For Higher Education

Activate Your Expertise

I offer workshops, talks, and consulting for programs, departments, and entire institutions on teaching, learning, writing, and principle-driven decision-making.

“Change is long overdue in higher education. It’s time for us to transform.”
– Elizabeth Wardle, “The Time for Small Ideas is Over,” Inside Higher Ed

Workshops and Talks

Extended Team-Based Seminars

I innovated the team-based approach to helping groups of faculty activate their disciplinary expertise in order to re-imagine not only courses but entire programs. This method has been used successfully at Miami University and has been adapted for use at 2-year open-access Hispanic Serving Institutions as well.

You can request a semester-long seminar, an intensive summer version of the seminar, or a train-the-trainer seminar on implementing the approach yourself.

– The approach has been researched and described in Changing Conceptions, Changing Practices: Innovating Teaching Across Disciplines.
– Learn more about this method in Writing Expertise: A Research-Based Approach to Writing and Learning Across Disciplines

“Teaching writing is everyone’s responsibility, but it’s not any one person’s responsibility to teach all kinds of writing. We are each responsible for helping students understand the written practices that we use in our fields and professions.” – Elizabeth Wardle, “What Critics of Student Writing Get Wrong,” The Chronicle of Higher Education

One-Time or Multi-Part Workshops about Writing & Learning

Engage faculty from across disciplines in workshops grounded in the research on writing, learning, and threshold concepts. I design workshops to meet your needs and respond to your context.

Examples of past workshops include:
– Understanding Disciplinary Differences: Implications for Teaching Writing
– Helping Students Write Their Way into Disciplinary Knowledge: Principles of Smart Teaching
– Unpacking Expertise: Making Our Assumptions Visible and Accessible to Students
– Good Pedagogy is Good Writing Pedagogy: How Learning Theory Can Inform Your Teaching with Writing
– Teaching Threshold Concepts for Transfer Through Writing about Writing

Workshop for Interdisciplinary Course Design & General Education

Drawing on the threshold concepts framework, I offer a workshop to help faculty members name their disciplinary ways of thinking and practicing and then consider what they share with other disciplines to then design effective interdisciplinary or general education courses.

This method has assisted faculty from disciplines as diverse as philosophy and computer science, and biology, geology and writing studies in developing shared principles for interdisciplinary course design.

Workshops for Department & Program Cohesion

Departments and programs often experience tension and conflict around their work, without understanding the root causes. I design customized workshops drawing on the threshold concepts framework to help faculty members make explicit their most cherished ways of thinking and practicing, in order to identify both areas of disagreement and alignment, and then name guiding collective values.

Talks

I deliver customized talks on threshold concepts, learning, program design, faculty development, transfer, genre learning, and the “writing about writing” approach to first-year writing.

Some examples of recent talks include:
– Learning Thresholds and Writing: Designing Courses for Deep Learning.
– Designing Environments for Deep Learning Around Threshold Concepts
– Helping Student Writers in Humanities Classes
– Threshold Concepts about Writing: Teaching Troublesome Knowledge
– Threshold Concepts: Considering What We Know and How We Teach It

Accolades for My Work

Liz is a passionate and compassionate researcher, educator, activist, and partner. Working with her has truly been transformative. Through our partnership, we’ve achieved significant positive changes in our community college district, changes that would not have been possible without her invaluable insights, resources, and unwavering support. Liz is a true catalyst for progress in higher ed, and I feel fortunate to have her as a colleague and collaborator.

— Stacy Wilson, Literacy Partners Program, Director
Maricopa Community Colleges

Liz is truly a visionary in our field. Her research, insights, activism, and resolve are precisely what is needed in this historical moment.

— Alex Arreguin, District Faculty Development Coordinator
Mesa Community College