UB’s Graduate School of Education has partnered with GiGi’s Playhouse Down Syndrome Achievement Center of Buffalo to provide UB students with in-classroom experience teaching students with disabilities. UB students were photographed at the center working with clients in July 2021. GSE professor Claire Cameron is working with the program.

CATT News & Updates

Featuring teaching tips and stories highlighting teaching and assessment innovations happening around UB.

Latest News & Updates

  • Instructional Support Community: Fall Meeting
    8/1/25
    The Instructional Support Community (ISC) brings together instructional support staff from across UB to stay connected on tools, services, and strategies that impact teaching and learning. It’s a space to ask questions, share insights, and hear what’s new, from system updates to instructional trends, so we can all better support instructors.
  • Top Hat is now available to all UB instructors
    8/1/25
    Top Hat is now available as an enterprise-supported tool within UB Learns. Top Hat is an active learning platform that helps faculty increase student engagement through interactive features like polls, quizzes, discussions, and real-time feedback. Seamlessly integrated into UB Learns, Top Hat offers a flexible way to create meaningful in-class and learning experiences. 
  • Introducing Developing AI Literacy: A Free Course Now Available to the UB Community
    5/20/25
    Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming an everyday part of our lives—shaping how we work, learn, and connect with others. From autocorrecting our messages to recommending what to watch next, AI is already here. But what exactly is AI, and why should it matter to you?
  • Lumen Circles Fellowships on AI and Prompt Development are Returning for Fall 2025
    6/27/25
    Are you looking to learn more about AI and how to incorporate it into your teaching? SUNY is partnering with Lumen to provide free access to the Lumen Circle Fellowship Program.
  • Generative AI Survey for UB Instructors
    1/29/25
    As the integration of artificial intelligence in education continues to evolve, we are seeking the input of instructors at UB to better understand how these tools are being utilized.
  • Our Office Has Moved: What You Need to Know
    1/14/25
    We are excited to announce that CATT has relocated from Norton Hall on North Campus to the UB Gateway Building, located at 77 Goodell Street in downtown Buffalo. While our physical location has changed, our commitment to supporting instructors remains stronger than ever.
  • Introducing the Instructional Innovation and Transformation Team
    9/3/24
    The Office of Curriculum, Assessment, and Teaching Transformation (CATT) is excited to announce the launch of our Instructional Innovation and Transformation team. This new initiative, led by Dr. Mara Huber, represents a significant step forward in our ongoing commitment to advancing teaching and learning at UB.
  • Debunking Course Evaluation Myths for Instructors at UB
    5/8/24
    As the close of the academic year arrives and students complete their coursework, we turn our attention to the importance of end-of-semester evaluation. Course evaluations often carry misconceptions that can influence both teaching and administrative practices. In this blog post, we unravel several prevalent myths about course evaluations, providing insights that can help instructors better understand and utilize this feedback mechanism effectively.
  • Preparing Grades for HUB
    4/10/24
    If you have been entering your grades in HUB for a while, you are likely familiar with the classic options of either manually entering every grade for your students - a tedious process especially if you have a larger class, or uploading a spreadsheet with all the final grades for your students. HUB has recently been updated to allow for a new way to upload grades. This blog will guide you on how to export your final grades to import via the New Way in HUB.

Latest Podcast Episode

  • Overcoming Burnout and Reigniting Your Passion for Teaching | Ep. 9
    3/28/25
    Burnout is a challenge many educators face, but how do you recognize it and navigate through it? In our latest episode of The Teaching Table podcast, we talk with Dr. Aisha O'Mally, a professor at the School of Management, about her experience with burnout. She shares how the demands of teaching and workload took a toll on her well-being and how she found ways to regain balance and reconnect with her passion for education. Tune in to hear her insights and reflections on maintaining well-being in academia.

Past Updates

  • Optimizing Brightspace: Tips to Enhance Your Course
    9/6/23
    The transition from Blackboard to Brightspace is finally complete and the fall semester has started. As you begin teaching your courses, our learning designers have some suggestions and tips to optimize Brightspace and create an engaging course that everyone will benefit from and enjoy
  • Brightspace Essentials: What You Need to Know for Summer 2023
    5/17/23
    As the spring semester comes to a close and the summer months quickly approach, we want to provide you with essential information that will help you with the transition to Brightspace, the university's new Learning Management System (LMS), and highlight some of the exciting features that instructors and students will find helpful.
  • Digital Accessibility: Quick Fixes to Make Your Content Accessible (Part 2)
    4/26/23
    Understand how to tackle five of the top accessibility issues to help you create accessible content.
  • Digital Accessibility: Inclusion and Compliance (Part 1)
    4/12/23
    With the prevalence of digital content in our everyday lives, it’s important to understand why digital accessibility is important and how you can ensure your content is accessible.
  • How CATT Can Help You Turn Your Teaching into Research
    3/15/23
    Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is the systematic inquiry into student learning and teaching practices in higher education. Participating in inquiry, particularly adjacent to or outside of one’s home discipline, affords an opportunity for scholarly growth. It also provides a reflective metacognitive exercise as faculty seek to identify and continually refine efficacious pedagogy.
  • Teaching Large Classes: Lessons from the Field
    2/15/23
    Teaching large classes can be a challenge for some instructors, with challenges including lack of flexibility, class climate management, difficulty of setting and enforcing classroom behavior, minimum attention to students, limited monitoring of students’ learning and difficulty in engaging students to activities (Fortes, & Tchantchane, 2010). This project explored techniques and teaching methodologies that experienced instructors may have, which can ultimately be shared with their peers to address these challenges.