Faculty Development

Welcome to the Office of Faculty Development

The office's aim is to help instructors at all levels (board appointed faculty, adjunct and part-time faculty, and graduate student instructors) develop the skills necessary to implement powerful pedagogies in their teaching. Regardless of whether courses are face-to-face or online, large or small, powerful pedagogies emphasize strong instructional design that maximizes student engagement. Such teaching plays a critical role in the WMU commitment to increasing student success.

Need Help with Teaching Methods, Classroom Technology, Elearning, or Information Technology? Check out the Instructor Decision Support Tree to find the right solution to your problems.

The deadline to submit applications for the 2013-1014 Academic Leadership Academy has been extended to May 20th.

Upcoming Events

First Annual Teaching & Learning Bash

The event will include workshops, posters and resources for teaching. This event will also showcase the results of Instructional Development Project and Travel Grants. The event is scheduled for Friday, September 13, 2013, 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. at the Fetzer center. Click here for more info.

The Performance Task Institute is aimed at helping faculty develop curricula and pedagogy that includes explicit teaching of higher order thinking skills by incorportating opportunities for students to practice complex problem solving. Those invited to participate will be meeting on May 9th and 10th from 8:30 am to Noon in UCC 2033.

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Academy-- The SoTL Academy conference will be held in Grand Rapids, May 19th-21st. For more information please check out this post card and visit here.

Services

We offer a variety of services to individual instructors as well as to groups. These include:

Graduate Teaching Assistant Workshops
These workshops will include topics on teaching tips, active learning strategies, dealing with disruptive students, and many more topics. These are available to all Graduate Teaching Assistants, please visit here for registration, more information, and schedules of workshops.

There will also be weekly Teaching and Learning office hours for interested Graduate Teaching Assistants on Thursdays starting January 17th from 3:30-5:30. Any GTAs can come by the Office of Faculty Development for help with problems and questions they may have about the courses they teach.

On-campus programs
See the schedule for details about short workshops, book discussions, and longer development opportunities.

Specialized programming for department and faculty groups
If your department or a group of faculty wishes to explore a particular teaching approach, want training in specific areas, or is interested in a tailored faculty development experience, please contact us to discuss how we can work with you.

Individual teaching consultations
We can work with instructors one-on-one through discussion of course design, syllabus construction, and teaching approaches; classroom observation and feedback; and interpretation of end-of-course student evaluations.

Programs

The links on the left will take you to services the office offers, programs planned for 2011-2012, and an ever-growing set of "vetted" and annotated links to resources for teaching and learning. Read more about our efforts in our Strategic Plan.

News:

Congratulations Dr. Beach

New Faculty Seminar - Every other Tuesday

Starting:
September 25th
12:30 - 1:45

Upcoming Events:

Graduate Teaching Assistants Workshops Sign up here

How to find us:

Our office is located in Room 2029 in the University Computing Center.

The OFD is just down the hall from the eastern entrance.