09/03/2026
By Julie Nash

As we begin the fall semester, documenting students’ academic engagement during the first weeks of classes — and completing Class Roster Validation by the Sept. 22 deadline — is an important part of supporting student success and meeting our institutional responsibilities. To support faculty in this process, the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) is pleased to invite you to join us for a practical CELT workshop focused on what meaningful academic engagement can look like and how to document it effectively without creating unnecessary work.

Workshop details

  • Title: Documenting Academic Engagement During the First Weeks of the Semester
  • Date: Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026
  • Time: 11 a.m. – noon
  • Location:Zoom meeting
  • RSVP for the workshop

During the session, colleagues from the Registrar’s Office and IT, along with faculty presenters, will walk through the Class Roster Validation process and share practical strategies for documenting student participation across different types of courses.

We will discuss:

  • What qualifies as academically related activity, and what does not
  • Key Class Roster Validation dates, requirements and resources
  • Practical examples of ways faculty can establish and document student engagement
  • Approaches that can work across different course formats
  • How Canvas, the attendance app and other available tools can support the process
  • What to do when a student has not participated

Most importantly, we want this to be an opportunity to ask questions, hear how colleagues are approaching this work and identify strategies that make sense for your own courses.

If you have found an approach that works particularly well for documenting academic engagement in your classes, we encourage you to come prepared to share your experience. We know that the best ideas come from our faculty, and we hope this session will give us an opportunity to learn from one another and build on practices that are already working well across our classrooms.

I hope you’ll join us. Ensuring that we have an accurate picture of students’ academic engagement early in the semester not only helps ensure federal compliance, but it can also help us identify students who may need support at a point when there is still time to make a difference.

The session will be recorded and made available afterward as an ongoing faculty resource.

For questions, email CELT@uml.edu.