Professional Development Opportunities
Connecting the dots . . .
| The Office for Academic Excellence and Assessment (AEA) has historically been tasked with advancing the assessment of student learning. For more than a decade, AEA has worked to grow a culture of assessment through various programs that introduced innovative forms of teaching, developed faculty's reflective practices, and encouraged a variety of forms of assessing students' learning. In essence, AEA works to help faculty "connect the dots" between their teaching, students' learning, and ability to assess and document the richness of students' learning. |
. . . while thinking outside the box (for a solution see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq3ta6SvlTo)
Changes in pedagogy and models of teaching, generational shifts in students, and increasing external pressures to produce a transparency of assessment evidence requires that we continue to engage in "thinking outside the box." Although sometimes used as a business cliche', academics, in the richness of a liberal arts tradition, are encouraged to think differently, unconventionally, creatively, or even from a newly-shared perspective.
Dedicated to significant issues in teaching, learning, and assessment, the Office for Academic Excellence and Assessment offers an array of professional development opportunities. The Creighton teaching and learning community is invited to share your perspectives or even challenge traditional thinking by joining us in an exploration of collaborative and innovative (online) teaching practices, enrolling in the Academic Assessment workshops, and celebrating a variety of creative methods by which to assess our students' learning, as showcased in the 2012-2013 AEA Development Grant Series.
While excited about continuing to support faculty participation in the 2013 International Institute for SoTL Scholars and Mentors (formerly the CASTL National Institute) at Loyola Marymount University in June, the academic year calendar will be filled with scholarly presentations, invited speakers, workshops, and campus reading and working groups. This year's AEA programs are as diverse as your teaching-learning interests and offered in "one shot" training sessions, 60-90 minute presentations, and/or semester-long reading or working groups.
As we begin the 2012-2013 academic year, it is most appropriate that we share best practices by "connecting" with each other and critically examing our teaching, learning, and assessment practices, even as they continue to change and evolve. You are invited to join in and contribute to these explorations by finding the topic and learning community that best matches your interest and availability; you are encouraged to begin our academic year with your own commitment to teaching, learning, and reflective evaluation, as guided by Ignatian pedagogy and the Creighton tradition. When we combine our individual strengths, write in our goal of improved student learning, and collaborate as a Creighton community, we all develop as educational professionals.
Resources
Read more about opportunities for Teaching and Learning, view our recent Teaching and Learning Connections newsletter.
For a list of publications that feature scholarly discussion of the art and practice of teaching view the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Journals.