Professional Development
Building Institutional Capacity Through Faculty Development
Strong implementation of CAE’s Critical Thinking Program starts with strong support. That’s why we offer in-depth professional development that prepares faculty not just to teach critical thinking, but to inspire it.
With the right tools and training, faculty gain the confidence to integrate these workforce-ready skills into their existing curriculum—elevating both student outcomes and institutional value. Our workshops also address the urgent need to develop students’ critical thinking skills in the age of AI, empowering faculty to guide responsible use of generative tools while strengthening students’ ability to analyze, reason, and communicate effectively.
What Faculty Learn: Topics That Translate to Impact
CAE’s professional development workshops are built around the real-world needs of today’s faculty, blending research, pedagogy, and practical strategies to make critical thinking a seamless part of any course of study.
Workshop Format
- A minimum of two days, extendable as needed
- Customized to your institution’s areas of interest and priorities
- Includes pre-reading and homework so faculty can put learning into practice
- Collaboration allows room for discussion on how to best bring the tools back to specific courses
DAY 1: Foundational Framework & Implementation
Faculty learn:
The Why Behind
the Program
First, we unpack the research and cognitive science behind CAE’s approach. We help faculty understand the role of critical thinking for students’ academic and career success in the AI age and how and why the program works so they can teach with purpose and confidence.
Curriculum
Integration
We share with faculty how to develop students’ critical thinking skills through intentional instruction, deliberate practice, and regular assessment. Faculty will also learn how to incorporate critical thinking skills development into their courses by using or developing performance tasks. Whether it’s a first-year seminar or an advanced course, faculty walk away with subject-specific tools that work.
Effective Use
of Data
Faculty learn how to interpret student assessment data to identify learning gaps, track progress, and provide targeted feedback. Our reports make it easy to turn insights into action.
Best Practices for
Student Engagement
We share techniques to foster meaningful classroom discussion and deeper learning. Faculty receive templates, rubrics, and real examples to help make critical thinking visible and valuable to students.
DAY 2: Options: Popular or Custom Workshops
Select from the options below for your second day, or we can design a custom workshop for you.
Building a Course-Aligned Performance Task
Faculty learn how to craft their own performance tasks that align with their course content to provide students with opportunities to deliberately practice applying reasoning, analysis, and communication in real-world scenarios. CAE’s instructors work closely with faculty to ensure the tasks have a clear decision with two or more equally plausible options, as well as authentic context, characters, and storyline that is accessible, relatable, and culturally relevant.
Increasing Data and Information Literacy in the Age of AI
Data and information literacy are core skills for critical thinking and communication and are in greater need with the overwhelming AI-generated content now being created. During the workshop, faculty confront intellectual vulnerabilities
including data distortions, biases, logical fallacies and hallucinations.
Through a group activity, they experience the student journey of navigating complex, open-ended information to decide on a course of action.
Using AI to Improve Writing Effectiveness
Faculty enhance their understanding of how to use AI to help improve students’ critical thinking and communication skills. Appropriate use of AI in the critical thinking process is examined to help faculty integrate these skills into their coursework.
Participants learn specific approaches to use AI as an objective critic to discover gaps and unexamined assumptions.
Faculty experiment with prompts and analysis through their writing assignment.
An Evidence-Based Approach Tailored to Your Needs
We collaborate with your team to structure the Critical Thinking Skills Professional Development workshop for your institution. Reach out with questions, sample agendas, and to discuss a workshop for your faculty.
Preparing Faculty for the AI Age
CAE supports faculty in navigating the challenges and opportunities presented by generative AI—emphasizing that critical thinking is more essential than ever. Through our professional development, faculty explore how to help students use AI tools responsibly, analyze outputs for accuracy and bias, and apply human judgment in real-world contexts.
By integrating Critical Thinking in the AI Age into instruction, faculty empower students not just to use AI, but to question it, challenge it, and make informed decisions beyond what algorithms can provide.
Download our free guide for practical strategies, classroom activities, and insights that will prepare students prepare students to lead in the AI era.
“I taught the first lesson in the module this morning and I’m not sure it could have gone better. The kinds of discussions I was hearing in class had me grinning from ear to ear. These are the best problem statements I’ve seen at the start of the semester ever.”
~ Faculty Member
“I gained valuable insights into the strengths and challenges of integrating critical-thinking instruction into my course. Critical thinking has relevance far beyond classroom activities.”
~ Faculty Member