Faculty Development and Teaching

The author has found that her military experience has proven to be good training for teaching ill prepared students.

A faculty development survey analyzed what faculty want and need to be successful teaching online.

Launched in January 2006, the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) at the University of South Carolina is located in the heart of campus in the Thomas Cooper Library. Enabling the wise use of new technologies to enhance student learning and providing synergy to campus teaching support activities through a systems approach are two of the CTE's five stated goals. To achieve these goals, the CTE created a new associate director position for teaching technology excellence.

A smart campus depends on an overarching strategy involving people, facilities, and ongoing faculty support as well as effective use of technology

What do faculty really want from faculty development efforts designed to help them teach with technology? How can institutions best meet faculty needs in this area? This presentation will share results from longitudinal studies of faculty, students, and technology at the University of Minnesota and will discuss the impact of these results on our faculty development efforts.

This session will provide an overview of a collaborative model for the design and support of effective online courses developed by a faculty member, an instructional designer, and a librarian. Find out how collaboration can draw upon and enhance individual expertise, model positive social presence, and facilitate the development of effective cognitive and teaching presence as described by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer’s community of inquiry framework.

As a takeoff on the popular reality TV series Project Runway, Project Technology follows six faculty during a school year as they attempt to effectively integrate technology into their teaching to enhance student learning. Session attendees will learn and see firsthand how faculty members struggled with and mastered new technologies.

A dynamic information base aids research into existing technology practices among faculty and fosters partnerships.

This presentation will demonstrate discipline-specific case studies to enhance faculty development in universal design for learning. We will highlight California State University's EnACT project, which supports learning for 10,000 CSU students with disabilities, and MERLOT ELIXR, a faculty development collaboration across state systems and campuses for developing cases and shared teaching resources.

Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies invite exploration, innovation, and building with “small pieces loosely joined.” Yet those opportunities can disrupt traditional academic processes that undervalue amateur participation, discourage faculty from venturing outside their realm of primary expertise, and look to “enterprise solutions” for administrative convenience. Can the academy include “half-baked ideas” in its core mission and processes? This session will address these issues from the perspectives of an insider (teacher, scholar, and administrator) and an IT professional outside the academy. Brief introductory remarks will be followed by robust discussion.