Teaching: List the institutional Quality Teaching activities offered: training of new and existing faculty (including adjunct faculty), support for teaching technologies, etc. (1000 words)

The College’s Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) is responsible for the development of the academic faculty regarding teaching as detailed below. The teaching evaluations are handled by the Academic Administration Office detailed it item 5.2.1.3 hereafter.

TLC includes four staff members who are closely affiliated with the Department of Communication. The director is Dr. Idit Manosevitch, who is the head of the Department of Communication with experience as a teaching consultant in the Center for Instructional Development and Research at the University of Washington (2003-2006). Dr. Haim Hagay, the forthcoming full-time faculty in the Department of Communication, serves as an instructional consultant and workshop coordinator, Sharon Ben-David who is the techno-pedagogy expert, and Dr. Efrat Daskal, the Researcher and Program Evaluator, with expertise in digital, hybrid, and blended learning.

The TLC offers teaching support in several types of activities:

The TLC offers teaching conferences twice a year,  and a new faculty orientation in the beginning of the year. Throughout the year, TLC provides personal mentoring and consultancy, workshops (on using MOODLE, writing exams, and more), and a dynamic website with materials about a wide-array of teaching and learning topics, as well as a “tip of the week”, Q&R, and more. The website is accessed via MOODLE, where the Center is defined as a course, and all the college faculty are defined as students. Thus, it can only be accessed by all the teaching faculty. This enables us to share materials (e.g., PowerPoint slides, and recordings of workshops) provided by outside guest lecturers that are willing to share their materials only with the college faculty.

Following is a detailed account of the teaching and learning activities provided by TLC during the 2020-2021school year. See Appendix 6.5 for the PowerPoint presentations as detailed.

The 2020/21 New Faculty Orientation (September 3, 2020) included the following activities:

Information on teaching-support services provided by different units in the college, including

  • Bili Ganor, Director of the Academic Administration
  • Smadi Melamed, Head of Library
  • Mordo Ezagouri, Head of the Computer Services
  • Sylvia Colet, Student Services

 

Workshops

  • Planning your course and preparing the syllabus / Dr. Haim Hagay (Appedix 6)
  • Promoting student engagement in learning / Dr. Idit Manosevitch (Appendix 6)
  • Writing and grading exams and assignments / Dr. Haim Hagay (Appendix 6)
  • Getting help from the Teaching and Learning Center / Dr. Idit Manosevitch (Appendix 6)
  • Working with MOODLE / Sharon Ben-David
  • Advanced workshop for engaged learning via Zoom / Sharon Ben-David

 

The 2020/21 Teaching and Learning conference for all faculty (September, 2020): The three-half day conference included lectures and workshops as follows:

Lectures:

  • Success in the New Work World – a Journey in Five Continents / Ayala Reuven Lelong
  • Academy and Industry: Connecting at Kinneret / Dr. Yael Dubinsky
  • Planning the Online and Hybrid Course: Pedagogical and Technological Considerations / Dr. Itamar Shabtai (Appendix 6)

 

Workshops: due to word limit, we cannot detail the content of all of the workshops, but we provided some details on two workshops below:

  • Writing exams in MOODLE / Dr. Oksana Nir
  • Zoom Time: How to transmit effective massages on Zoom / Vered Feldman
  • Methods for Alternative Assessment in the Social Sciences and Humanities / Dr. Dovi Weiss: explained the purpose of assessment and it’s importance, and then introduced several ways to apply assessment methods (other than exams or traditional written assignment), that engage students in high level learning.
  • Integrating digital tools for engaged learning: Dr. Noa Shapira: this included an introduction on engaged learning, a survey and short explanation about eight different online teaching applications inlcudingz; Padlet, Linoit, and more. Then she explained the JIKSO method, and described three examples of how to apply it for engaging students in learning using Google Docs and Google Slides. Finally, Shapira shared her slides which included links to online instructional videos on how to use eight different engaged teaching applications.

 

A mid-year conference titled “Digital Teaching and Learning” (February 23, 2021), including:

  • Between synchronic and A-synchronic: Dilemmas, Insights, and Successes / Prof. Motti Neiger
  • Digital Innovations for Engaged Teaching: Applied Examples
    • Padlet / Dr. Haim Hagay (Appendix 6)
    • Concept Map / Prof. Dorit Alt (Appendix 6)
    • ThingLink / Dr. Yoav Kapshuk (Appendix 6)
  • Argunomy: Maintaing a Correct Body Position in Online Teaching / Avital Radusher

 

Personal teaching consulting service: The Center offers individual consulting to new instructors and instructors experiencing challenges during their teaching. The rationale is to empower lecturers to enhance their teaching in real-time rather than wait for the end of the semester when changes can only make a difference in the future. This method is effectively practiced at University of Washington, and we adopted it at Kinneret. The process includes class observation, collection of mid-term student feedback, and confidential meetings in which the instructor and the consultant discuss students’ input and observation notes and create a plan for effectively enhancing teaching in the given course. The confidentiality of the process is designed to encourage instructors to feel comfortable to share their challenges and personal weaknesses, so that the consultant can be of most help in identifying ways by which to address them.

In order to identify those instructors that need consultancy services, in the begning of each year the college president reviews all of the teaching evaluation scores provided by the Academic Administration Office (see item 5.2.1.3), and asks send all heads of departments the names of those faculty scoring in the lower 10th percentile. In addition, department heads are asked to send to the center any instructor that seems to need teaching enhancement. In the future, the center’s goal is to require all new faculty to undergo this process.  To this end, we are gradually establishing a cohort of experienced faculty that could help provide this service.

Support for teaching technologies is provided by Sharon Ben-David, and includes personal guidance on usage of the online teaching platforms and tools, and occasional workshops about using technologies in the classroom.

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