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
    6/1/25
    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

  • Bridging Assessment and Instruction
    9/8/21
    In these past few weeks following our recent merger between the Office of Educational Effectiveness and the Center for Educational Innovation, I have been thinking hard about how to most effectively communicate what it is about our new office that will allow us to better serve the university.
  • Connecting with Students Through Story
    2/3/21
    Story is one of those elements encountered around every corner, embedded into our lives so deeply that we may not always notice it. It powers every successful advertising campaign and drives our purchasing habits, inspires dinner table conversation as well as the subsequent family arguments, and designs the visuals that flood our sub-conscience as we close our eyes each night.
  • Design with Accessibility in Mind
    1/21/21
    If 2020 has taught us anything, we’ve learned to be flexible, to roll with the punches and to realize that at any point in time, our lives can be upended. As teachers, we have found the move to teaching online has brought along with it many conundrums, from the more obvious concerns about having the right technology, stable internet connectivity, and scheduling to a range of issues that stem from simply not being together in the classroom.
  • The Ever Dreaded Discussion Board – Out of the Box Activities and How to Handle the Workload
    12/17/20
    A great conversation on the use (or overuse) of Discussion Boards emerged from CATT’s Design and Build Academy. The questions and concerns raised in class by the faculty ranged from how to effectively use Discussion Boards and over usage of Discussion Boards in online learning, to how to effectively manage Discussion Boards when they become overwhelming and do Discussion Boards really engage students. Below are some resources, tips and tricks to master the online staple, Discussion Boards.
  • Feeling Isolated? Strategies to Create and Foster Community in Your Online Course
    12/10/20
    A typical semester is grueling. An atypical semester during an ongoing pandemic is even more so. While I’ve appreciated the short commute to my “home office” and replacing the early morning coffeemaker conversations with family breakfasts, it’s exhausting being on hours of daily Zoom calls. Working in isolation is a daily challenge that we are all experiencing, especially our students.
  • Do You Hear What I Hear? Improving Audio in Your Videos
    12/3/20
    In my previous blog post, I made my case for improving the quality of our online educational videos. I know you read it, and in fact have probably committed it verbatim to memory. So now that we’re in agreement that it is highly beneficial to take production values into account when producing our online videos, let’s get started.