Center for Teaching and Learning

More than 200 people from 33 different colleges and universities across the region recently gathered at UNC Charlotte Center City to learn how to leverage digital classroom technologies for student success.

For some attendees, the second annual Southeastern Digital Learning Forum presented an opportunity to learn more about adaptive learning and how it is having an impact on student learning.

Active learning has been defined as activities that students can utilize to better construct knowledge and understanding. UNC Charlotte’s Active Learning Academy in the Center for Teaching and Learning supports faculty members to develop such techniques for their classes, and recently, the center hosted an expo that featured academy faculty teams that shared their projects designed to promote active learning.

The Center for Teaching and Learning is forming a new Online Faculty Learning Community. Faculty members who are interested in enhancing their online or blended courses are encouraged to participate.

“Our online faculty are committed to high quality teaching, and being part of this kind of professional learning community enables them sharpen their skills and share with others,” said J. Garvey Pyke, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL).

The 2016-17 Active Learning Expo will be from 2 to 3:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 18, in the Cone University Center, Room 210.

Members of the Active Learning Academy, a group open to all faculty who are interested in using active learning techniques, will share their unique approaches to instruction during interactive poster presentations. The Center for Teaching and Learning facilitates the Active Learning Academy.

Topics and presenters for this year’s expo are:

Starting with the 2017-18 academic year, the University will begin to use Poll Everywhere software for classes that use a student response system, previously known as clickers.

The Center for Professional and Applied Ethics is cosponsoring “The Evolution of Careers in Clinical Research: How Do You Fit in as a Clinical Research Professional?” on Friday, Oct. 28, in the Barnhardt Student Activity Center Salons.

Shanna Coles, Florence Martin and Heather McCullough have been selected as 2016 fellows for the Institute of Emerging Leadership in Online Learning (IELOL), a leadership development program sponsored by the UNC Online Learning Consortium and Penn State University.

This program, which is in its eighth year, will enable fellows to work with colleagues from around the world and join a growing network of higher education leaders. IELOL fellows are selected through an application process and sponsored by their home institution.

J. Garvey Pyke, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, was elected chair of the UNC Faculty and Academic Developers Consortium.

Collaborating with faculty development leaders across all 17 UNC campuses and supported by UNC General Administration, the UNC Faculty and Academic Development Consortium serves as a conduit for collaboration, common resources and shared advocacy with the goal of enhancing faculty and academic development in higher education for the UNC system.

UNC Charlotte is transitioning to a new learning management system, Canvas; its adoption resulted after several months of study, including a pilot phase that involved more than 100 courses in 20 disciplines and 3,000 students.

Investigating how to advance the practice of teaching to enhance students’ learning is the impetus for research grants offered by the Center for Teaching and Learning.

Recently, grant recipients for eight funded projects shared their work at the second annual Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Research Showcase.