UMBC Faculty Development Center (FDC)
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The goals of the work of the FDC align with those of the UMBC Strategic Plan to:
- Provide exemplary support for educators in creating state-of-the-art undergraduate and graduate curricula delivered through innovative and effective approaches to teaching and learning.
- Continue to build a culture of academic assessment to support our faculty as the primary drivers of continuous improvement in student learning outcomes.
- Individual consultations and classroom observations
- Help in gathering student feedback through the CATALyst process
- Workshops and book discussions on teaching and learning topics
- Support for pedagogical innovation and research
- Learning assessment services
- Consultations in writing and communication in the disciplines
- Management of the Hrabowski Innovation Fund grant program
- Support for faculty learning communities (FLCs)
Recent Submissions
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Issues of Question Equivalence in Online Exam Pools
(National Science Teacher's Association (NSTA), 2023-04)During the pandemic, the use of question pools for online testing was recommended to mitigate cheating, exposing multitudes of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students across the globe to ... -
Building Community: From Faculty Development to Pedagogical Innovation and Beyond
(Springer, 2022-12-01)This chapter offers a compelling case study of one center’s approach to building community around teaching and learning. The 20-year history of the Faculty Development Center at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, ... -
The Social Science of Board Games w/ Dr. Kerri Evans
(UMBC Center for Social Science Research, 2022-06-13) -
The Challenge of Choices When Teaching During COVID-19
(The Scholarly Teacher, 2020-07-23) -
Mapping the Curriculum: A Low-tech Model for Synthesizing Assessments and Improving Learning at Multiple Levels
(Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education (AALHE), 2017-06) -
Identifying Effective Assessment Technologies
(EDUCAUSE, 2018-01-29) -
Defining and Dashboarding Student Success: Jump-Starting Data-Driven Decision-Making
(EDUCAUSE, 2018-11-02) -
Supporting Academic Continuity by Building Community: The Work of a Faculty Development Center During COVID-19
(Journal on Centers for Teaching and Learning, 2021-02-22)In the initial rush to remote instruction during COVID-19, educators focused on technologies to ensure academic continuity and relied on instructional technology teams to teach them how to use them. Soon after, instructors ... -
Synthesizing Outcomes at Scale: Connecting the Dots to Inform Institution-wide Decision Making
(Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education (AALHE), 2020-04-15) -
Measuring Pedagogy and the Integration of Engineering Design in STEM Classrooms
(Springer Nature, 2018-11-03)The present study examined changes in high school biology and technology education pedagogy during the first year of a three-year professional development (PD) program using the INSPIRES educative curriculum. The Next ... -
A Personalized Automated Email Tool to Connect Faculty with Students in Large STEM Courses
(The Chemical Educator, 2019-12-31)Undergraduate student success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors often hinges on the satisfactory completion of large gateway introductory courses such as general chemistry. First-year or ... -
A Methodology to Analyze Self-Reflection in E-Portfolios
This Research to Practice Work-In-Progress offers an approach toward assessing self-reflections in e-portfolios written by undergraduate student-Scholars in a Grand Challenge Scholars Program within the College of Engineering ... -
Effect of Exam Wrappers on Student Achievement in Multiple, Large STEM Courses
Metacognition, the ability to think about and regulate one’s thinking, is an important factor in effective student learning. One intervention to promote student metacognition is the exam wrapper—a reflection students ... -
Engineering Teacher Pedagogy: Using INSPIRES to Support Integration of Engineering Design in Science and Technology Classrooms
This Engineering Teacher Pedagogy project implements and assesses the promise of an extended professional development model coupled with curriculum enactment to develop teacher pedagogical skills for integrating engineering ... -
A High Quality Educative Curriculum in Engineering Fosters Pedagogical Growth
(Elsevier, 2019)The Next Generation Science Standards call for the integration of engineering into mainstream science education, yet challenges arise for teachers unfamiliar with engineering-based pedagogy or concepts. The INSPIRES ... -
Supporting Deaf Students in Undergraduate Research Experiences: Perspectives of American Sign Language Interpreters
(American Society for Microbiology, 2019-09-29)Deaf undergraduates are eager to engage in research but often feel marginalized due to lack of appropriate accommodations to allow for effective communication within heterogeneous research teams consisting of hearing peers ... -
Student Engagement in Active Learning Classes
(Springer, Cham, 2020-02-24)As the evidence for the value of active learning in STEM classes grows, questions arise about how to implement such approaches to maximize their effectiveness. Definitions of active learning can lead us to believe that if ... -
Factors Influencing Quality of Team Discussion: Discourse Analysis in an Undergraduate Team-Based Learning Biology Course
(American Society for Cell Biology, 2020-02-14)Group activities as part of active-learning pedagogies are thought to be effective in promoting student learning in part because of the quality of discussion they engender in student teams. Not much is known, however, about ... -
A Professor's Pathway through problem‐based learning
(Wiley Online Library, 2006-11-03)Numbers of articles document the power of problem‐based learning in promoting various facets of student learning, yet many faculty are still hesitant to use this pedagogy. Balancing the complexity of the classroom dynamic ... -
The Problem' as Metaphor in Teaching
(2004-06)