The Engineering and Computing Education Core (ECEC) provides resources and support for engineering faculty in providing excellent post-secondary education. The ECEC develops, implements, and promotes professional development programs for engineering faculty to assist them with incorporating successful evidence-based instructional strategies in engineering education.
We are excited to offer the following teaching-focused professional development programs for our faculty:
Learning by Design
Student learning and success in a course are affected by instructional decisions that take place well before the first day of class. Careful planning and attention to a course's design can both facilitate student learning as well as make teaching fulfilling and more satisfying. This program is designed for faculty who are preparing to teach a new course for the first time and/or who want to re-think or re-envision - in small or big ways - a course that they already have experience teaching. Participants in the program will learn about fundamental course design principles and apply them to the design of a new course or the partial/full re-design of an existing course. Necessary books and lunch will be provided.
As of the Fall 2023 semester, 70 faculty have taken Learning by Design.
Peer Observation
The Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS) is a tool for systematically documenting student and teacher behaviors as one means of assessing instructor effectiveness in STEM classrooms. Peer-observation programs can document the types of teaching practices on instructor and departmental levels, support professional development opportunities, and evaluate the effects of instructional interventions with pre and post-observations. This program helps participants by conducting observations and providing an objective source of formative feedback for self-evaluation. Each faculty member participating in this program will receive a detailed individualized report on their teaching based on the results of the observation.
Between Fall 2017 and Fall 2023, the ECEC has trained 80 faculty and 62 doctoral students. Faculty and graduate students observed more than 300 class sessions.
Faculty Teaching Fellows
Faculty interested in completing a comprehensive teaching-focused program can select to complete the components of Tier 0 and apply to join the Teaching Fellows cohort. The Tier 0 of the FTF program focuses on course design, in-class teaching strategies,
For questions regarding any of our programs please contact Dr. Tareq Daher
Registration
To register for any of the programs above, please follow: https://engineering.unl.edu/ecec/registration/.