Faculty Learning Communities
What is a Faculty Learning Community?
Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) are peer-led groups of faculty, staff, and graduate students who engage in an active, collaborative, year–long program structured to provide encouragement, support, and reflection. FLCs are designed to:
- Stimulate innovation and create experiential, collaborative learning environments
- Increase collaboration and make the best use of limited funding
- Provide a flexible professional development structure to support learning of any topic
- Increase communication and collaboration among faculty who, by the nature of their work in individual classrooms, are often isolated from colleagues
Participant Expectations
- Attend all required meetings, and attend 75% of optional meetings. FLC leaders may decide with their group to attend a workshop in replacement of or in addition to the normal monthly meetings.
- Propose and construct your “Big Idea Project.” The Big Idea Project can be one project completed by the entire group or each member can have their own project. The Big Idea Project could result in:
- Course specific improvements
- Creating a teaching resource for the UF teaching community
- Conducting research that can contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning
- Attend the wrap-up session in which each FLC will present their Big Idea Project (individual or group)
Registration
The link to each FLC’s registration form is located in the drop-down menu below. Once you’ve registered, you will be added to the Faculty Learning Communities Canvas course. If you’re interested in hosting a future FLC, start planning your session with our campus collaborators form. Please contact Alexandra Bitton-Bailey if you’d like to become an FLC facilitator.
2026-2027 FLCs
Explore AI in Teaching. Join the AI Teaching Adventure FLC!
Curious about how AI can enhance your courses? The Center for Instructional Technology and Training, Center for Teaching Excellence, and AI² Center invite UF faculty to join AI Teaching Adventure, a fast-paced virtual faculty learning community running Summer 2026.
In just three weeks this July, you’ll connect with colleagues across UF through six live 90-minute Zoom sessions and a self-paced Canvas course, during which time you will:
- build AI literacy,
- sharpen your prompting skills,
- and design more engaging and accessible course content.
No prior AI experience needed. Just bring your curiosity.
What to expect:
Six 90-minute Zoom sessions with 1-2 hours of pre/post-session activities and a self-paced Canvas course which contains about 20-30 hours of content.
Meeting dates: 7/14, 7/16, 7/21, 7/23, 7/28, 7/30 from (10:00–11:30 AM).
Open to faculty from any college or department at UF.
Register by July 6, 2026 at 12:00 p.m. Apply here for AI Teaching Adventure!
Harnessing AI for Teaching & Learning” FLC explores the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in teaching and learning. This FLC is designed to build a vibrant AI-focused faculty community, foster practical AI application skills, and promote ethical considerations in AI for education. Participants will gain hands-on experience and develop projects that contribute to the evolving landscape of AI in teaching and learning at UF.
This learning community is for you if:
- You like trying new technologies for teaching and learning.
- You love to discuss and share new ideas with your colleagues.
- You are from any college and department at UF, with any level of experience with AI.
- You are available in the fall to meet bi-weekly (with consideration for holidays) on Thursdays from 9:30 AM to 11:00 AM with a kickoff starting 8/27/2026 and meetings ending with a Showcase on 12/3/2026.
- 2026-2027 Meeting Dates: 8/27, 9/10, 9/24, 10/8, 10/22, 11/5, 11/19, 12/3
DEADLINE: Please register by 12:00 pm on Friday, August 21, 2026.
The AI RiTL FLC is an innovative, interdisciplinary community focused on how to conduct scholarly research about the use of AI in teaching and learning. Participants will work on their own research project and support each other throughout the research cycle starting with ideation of an AI teaching and learning research project, collecting data, analyzing results, discussing implications and communicating that research on campus and beyond. This collaboration between the AI2 Center and the Center for Teaching Excellence builds on the foundations of previous AI professional development experiences (e.g., Harnessing AI for Teaching and Learning, AI Adventure, and the AI Learning Academy).
Deadline
August 28, 2026
Apply here for AI Research in Teaching and Learning!
Fall 2026 – Spring 2027 Schedule
- Every other Thursday from 2:30 – 4:00pm
- The FLC will run September 10, 2026 – April 8, 2027
- Fall 2025 Dates: 9/10, 9/24, 10/08, 10/22, 11/05, 11/19
- Spring 2026 Dates: 1/14, 1/28, 2/11, 2/25, 3/11, 3/25 (4/08 – optional)
- Location: Tigert 302 in person
Key Details:
- Capacity: Limited to 12 faculty members
- Stipends:
- Participants will receive a $1000 stipend for completion of the FLC requirements.
- Participants will receive an additional $1000 stipend if their work is published in a peer-reviewed journal. (Additional funds of up to $1000 are available to reimburse publication fees after publication).
- Support: Comprehensive support from the inception to completion of Research in Teaching and Learning (RiTL) projects.
- Requirements for Completion:
- Active Participation: Attend 75% of meetings (9 of the 12 sessions).
- Big Idea Project: Propose and develop a teaching-as-research project, either as a group endeavor or as an individual. Projects could range from studying course-specific AI integrations, evaluating AI professional development or teaching resources for the broader community, or conducting scholarship of AI teaching and learning.
- CTE Event Participation: Present your AI scholarship of teaching and learning research at the Center for Teaching Excellence’s RiTL Symposium or Interface Conference.
Participant Eligibility
- Participants must show that they have a sustained commitment to incorporating AI in teaching and learning. This may include successful completion of Harnessing AI for Teaching & Learning, Teaching with AI in the SEC Learning Community, AI Teaching Adventure, or the AI Learning Academy Micro-credential. Other possibilities include teaching an AI-designated course, other forms of professional development around AI, micro-credentials in AI, or being an AI 100 hire.
- No previous research experience in teaching and learning is required.
Goals and Objectives:
- Generate unique research questions and devise comprehensive research plans that incorporate AI into different teaching and learning domains.
- Submit a presentation proposal to the 2027 Interface Conference to share your AI RiTL project with a campus-wide audience.
- Begin and make progress on a publication of a Research as Teaching project.
- Foster an environment for reading, learning, and discussing scholarly works on teaching and learning with AI and about AI.
Overview
Join us in exploring how AI can transform your teaching.
This Faculty Learning Community brings together educators who are eager to discover how emerging AI technologies can help create better course materials—whether that means designing more engaging curriculum or reducing costs for students. You’ll choose one or more of your courses and partner with AI to develop new materials together.
What we’ll do together:
We’ll experiment, learn, and create as a community. You’ll work with AI tools to generate educational content, test different approaches, and refine your techniques. We’ll start with what you already have—your lecture notes, slides, syllabi—and use AI as a creative partner to build something new. Throughout the process, you’ll have access to UF’s leading experts in both AI and instructional design.
How it works:
Our first semester focuses on learning and experimenting together. In the second semester, we shift to hands-on project time through flexible workshops where you can develop your ideas with ongoing expert support.
Sharing and celebrating our work:
At the end, you’re welcome to share your creations as open educational resources if you’d like—completely your choice based on what feels right for your work. We’ll also have opportunities to present our discoveries and insights to the broader UF teaching community through Interface and the RiTL Symposium.
Ready to explore what’s possible when human creativity meets AI innovation?
Dates and Time
This FLC meets biweekly on Tuesdays starting in September, with a couple of exceptions (see dates below).
2025: 9/1, 9/15, 9/29, 10/13, 10/27, 11/10, and 12/1
2026: 1/12, 1/19, 2/2, 2/16, 3/1, 3/16, 3/30, 4/13, and 4/27
Time: 10 AM to 12 PM
Location: Tigert Hall 302
Goals
- Identify and use an appropriate tool and platform for the creation and publication of your project.
- Utilize appropriate instructional design methods and learning principles in designing your project.
- Select appropriate AI models and utilize sophisticated prompt engineering, parameter adjustments, and other techniques to create course material content appropriate to your project.
Expectations
The following is expected of FLC attendees:
- Attendance and active participation at 13 of 16 sessions
- Complete all deliverables (project proposal and the project itself) by the due date
- Dissemination of outcomes at a UF-wide conference, such as the Center for Teaching Excellence’s Interface conference, or at an OER conference, such as the Florida OER Summit.
Optional Goals, for projects shared as OER:
- Apply copyright principles in selecting the appropriate licensing for your project.
- Distribute your project through appropriate OER repositories or other means of open sharing.
Deadline
Please apply by 11:59 PM on Friday, August 21, 2026.
This FLC is a partnership between UF’s Center for Teaching Excellence and the LearningWell Coalition and participation is open to faculty and administrative staff from Coalition and SEC member institutions, including faculty and administrative staff from the UF community.
The goal of this FLC is to Since 2014, the Gallup Foundation has conducted surveys to understand alumni engagement, well-being, and attachment to their alma mater. Consistently, students who say they had all (or even some) of the Big Six Student Experiences report greater career and personal well-being. These experiences highlight the importance of supportive faculty-student relationships and experiential learning. This FLC represents an exciting opportunity to shape the way the Gallup Big Six Student Experiences are understood and implemented, not only at LearningWell Coalition member institutions and SEC partner institutions, but also across the globe.
FLC Activities and Outcome. Building upon the open-source deliverable created by the participants in previous cohorts of the FLC, this next cohort will create deliverables that expand the practice of fomenting a relationship-rich and experience-rich education for students. To jumpstart our time together, we will select a book to serve as our common reader to frame our initial sessions, and guest speakers will inspire and motivate our work throughout the year. We will work remotely in groups and connect with fellow participants from institutions of higher learning across the country, as well as have the opportunity to meet in person at the annual LearningWell Coalition Conference (www.learningwell.org) in the spring term. Faculty who complete this year-long effort will receive a Promoting Well-Being Faculty Learning Community Certificate issued by the University of Florida’s Center for Teaching Excellence.
Meeting Dates/Times: Bi-weekly on Wednesdays, September 23, 2026 – April 28, 2027, from 1:00 PM−2:30 PM. (Dates: 9/23, 10/7, 10/21, 11/4, 11/18, 12/2, 1/20, 2/3, 2/17, 3/3, 3/31, 4/14, 4/28.)
Application Deadline. Monday, September 11, 2026.
Apply here for Promoting Well-Being through Learner Centered Education!
RiTL FLC is a community centered on understanding and applying the fundamentals of teaching-as-research: the deliberate, systematic, and reflective use of research methods to develop and implement teaching practices that advance the learning experiences and outcomes of students and teachers. UF instructors, staff, graduate students, and postdocs who are in the beginning stages of research in teaching and learning will develop their knowledge of scholarship on teaching and learning, as well as available resources on campus, in order to create educational research proposals, applying what they have learned in the FLC to their unique disciplines. Completion of the RiTL FLC will qualify you to receive ONE of the following:
- A RiTL Faculty Learning Community Certificate in the Center for Teaching Excellence’s Passport Program.
- A Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) Practitioner Certificate in the Center for Teaching Excellence’s Passport Program (for graduate students and postdocs).
Meeting days/times: Bi-weekly on Mondays, September 14, 2026 – March 22, 2027, from 1:00 PM−2:30 PM. (Dates: 9/14, 9/28, 10/12, 10/26, 11/9, 11/30, 1/25, 2/8, 2/22, 3/8, 3/22.)
Application Deadline: Friday, September 4, 2026.
Archive: Past FLC Resources
This section includes resources created as part of past FLCs.
The FARPET Team has created a flexible research-based tool for the Peer Evaluation of Teaching, specifically for lectures. The Formative Assessment Rubric for Peer Evaluation of Teaching has been piloted for use within the veterinary academic community but we believe that it is applicable to other health science and non-health science fields.
Here is a link to the Formative Assessment Rubric for Peer Evaluation website
Resources
Participants
- Dr. Diba Mani
- Megan Mocko
- Dr. Martina Sumner
- Dr. Norman Douglas
Resources
Participants
- Dr. Lilianny Virguez
- Dr. Amie Baisley
- Dr. Theresa Benitez
- Dr. Johannes Van Oostrom
- Kwansun Cho
- Dr. Pamela Dickrell
- Dr. Ana Martin-Ryals
- Dr. Melanie Correll
- Dr. Jian Zou
- McKenzie Landrum
Affordable Access for Student Success
- Affordable Access for Student Success: An OER Learning Community Book