligence (AI).   
Focused on an online Bachelor’s program, the project implemented an iterative process to develop a hybrid workflow: 1) auditing video content by human reviewers based on instructional reliance on graphics, 2) generating baseline descriptions using AI and by human describers, 3) conducting human reviews to ensure pedagogical alignment, and 4) providing feedback on description for AI training and usability experience. We will discuss the challenges and successes of this hybrid workflow. The collaboration highlights refinement areas: humans corrected AI misalignments of on-screen events, adjusted overly detailed descriptions of temporary visual elements, and ensured context was introduced effectively.  
The AI tool will be introduced with AI-created descriptions for sample videos. The presenters will share visual description guidelines for structuring descriptions of technical visuals, such as diagrams, tables, and software for UI interactions. This presentation offers an actionable roadmap for leveraging AI for sustainable and compliant video accessibility. 

Motion capture technology, long established in industries such as sports, animation, and medical research, is a powerful tool for mapping and analyzing human movement. Its precision and ability to visualize biomechanical detail offer unique benefits when applied to music education—particularly in piano pedagogy, where mastery of physical nuance supports and enhances expressive performance.


Our project at Northwestern University, conducted in partnership with the Northwestern IT Emerging Technologies Lab, investigates motion capture as a platform to modernize piano instruction. By combining wearable sensor data from instructors with synchronized MIDI and multi-angle video, we facilitate dynamic visualization of expert technique—granting students access to practical demonstrations that surpass the limits of conventional teaching. The system’s interactive features, including targeted practice modes and accessible tools, encourage self-directed learning and promote a more informed development and understanding of playing habits.


Through iterative design and continued collaboration with faculty and students, we are refining this approach to prioritize accessibility and expand functionality. Beyond technical advancement, our work highlights how motion capture can foster creativity, exploration, and personalized learning—helping learners bridge the gap between understanding of physicality and technical execution in a technology-driven landscape.

This session introduces a new approach to designing an AI‑enhanced assessment for online learning, created to deepen student engagement and support experiential learning in a course on NCAA Compliance in the M.S. in Sports Administration Program at the Northwestern University School of Professional Studies. Developed through a cross‑departmental partnership, the project brought together learning designers, faculty, and academic staff in the Office of Distance Learning, working closely with programmers in the Northwestern Emerging Technologies Lab. Rather than adopting third‑party tools, the team became early adopters of Discourse AI, a custom-built GenAI web application used across several Northwestern courses. Discourse AI employs “AI Personas” as fictional conversation partners, allowing students to role‑play career‑relevant scenarios in a safe, low‑stakes environment. This design prioritizes inquiry, strategy, and decision‑making over simple answer generation, while ensuring instructors remain central as subject‑matter authorities through their feedback on student–AI transcripts. The resulting assignment simulated a real-world compliance investigation within Canvas—an experience previously unattainable in an asynchronous format. The presentation will outline the assignment structure, share insights from its initial implementation, present student survey data and feedback, and describe plans for refinement. Attendees will gain practical guidance for using custom AI tools to create meaningful, immersive learning experiences and expand the pedagogical potential of GenAI in higher education.

We all think differently. As a neurodivergent educator in a diverse classroom, I know how difficult communication can be. Sometimes understanding each other practically or empathically can be challenging. What seems obvious to one person can be confusing to another. In this event, we will learn games that creatively demonstrate the different ways we communicate and more importantly, the MANY ways we can be misunderstood. I’ll teach you games that build skills in clearer and more inclusive communication with interpersonal dynamics. Content includes a focus on how language and images can be interpreted differently. You’ll learn each game just like my students but with insider tips. Then, you’ll rotate through up to seven playing stations for hands-on experiences. A packet will be included with game directions, variations, reflection questions, etc. Apply these innovative games to the arc of a course, a specific unit, a class period, or a 15-minute exercise.  All of these have been successfully integrated into my university courses, but can be applied at any level. Pedagogically, these activities promote UDL in conjunction with gamification. 

While the rise of AI is helping education in many ways, it is hindering in others.  After giving an exam, I used to provide the opportunity for students to make up some points by revisiting what they got wrong and writing about what went wrong and how to fix it.  Last year, it became blatantly obvious that the majority of the class was using AI to complete this, thus defeating the objective.  Since I think there is great value in revisiting mistakes, this year I administered an oral exam to make up points.  Students knew that I could ask anything related to the exam topics.  In this talk, we will describe the experience and what we learned in the process, from student attitudes to the administrative burden.

For all the established benefits of implementing Universal Design for Learning (UDL), faculty face significant challenges putting it into practice, to the point development is done partially or abandoned entirely. In this interactive presentation, we guide instructors through the use of AI tools to reduce barriers to UDL implementation and reap the framework’s rewards. After comparing the pros and cons of various free AI models, participants will use a chosen tool and sample prompts to apply UDL principles to their own courses. Finally, we will leave everyone with baseline prompt frameworks that can be used for future UDL development.