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Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning Programs

Enhancing Student Learning and Success in Persistently Challenging Courses Grants Program 

The Enhancing Student Learning and Success in Persistently Challenging Courses Grants Program aims to increase student success in persistently challenging courses — that is, courses with high rates of grades of D, F, and withdrawals (W), and courses with equity gaps. The Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning will support you in this work through financial support, coaching, collaboration, professional development, and/or other assistance. 

Faculty Learning Communities Program

The Faculty Learning Communities Program houses the Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) that are offered at Ferris State University.  A faculty learning community is a discipline-based or interdisciplinary group of faculty (6-15 participants) that focuses on a specific teaching and learning theme, issue, problem, or pedagogy over an extended period of time.  Each FLC has one or more facilitators who design or co-design with participants a curriculum (if you will) that guides the learning and work of the participants.  In most FLCs, participants also produce or create a specific work that is related to the FLC's focus.

New and Early Career Faculty Program

FCTL's New and Early Career Faculty Program aims to support faculty in their early years at Ferris State to make a positive transition into the Ferris community, be effective educators, and productive members of their  academic and professional communities.

The Junior Faculty Fellows Program (JFFP) has several goals, including helping Fellows identify and develop a project relevant to their teaching, scholarship, or service; supporting Fellows in their project work; facilitating the establishment and growth of relationships and rapport among fellows; and providing Fellows with a venue for sharing their work with the University community.   

Institutes

FCTL's institutes provide immersive, supportive, and collaborative learning environments to focus on range of ideas, research, teaching and learning strategies, and much more. Here, we describe the institutes FCTL has facilitated in recent years.

think text on computer

Photo: "think" by Bruce Aldridge on Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED

2024 Summer Institute

An important, persistent, and sometimes vexing educational challenge is developing students’ critical thinking skills and dispositions. FCTL’s 2024 Summer Institute will face this challenge head-on. We will explore conceptions of and barriers to critical thinking, identify strategies, and develop a plan to foster and assess students’ critical thinking. 

 

Institute on Inclusion and Inclusive Classrooms logo

Institute on inclusion and Inclusive Classrooms 

The Institute on Inclusion and Inclusive Classrooms is a five-day learning and working experience for you to explore diversity-, equity-, and inclusion-related topics that impact us as educators and members of our communities. In this institute, we explore learning barriers encountered by students and other topics such as social identity, intersectionality, Microaggressions, stereotype threat, power, and privilege.

The Course Design Institute

The Course Design Institute (CDI) is a five-day, hands-on, interactive experience. The CDI provides you a focused, engaging, and collegial environment to utilize elements of course design and approaches to teaching, learning, assessment, and feedback to design portions of a course.

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Agile Course Design Institute

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spring 2020, the fully online Agile Course Design Institute (ACDI) was designed to enable faculty to combine elements of course design with the need to be agile relative to unpredictable changes in teaching and learning.  The ACDI is a fully online experience with both synchronous and asynchronous opportunities to fit your schedule.

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Learning Design Institute 

This Institute is a three-week workshop that builds on prior course design sessions held by FCTL. It focuses on the science of learning and how to apply it to your class in a way that engages and motivates students. You will learn how to redesign a significant assignment and how to integrate what you have learned into your courses.