Higher Ed Teaching Course

 

 

Course Overview - This course will address the knowledge, skills and dispositions expected from a professional in the higher education arena.  Topics will include presentation skills and practice; balancing the many roles of professors; course design; delivery of instruction, teaching strategies; learning differences among students; active learning strategies and collaborative learning; giving assessment and soliciting feedback; academic ethics, legal issues; and classroom management.

 

Course Objectives/Learning Outcomes - The purpose of this course is to assist faculty who wish to gain a clearer, deeper active approach to teaching and learning.  The course aligns with the University’s central goal of teaching and learning. Our mission is to support the pursuit of excellence in teaching and learning.  We provide services and resources to assist faculty in becoming more effective, active teachers and scholars, subsequently enabling students to become more engaged stakeholders in the construction of their conceptual process.

 

Learning Outcomes are the knowledge, skills and disposition which the active, higher level processing, student-centered learner should be able to DO, specifically under these conditions and to what degree these expected outcomes will be measured. A quality learning outcome typically has at least two parts: substance or subject matter and form or what action must the learner perform (analyze, classify, compare, compute, contrast, demonstrate, derive, evaluate, explain, integrate, interpret, justify, outline, propose, synthesize...). Therefore, the faculty member will

 

-       propose effective instruction through intentional, appropriate integration of additional empirically-based active teaching strategies, considered a success when deployed and assessed in the classroom;

 

Course Prerequisites/Co-requisites - Terminal Degree

 

Required Texts and Learning Materials - Textbooks that you are using in your course; your Syllabus, Assessments, Methods, Plans, Ideas, etc.; an engaging learning attitude and perspective.

 

Supplementary (Optional) Texts and Materials - Faculty Center Website

 

Basis for Final Grade/Assessment - Although there is no formal ‘grade’ in this course, we hope that you will self-regulate and ultimately embed much of what we are discussing into your course, both this semester and beyond. We hope to offer a learner-centered experience utilizing active learning methodology to assist participants in making connections between teaching and learning.  The approach is conceptually-based and subsequently process driven, engaging learners to observe, communicate, classify, infer and predict.  A learning environment will facilitate learners to build on their prior knowledge and value of education expanding into models of learning, critical analysis and methods of teaching.  In particular the concepts are both foundational and generalizable into other areas.  The goal of learning is not only content, but ideally we should be able to use, apply, integrate and actively use concepts from one discipline to extend understanding and meaning in other areas. Our brains function best when they have multiple stimuli of differing degrees and types.  It is similar to if you only had one target to aim at, your chances of hitting it are less than if you had a dozen targets.

 

Course Policies
Technology and Media - I will use email extensively to help keep everyone informed in an asynchronous manner. Please feel free to bring/use your laptop, or if you would like to use one for this course, we have several we can loan you for the session. Please disengage all other portable devices for the time we are together. We assume everyone will be intrinsically motivated to attend, although we understand there will be times when we need to miss our class. Please chat with your colleagues or myself for material which we covered.

 

Tentative Schedule - We will be using an Electronic Teaching and Learning Workbook accessed at http://www.fctl.ucf.edu/Events/GTAPrograms/workbook. Please do not feel obligated to print anyh of this online material as I will have forms prepared for your use during class.