Programs

Faculty Workshops on Teaching and Learning

 

UW instructional personnel are invited to participate in the Faculty Workshops on Teaching and Learning. The workshops, which have been designed by and for UW instructional personnel with the needs of both seasoned professionals and newcomers in mind, are intended to offer an opportunity to discuss our experiences and knowledge with their colleagues. The workshops are open to faculty, advanced graduate students (who have served as instructors), and to regular part-time lecturers, that is, those who teach at least two courses per year and have done so for at least the past three years. The workshops have been created and are being facilitated by University of Washington faculty who have received campus-wide recognition for their effectiveness in teaching.

 

Sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the UW Teaching Academy in collaboration with the Center for Instructional Development and Research, Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity, UW Libraries, UW Catalyst, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Office of Educational Assessment, offers these workshops.

 

 

SPRING QUARTER WORKSHOPS, 2009

Workshops will be held from 2:30-4:20PM on the Seattle campus. Scroll down for registration link.

 

April 24, 2009 | Teaching Racial Literacy

Jonathan Warren, Jackson School of International Studies

How can faculty build a deeper understanding of race and more effective skills for responding to racism and its effects? In most U.S. educational and political institutions, race talk today centers on colorblindness. In this seminar, we will analyze this discourse, including its limits for characterizing the work of power and race. In the process, we'll investigate the primary assumptions, identities, and social practices impeding racial literacy and introduce a more productive, alternative framework—race cognizance—to enhance racial literacy in the classroom.

 

May 1, 2009 | Using Bloom's to Get the Most Out of Your Exams
Alison Crowe, Biology
Mary Pat Wenderoth, Biology

In this workshop we will explore ways to use Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Domains to help faculty create intellectually challenging assignments and exam questions (multiple choice as well as essay).  Participants will work in groups to revise exams or assignments which they bring to the workshop.  

 

May 8, 2009 | Reducing Grading Time While Increasing Effectiveness

Matt McGarrity, Communication

How do we maintain good writing assignments with increasing class sizes without drowning in the tides of grading? This workshop will focus on ways to design, discuss, and grade writing assignments with simple rubrics. Rubrics are the criteria and categories used for grading an assignment; they can be simple check lists, or more elaborate category lists. When used well, rubrics can sharpen your sense of what students should focus on in their essays, increase the transparency of your grading criteria for students, improve the quality of student writing, and reduce the amount of time spent with that stack of papers. Participants should bring a draft of a current or anticipated writing assignment to discuss and develop. At the end of the session, each participant will leave with a grading rubric for their assignment and a few specific rubric teaching strategies for improving student writing.

 

 

Each workshop will be from 2:30-4:20PM on the UW Seattle campus. The specific location will be included in the confirmation email. The total number of participants for each workshop is limited to 30. All materials will be provided the day of the workshop.

 

 

Registration
While preference is geared towards tenure-track faculty, particularly, Assistant Professors, members of the instructional community are invited to register. Availability is restricted on a first come first serve basis. Shortly after completing the online registration form, you will receive confirmation of your enrollment. Please direct any questions to: tacademy@u.washington.edu or call 206-616-7175.

 

To register, go to: https://catalysttools.washington.edu/webq/survey/tacademy/73840

 

 

Previously Offered Workshops

 

Leading Effective Seminars and Discussion Techniques: Techniques for leading seminars effectively will be examined in this workshop. Since seminars require different types of preparations and teachings than lecture classes, this workshop is taught by faculty who are recognized for their effectiveness in leading seminars. The workshop will cover strategies for leading discussions, techniques for encouraging participation and seminar designs that enhance student learning.

 

Power and Difference on Campus: A Workshop on Diversity
This workshop is designed to facilitate conversations about diversity in general and, in particular, about the relationships between issues and practices of power and difference, and between diversity and academics, teaching, and service. Open-ended discussions among the participants will be encouraged.

 

Strategies for Incorporating Experiential Learning in Class: This workshop will explore how to build experience as a learning tool into courses. The workshop facilitators will review different types of learning experiences that range from project-centered research to community service. Workshop participants will be introduced to these different approaches by faculty members who have used them and with undergraduates who have participated in the experiences. Illustrations from the facilitators' classes will be discussed and analyzed.

 

Globalizing Learning: This workshop will offer ideas for infusing a global perspective in course design and classroom techniques. A number of disciplines have moved toward a transitional framework in recognition of pervasive changes in the organization of economies, societies and policies around the world. This workshop will offer ideas for translating these new directions into pedagogical applications.

 

Effective Strategies for Using Writing in Classes: This workshop will examine a variety of techniques for using writing effectively in the classroom. Writing can be used as a tool for long-term communication of ideas, as in sustained research papers; it is also a tool for triggering broader classroom participation, for instigating deeper thinking about readings and other resource materials and for encouraging more thoughtful participation in classroom discussions. This workshop will address these varied ways of using writing and will offer opportunities for practicing these techniques, as well as assessing written work.

 

Techniques for Effective Lecturing: The goals of this workshop are to expose participants to methods that lecturers use in engaging students in lecture classes. Each facilitator will demonstrate strategies used to engage students and the payoffs of these strategies. Participants will be expected to discuss their own approaches to lecturing and the challenges they face in their classes. Faculty members who facilitate this workshop will be among the University's most noted lecturers.

 

Enhancing Learning Through Use of Technology: This workshop offers an overiew of the uses of technology in teaching. Faculty who use technology extensively and effectively will facilitate the session. During this workshop, faculty will be introduced to different applications by way of hands-on examples. Information about teaching and technology resources available on campus will be included and participants will have an opportunity to consult closely with faculty facilitators in order to learn how technology may assist in addressing specific teaching concerns.

 

Approaches to Teaching Diversity, Social Justice and Citizenship: This workshop will engage faculty in considering new scholarship on diversity, social justice and citizenship and how to integrate this new knowledge into courses they teach. Participants will examine case studies on race and disability and engage in discussion comparative approaches to teaching diversity. Faculty members will bring a syllabus and collaborate with colleagues on developing effective pedagogical strategies for teaching about diversity, social justice and citizenship.

 

Course Re/Design: Using Learning Goals in Course Development and Revision: This workshop is an argument for identifying clear learning goals at an early step in the course (re)design process, for using them to help shape the course, and for communicating them to students. Discussion will include what research says about the use of learning goals; our own experiences trying to use them; ideas on how to write effective goals including links between learning goals at the course-level and at the level of the major. This is a hands-on workshop so participants will have time to articulate learning goals for a course they plan to each and to let those goals inform the course design. Participants should come with a course in mind, some sense of reading/content for that course and any other materials they may need.

 

Using Discomfort and Intense Conversations in Teaching and Learning, or, "How I learned not to be a deer in the headlights": This workshop will address subjects that lead to contention and agitation in the classroom. How might we prepare ourselves and our students for tough discussions, and what might we do with some of those explosive moments? Readings and a brief response paper will set the stage for our workshop, which will include discussion, pondering, and, by the end of the day, a tool kit.

 

Teaching Across Disciplines: This workshop will explore the challenges of teaching undergraduate and graduate students multidisciplinary understandings of substantive topics, using a case study from marine environmental studies as an example. Teaching social and natural science information in the same course and teaching disciplinary information to non majors will be explored with class examples and strategies to ensure breadth and depth of learning. Participants will be asked to engage in developing teaching responses to challenging scenarios.

The University of Washington is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation in its services, programs, activities, education and employment for individuals with disabilities. To request disability accommodation contact the Disability Services Office at least ten days in advance at: (206) 543-6450/V, (206) 543-6452/TTY, (206) 685-7264 (FAX), or dso@u.washington.edu.