Faculty Workshops
The teaching and learning coordinators are available to conduct department workshops on the following topics and many more. Contact Dr. Mapopa Sanga or Steve Ray to make arrangements.
Call 580.774.3149 or e-mail distance@swosu.edu to schedule a one-on-one appointments with the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning staff.
To schedule a one-on-one appointment or to schedule a Canvas workshop for the department, call your department’s Teaching and Learning Coordinator. Refer to CETL Services for Departmental Distance Education Support.
Teaching & Learning Strategies
- This general category supports instructional methods and strategies whereby students engage in learning activities, such as reading, dialogue, writing, or problem-solving that promote reflection, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of learning processes and class content. Specific instructional interventions include:
- Project\Problem-Based Learning — discipline specific, with project-based learning seen in disciplines such as business while problem-based learning is deployed in scientific fields. PBL is both a teaching method and a curricular approach; students are typically integral in the identification of the problem and its refinement to actionable goals that employ techniques and self-directed learning strategies, often within a team framework. Content and skill development are derived from identified needs.
- Flipped Classroom Strategies — student-based activities that promote an intense period of student engagement, are more central to classroom time; allowing for greater depth in a topic that may follow student direction. Faculty serve as mentors in this model. In higher education, a flipped classroom may have research implications with students conducting research on a continuum from informal, action research to student participants in faculty research, to formal, thesis experiences.
- Simulation-Based Learning — the use of artificially reproduced real-world settings and processes to fulfill educational objectives through experiential learning of behaviors and functions. Skill development is a key component of this type of learning so objectives are typically written in terms of the mastery level to be achieved.
- Game-Theory Learning — used in areas where the focus is logical decision-making, with applications in computer science, economics, political science, and psychology, game theory studies mathematical models of conflict and cooperation to address balance in zero-sum, simultaneous, sequential, imperfect and differential environments.
- Best practices in learning via case study — students explore constraints, examples and data of a specific situation in order to define, clarify, and make recommendations for future practice and application.
Classroom Pedagogies
- Cooperative Learning — defined roles in a teamwork framework allow students to experience responsibilities aligned to each role; roles may rotate with each project or be maintained in a longer time-frame to allow students to develop a leadership model. At the end of the experience, student may write a job description or orientation manual to train future participants for the role.
- Collaborative Learning — while similar to cooperative learning, in collaborative learning, the focus is on each student’ s project or deliverable, so students seek out expertise in a more ad-hoc fashion with soft-skills such as inviting buy-in and identifying common strategic goals contrasting with the expectation in the cooperative model that a participant will perform their role.
- Just-in-time teaching — a two-step process whereby students identify needs which the instructor collects and compiles to form an intervention of specific instruction and\or feedback on those particular areas.
- Learning styles — discussion of various learning style and intelligences models with a focus on the instructional methods and strategies that support each style.
Assessment
- Objective (direct) vs. Subjective (indirect) evaluation — Objective metrics are typically used for repetitive skill development, such as demonstrating the correct way to administer an injection in terms of percentage correct. Subjective metrics deploy categories of measurement to determine if the student has met the essence of a concept, such as their professionalism in their bedside manner.
- Best Practices in E-assessment– how to effectively use online gradebooks, rubrics, and online tests and test banks to minimize instructor time and maximize student feedback.
- Rubrics – the development and deployment of effective assessment in order to fairly evaluate students and proactively inform students of the measures of criteria and expected level of competency.
- Competency-based education– also known as Personalized Learning; learning, curriculum, and assessment methods can be discussed under this broad umbrella. The CBL model is not based on seat-time strictures, rather, students absorb content at their own pace and demonstrate proficiency through a series of assessments.
- Learning Analytics\Interpreting and Reporting Results– accreditation agencies may expect to see evidence of learning goals interpretation at different levels: institutional goals, general education goals, departmental/major/program goals, course goals, internship/field experience goals, capstone/thesis goals, student life goals, and goals to show how planning impacts results. Statistical significance and reporting in samples and populations are addressed in order to represent data effectively.
- Objectives vs. Outcomes– tips on how to make objectives measurable and tie results to outcomes for students, programs, courses, experiences, and general education competencies.
- Program Assessment– components of the program assessment process, including demonstrable knowledge and skills and direct and indirect measures, and tools to facilitate the process so that findings are analyzed in an actionable program improvement framework are the focus.
Reading & Writing
- Evidence-based writing — the use of prompts, thesis development, and strategies regarding making claims, providing data, warrants and backing in order to develop, rebut or counter an existing claim.
- Persuasive writing — tips for understanding audience needs, analyzing existing persuasive writings, employing comparisons, reasoning, repetition, and counterarguments.
- Close Reading — a method for teaching reading comprehension in which vocabulary, diction, and patterns illuminate the meaning of the passage in addition to its elements of point of view, symbolism, and characterization.
Learning with Technology
- Integration of technology — strategies to overcome barriers to implementation and integration are discussed as well as benefits, legal issues, and ethics of integrating technology and effective methods of integration.
- Distance and Alternative Learning Settings — effective teaching in these settings, including reimaging and migrating a face-to-face course for a distance or alternative setting.
- Assistive Technology — program and classroom accessibility issues, adaptive and assistive technology products and strategies are discussed.
- Technology Applications — effective ways to teach with a variety of hardware and software products including: Smartboards, blogs, podcasts, productivity software, webpages, coding software, polling software, and social networks are addressed; some of those topics may be addressed individuality to allow for greater depth in the topic.
Principles of Instructional Design
- Models of the stages of the instructional design process and roles of the community of inquiry will lead implementators to adopt a robust model that is adaptable to their needs.
Leadership
- In general, a focus on successful leadership models and response to situational needs.
- Fostering Student Leadership – focus on strategies and models to implement opportunities in classroom and department settings, campus groups, and in local and statewide organizations.
- Fostering Faculty Leadership – focus on strategies and models to implement opportunities in department and committee settings, campus groups, and in local, statewide, and national organizations.
Research
- Faculty Research — focus on participating and leading in successful research teams and translation of research into classroom content and\or student mentoring opportunities.
- Fostering Student Research — examination of issues related to increasing the depth and breadth of student research on campus and in student group areas including: undergraduate, graduate, honors, STEM-related, and minority participation.
- Qualitative vs. Quantitative Methodologies — interviewing, survey development and deployment, sampling populations, analyzing data, IRB and IACUC oversight of research are discussed to help faculty researchers or student mentors.
Classroom Management
Strategies to motivate students, foster classroom democracy and educational discourse, incentivize participation, support at-risk students, deal with time-management issues, and maintain discipline and rules in the classroom are the focus.