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Teaching and Learning Design Studio

About the Studio

The Teaching & Learning Design Studio (TLDS) at Elizabethtown College is a hub for enhancing teaching methods and supporting faculty and staff. The Studio offers a variety of services, including professional development, coaching on using educational technologies, and personalized support for course design. It's a resource aimed at improving teaching effectiveness and helping faculty engage students more deeply in their learning journey.

The Studio promotes and supports a relationship- and learner-centered culture of instruction, guidance, and scholarship, with a focus on evidence-based pedagogies from the scholarship of teaching and learning that foster student academic engagement, advance the College’s mission, and cultivate innovative teaching.

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Contact Us:
Nicarry 114 | studio@etown.edu | 717-361-1192

One-Page Teaching Guides

Connecting With Students

Teaching in Large Classes: Engagement

Teaching Non-Majors

Balancing Affirmation with Critique

Creating Accessible Canvas Sites

Resources for Self-Care

Teaching in Large Classes: Grading

The Microsoft Accessibility Checker

Applying Design Thinking to Mentoring

Flexible Assignment Deadline Policies

Design Thinking Stage I: Research

“New Quizzes” in Canvas

Approaches to Teaching History

Zoom or Microsoft Teams?

Assessing Participation

Midterm Feedback

Instructor Clarity

To Grade with 0 or To Not Grade with 0

Meet The Team

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Dr. Kathryn Caprino

Director of the Teaching & Learning Design Studio

caprinok@etown.edu

Dr. Caprino is an Associate Professor of PK-12 New Literacies in the Education Department and the Director of the Teaching & Learning Design Studio. Prior to earning her doctorate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dr. Caprino taught middle school and high school English in Virginia and North Carolina. She has taught first year composition at Durham Technical Community College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before joining the faculty at Elizabethtown, she co-coordinated the English Education program at the University of Florida. She is a trained reading specialist and instructional coach.

She lives in Lancaster County with her husband and little boy.

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Dr. Sharon Birch

Assistant Director of the Teaching and Learning Design Studio and Instructional Technologist

birchs@etown.edu

Dr. Sharon Birch is an instructional designer and instructional technologist with twenty-five years of experience in the small college environment. Her professional interests include digital literacy, statistical literacy, and critical digital pedagogy. Sharon holds a BA in sociology from Southwestern University and a MA and PHD in Sociology from Bowling Green State University where she specialized in social demography. After stints as a researcher for the state of Texas and for the US Census Bureau, she returned to higher education as an instructional technologist specializing in quantitative social science pedagogy and tools. She has taught undergraduate sociology courses and first year seminars regularly throughout her career and enjoys using these classes as opportunities to experiment with technological and pedagogical ideas.

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Jillian Kleis

Teaching & Learning Design Studio Program Coordinator

kleisj@etown.edu

Jillian Kleis joined the Etown College community in 2017 and has been a member of the Teaching & Learning Design Studio since its inception in 2020. As the Studio’s Program Coordinator, Jillian serves as the primary point of contact to the rest of the campus, helping faculty and staff to receive the services they need most efficiently. Jill also serves as the department’s Design Thinking expert for groups, classes, or departments who seek to establish or refine their mission, vision, and structure.

Outside of work, Jill is a voracious reader who splits her spare time between running the neighborhood carpool and planning her next trip to New York City.

Design Fellows

Learning Design Fellows collaborate with the Studio to get personalized coaching, support, and feedback they need to complete their projects. They attend periodic Studio meetings to give updates on their projects and are asked to disseminate their projects and serve as campus resources after their fellowship ends.

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Matt Bergman

Assessment & Curriculum Coordinator for the School of Graduate and Professional Studies

Bergman’s project aims to harness the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in conjunction with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. The project intends to develop an AI implementation framework and a toolkit of resources and best practices for using AI in different learning environments. The objective of Bergman’s project is to disseminate the tools among faculty and staff to foster an accessible and engaging learning environment and to help faculty become more comfortable using AI in the classroom.

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Sara Noveral

Lecturer in Biology and Lab Coordinator

Noveral plans to work with the Studio to incorporate hands-on modeling and diagramming into introductory biology (Bio 111) lab classes to increase the connection between lecture and lab content and improve student understanding. By incorporating hands-on models, students can explore what is happening in their experiments on a molecular and cellular level. Noveral will put together a portfolio of hands-on student activities that can be completed in short segments with discussion questions that can be used by herself, other instructors, teaching assistants, and tutors.

Elizabethtown College