All instructors of record who are teaching a course in the 2025-2026 academic year are welcome to attend, including graduate students and adjunct instructors.

If you have attended a CDI in the past 2 years, you may register but please note that priority is given to new attendees. If there are not enough seats to accommodate you, we’ll let you know.

No, so long as your course is a credit-bearing course here at UD. You are welcome to design a course in any modality (e.g. asynchronous online, face-to-face…). We welcome instructors who are seeking to design specialty courses such as capstone experiences, service learning, or advanced graduate courses. If you are unsure about an aspect of your course, let us know in your registration form and we’ll reach out.

Some instructors at UD teach courses where the course-level learning outcomes are set by their department, their accreditors, or other factors. Even if you find yourself in this situation, you’ll get a lot out of the CDI experience, as we work through how to design assignments and major assessments that address learning goals effectively.

Other instructors teach courses where a final exam is required. If that’s the case for your class, please let us know and we’ll provide you with some additional tools and support to make sure that your exam is addressing your learning outcomes effectively. There will be a few sections of our program (e.g. authentic assessments) that may not apply to this teaching situation, but prior attendees have worked through these sections with another course in mind in order to understand and apply the basic principles. 

Many faculty are not able to change the course textbook or materials for the course they are working on with us. CDI is a “content agnostic” program, meaning we don’t explicitly talk about the content of your course very much in the design process. Using the principle of Backward Design, content is the final part of our course design journey, not the beginning!

Our program is very carefully designed to take place over three and a half days, and each day’s program builds on work done the day before. Additionally, attendees put into pre-set groups of colleagues to work with throughout the institute. Having worked with over 300 faculty, we’ve read post-program reflections that clearly show that those faculty who miss days or drop off part-way through the program didn’t get as much from the program as they had hoped. Reflections from attendees who did complete the program, but who had table-mates that drop off express disappointment about not being able to engage in the discussions they were hoping for. No-shows and drop-offs also result in significant financial costs for our unit, as well as food waste. 

If you know in advance that you won’t be able to join us for the whole program, we strongly suggest you wait to register until the next opportunity. CTAL is happy to work with faculty in a variety of ways, and you are encouraged to reach out to us separately for course design support.