The environment in which faculty development centers operate has changed significantly. As a result, centers are asked to play a more important role in contributing to institutional strategic initiatives, assess outcomes of programs, and enhance faculty scholarship success. In the past, assessments have focused on attendance and satisfaction…

Faculty development efforts have had varying success in changing the culture of a department or institution. In this paper, we describe a faculty development program using a residents as teachers (RATS) curriculum that we believe effected educational change in a department with a history of suboptimal student evaluations on the clerkship and an…

Project Engage (PE) was a 16-month teaching enhancement program offered at a large doctoral-granting university. Participants in this pilot program were full time faculty members who redesigned large enrollment introductory university courses to improve student engagement. To support their redesign projects, participants first received feedback…

The Threshold Concepts Framework acts as a catalyst in faculty development activities, energising and provoking discussion by faculty about their own courses in their own disciplines, and often leading to the discovery of transformational concepts that occasion epistemic and ontological shifts in their students. The present study focuses on…

Demonstrating the impact of faculty development activities is difficult and infrequently attempted beyond assessing participant satisfaction. This study examines how faculty development activities affect instructional practices and the impact on student learning and motivation in accordance with Kirkpatrick's levels of evaluation. Ten instructors…

In response to the well-documented need for rigorous evaluations of faculty development programs and increasing demands for institutional accountability, University of Minnesota's Office of Information Technology (OIT) researchers have developed an approach to program evaluation that assesses individual level changes to participants' attitudes,…

Reports on a study of critical thinking goals in senior capstone courses. Finds that: (1) independent research and group projects are the most effective methods to teach critical thinking, according to faculty; and (2) students felt that they expanded their intellectual curiosity and learned to think more effectively because of these courses.…