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The Center for Advancing Faculty Excellence (CAFE) uses a colleague-to-colleague model to promote excellence and innovation in teaching and learning. Through one-time and multi-part workshops, professional development events, and special opportunities, we help faculty network with others in collegial settings to develop strategies that promote student success and cross-disciplinary understanding. CAFE is a resource that serves and supports all faculty (part-time, term, tenure track) on all five UAA campuses.

Learn More about CAFE

Teaching

  • Teaching Tips
    Monthly Teaching Tips
  • Difficult Dialogues
    Difficult Dialogues is a national program designed to promote and protect academic freedom and religious, cultural, and political pluralism on university campuses. Originally launched by two UAA/APU Ford Foundation grants, this project equips UAA faculty with the skills, knowledge and support to proactively and effectively introduce controversial topics into the classroom and, where necessary, field unanticipated controversy that arises.
  • SoTL/Making Learning Visible
    SoTL is scholarly inquiry into student learning which advances the practice of teaching by making research findings public and open to critique and evaluation. The intent is to create a community of “scholarly teachers” who add to the body of knowledge about teaching and learning as well as benefiting from the SoTL research of others. Check out UAA's version of SoTL - Making Learning Visible.
  • Team-Based Learning TBL
    Team-Based Learning™ (TBL) is a highly interactive, results-based educational strategy developed in the business school environment which has spread to other academic disciplines over the last decade. TBL can be used in classes as large as 200 and as small as 12. It transforms instruction into active learning and promotes the development of professional competencies in interpersonal skills, teamwork and peer feedback.  

Career Support

 Faculty Development Calendar   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teaching Tip

Strategies for holding "office hours" 

The benefits of "outside of class communication" (OOC) are well documented. Faculty/student interactions positively influence student learning and student persistence (Halawah, 2006; Kuh &Hu, 2001; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). The online newsletter Faculty Focus recommends several strategies for improving office hours: 1) Schedule office hours at times that are convenient for you AND your students. 2) Solicit student input to determine their best times by circulating a calendar and asking them to initial days/times that don't work for them. 3) Use tools like Doodle or an online scheduling tool like YouCanBook.Me. 4) Make yourself available in alternate locations like a Google Hangout or a table near a campus coffee stand. For more suggestions, check out the February 18, 2015, issue of Faculty Focus. We'd love to hear about your creative strategies for increasing "outside of class communication" (OOC) with students.

CAFE shares announcements and brief items of interest on best practices in teaching and learning via FACEBOOK.  We'd love to see you there.  

 

Center for Advancing Faculty Excellence
907-786-4644
uaa_cafe@uaa.alaska.edu
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