Adventures in Educational Development

Synopsis

Educational development is a broad field that includes a variety of approaches aimed at enhancing teaching and learning. I will illustrate what this means in the Department of Physics – and beyond - with highlights from several projects and initiatives from the past five years.  To address some of the current challenges regarding teaching and learning, including student preparedness, instructor workload and accountability demands, I will propose some ideas for the next five years.   

If you are a grad student or postdoc contemplating your future career, the examples may help you decide whether this is something for you. Perhaps surprisingly, training as a physicist can prove very useful for this kind of work.  Of course, there are also challenges due to the cross-disciplinary nature of educational development, including different disciplinary languages, cultures, values, and epistemologies, and the ever-changing landscape of (postsecondary) education.