From May 11 to 15, fifteen instructors from the Penn State Eberly College of Science and five colleagues from the College of Engineering gathered in the Engineering Design and Innovation Building for the Grove Center Evidence-Based Teaching Academy (EBTA), supported by a team of facilitators and mentors. Participants left EBTA more confident applying backward design, cognitive load principles, and AI-supported workflows to their own courses and rated the overall experience as highly valuable and recommendable. 

During one session, instructors focused on identifying hidden barriers in their course designs, especially moments when students hit a wall that is not about the content itself being hard. Using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as their framework, participants diagnosed specific friction points in their own courses and committed to one concrete change to remove them. At the end of the session, instructors posted a written implementation intention on the window for everyone to see: one tweak, one course, one deadline, a small but deliberate step toward more accessible teaching.

As a facilitation team, we learned that we need to build in more protected time for participants to work on real course materials, make the underlying research evidence more visible, and expand our AI offerings in future iterations of the academy. It is always our favorite week of the year, it goes too fast, and we are already looking ahead to make the next iteration even stronger. Contact us at grovecese@psu.edu if you would like to join us next year.