Cooper Center > Faculty Workshop

What exciting things are happening in your classroom? Would you like to share those stories and teaching strategies with colleagues? What new things are you interested in trying? The Cooper Center “faculty workshop” provides a forum for exploring teaching and the scholarship of teaching. Check out a book from our theory and pedagogy library. Watch for our workshops and feel free to suggest ideas that you have. 

Cooper Center Sponsored Programs Connected with Teaching Excellence:

Writing Across the Curriculum
Introduced via a grant in 1983 by Professor Ken Holder, writing across the curriculum has been a regular part of NWU’s academic program ever since. In 2002, the program was updated at the request of the Provost’s office to address findings from the university writing assessment. Faculty members from disciplines across the campus have participated in workshops led by nationally-recognized WAC specialists and in workshops developed by the Cooper Center Faculty Advisory Committee.

University Writing Assessment
Initiated in 1999 as part of the university-wide assessment process, the writing assessment project has served as a model for the speaking assessment project and for assessment templates/rubrics developed by various academic departments. Every other summer, a group of five faculty members, one from each academic division, meets for training and then proceeds to assess a randomly selected group of first-year and upper division level research papers for their overall effectiveness and for a variety of rhetorical elements. The results are published in the Cooper Center newsletter and distributed to faculty and administration. The Cooper Center Faculty Advisory Council uses the results in planning faculty workshops.

Collaborative Learning
In 1998, a Communication faculty member who helped establish the speaking workshop element of Cooper Center services researched and developed workshops on collaborative learning. Faculty members read about collaborative learning in the Cooper Center newsletter and participated in workshops.

Peer Review Project
In 2000, after attending a five-day seminar on the nationally-based peer review project, the director and a faculty colleague re-created the project at NWU. Faculty members partnered with colleagues in another, or the same, discipline to complete three exercises focused on syllabi, classroom instruction, and student evaluation. The project was repeated in the following years.