Faculty Development - Science topic

I am glad to announce the 5th Annual Research Faculty Development Program (FDP) title, 'Scale Development and Data Analysis with PLS-SEM in SmartPLS 4.0' (23 – 29 December 2024), organized by the Jaipuria Institute of Management, Noida. PROGRAM OUTCOMES · The participants will be able to conduct cross-sectional research in social science. · The participants will be able to frame theoretical frameworks in social science research. · The participants will be able to develop correct scales for conducting effective research in the industry. · The participants can use advanced statistical techniques of cross-sectional research to forecast and predict consumer preferences.

*The participants will receive a Free Two-Month Professional License Key worth 56 Euros (INR 5,393). Link to register: Registration Link: https://lnkd.in/gp3-hGfX A certificate will be provided on successful completion of the program. Seats: 50 (First-cum-first-serve basis). Platform: Offline at Jaipuria Institute of Management, Sector 62, Noida, India.

For more details, Please contact MS. SHUCHİTA TEWARİ (9811050643) or email to annualresearch.fdpnoida@jaipuria.ac.in

How can you design a faculty development program that supports early-career faculty?

Say that your department has just hired a smart, inspired, assistant professor. This person has a great education, is thoroughly knowledgeable about theory and methodology, and is genuinely enthusiastic about working for the department. As a department chair or other key administrator, what is the most effective way to fan the flames of this person's inspiration and long-term (post-tenure) research productivity?

Here's my short list:

1. Try not to demotivate them. Ability and intrinsic motivation are what my field call "substitutes for leadership." This person is unlikely to react positively to carrots and sticks, and they may diminish the person's creativity and effort. So, if you must have tenure, don't use it to attempt to drive the person harder. Also, don't use journal lists to evaluate their performance. Such lists are stifling to most researchers who love their work. And, above all, don't tie publication in journals on some list to things like teaching load. That will be seen as an attempt to manipulate them via negative outcomes.

2. Provide any and all valued resources. This means financial resources like internal grant funding, summer money, or support for a lab. It means other material resources like relevant software and hardware. And it means social resources like treating them with dignity and demonstrating a sincere concern for their well-being. Maybe have a beer with them and their colleagues once in a while.

3. If they hit a rough spot and need a litle emotional support, lead with values. Point to the immense value their teaching can have on students. Empahsize their potential to contribute to science. And, again, show genuine concern for them as a human being.

That's my short list. What's yours?

(NOTE: This is a companion question to my former one about crushing the soul of an assistant professor. Apologies for whatever confusion that question caused.)

I am a Professor of a university which is having its campuses in different parts of the globe and there are many professors in different fields. We are all taking various faculty development programmes across different domains of Engineering, science. Most of this technical certifications are of very high order. However with research and teaching being part of our curriculum I would like to ask you to suggest a few online course which can be done for ABET and other accreditation and useful for the education industry point of work since I have to continue my work as a professor and it will involve gradation also.

What makes a researcher independent and how this can be practised? How to enable any such skill among PhD/Post-Doc students, or even before that stage? Please Feel Free to add your observation, arguments and experience.

I am currently developing a search strategy for a scoping review covering a broad variety of completely different forms of international cooperation (IC) in the context of faculty development in health professions education.

The problem is the absolute over-sensitivity of a universal search algorithm (meaning all synonyms/MeSH terms etc. in one boolean string combined)! Extracting the search terms for all wanted forms of international cooperation and applying them seems impossible without retrieving > 10 thousand hits in a search

So how to go about a sequential search strategy??? Is that viable? with concern to translation to different search interfaces?? to reproducibility??? to efficiency???

Anybody knows of any guides, literature etc. on the matter??

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

------------------------------

identified forms of international cooperation in the research until now:

A)Mobility program

B)Conference

C)Research cooperation

D)Learning arrangement

E)Curriculum cooperation

F)Joint course/degree

G) Partnership

H) Development project

I) Networking (specify)

taken from:

The project: https://www.researchgate.net/project/The-use-of-international-cooperation-in-faculty-development-of-health-professions-education-a-rapid-scoping-review

Greetings, Researcher

For the first week of October in 2021, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Rajkiya Engineering College, Kannuaj, India ( An Government Engineering College) arranging an international faculty development program on "Emerging research areas and Intellectual property rights ." For this event, I'm looking for a worldwide partnership.

If you're interested, please send me a message.

Although there are different models of instructional design, for face-to-face or e-learning modalities, and research has been carried out to evaluate the results of the design in terms of learning or student satisfaction, it is necessary to know the domain that a teacher of higher education on the different aspects that constitute the instructional design.

Dear Researchers,

Department of Computer Applications, Madanapalle Institute of Technology and Science (MITS), is going to organize one-week online Faculty Development program on "Scientific Writing Using Latex" from 22/03/2021 to 26/03/2021.

E-certificate: All registered participants will be eligible to get e-certificate whose attendance is above 75% in all sessions and after submitting feedback form.

Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/7hm3skj5

Registration Fee: No registration fee required.

Dr. Mohammad Shameem

(MITS, Madnapalle)

Voice: (+91)-8791368088, (+91) -9852147345

Dr. Naeem Ahamad

(MITS, Madanapalle)

Voice: (+91)-8510930530

Multiscale Simulation Research Center (MSRC) at Manipal University Jaipur is organizing a Faculty Development Program on " Multiscale Analysis and Simulation Methodologies in Engineering and Science" from March 22 - 26, 2021. The Program will be conducted in online mode. All interested are requested to join.

The current Covid-19 situation is forcing people to put things in perspective and wonder about the future of everything. As an example, scientific conferences, currently impacted, turn to online format to serve as platform for knowledge dissemination. Although this move is totally justified and understandable, you can find more and more articles and opinion pieces discussing the future of Scientific, professional, and academic conferences. What I am writing here is in no way concerning the current situation, but it is concerning the post-pandemic future of conferences. Before diving into the subject, I wanted to use my own experience as an illustration what is coming I have delivered over 30 talks at national and international conferences all over the world. Although some of these conference could have been more productive or more beneficial, each of them has been a uniquely enriching experience…. All but one. In 2010, when I was finishing my doctoral studies in France and Spain, two of my contributions got accepted as oral presentation in one of the top international conference in my field which, that year, was help in Taipei, Taiwan. I could not have been happier, two talks at the top conference, in Taiwan, and my advisors in France and in Spain had the funding to cover for my travel expenses. However, just before the conference, the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland erupted and disrupted all air traffic in Europe preventing people from leaving Europe. As many researchers were stranded in Europe, the conference announced that we had the possibility of either presenting remotely via Skype, or submit a recording of the presentation that would be played at the conference session. My first talk was scheduled at 9 am local time which was 3 am in France while my second talk was scheduled at 1:25 pm the following day (7:25 am in France). As a result I had decided to record my first presentation as I did not want to Skype in at 3 am, and I decided to wake up early to give my second talk over Skype. As a student, both options were awfully awkward. The outcome? I never had any feedback, question, comment or any sort from my recorded presentation. As far as the Skype presentation goes, I had absolutely no idea who saw it, if people enjoyed it or not. I had not question during of after the presentation. I was hoping to network a little bit, meet with some collaborators I had never met in person, and try to find postdoc opportunities but none of these happened.

Although traditional in-person conference cost money (travel, hotel, registration fee), they offer a wide variety of benefits if you know how to take advance of the opportunities.

Training of junior researchers. Public speaking and presenting your work in front of a large audience presents more challenges to overcome than giving an online presentation. You have to work on your verbal communication skills as well as body language. There is also a higher stress than in a virtual format because people are looking at you and because you can see facial expressions, people shaking their head as sign of disapproval, and people doing something else which signals they may lose interest. These are things you do not face when you talk to your computer. Sure people listen to you (or not) but you are still alone in front of your computer and you do not see if people actually listen to you, if they seem to find your talk boring or entertaining, or if they just seem to disagree with you claims. You are missing this real-time feedback that in-person setting offers. Learning to read cues from the audience is a great skill to have, it helps the speaker, correcting the course of the talk or the way he/she presents. You are learning adaptability. It also provides significant indirect feedback from the talk. If you see the majority of people diving into their laptops and phones after just a few minutes, maybe you need to work on your communication skills to better engage your audience. Something your do not get from virtual format. Learning to move on stage, speak in a microphone, make eye contact with people, demonstrate or illustrate your statements with hand gestures, and link your work to one person in the audience by pointing/naming the person, all of this, makes your presentation more interactive, more engaging, and more alive. These are very valuable skills that are needed in any professional career and that cannot be gained in a virtual conference setting. Some people say that online conferences are also stressful because of potential technical issues that may occur. Well, they happen all the time in traditional conferences as well. There are those people coming with their own laptop on stage to realize they do not have the right connector. There are those who struggle to share their screen and go in presentation mode even though they went through the testing room before. And there are those transferring their ppt presentation onto the conference laptop who realize after a few minutes that all their mathematical equations are completely messed up and display as hieroglyphics or that a video does not want to play because of software incompatibilities.

Exposure to state of the art research. If you attend a traditional in-person conference and if you are taking it seriously you will very likely stay in the conference room for the entire session (or most of it), for the whole day (or most of it), for the duration of the conference (or most of it). Agreed, staying in a room all day from 8 am to 5+ pm is tiring and can be long, especially if there are a few uninteresting talks here and there, but, is that feasible to stay staring at a screen all day watching presentations? True, we already work all day on computers but we do not stare at the screen all day. We also read papers and notes, write things on a notebook, sign documents, answer phone calls, discuss with people stopping by our office. Sessions are typically 2-3h in a regular conference, there are typically 2 sessions in the morning and 2-3 sessions in the afternoon, and a conference is between 3 and 5 days. An online conference with the same format is like watching the complete trilogy of the Lord of the Ring and the Hobbit each day for 3 or 5 days in a row. Yes, we live in digital world but there are physiological limits. You may be a fan of the LoR, like I am, but it is exhausting and it gives headaches (at best), and I am not sure anyone would stand the whole 3-5 days of constant screen time. Some people say, you just pick a few talks here and there that are interesting. Well, then you loose the exposure to the research activity going on in your field which is one major reason people go to conferences, and you are probably in that group of people who come to conferences, gives there talk and either leave soon after or spend the rest of the week sight seeing.

Connection with other researchers and networking. The major and maybe top motivation to attend conference is networking. Whether you are a junior researcher (student, postdoc) seeking opportunities, a junior faculty seeking new collaborations and funding opportunities, or a seasoned professor willing to recruit new people in your group, seeking new collaborations, or strengthen existing collaborations, in-person conferences are the best choice.

Junior Researchers. Which student or postdoc did not dream to join the best research group in their field? Which student did not need a strong letter of recommendation for a job or an award? Top researchers and professors received tons of email requests from students looking for a postdoc opportunity, or letter of recommendations. Personally, as an Assistant Professor I receive multiple requests every week, most of them I don’t even know. If that person doesn’t know the student and never met the student, forget it, the email will go directly into the trash. Attending a in-person conference gives the opportunity for junior researchers to approach professors and senior researchers and introduce themselves. True, they may forget the student’s name within the hour, but if the student contacts them afterward, they can remind them “you may not remember my name but we’ve met after your presentation” or “I’ve asked you about a potential postdoc opportunity in your group” and then automatically the professor will picture the context, the face of that junior researcher and will very likely engage on a more personal basis. If you are in academia, this must ring a bell. With virtual conferences, they won’t know your name, they won’t know your face, they won’t have any context to remember you. You’re loosing the opportunity to make a more one-on-one personal contact.

Junior Faculty. Junior faculty, as I am myself, need to develop new collaboration opportunities, expose yourself to the community, and increase your footprint into the field. It is very convenient at an in-person conference to briefly introduce yourself and chit-chat a few minutes with other colleagues in your field in between two presentation or between sessions. Casual discussions around a coffee or more formal meetings can happen. When you are the speaker, you can see in the audience who is present at your talk (or even just part of your talk), because you see the faces. So it is easy to catch up and connect with people afterward. If you need a support letter for an award (which all junior faculty need) you know who attend your talk(s). It becomes easier to ask “I need a support letter for this award, and since you have attended my talk at that conference I thought you were the best person to discuss my accomplishments in that area”. With virtual conferences, you have no idea who’s in listening to you. Even if the names are displayed somewhere on the interface when your give you’re online presentation, you do not have the time to scroll through all the names when giving your presentation. On the other hand when you give an in-person presentation you automatically see the faces in front of you. People may have read your name on papers, but you’re just a name. Show up at conferences and they associate a face to this name, you become a person. People connect to persons, individuals, not just names. If you show your face at multiple conferences you become a part of that community. If you do not present anything or even if people missed your presentation and see you walking down the hall and sitting in sessions they know you’re here. They will wave or stop and chit chat, you’re part of the community. When attending virtual conference, if people do not attend your talk, there no way they will know you’re there. You cannot “bump” into someone.

Professors and Senior Researchers. Top people in any field are very busy folks. Very often, when they come to a conference to deliver a keynote, plenary, or invited talk, they come in just for one day, maybe two. They very rarely attend the entire conference, which may be frustrating for junior researchers and faculty who want to connect with them. However, when you are aware of that fact, you can still take advantage of this narrow time window to connect with them. In a virtual format, are these top professors reaming online the whole day so you can connect with them? Sure not. If they connect in to give their talk from their office, and maybe stay in for a couple of interesting talks, they will disconnect very rapidly to go back to their daily business (meetings, grants, papers,...).

Keeping in touch with the academic researchers around world. While international conferences are expensive and many people cannot afford them, they still attract people from all around the world. If carefully planned, they are held in nice touristic locations which gives an additional incentive for oversees researchers. Which Asian scientist doesn’t want to come to California for a Spring conference? Which European scientist doesn’t want to go to Cancun for an early summer conference? Which North American or South American scientist doesn’t want to go to the French Alps for a winter conference? Most of the time, these people who decide to make these long and expensive travels stay a few extra days for sight seeing or take the opportunity to further network by delivering seminars in nearby universities and labs, visit “local” colleagues. Virtual conferences may be attractive for local, regional, and national conferences, but add other constrains to oversee researchers. Sure, the cost is lower since you do not have to travel, but are you willing to give a talk at 2am? Yes, time zones have an impact on international conferences. China and the US are 12-15h apart, Europe and US are 5-10h difference. Even if you’re willing to deliver a talk at 2am, would you stay up all night to attend other people’s talk? Would you do that all of the 3-5 days of the conference? Keep in mind that you also have a day job. Sure you can record the talks, or access talk recordings the conference make available. But, first, watching a video recording 12h after the presenter gave the talk does not really favor interactions with the speaker and the other people who attender the talk. And, second, as a speaker, you do not need conferences to post recordings of one of your presentation online so people can watch freely.

It is true that conferences are expensive. It is also true that not all of them are interesting and worth the money. Whether you are a student, postdoc, research, or professor at any stage, you need to carefully pick your conference, those with the highest visibility and exposure, those with the participant roster that meets best your needs and interests, and without fooling yourself the best locations. By doing so you should get the best of the conference. In virtual conference,s you get a different set of issues that will strongly limit the outcome you get from the conference. Poor training of junior researcher, poor networking opportunity and setting, lower participation of top researchers and oversee researchers. Virtual conferences do not provide anything worth. It would probably be better to just record a presentation, upload it online on YouTube, your group website, Facebook, Linked-in, or any other platform and send the link to all the people you know in your field. It is free and you can do it anytime of the year.

For a research project, I am looking for a world-wide profile of higher education faculty.

I am looking for distributions such as age, faculty rank, discipline taught, years of teaching, graduate versus undergraduate percentages, and experience teaching via online or distance learning.

My guess is that no such world-wide profile exists, but if you have any suggestions for citable sources, let me know.

Note that although I need citable sources for my research, I am also happy to talk about any ideas with respect to this topic.

Hello everyone,

I was wondering if anyone would be willing to share information/knowledge about research in higher education (HE) explicitly connecting: a faculty/academic development training program + participants’ (HE faculty members) learning + students’ learning.

To put it in another way. I am interested into knowing about research that combines the analysis of a faculty development program attending to: 1) how/what its participants learn and, especially, 2) how/what the students of those participants learn (thus, not their satisfaction).

On this regard, I am also particularly interested in faculty/academic development initiatives that go beyond single seminars, workshops, and courses of, for example, a couple of days. I am interested in initiatives that go beyond those (in terms of time and potential goals).

Thanks in advance for your interest and answers (if there is one). I will try to answer to all of you as much as I can.

In the meantime, more than ever, I wish you all to stay well and healthy.

Best regards

My focus is teacher preparation, primarily at the K12 level, but I have recently been thrust into a curriculum development position with a college of veterinary medicine. I am looking for seminal works dealing with classroom practices, teaching philosophies, etc. at the graduate and professional school level.

Would you please introduce me a valuable resource for studying on new faculty development approaches and methods?

Firing one person, you’re firing an entire research group ? Senior Professorship is the answer for mandatory retirement.

In the latest issue of the scientist (Mar 1, 2019), Katarina Zimmer, a freelance science writer living in New York City is discussing the issue, if mandatory retirement is the answer-to an-aging workforce. This question is specific to the US, because across Europe there are already mandatory retirements in place and many young junior professorships programs. In fact already discussion should rather go in the opposite direction. Katarina Zimmer is citing Professor Hagan Bayley from the UK Oxford University, who has pointed that mandatory retirement is “dismissing experienced researchers at the height of their careers isn’t just unfair—it would do more harm than good for science. “ and “it’s also not good for young people,” as lab members will have to find alternative posts after their PI leaves. “You’re not firing one person, you’re firing an entire research group.” I agree with his point. However there are also other solution. In some countries like Germany, already programs are developed to keep qualified senior faculty in the workforce and allow younger colleagues to get this positions. THE SOLUTION is SENIOR PROFESSORSHIP. He/she is retired and within the Senior Professorship is allowed to continue research projects and/or teaching (you can chose for both or one option). The payment is only the difference between the pension (which is much lower) and the “normal salary”. It also allows the Universities to save money for additional (mostly missing) money for additional faculty. On the other hand it may allow experienced scientists like Professor Barley to continue his projects.

As I venture into the field of education I find many problems that both teacher and administrators face from the generation of today, to technology, to policy or the lack of, to faculty development, etc... I am most interest in how you see these issues especially within secondary and adult education. Thank you in advance for your feedback.

Final Test Week is here for my school, and rapidly approaching for many faculty members. It includes a huge crunch of test-giving and test grading, plus many other end-of-the-semester tasks.

How do you avoid stress but stay organized, avoid procrastination and stay focused?

Evaluating academic faculty for promotions often include assessing their teaching abilities. Is it sensible to base these on Student Course Evaluations?

Geoffrey Alderman wrote in the Gaurdian that a reason for the decline in academic standards has been the 'increasing and increasingly stupid use of students' course evaluations as pivotal factors in the academic promotion process.'

Does anyone have a deeper insight on how the use of such student evaluations have impacted faculty at their own institutes? Have they led to dumbing down?

How much confidence would you have in the teaching ability of the applicant if the evidence was exclusively based on Student Course Evaluations?

I am working on an audience analysis for a proposed workshop on using Angelo & Cross (1993) Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) in post-secondary education and training environments.  A response to the following prompts would be greatly appreciated:

Does your position includes teaching responsibilities?

Does your background include coursework in adult education teaching theory and methods?

Does your institution promote or require the use of classroom assessment techniques (including online modes) as a research-based method for improving teaching and learning?  Do you think they should?

Does your institution provide or offer any workshops or seminars for full and part-time (including adjunct) faculty on the use of classroom assessments techniques? Do you think they should?

Would you be interested in attending (face-to-face, online or blended) a workshop or seminar on implementing practical, research-based, effective methods such as CATs to improve teaching and learning?

Faculty development should be one of the priorities of Higher Education Institutions (HEI's). However, the preferences may differ and support from HEI's to its faculty may be very less. Can you please share your experiences to organize faculty development programs in similar settings?

I want to know the different procedures between the universities regarding scientific promotions?

Transformative Mixed Methods Design Question:

I am interested in using a transformative MM design for my qual/quant case study research, mainly because of the way in which the design uses theory (compared to the other MM designs). However, my topic is not social justice-related, and the ultimate goal is not emancipatory. Looking for examples of studies which used the transformative design, but were not social justice-related. Any suggestions?

please email: hedy_wald@brown.edu

I am looking for samples of instruments that are employed in the K-12 to evaluate teachers' BLENDED teaching (both design and implementation).

The studies intend to check the contribution of the principles of corporate governance, and how they occur so that resonate positively to the development of aspects such as faculty, management and teaching quality.

Please share any conceptual framework you know for planning and evaluation for faculty development. Thanks. 

I would like to engage with any colleagues at national and international universities who are using the Blackboard Goals (Tool).

I am particularly interested in their experience of Goals. (Is it working for them? Did lecturers bought into to tool? Did they have a Faculty Development approach to the implementation of Goals? Any research done on the effective use/outcome of Goals?)

Actually we have some literature findings and samples... But all are in medical education field. Perhaps there might be more in other disciplines.

Granting or denying tenure to a faculty member is a problem for many tenure and promotion committees, department chairs and deans, regardless of the college or school that will be granting or denying a faculty member tenure. To help these committees make more concise decisions, should colleges and schools require a minimum number of peer reviewed articles for granting tenure? Is it better to have no set number of required articles upon which a tenure decision would be based?

Why should you care whether the person leading your lecture is an assistant, associate, full professor, a lecturer or something else altogether?

Teaching, research, and community service are the classic criteria for academic promotion. In recent days, is it enough for faculty members to estimate their abilities regarding to these criteria?