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University Teaching and Learning Course | Fall 2023

University Teaching and Learning Course | Fall 2023
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The University Teaching and Learning Course (UTL)is offered to all new Assistant Professors and Lecturers. This course will prepare the newcomers for some of the important aspects of university teaching and learning, such as course design, learning assessment and feedback, teaching for student engagement and working with groups. For experienced faculty, this course can give you new insights in your teaching and useful advice on current teaching pedagogy to enhance student learning.

Date: 16 – 18 AUG 2023
Venue: Room 6558 (Lift 27-30)
Facilitators: Dr. Sean McMinn, Director, CEI
Dr. Beatrice Chu, Head of Professional Development, CEI
Miss. Crystal LUO, Education Development Manager, CEI

Program Rundown

09:30 – 10:45 (75 min)
Module 1: How Learning Works
11:00 – 12:15 (75 min)
Module 2: Course Design based on Outcome Based Education Framework
09:30 – 10:45 (75 min)
Module 3: Learning Assessment and Feedback
11:00 – 12:15 (75 min)
Module 4: Creating Rubrics for Assessment
09:30 – 10:45 (75 min)
Module 5: Teaching for Student Engagement
11:00 – 12:15 (75 min)
Module 6: Working with Students in Teams and Groups

Module Descriptions

Module 1: How Learning Works

Any effective teaching must begin with a consideration of how students learn. When it comes to teaching, you could base your teaching approaches on personal experience, opinion, habit, or your colleagues’ advice - but these approaches may not be ideal if your goal is to be an effective teacher. Understanding the science of learning can improve your teaching and help you address some common classroom challenges, such as why can’t students engage in my class? Why do students continue to apply the same ineffective learning strategies? What can I do to help students apply what they have learned? This session aims to introduce research-based learning theory coupled with practical tips to improve your teaching.

Module 2: Course Design based on Outcome Based Education Framework

This module will explain course design based on an Outcome Based Education (OBE) approach, emphasizing the importance of establishing clear learning outcomes, then designing teaching and learning activities and assessment tasks that align with those intended learning outcomes. The session identifies the essential components of effective course design and helps you applying OBE in your context.

Module 3: Learning Assessment and Feedback

The process of marking, grading, and giving feedback is crucial: it is the most powerful lever teachers have to orient students' study efforts towards the most important things in the most appropriate ways. In addition, students will pay the most attention to what they think is being assessed. In this session, we will look at the implications of crucial areas such as: setting assessment tasks, specifying outcome criteria, helping students self-review, and giving feedback.

Module 4: Creating Rubrics for Assessment

A rubric is a grading guide that explicitly communicates the expectations for an assignment by listing a coherent set of criteria and clearly describing levels of performance quality for these criteria. Rubrics are often used for written assignments, project work, group/teamwork, peer evaluations, and oral presentations. This session will help you learn about a rubric and design an effective rubric for assessment tasks.

Module 5: Teaching for Student Engagement

Keeping students captivated and ready to learn is not an easy task. It requires both careful planning and skillful facilitation. This module will introduce some handy and interactive student engagement techniques that can help you keep students motivated, no matter in what class size.

Module 6: Working with Students in Teams and Groups

Having students work in groups/ teams is effective in helping them to apply concepts rather than simply learn about them. Working with peers enables students to pool ideas, see problems from different perspectives and benefit from analyzing, discussing, and exploring their ideas and gain feedback from their peers. This module will look into how to facilitate student learning in teams (1)  where they need to work together on a project for an extended period and (2) ad-hoc groups that are formed during class where they need to work cooperatively to accomplish some learning goals within a class session.

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