Throughout the fall and spring semesters this year, the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) has been partnering with the Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering (MBE) to offer workshops directly to MBE faculty on topics of interest to them. These workshops take place in the engineering buildings and during the time slot of MBE departmental meetings, making it easier for faculty to engage in the workshops. In the fall, workshop topics included “Course Design Basics”, “Authentic Assessment”, and “Using Evidence to Document Effective Teaching”. This spring, the workshop topics are “Teaching for Student Belonging and Success” and “Incorporating and Facilitating Group Work in Your Courses”.
Although the CTL has previously offered Sparkshops, 15- to 20-minute workshops, at faculty meetings, this partnership represents a new way to engage with faculty and support ongoing departmental dialogue around teaching. The workshops were developed specifically with MBE faculty in mind and drew upon disciplinary examples throughout the sessions. Additionally, attendees were able to work collaboratively with their colleagues to apply the workshop topics specifically within courses important to their own program.
Todd Otanicar, department chair of MBE, said, “The CTL engaging with us as a department through the TeachME workshop series allowed our faculty to engage with topics being presented in a really focused manner specific to our curriculum. Each session I walked away impressed, encouraged, and challenged to become a better teacher. In addition to the great pedagogical information it also served as an excellent team bonding exercise.” The faculty attendees also found the structure to work well for them. Hannah O’Hern, Clinical Assistant Professor in MBE said, “Having these discussions with my fellow department members made it easy to discuss the application of the workshop topics to our courses when we already had background and context for each of the courses.”
To learn more about how the CTL could partner with your department for targeted programming, please email Teresa Focarile (teresafocarile@boisestate.edu).