Posts Tagged ‘Faculty Development’
November 5 - Lifelong Learning: Discovering and Developing Your Teaching Skills
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Faculty Development
“Self-knowledge is the beginning of all knowledge,” writes C. Roland Christensen, one of the true masters of discussion teaching. He is referring to his development as a teacher—how he arrived at the techniques that made him so effective. Most teacher accounts of growth are not as instructive and insightful as this one. Best of all, the approach he used to develop his discussion leadership skills is one that can be used to develop many teaching skills.
October 7 - 23 Practical Strategies to Help New Faculty Thrive
By: Mary Bart in Online Seminars
Most aspiring professors know their course content very well but receive little training in how to teach effectively. This seminar provides practical advice to guide new faculty members around predictable pitfalls and set them on the path to a rewarding teaching career.
April 2 - Learning from Experience: How Teaching is Like Golf
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Faculty Development
Management professor David A. Whetten, who now directs a faculty development center, admits with honesty that for some years he didn’t think there was much he could learn from people who “studied” education. After all, he was in the classroom doing education and had learned much from that experience. In a wonderful piece [see reference below] he explains how a conversation with his golf instructor resulted in an important insight about the nature of experiential learning.
March 1 - Strategies for Teaching What You Just Learned
By: Mary Bart in Online Seminars
Budget cuts, changing curricula and an increasing focus on interdisciplinary courses are just some of the pressures forcing instructors out of accustomed subject areas and into unfamiliar teaching territory. Get valuable recommendations for remaining an effective instructor, even when teaching outside your comfort zone.
November 7 - 12 Tips for Improving Your Faculty Development Plan
By: Mary Bart in Academic Leadership, Free Reports
Countless workshops, seminars, retreats, and other faculty development courses are offered under the assumption that they can positively affect how faculty teach, which in turn will help students learn.
September 27 - Instructional Design: Six Strategies to Make Courses More Learner Centered Without Sacrificing Content
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Instructional Design
Concerns about covering content are legitimate, but they often block a whole family of techniques that more effectively involve students and promote learning. “I know I should do more active learning, but I have all this content to cover . . .” We routinely favor involving students but we do so understanding that the content-coverage dilemma confronts faculty with difficult decisions.
September 8 - A Focus on Teaching and Learning at Mid-Career
By: Rob Kelly in Faculty Development
Are your experienced faculty members as effective in the classroom as you would like them to be? If not, perhaps a faculty development program like the University of Minnesota’s Mid-Career Teaching Program could be the answer. Many faculty members currently in mid-career have probably had fewer teaching enrichment opportunities than their more recently hired colleagues, and just because they are experts in their disciplines does not necessarily make them good teachers. In addition, teaching is becoming more complex: student populations are more diverse than they used to be, and they often expect more from professors than students did in the past…
September 7 - Teaching Circles: Low-Cost, High-Impact Faculty Development
By: Barbara A. Mezeske in Faculty Development
Two years ago, a midcareer colleague in the mathematics department sent around an e-mail to all faculty at our college, inviting us to read a book with her. And as simply as that, a teaching circle was formed.
A teaching circle, the term we use at my institution, is simply a group of faculty interested in discussing teaching at regular intervals, ideally over food. As my colleague said, laughing, at our first meeting, “I need a support group, and everyone needs lunch!”…
June 17 - Approaches to Teacher Growth and Development
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Faculty Development
How do faculty approach their development as teachers? Gerlese S. Akerlind has been using a qualitative research method known as phenomenographic analysis to try to answer this question.
