Short Courses and Webinars

EASC offers professional development opportunities for K-12 educators throughout the academic year. Here you can find our upcoming NCTA short courses and webinars, as well as see courses that have been offered in the past.

EASC's online professional development opportunities are open to all K-12 educators and pre-service teachers.

Spring 2026 NCTA Short Courses and Webinars

Start Date: January 04, 2026

End Date: February 14, 2026

Registration Deadline: December 27, 2025

Taught by Cecilia Boyce, this six-week NCTA course will equip teachers with the knowledge and resources needed to incorporate the short fiction of Haruki Murakami into their literature classrooms. Through the exploration of Murakami’s short stories teachers will gain more insight into the cultural and historic subtext of Murakami’s stories while engaging in dialogue with other teachers. This course includes asynchronous work with synchronous online lectures.

This course offers teachers 12 professional development hours. For any questions reach out to easc@iu.edu 

Registration Closed

Start Date: February 15, 2026

End Date: February 28, 2026

Registration Deadline: February 07, 2026

This two-week, asynchronous NCTA short course will explore South Korean colonial era literature through the lens of femininity. Alongside an introduction to South Korean literature, participants will also be given a brief overview of early 20th century South Korean through the focus on the concept of the “modern woman/new girl” phenomenon that swept across East Asia during this era. Using fictional and historical sources, participants will build an understanding of how these concepts of “modern” femininity were perceived and how they pushed against traditional ideas of womanhood in colonial Korea.

This course offers teachers 3 professional development hours. For any questions reach out to easc@iu.edu 

Register Here

Date: March 26, 2026

Time: 7:00 - 9:00pm ET

Registration Deadline: March 20, 2026

Location: Online, Zoom. 

With the growing population of inbound migration since the 1980s, particularly from Southeast Asian countries, the cultural landscape of contemporary Taiwan has been reshaped by a wide range of cultural productions and the influences brought by both migrants and the host society. In this lecture, by focusing on Southeast Asian marriage migrants and migrant workers as active participants and cultural creators, I will introduce key works that reflect transnational cultural flows, including feature and documentary films, the “Taiwan Literature Award for Migrants,” and cultural programs organized by NGOs. The talk will show how these works portray migrants’ daily lives and experiences, offering ways to understand cultural exchange, emotional journeys, and identity formation. By looking at strategies used by both Taiwanese creators and migrant communities, the lecture highlights how these productions connect Taiwan with other places in Asia and beyond. In addition, I will demonstrate a sample course design that helps teachers bring these materials into the classroom to discuss migration, storytelling, and students’ understanding of the world.

This webinar will be led by Dr. Hsin-Chin Evelyn Hsieh, an Associate Professor in the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature at National Taiwan University. Her research interests include contemporary Taiwan literature, documentary studies, migration studies, and transmedia narratives, with a particular focus on the relationship between cultural production and Taiwan’s inbound and outbound migration. She is a project investigator for a translation initiative sponsored by the National Museum of Taiwan Literature and co-editor of the volume Isle of the Austronesian: Indigeneity, World-Making and Taiwan (Balestier Academic, 2025).

This webinar offers teachers 2 professional development hours. For any questions reach out to easc@iu.edu 

Register Here

Start Date: April 26, 2026

End Date: May 09, 2026

Registration Deadline: April 18, 2026

This asynchronous NCTA short course will cover Japan's unique culture of fermentation. Participants will explore the agents used, how methods vary based on the size of producers, and the different types of ferments found in Japan. This course will also explore how Japan fits into the larger East Asian region consisting of China, Korea, and Taiwan. Focus will be on how Japan has influenced the surrounding area especially during its pre- and inter-WWII imperialist expansion in the region. Participants will be introduced to the similarities between ferments from different countries and how regional ingredients are adapted to make unique combinations.

This course offers teachers 3 professional development hours. For any questions reach out to easc@iu.edu 

Register Here