2.I. Professional Development

To receive an Excellent rating, a faculty member should demonstrate professional development through such efforts as:

  • Participation in workshops, conferences or similar activities devoted primarily to improving teaching methods and course content.
  • Participating in regional and national pedagogical organizations.

Since joining JMU, I have supplemented my professional development by participating in activities, conferences, and events specifically designed to enhance my awareness of different pedagogical approaches. These include participating in workshops, conferences or similar activities devoted primarily to improving teaching methods and course content – and more recently, I have started demonstrating leadership in this area:

TransformLearningUnconference

  • I moderated and co-chaired the one-day long Transforming Learning conference (August 30, 2013 at Black Rock City, NV) that brought together educators and others interested in stimulating life-long learning.
  • I attended the summit of the Black Rock Educators Consortium (BREC) (August 28, 2013 at Black Rock City, NV) [Full Program]
  • I enrolled in a Coursera class in Fall 2012 for data analysis on large data sets using R, and in Spring 2014 for a course on Statistical Learning.
  • I was selected to participate in, and completed, JMU Center for Instructional Technology (CIT) Institute for Blended Learning in Fall 2011. I completed Phase II of the course by deploying GISAT 251 in blended mode during Spring 2012.
  • In March 2010, I attended CSEET (Conference on Software Engineering Education & Teaching) with Morgan Benton which was my first introduction to pedagogy for technology education.  He noted that there was an excellent presentation on a model for training software developers in Sweden that used a cross-cohort model that spanned multiple years of their program.  We have been working to implement the cross-cohort model in our classes, and by coordinating our classes to enhance collaboration across course boundaries, since this time.

I have also started to participate in regional and national pedagogical organizations by more active engagement in the Black Rock Educators Consortium (BREC) throughout the 2013-2014 academic year, and will provide additional leadership for them in 2014-2015.