Workshops 2003

This is the start of the spring semester's workshop series designed specifically to meet the needs of UCF adjunct faculty. The first in the series is Start of the Semester Trials and Tribulations and will deal with issues that come up at the beginning of the new semester. The series occurs the first Monday of each month.

Balancing Work, Family and Life in Higher Education: A Survivor Series

This workshop will focus on lessons learned about the role of family, use of technology, balancing time and most importantly creating and sticking to a clear agenda with the multiple demands of higher education.

One of the hardest things to do is to document teaching proficiency. This portfolio workshop will help faculty develop an outline for their portfolio and define the content and layout.

All too often, faculty do not realize that those persons who are reviewing their teaching award portfolios are not in their discipline. Faculty also do not realize that so many of their teaching related activities make them great teachers. In this workshop, we will talk about ways to make your best presentation in order to develop a competitive teaching award portfolio.

The General Counsel of the University, Scott Cole and Assistant Vice President, Campus Life, Patricia Mackown answer your questions about what specifically are faculty rights with regard to academic freedom, classroom management, FERPA and student grade grievances among other issues.

Participants will develop an Abstract, Goals, Background - current status of area, preliminary data statement and Objectives for their grant.

Do you have great ideas but get stuck turning those ideas into publications? Do you find it hard to move past rejection letters? This workshop will provide you with ideas and strategies for converting your ideas into academic publications. The workshop will also provide you with ideas for handling rejection.

Relationship Rescue: Tools to Enhance Faculty-Student Relationships

This workshop will review a variety of communication and conflict resolution techniques that will help you prevent and address difficult faculty-student interactions. We will examine our attitudes about faculty-student relationships and explore the ways in which enhancing our interactions with students can transform our work in the classroom.

Tenured or tenure-earning faculty need to write publishable material to be professionally successful. But the pressures of teaching, service and life in general often relegate one's own writing to the back burner. Come to get strategies on how to jump start your own writing and to incorporate academic writing into your hectic teaching/research schedule.

Communication in the Classroom and Effective Teaching

In this workshop you will learn techniques that enhance the motivation of students to learn from and to teach each other.

Come and learn teaching strategies to improve the ability of students to participate in collaborative learning.

In this workshop the participants will experience interactive classroom techniques that might be used in any size class. By being actively involved, faculty will be able to determine the value of the methods from the student and faculty perspective.

Interactive Learning Skills for Large Engineering Classes

It’s easy for engineers to fall into traditional lecture-based teaching roles, but sometimes that leaves students lost or disengaged. Come and learn how to liven up your classroom dynamic and to reach a greater number of your students.

As part of documentation of effective teaching, it is important to have colleagues review your course materials and classroom environment. The goal of the workshop is to provide you with information, methodology and documents that will help you be effective in the peer review process and in providing material for others to review.

Putting Your Best Foot Forward: Teaching Award Portfolios

All too often, faculty do not realize that those persons who are reviewing their teaching award portfolios are not in their discipline. Faculty also do not realize that so many of their teaching related activities make them great teachers. In this workshop, we will talk about ways to make your best presentation in order to develop a competitive teaching award portfolio.

There are small but important things you can do to help your class run more smoothly and to reduce student anxiety. You will be provided with suggestions and hints about how to provide important information to your students about what you want them to do, your expectations about their performance, and how they can succeed. Bring your best examples, anecdotes, and questions to share with other faculty.

Participants will experience creative classroom techniques that might be used in any size class. By being actively involved, faculty will be able to determine the value of the methods from the student and faculty perspective.

In this 2 hour workshop participants will discuss the book 10 Best Teaching Practices by Donna Walker Tileston, based on how brain research, learning styles and standards define teaching competencies. The participants will discuss these practices and develop teaching strategies for their own discipline and student body. The main topics include using a variety of teaching strategies that address different learning styles, teaching for long-term memory, integrating higher level thinking skills, and bridging the gap between all learners.

We will examine several strategies for overcoming some disconnections that contribute to low student motivation, including re-embodying learning, re-linking culture and environment, and re-valuing student performance.

Aligning Course Goals and Objectives with Assessment

A tool box of assessment techniques will be opened and participants will discuss aligment of course goals and objectives with different types of assessment.

In this workshop participants will discuss 5 basic criteria for making grading easier, more efficient and more useful to the student. The workshop is modeled on Barbara Walvoord's book Effective Grading and a workshop that she gave at the recent American Association of Higher Education meeting on assessment methods.

Student evaluations are not generally fun to read, but they can be used constructively to help you get a sense of your students' perceptions. Come to discuss how to sort through the useful from the useless, how to keep perspective on the negative ones, and how to choose sample comments to include in your portfolio.

Why wait until the midterm exam to find out that your students are not getting the material? Come to discuss strategies for finding out where your students are and meeting them there.

This program will show how heterosexism and homophobia is the norm in our society and how it can come up in the classroom and shut down those who might be part of a class discussion. The program will focus on becoming aware of heterosexism & homophobia in society, self and other, and will discuss how best to handle difficult situations and create space for productive discussion.

This presentation will review several ideas from David A. Sousa's book of the same title which integrates recent findings about the learning brain with better teaching practices.

This semester we will be talking about Richard Light's book Making the Most of College: Student's Speak Their Minds. This is an opportunity to come together to brainstorm teaching ideas and mentor each other as we implement the ideas in our classrooms.

Why should you use PowerPoint in your classes? What is the added student learning? What can you incorporate into your PowerPoint presentations to reach all student learning types? In this workshop these and other questions will be discussed and the types of media that can be incorporated into a PowerPoint presentation will be demonstrated. The beginning session will focus on basic skills in PowerPoint. Intermediate sessions will offer some advanced skills.