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Faculty Resources

Empowering Engineering Faculty: Insights and Strategies for Teaching Excellence and Lifelong Learning

Dr. Denise Simmons leads a town hall discussion on engineering education, delving into three pivotal phases of an engineer’s career journey. Faculty members will discover invaluable insights on strategies to enhance outreach to K-12 students, foster collaboration, and bolster infrastructure within engineering education. Moreover, Dr. Simmons shares actionable approaches for crafting transformative learning experiences tailored for undergraduate students, as well as adapting traditional teaching methodologies to suit online and lifelong learning contexts. The discussion also presents faculty with innovative ideas from the proposed transformation of laboratory courses into technology-enhanced formats, aligning with current educational trends. This video equips our faculty with practical knowledge to elevate their teaching effectiveness and stay abreast of industry advancements.

The Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) offers courses and a workshop series (one example is listed below). You may take one or more of these courses or decide to take other courses offered by CTE. 

  • Great Online Course Series: The courses are designed to accommodate all levels of experience, with information geared towards those who are new to online teaching. However, if you have more experience, there are “optional” assignments that you might skip if you are confident in those areas.
    • Design a Great Online Course (7.5 hours)
    • Build a Great Online Course (5 hours)
    • Teach a Great Online Course (5 hours) 

The Simple Path to Online Teaching Excellence (21-minute podcast) Discusses essential design elements to create exceptional online learning experiences for your students. 

Center for Instructional Training & Technology (CITT): 

  • Accessibility Basics (2-3 hours) Self-paced online course on how to create accessible content. 
  • Accessible Online Environments (2 weeks) Throughout this online course, you will learn about the different types of accessibility needs and suggestions for developing your online materials. 
  • Ally in Canvas (1 hour) Ally is a digital accessibility tool that scans your e-learning course and content. 
  • Improving Learning Outcomes Applying Educational Theory  (8-10 hours) In this course, you will review foundational, research-based instructional best practices and design assignments for future implementation into your courses. 
  • Designing an Inclusive course (6-9 hours) In this course, participants will explore methods for designing inclusive courses that recognize the diversity of UF students and empower all students equally. 
  • Engaging Online Learners (Webinar: 3 weekly activities) Engaging Online Learners uses research-supported studies to examine and model best practices in online course design. Participants will experience the online learning environment from the student perspective while working through activities intended to demonstrate mastery of a variety of topics, including designing for student success, aligning student learning objectives, and creating engaging and accessible presentations.

    You can find many other courses on their Training Website. Use the AFFILIATION filter on the left navigation for faculty-focused opportunities, such as: 

  • Dozens of short asynchronous courses specific to online instruction are also available on LinkedIn Learning(the time required to complete them varies). Instructions for accessing UF LinkedIn Learning for both LinkedIn users and non-users can be found here. If you use LinkedIn but prefer not to connect your personal account, use the access instructions for non-users.  

UF myTraining

  • e-Learning@UF – Build & Design: Learn how to create and update an online course on UF’s e-learning system. In this hands-on training, certified trainers guide participants on how to create an engaging online course. With best practices principles, participants will learn how to: • Make a course request • Navigate and edit both global and course navigations • Message students and course members • Upload, manage, link, and embed content • Create and publish pages, assignments, quizzes and discussions boards • Employ organizational modules • Upload and manage a syllabus • Export/import course content. 
  • e-Learning@UF – Facilitate & Engage: Are you new to e-learning at UF or wondering how to facilitate a pre-created course? In this training, participants will actively engage with the e-learning interface from an instructor’s perspective and explore powerful tools for providing effective feedback and assessing student progress. Trainers will share best practices related to: • Editing existing content • Managing the grade book • Streamline grading with speed grader • Communicating efficiently with students – announcements, discussion, • Managing groups and peer reviews • Starting webinars • Tracking student activity To get the most out of this training, users should be familiar with tools used to build and design an online course on UF’s e-learning system (see e-learning@UF – Build and Design training option). 
  • Learning Outcomes in e-Learning: In this workshop, participants will learn how to use and set up outcomes in e-learning to track students’ mastery within a course. We will look at how rubrics in assignments link to outcomes and how you can align outcomes with quizzes through question banks. This workshop focuses on outcomes at the course level. 
  • Rubrics in e-Learning: In this training, participants will see how a few minutes of setup can save hours of grading and feedback time. In this hands-on technical training, participants will review basic best practices and gain experience building rubrics in UF’s e-learning environment, attaching them to assignments and discussion boards and using them for grading. 
  • Using e-Learning Data to Improve Learning: Learn to identify struggling students, enhance assessment reliability and validity, and improve student learning through in-depth coverage of e-Learning analytics and quiz statistics. 
  • Peer Review in e-Learning: This training introduces the basic best practices of online peer review. Participants will emerge with a full understanding of the mechanics, advantages, and limitations of the peer review feature in UF e-Learning. Particularly when paired with a great rubric, peer review provides an avenue for meaningful engagement and encourages the best work from learners. Come learn how! 
  • Group Work in e-Learning: In this workshop, you will learn how to design a great group assignment with built-in individual accountability and manageable feedback mechanisms using UF’s e-Learning system. You will first explore the vocabulary and critical components of successful group work. Expert facilitators will share best practices and guide hands-on practice with the steps of making groups, assigning tasks, and grading group members individually and as a team.