My mid-Atlantic, public, liberal arts institution has gone through a great many changes in the last two years. Changes in the top-echelon leadership have inspired a curriculum overhaul, revisions of the ways in which faculty are evaluated, more robust opportunities for undergraduate research, a comprehensive first-year program featuring targeted advising and freshmen seminars, and will soon yield a new faculty governance system.
I have just learned that another major change is imminent: the elimination of our current, faculty-organized teaching development program and the creation of a new Center for Teaching Excellence. The new Center will integrate teaching and learning technologies and pedagogies in what I expect (and hope) will foster real organic exchange between faculty interested in the teaching commons and faculty using technology in innovative ways.
We have an opportunity to produce a model Center. Readers–if you had your druthers and could create the “Dream” Center for Teaching Excellence, what would you have it do? What services should it provide? How should it be organized?
December 15, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Good question–hopefully this will be the center node in many full blog posts about this–comments might not be able to do it justice.
But that won’t stop me from trying…
1. It will be –in part– a decentralized center. That is, while it will contain a repository of important resources, it will also have mechanisms for pushing such resources out to people via organized RSS feeds, a healthy del.icio.us network, and more.
2. It will help organize and give coherence to broad institutional programs like the writing program and first-year seminars where the teaching goals strongly overlap, but the implementation of the classes is too often done in isolation from others.
December 15, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Broad questions, big potential headaches, but significant opportunities….
My ideal teaching center would, of necessity, be decentralized as well, but it would also need to have real direction, leadership and vision at the top levels of the Center. That requires a person or people with a real passion for teaching, an openness to new ideas (technological, pedagogical and technopedagogical*), a respect for the power of traditional teaching done well, a sense of the needs of the students and the faculty (and many, many ideas about how to enrich the learning experiences of both), and a visionary yet realistic plan for where the teaching at the institution (in all of its forms) needs to go.
I have a number of pragmatic considerations (many adding on to Patrick’s suggestions), but maybe I’ll save that comment/post for when I’m done grading.
* Is it rude to make up a word on somebody else’s blog?
December 20, 2007 at 12:09 am
One of the most important things is that the leader of the center should be an excellent, passionate teacher. I think it is sometimes hard to tell about this aspect of a person on paper; teaching experience is a given, but often awards, given by administrations, don’t tell the whole story. But when you meet the person, when he or she talks to you and asks and answers questions, if you feel drawn to him/her and inspired, then you’ll know! But the person has to be even more: s/he needs to be passionate about working with other teachers, to love thinking about how people learn, who believes in the power of community… Yes, the leader is a very important piece of making a great center. I have found a great resource to be the POD network (http://www.podnetwork.org/). And the technology, well, as much as I love it, I have seen too many centers where the priorities are all messed up. Don’t let the technology service model take hold!
I’ll be interested to hear what others add to this conversation!