A Year-Long Workshop Series on the Building Blocks of Good Teaching
Develop and Document Your Teaching Skills
The first years of university teaching provide both challenges and opportunities to develop and hone your skills as a teacher. CTE's New Faculty Teaching Excellence Program (NFTE, pronounced "nifty") offers a series of workshops to support new teachers in designing, teaching, and assessing their courses. Each workshop will impart information about a teaching topic and provide attendees an opportunity to make concrete use of the information in their own courses.
NFTE Certificate of Achievement
Full time faculty, tenure-track as well as non-tenure-track, are eligible to pursue the NFTE Certificate of Achievement to showcase and document your efforts and achievements in teaching. In addition to helping participants become excellent teachers, NFTE workshops provide ideas for demonstrating your efforts and successes. Faculty members can provide evidence of their commitment to teaching by earning a NFTE Certificate of Achievement. Here's what that requires:
- attend at least 60% of the NFTE workshops
- create a Teaching Philosophy Statement
- set up a teaching portfolio
- participate in and reflect on a teaching observation session, whether as the teacher observed or the teacher providing feedback
Philosophy statements will continue to develop and portfolios will grow with more teaching experience, and we encourage new faculty members to find mentors and to participate in CTE's Peer Feedback Program. The NFTE program is designed to leave participants well on their way to building a teaching dossier that can be used at contract renewal and promotion time.
The NFTE Community
For those full-time faculty members who choose to participate, CTE will offer a cohort-based community of practice for those within their first three years of teaching. The NFTE Community is a small group of faculty members who engage in an active, collaborative, year–long program, structured to provide encouragement, effective feedback, support, and reflection. It is designed to create a safe environment in which new faculty members can investigate, question, explore, and apply new or different instructional strategies and provide support for improving instruction and student learning. Barbara Morganfield, CTE's Program Specialist, will facilitate this group. For more information, contact CTE.
NFTE Workshops for 2013-2014
The NFTE Track at the Teaching Effectiveness Symposium (August 22, 8:00 - 2:00)
- New Faculty Orientation
- Make the Most of the First Day of Class
- Worst Case Scenario Survival Game: Teaching Edition
NFTE Workshops During the Year
Fall 2013
- The Raw Materials of Excellent Teaching: Collecting Evidence, Getting Early Feedback
- Ways to Motivate Your Students to Prepare, Participate, and Ponder
- Techniques that Promote Active Learning
- Save Time & Get Better Student Work: Using Rubrics & Other Assessment Tools
Spring 2014
- Technology Tips: Get the Most out of Blackboard
- Craft Your Teaching Philosophy Statement
- Showcase Your Teaching: Beyond Student Evaluations