Submit your teaching ideas by April 15 to celebrate 30 years of the Iowa Center for Teaching

The Center for Teaching is turning 30! Since our earliest days, our mission has been to support and promote the development of teaching skills, strengthen the university’s culture of teaching, and embody the University of Iowa’s commitment to excellent instruction. 

To celebrate this milestone, we’re curating a collection of impactful teaching ideas from instructors from across UI. This collection will be published via Iowa Research Online, where it will serve as a resource for instructors seeking inspiration and tested strategies.

In November 2026, the Center for Teaching, in collaboration with UI Libraries, will publish write-ups (up to 1,200 words) of accepted teaching ideas. Teaching ideas can be a specific classroom practice (e.g., a particular assignment or activity), an approach to your professional learning as a scholarly teacher (e.g., a practice of connecting with other instructors for teaching support and inspiration), a strategy for organizing an instructional team (e.g., an activity that has helped you mentor new TAs to your course) or any other idea that enhances teaching practice and supports student learning. Teaching ideas are short, conversational, outcome-focused pieces similar to those found in Faculty Focus, The Scholarly Teacher, or teaching-focused sections of some disciplinary-based publications.

Timeline

  • April 15: Proposal deadline
  • May 6: Authors will receive feedback and suggestions about next steps for proposals.
  • Summer (date TBA): Optional writing retreat (via Zoom)
  • Early September (date TBA): Optional writing retreat (in person)
  • September 8: Deadline for submission of full draft. The editorial team may request revisions at this stage.
  • November 18: Collection announced in the Center for Teaching newsletter.

To Participate

We welcome ideas from all disciplines and teaching contexts. 

  • Propose your idea: Share a teaching idea that has made a difference in your classroom. The survey will request your name, title, department, contact information, a proposed title for your idea, and a 150-250-word abstract. For multi-author submissions, one author should submit the proposal and list names and contact information for all authors in the survey.
  • Deadline for initial proposal submissions: April 15
  • All proposals will undergo review and receive constructive feedback. Successful proposals will work closely with the editorial team to create the final product. 
Share Your Teaching Idea

Collection Details

Published final products will include the following components:

  • Brief overview of the teaching idea – A sentence or two about what it is, being mindful of the broad audience of university educators
  • Purpose and goals of the teaching idea – Challenges addressed, or what purpose it serves your teaching)
  • Description of the teaching idea – Specifics about how it works and when and where you’ve used it.
  • Reflection on impact OR connection of the teaching idea to evidence-based teaching practices – You may address questions like: Is this practice inspired by other instructors or by scholarly literature? How do you know it works, or why do you think it didn’t work? How have you assessed impact? How does it align with evidence-based teaching practice(s)? Teaching ideas should be based on your practice and not strictly theoretical.
  • Advice for adopting or adapting the teaching idea – Suggestions you’d give to other instructors or lessons learned from your own experience.
  • (optional) Artifacts – For example, rubrics, lesson plans, documents from working with TAs, invitations to colleagues for a peer teaching mentorship group, etc.)

Authors must ensure final products meet accessibility standards. Authors will also have the opportunity to assign a Creative Commons license to their teaching idea. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What kind of support is available? How will I know if my idea works for this project before proposing a teaching idea?

Center for Teaching staff are happy to meet with you about specific questions.

Interested instructors are invited (but not required) to register for the upcoming SoTL Institute on April 10. The institute features Dr. James Lang, a nationally recognized expert on teaching and learning and author of Write Like You Teach and Small Teaching.

All proposals will receive constructive feedback. For accepted proposals, Center staff will host optional summer and fall writing retreats to help you put your idea into words.

What if my teaching idea doesn't involve the Center for Teaching?

We welcome all submissions! As an advocate for evidence-based, reflective teaching, and a leader in instructor professional development, part of the mission of the Center for Teaching is to spark transformative conversations about teaching and learning on campus. We hope that by offering this forum, we can celebrate your commitment to teaching and learning and inspire other teachers at Iowa. If your teaching idea was supported or inspired by the work of the Center for Teaching, we invite you to share those ideas too! 

What is Iowa Research Online? What are the benefits of sharing my teaching ideas in this collection?

Iowa Research Online (IRO) collects and showcases the innovative research, scholarship, and creative work produced by UI’s talented faculty, students, and staff. Its purpose is to foster discovery and collaboration as well as demonstrate the impact of teaching and learning at Iowa. Content published in IRO is:

  • Discoverable by search engines such as Google and Google Scholar
  • Indexed and searchable in InfoHawk+, the University of Iowa Libraries’ catalog
  • Hosted and preserved on a secure server
  • Registered with a digital object identifier (DOI) to ensure permanent access and proper citation
  • Shared openly – files are free to read and download, and authors retain copyright of their work and have the option to apply a Creative Commons license

Please note some publishers will not accept previously published articles. If you are planning to submit your teaching idea for publication elsewhere, check with your publisher before submitting to this collection.

Can I share an idea that I've previously published elsewhere?

Yes, you can expand on or analyze in a new way a practice you have published elsewhere. For instance, you might be inspired to reconsider a publication that focused on extensive data analysis regarding the outcomes of a particular teaching practice and create a more practice-oriented write-up of your teaching idea. Iowa Research Online can link your teaching idea to your related publications.

Is this the same thing as publishing in a Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) journal?

This project is grounded in the spirit of SoTL, an approach that encourages instructors to explore their teaching with the same curiosity and systematic inquiry they bring to their disciplinary work (Brandriet & Nasrollahian, 2025). SoTL often begins with turning a classroom observation, curiosity, or challenge into a research question and gathering evidence to better understand student learning. Closely related is Scholarly Teaching, which is the intentional use of educational research and evidence-informed teaching strategies to guide one’s own teaching practices. While we welcome both SoTL and Scholarly Teaching work, this call is meant to be an accessible entry point and may feel especially aligned with Scholarly Teaching. You might highlight a teaching innovation, describe an instructional approach that has shaped student learning, or share how you use evidence to guide your teaching decisions. The idea or project you share here could serve as a foundation for a future, more comprehensive SoTL study if you choose to pursue it, and the Center for Teaching is happy to support you in that process.

Who is eligible to submit a teaching idea?

Any faculty member, graduate student, or staff member at the University of Iowa with instructional duties may propose a teaching idea.