Welcome to KNILT

Knowledge Network for Innovations in Learning and Teaching

KNILT is an open knowledge space for educators to share and develop new ideas to improve education and address emerging challenges. They create teacher-friendly mini-courses to share actionable insights. With over 650 mini-courses for teacher learning across subject areas, KNILT has been used by millions of educators worldwide.  Join our KNILT Facebook group for updates and networking with fellow educators.

 
   🛠️ Create: Current Classes
 
 
   🎓 Learn: Existing Mini-Courses
 
 
   📘 About KNILT
 
 
   🧠 Zhang Research Lab
 
 
   🏫 UAlbany SOE

UAlbany Public Engagement Awards celebration April 25, 2023

Announcements and updates: Our KNILT site lost a set of minicourses due to a server hardware failure in summer 2026. Since then we have recovered some of the courses, which may still involve broken links. The courses going through restoration are listed at the bottom of this page. We apologize for the negative impact this has caused. Our ITS team has taken strong measures to secure our KNILT server hosting and maintenance.   For more news... Archived announcements)

Overview of KNILT

A Podcast Introduction to KNILT

KNILT is a long-term, ongoing project situated in the graduate courses and research projects led by Dr. Jianwei Zhang at the University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY) (see Zhang Research Lab). Students enrolled in these classes (e.g. instructional design and learning technology in the MS CDIT program) carry diverse expertise as PreK-12 teachers, college instructors, technologists, instructional designers, curriculum coordinators, online education specialists, and other professionals. Their expertise is brought to bear on an authentic, semester-long project. Each class member goes through the systematic processes of learning design to create an online mini-course targeting teacher learning of a high-need topic, which may focus on a new pedagogical approach, a subject-specific teaching/assessment strategy, or a new technology tool. See University at Albany news release: ETAP Students Create Mini-Courses to Empower 21st Century Educators.

Since its inception in September 2007, KNILT has accumulated more than 600 mini-courses; this number grows each semester. The mini-courses are continually used by students for peer learning within each class and across different cohort groups. The mini-courses are further made freely available to educators from all around the world, who search for new ideas, strategies, and tools to renovate their teaching. During the pandemic from January 2020 to August 2023, 1.2 million users from 230+ countries/regions have accessed the mini-courses. See KNILT:About for more information about the history, development, and outreach of the KNILT site.

Featured Mini-Courses

Below are a few examples. Check out the Repository of Mini-Courses and Instructional Cases for many more mini-courses and cases.

KNILT is designed and coordinated by Dr. Jianwei Zhang who directs the Tech-Augmented Co-Creativity Lab (TaCCL) at the University at Albany's School of Education. Special thanks to the technology team at UAlbany's Academic and Research Computing Center (ARCC) and Information Technology Service for their strong ongoing support. Contact us: knilt.edu@gmail.com.

Welcome to KNILT

Overview of KNILT

Featured Mini-Courses

🔄 Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching

🔬 STEM Learning and Teaching

📚 Literacy, Language, and Arts

📚 Social Studies and Civic Education

💛 Social and Emotional Learning

🛠️ New Learning Technologies, Competencies and Environments

📝 New Approaches to Assessment and Evaluation

♿ Special Education & Diverse Learners

💻 Remote/Hybrid Education (Created During the COVID-19 Pandemic)

Courses Recovered from Archive (Recovered August 2026)