Welcome back faculty! We are all now four weeks into our annual sojourn into a new academic year. During our journey as disciplinary experts, we have opportunities to develop and refine the craft of teaching at the college level. The University of Portland and several colleagues on campus offer resources to support our reflective teaching. These include the REFLECT team, the Untethered Lecture Capture initiative, the Ignite Grant program, CISGO, this TLC blog, our Teaching and Learning HUB, new Humanities Collaborative, and much more.
In addition to our own on-campus initiatives, online resources based at other institutions can also augment our efforts to hone our approaches to teaching. One excellent example is Carnegie Mellon University’s Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation. This thoughtfully designed site includes resources for course design and teaching, assessing both teaching and learning, education and technology, and solving teaching problems. This latter topic’s page breaks down the problem-solving process into three virtual steps: identification of problems by category, followed by identification of possible reasons, and ending with a set of potential strategies for addressing each possible reason for the problem. Teaching in higher education is often a puzzle for us disciplinary experts; some call it one of those wicked problems. The Eberly Center website provides us with a well-organized set of practical virtual tools for approaching our questions about teaching and learning.
We have now included The Eberly Center on our Teaching and Learning HUB’s Toolkits page. While you visit the page, take a moment to explore UP’s other resources for becoming a more reflective teacher at the college level.
Jeffrey White is an instructor of German and the Learning Commons administrator in Buckley Center 163. To discuss with Jeffrey topics on teaching and learning or how your students can practice and enhance their learning in the Learning Commons, contact him at x7141 or via email at white@up.edu.