Seattle U has moved to remote instruction through the Spring Quarter. More details and FAQs on the COVID-19 website.
In the 2019-20 academic year, the Center for Faculty Development is offering six Faculty Learning Communities, each focused around a book. To ease scheduling for participants, each Faculty Learning Community will meet during a single quarter and dates and times will be scheduled at the outset.
A faculty learning community is a group of cross-disciplinary faculty (usually 6–12 people) engaging in an active, collaborative program that meets regularly to support each participant's professional development (definition adapted from Miami University, OH). Depending on the chosen book, learning community participants may pick a focus project and agree to apply the ideas, try out innovations, and report back to the group on what they have learned.
The Center for Faculty Development provides you with a copy of the book, refreshments, and a designated “host” for your learning community. At each gathering, you’ll discuss key insights from the assigned reading, questions that arise for you while reading, and, when appropriate, the progress you're making on your own project.
Any Seattle University faculty member, part-time or full-time, can participate in the program.
How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching
Are you interested in finding out more about your students’ learning and adjusting your own courses as a result? How Learning Works, written by faculty developers from Carnegie Mellon University, is grounded in evidence from cognitive sciences, education, and psychology, and presents seven key principles that you can use to inform the design of your courses. Covering such topics as mastery, prior knowledge, motivation, and classroom climate, this book has gained an international reputation for its clarity, rigor, and practicality. In this four-session Learning Community, facilitated by Katherine Raichle (Center for Faculty Development), you’ll be able to increase your understanding of learning, plan concrete changes for your classes, and discuss the results of these changes with an interdisciplinary group of peers.
Over the course of this learning community, you'll:
This community is for any faculty member who would like to take a more research-based approach to teaching. Ideally, you would be teaching in Winter so that you can put new ideas into practice immediately and are therefore better able to contribute to group discussion and reflection. This will give everyone greater insight into the variability of teaching contexts and norms, and can lead to a deeper appreciation of disciplinary nuances in higher education.
How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching is 224 pages long, and the reading will be split across the four sessions to be manageable for participants.
The four dates in Winter Quarter are
»Registration is now closed.
Transparent design in higher education teaching and leadership: A guide to implementing the transparency framework institution-wide to improve learning and retention
Co-sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI)
We know from decades of research that access to learning is inequitable for students, continuing an unjust pattern of underrepresentation and underachievement in higher education for specific groups of people. Faculty are often left feeling that addressing such huge discrepancies is beyond their control. Yet there are simple and immediate ways to create more equitable access to learning in your classes.
In this learning community, facilitated by Katherine Raichle (Center for Faculty Development), we will explore a simple and high-impact transformational approach to teaching – the Transparent Design in Learning and Teaching initiative in higher education (TILT). Put simply, TILT is an approach to teaching that helps students better understand how and why they are learning course content. Even tiny adjustments to teaching practices informed by TILT have been shown to bridge inequitable access to learning, enhancing learning for all students, while importantly benefiting underrepresented students in particular. Moreover, research has shown a lasting impact of TILT on student confidence, metacognitive self-awareness, sense of belonging, and persistence.
This is a hands-on and practice-oriented thematic learning community where we will learn about TILT and apply its principles to the design of assignments and teaching practices in our classes.
Over the four sessions, you'll learn how to:
This community is for any faculty member who is seeking to enhance their students’ learning and make their learning practices more equitably accessible to all students.
We will cover several selected readings, including sections of the book Transparent design in higher education teaching and leadership, a copy of which we will provide for you. The readings will be split across the four sessions to be manageable for participants.
The four dates in Winter Quarter are
»Registration is now closed.
