Teaching Development End of Year Report

Teaching Development Seminars

During the fall semester there were two teaching development seminars.  The first was “Electronic Presentations: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” by David Stevens. The second seminar was a presentation by Vanessa Hill “Clickers in the Classroom”

May 13, 2011

John Keith Watson, Coordinator

In the spring semester there were two more seminars.  Jaci Russo of The Russo Group presented “Social Networking in the Classroom” and Luke Dowden presented “Quality Matters” in distance learning. Both sessions led to lively and thought provoking discussions.

Senior Survey

Senior surveys were administered online through Survey Monkey for the first time in fall 2010 with the help of Mike Totaro.  The level of participation was low (67 students) in the fall, but with more aggressive encouragement participation more than doubled in the spring. The results of the surveys are used to help improve the curriculum and teaching.  Seniors’ comments about individual instructors’ teaching performance are particularly useful and are distributed to the instructors to help them improve their performance in the classroom.  A full report is presented to the dean and departmental reports are presented to department chairs.

The committee will work on a new edition of the survey as there have been complaints that the survey is too long and that some data collected is not relevant or used. The survey is under revision and some new members of the committee are being recruited.

Teaching Excellence Awards

Brandi Guidry-Hollier is the winner of this year’s outstanding teacher award.  John T. Landry, the benefactor, along with previous year’s winners chose the winners based on the comments made by seniors in last fall’s senior exit survey. The other nominees were: Vanessa Hill, Mary Luquette, Suzanne Ward and Ram Thakur.   The award was presented at the annual awards banquet.