Access to Research on Teaching and Learning

Some programs of the Center for Teaching and Learning offer faculty members a broad perspective on the art and science of teaching. The Center works to provide faculty with strategic tools to help them design coursework, improve classroom techniques, adapt new techniques to their own classroom situations and assess the effectiveness of their teaching methods. With new research on learning and curriculum appearing every day, today’s educators need both access to the research and opportunities to apply it in the classroom. Center initiatives such as the Ways and Means program, university-sponsored workshops, conference support, and reading groups provide faculty with both new research and well-tested ideas for the classroom. In addition, the Center for Teaching and Learning houses a library of books and newsletters on teaching as well as maintaining on its website links to other teaching and learning sites and documents designed as faculty support and adjunct support.

Creating a Community of Dialogue and Growth

As in the business world, dialogue and sharing of information are essential to education. Whether in formal or informal contexts, intellectual discourse feeds the energy and imagination of faculty and allows the academic community to thrive. Another aspect of the Center for Teaching and Learning is to create spaces where faculty can talk together about their craft, share acquired wisdom, and stimulate thought. Center programs such as Teachers Noticing Teachers, reading groups, special sessions, and the Professional Enrichment Program are designed as ways of sustaining conversations that can nourish those who feed our students.

Technology as a Servant of Teaching

Technology continues to grow at a vertiginous rate, and its impact on education is ever-expanding. Helping faculty to identify what current technologies might be put to creative pedagogical use in the classroom is an ongoing task that the Center for Teaching and Learning embraces as part of its mission. Working in conjunction with Point Loma Nazarene University’s Instructional Technology Services department, the Center uses its Tech Time program to help connect new technologies with good classroom practice. Focus is always on good classroom practice and never on using technology for its own sake.

Supporting Students in Transition

Finally, the Center for Teaching and Learning works to support students in some of their moments of major transition. Thus the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning also coordinates the Honors Program and most particularly oversees the senior-level Honors Project. In addition, the Center offers a series of graduate school workshops for students to help them think about and prepare for continuing their education. Finally the Center for Teaching and Learning in conjunction with the Margaret Stevenson Center for Women’s Studies underwrites the Women in Science Careers reading group that works to support the many young PLNU women who are planning on careers in predominantly male scientific fields.