| Abstract | As part of its university-wide faculty development program, the University of Alabama at Birmingham initiated during the current academic year a seminar series for new faculty (Excellence in Teaching: A Seminar Series for New Faculty). The sevensession seminar series was developed for faculty in their early years of teaching and was designed especially for those with no formal training in educational instruction. The goal of the series was to help new faculty gain useful knowledge about teaching and learning while giving them opportunities to network with both new faculty and experienced master teachers from Chemistry, Physics, Health Professions, and Physiology and Biophysics. The majority of the 30 participating faculty had primary appointments in STEM discipline departments. The seminars were designed to provide targeted information that would help faculty learn how to engage students in complex and/or highly technical content while they were revising or designing a new course. Seminar topics included student learning and long-term retention, designing a course syllabus, enhancing lectures, effective teaching approaches and techniques, challenging students and interesting situations, as well as evaluation and grading. The seminars were all interactive, participatory “working” sessions, modeling effective teaching/learning practices and engaging faculty in hands-on activities with cross-disciplinary colleagues. Each participating faculty member identified a course that he/she wanted to revise or create; they worked on this course throughout the seminar series, consistently refining and revising aspects of the course. For example, faculty practiced writing specific, measurable learning objectives and designing authentic classroom assessments aligned with these learning objectives. They discussed how to use tests and assessments as teaching and learning tools and shared successful strategies for addressing class management issues. Herein we provide an overview of the Excellence in Teaching Seminars Series and describe several of the interactive strategies used. |
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