University of Guelph COED 2008 Update

From OUCEL Wiki

The Educational Development Unit at the University of Guelph creates opportunities for on-going development of educator-related knowledge, skills and attitudes by providing instructional design expertise, access to pedagogical theories and models as well as peer interactions.

Our Educational Development Unit is managed by Peter Wolf and includes Natasha Kenny, Mary Wilson and Janet Wolstenholme.

ED Unit Highlights for 2007-2008:

• Over 1100 faculty, TA's, and other educators attended more than 90 workshops, conferences and other educational development unit events.
• Combined publications included 1 edited book, 5 peer-reviewed publications and engagement in 3 on-going research projects.
• Facilitated over 75 individual and departmental consultations with faculty, TA's, and other educators on course design, delivery and assessment.
• 16 curriculum renewal initiatives were supported.
• 15 external presentations were given by ED Unit staff at academic conferences or as invited speakers.
• 5 successful, topic-specific, on-going faculty/staff discussion groups formed.
• 3 undergraduate and graduate credit courses were taught.
• College of Arts Graduate Student Teaching Practicum was initiated.
• Designed and launched on-line curriculum mapping software.

Challenges:

• We are occasionally running into space problems now with multiple, concurrent events, but this has largely been alleviated by booking externally.
• Balancing the demands of new initiatives that have strong community support and interest (Graduate Teaching Practicum and Curriculum Mapping) with the desire to continue our offerings of practical teaching skills workshops.

Goals:

• We are looking forward to working with our colleagues in TSS's Learning Technologies and Classroom Innovations group to support faculties as we switch our Learning Platform from Blackboard to D2L.
• We are formulating assessment protocols to evaluate the effectiveness of our work.
• We are working at finding capacity and efficiencies internally to respond to increased demand for our support of curriculum and instructional development.