Future Faculty Fellowship Program: Course Agenda
Day One
Morning session 1: Orientation and Team Building
What is this program about and what is my role?
Becoming a faculty member is not something that occurs overnight. As part of your graduate career, you want to explore the elements of a typical faculty role and be as prepared as you can when you accept your first appointment. This session will provide an overview of the program. Your role is to be as active as you can in the sessions and with each other so you can glean as much information as you can in the context of becoming a new faculty member
Morning session 2: Getting to Know Your Students
Who are our students and what are they like?
The more you know about your students—their background and expectations, how they learn, their knowledge (and misconceptions) regarding the discipline, intellectual competencies and skills, interests, attitudes, and preoccupations, the better you can design learning experiences that will promote effective learning.
Noon: Lunch discussion on academic leadership
Afternoon session 1: Teaching Critical Thinking
What should be the result of instruction?
The first step in systematizing one’s approach to course planning is to see the process from the perspective of the learner instead of the teacher, which requires specification of learning outcomes and an understanding of different learning taxonomies. The course syllabus should express the learning outcomes clearly and serve as a “lab manual” for the course.
Afternoon session 2: Conceptualizing Learning Outcomes: Designing Instruction
What should be the result of instruction?
The first step in systematizing one’s approach to course planning is to see the process from the perspective of the learner instead of the teacher, which requires specification of learning outcomes and an understanding of different learning taxonomies. The course syllabus should express the learning outcomes clearly and serve as a “lab manual” for the course.
Day Two
Morning session 1: Evaluating Learning Outcomes
How will you know if students have achieved the learning outcomes you set for them?
Conventional testing methods are useful for assessing all levels of learning outcomes, provided that they are designed for validity and reliability. Other methods of learning assessment (e.g., projects and research papers) must also meet these standards. Course grades, which represent performance over the entire semester, should reflect the achievement of meaningful learning.
Morning session 2: Ethical Issues in Teaching
What are some of the ethical problems that arise in the teaching profession and what ethical principles exist to help resolve them?
Cheating, plagiarism, and various breeches of academic integrity are distasteful to all teachers, and helping students develop a strong ethical sense is an important element of college instruction. However, ethical problems are by no means restricted to students, and we must examine how to develop and maintain our own ethical perspectives.
Noon: Lunch discussion on academic leadership
Afternoon session 1: Classroom Management
How can we build a classroom of respect and create an outline for handling problems that may arise in your courses?
Building a classroom of respect will go a long way in minimizing classroom management "issues." Even with the best of courses, problems can emerge. Problems such as these are difficult for ALL instructors, and having a firm grasp of basic principles of course management will pay huge dividends in saved time, energy, and frustration.
Afternoon session 2: Evaluating and Improving Teaching
How can we use evaluation to improve our teaching and satisfy the institution’s need for accountability?
To be reliable and fair, teaching evaluation methods should follow principles of good practice that are based on empirical research. Student evaluations, peer observations, and teaching portfolios all play important parts in a comprehensive system of teaching assessment.
Day Three
Morning session 1: Tools for Teaching
How can we make appropriate choices among the variety of teaching tools available?
Although there are many methods, approaches, and tools for teaching, most teachers use only a limited number, often basing their choices on the kinds of methods their own teachers employed. It is important to make this selection on the basis of a rational pedagogical plan.
Morning session 2: Facilitating Effective Discussion
What class structures, strategies, and activities can we use to create effective discussions that foster higher order thinking, respect for others’ ideas, and critical thinking?
Effective discussions can increase students’ retention skills, connect class concepts with personal experiences, perceptions, and global issues, and enable students to achieve higher order learning objectives. Planning and management are two of the key processes for effective discussions to occur.
Noon: Lunch discussion on academic leadership
Afternoon session: Writing as New Faculty
Day Four
Morning session 1: Group Work and Student Apathy
How can I design group work that considers the variety of ways that students can become really engaged in the material and with their team mates?
Engaging students effectively and efficiently in the learning process by capitalizing on their natural tendencies to be curious and to interact with others is fundamental to effective group work and for reducing the potential for apathy.
Morning session 2: Advancing Your Research Agenda
How can I advance my scholarly work in a way that is productive and satisfying to me and my institution?
The research aspect of faculty life is often narrowly defined as writing grants, doing research, and publishing your findings. While these are large elements of the research agenda, there is much more involved in moving your scholarly work forward in a systematic way.
Noon: Lunch discussion on academic leadership
Afternoon session 1: Library Resources
Afternoon session 2: Instructional Technologies: Present and Future
How are instructors and students using online and classroom technology to support coursework? How will innovations that lie ahead change the ways that instructors teach and students learn?
Learning management systems such as Blackboard provide a basic interface for storing course materials and handling administrative tasks, but still require instructors to make meaningful decisions about instructional design and student assessment. Tools that support social networking, collaborative authorship, and visual literacy create new opportunities for students to engage with structured learning objectives and communities beyond the classroom.
Day Five
Morning session 1: The Job Search
How can I conduct a successful job application process that results in a desirable position?
The job search process for graduate students is fraught with anxiety and uncertainty. Understanding the process from the beginning of your graduate career until a position is obtained is one way to reduce some of the anxiety and uncertainty.
Morning session 2: The Tenure Track Puzzle
What will it take to achieve tenure? How can we use our current graduate school experiences to prepare for the future demands of a faculty position?
Publish or perish; get grants or get out; become a star before you burn out: this session will address myths and realities of the path to tenure. Although criteria for tenure differ across academic disciplines and institutions—and are often hidden from view—we will explore ways to discover a department’s expectations and thereby plan career timetables, develop mentoring networks, and navigate departmental politics.
Noon: Lunch discussion on academic leadership
Afternoon session 1: Balancing Teaching and Other Academic Responsibilities
How can we invest the time needed to teach well while continuing to make progress on our own academic work and other responsibilities?
To succeed in academia, instructors must find ways to balance the demands of teaching with their own research, writing, and the rest of life. This session will explore strategies for managing time, setting priorities, writing efficiently and managing stress.
Afternoon session 2: Closing