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Completed FDC Events
Spring/2008
iLearn Training Sessions
Sessions will run from January 27 - February 4
*Please click here for more details
Impression Management across Cultures: The Role of Nonverbal Behavior
Professor Dr. Gary Bente
Director of Psychology & Associate Dean of Research
University of Cologne, Germany
Wednesday, February 13 at 3:00 PM
This presentation addresses the crucial role nonverbal behavior plays in cross-cultural communication. Misunderstandings and even conflicts among members of different cultures are not only a result of values, stereotypes and expectations, but also of subtle nonverbal cues which mostly unconsciously guide our perceptions of others in face-to-face encounters. There are many secrets yet to be unraveled in this area. New methodologies today allow for deeper insights and may create a basis for better understanding of our own perceptions and the behaviors of our communication partners as well. These methodologies will be introduced here andpreliminary results of a cultural comparison study involving the UAE, Germany and the USA will also be presented. These results stem from a collaborative project between the University of Cologne and the American University of Sharjah. Implications for cross cultural training will also be discussed.
Give Your Online Course a Voice
Imrana Ghani
Manager, Marketing & Professional Services
ISB - Integrated Solutions for Business
Tuesday, February 19 at 2:00 PM
This 40 min presentation will demonstrate how Wimba Voice can be used to support learning in an online environment by facilitating vocal instruction.It will also include a 10 minute Case Study of how the American University in Cairo (AUC) has been successfully using Wimba Voice to enhance their language student's educational experience while improving learning outcomes achieved during traditional class time.
Error Correction Revisited: A Replication Study
Anne Shine (DWS)
Wednesday, February 27 at 2:30 PM
Three feedback techniques, reformulation, error correction, and underlining errors, are used in a partial replication of a recently published study by Sachs and Polio (2007). Although error feedback is a large part of a writing instructor’s role, the efficacy of this time consuming practice is debated. The results of this study shed a little more light on the role of feedback in writing classes and the degree to which these three different methods of conveying error, some less time consuming than others, are used in revision.
Problems to Avoid When Writing Multiple-Choice Test Questions
Dr. Betty Lanteigne (DoE)
Thursday, February 28 at 3:00 PM
The form of multiple-choice questions can actually interfere with accurate measurement of student knowledge.This presentation discusses the subsequent threat to validity, and provides examples of MCQ pitfalls to avoid, such as 2/2 pairs, 3/1 splits, subsumed answers, giveaways, and others.(If faculty desire to discuss discipline-specific examples, it is suggested that they bring multiple-choice tests used in their subjects.
Research Proposal Writing Workshop
Dr. David Culver & Ms. Catherine Kirby (AU)
Thursday, January 24 at 9:30 AM -5:15 PM
Friday, January 25 (for Individual Sessions)
Designed for new proposal writers, this introductory workshop instructs participants in the key components of a proposal with particular attention paid to the components of the AUS Faculty Research Grant Application. The workshop will focus on aspects of grant writing such as developing the statement of need; articulating the contribution to the field that the proposed research or program will provide; and program evaluation among other topics. The presenters will also respond to questions about the process of writing a proposal or applying for an external grant. Participants must register for the workshop and for individual sessions. To register, send an email to the Office of Research at research@aus.edu. Relevant materials are currently available on ilearn on the following path: FRG08 Proposals → Proposal Writing Workshop → Workshop Materials.
* Click here to view the presenters' bios
* Click here to view Workshop Schedule
*Click here to view workshop content & materials
Fall/2007
FDC
Open House
Tuesday, September 4th
9:30 - 12:30 PM & 2:00 - 4:00 PM
This will be a chance for all of us to meet informally over coffee, get to know new colleagues, and talk about FDC plans for this academic year. The Open House will give each of you the opportunity to learn more about the FDC mission and objectives, preliminary calendar of events, upcoming events, opportunities for participation in FDC events, services provided by the FDC, future plans for the FDC, and the FDC new website.
Emerald’s 40th Anniversary Publishing: The Next 40 Years
Monday, September 10th, 2:30 - 4:30 PM
Join us to meet the Chairman of Emerald, the CEO, and other managers as they will discuss new developments of Emerald, publishing opportunities, research awards and funding, and take your questions.
Preparing Your Promotion and Contract Renewals Files: Faculty Panel
Tuesday, September 25th , 4:00 -5:30 PM
The deadline for turning in your files for promotion or contract renewal is fast approaching. Many of us have gone through the process of preparing files for these two tasks and understand the importance of presenting ourselves in the best light possible. In order to help all AUS faculty going through this process, the FDC in conjunction with the Faculty Senate has assembled a panel of five faculty members, from different schools and colleges, who have experience with reviewing files for promotion and contract renewals and have themselves been through the process. They will discuss how to present your promotion/contract renewal files in the most effective way and they will respond to your questions. Click here to view PPT
Panelists:
Dr. Yousef Al-Assaf, Professor, Dean of College of Engineering
Dr. Dennis Olson, Professor, Head of Department of Accounting and Finance
Dr. Asad Hassan, Associate Professor of Physics, CAS
Mr. Mehdi Sabet, Associate Professor of Architecture, SAD
Ms. Pelly Shaw, Senior Instructor, IEP
Moderators:
Ahmad Al-Issa, FDC
Tina Richardson, Senate President
Peer Review of Teaching: A collegial Discussion
Wednesday, October 3rd, 4:00 -5:00 PM
Daniel Kirk (DWS)
College and university teaching is most often a solitary activity – my course and my classroom, as we put it. Furthermore, academics are typically left on their own to develop and master the knowledge and skills that are required to teach well. Peer review requires collegial conversations about teaching and learning. Peer review promotes an examination of our assumptions and rationales for teaching activities. This session aims to begin a dialogue between faculty that will seek to allow each of us to examine our own teaching and learn from others. Through talking and undertaking peer review, utilizing a ‘critical friend’ framework and examining what it is we do in the classroom, it is hoped that we can begin to reflect on our practice and develop the art of teaching. Click here to view PPT
They Graduated, but their Writing didn’t: A Case for Writing Across the Curriculum
Tuesday, October 9th , 4:00 -5:00 PM
Maher Bahloul (DoE)
This presentation reports the findings of a current study which investigates a written corpus of more than 25000 words collected from 351 graduating AUS students. The results of the analysis of students’ writing performance show that students' linguistic, critical thinking, and organizational skills fall short of courses' expected general learning outcomes as well as program and institutional goals. Suggestions for improving students' writing and a call for Writing Across the Curriculum Program will be made.
Factiva: Ennhance your Course Content and Research Efforts
Tuesday, October 23rd, 3:00 - 4:00 PM
This workshop is about a new robust, content-rich online library database called Factiva. Factiva is a full-text database that provides global news, business, and financial information from newspapers, magazines, newswires, and trade journals. It also includes vital information on companies and industries, SEC filings, and financial profiles. Factiva provides access to premium content from 152 countries and in 22 languages. The aim of the training session is to familiarize faculty with Factiva so that they can enhance their course content and research efforts.
Teachers as Learners: Self-Monitoring & Class Observation
Wednesday, October 31st , 1:00 - 2:00 PM
Ahmad Al-Issa
Educational research and personal experience tell us that much of what happens in the classroom is really unknown to the teacher. It is only when teachers start reflecting on their own classroom practices that they become conscious of the effectiveness of their teaching strategies and their students’ learning. Self-reflection, as a form of classroom-action research, guides teaching practices through exploration and critical thinking rather than relying solely on intuition and routine. Simply put, reflective teachers are more effective practitioners. Questions such as the following will be discussed with the audience: What is reflective teaching? How can I reflect on my own teaching practices? What is self-monitoring? Why self-monitoring? Why class observation? What to look for in a lesson? What is classroom action research? How can my students’ help? How can my colleagues help?
Instructors and Professors are always searching for methods to maximize learning in the classroom. This workshop helps teachers organize their classes into dynamic learning groups, which produce independent learners. Positive interdependence, Promotive Interaction, and cooperative vs. competitive and individualistic learning will be discussed. Collaborative Learning Groups can produce a myriad of unique output, including a Collaborative Class Chronicle. Click here to view PPT1. Chronicle
Web of Knowledge Seminar: How Web of Science Can Enhance Research Performance
Tuesday,November 13, 3:00 – 4:00 PM
ISI Staff
The Institute of Scientific Information will conduct a demonstration workshop of the multidisciplinary database Web of Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) and Science Citation Index (SCI). These databases allow searching not only for articles by subject, author, journal names, and institution, but includes the unique feature of viewing the cited reference list of an article and finding articles that cite a known author or work. This feature is useful in preparing faculty portfolios. In addition, the ISI representatives will share a report on research trends in the UAE and comparison to other Middle-Eastern and European Countries. Click here to view PPT
Blaming the Alien: Communication Styles and their Impact on Teaching and Learning
Wednesday, November 21, 1:00 - 2:15 PM
Ahmad Al-Issa
Individuals from different cultures have different preferred styles of communicating with others and interpreting the communications received from others. In a culturally diverse context such as that of AUS, these differences may exist in the communication styles of teachers, students, parents, administrators, and non-teaching staff. If noticed and dealt with, differences in communication styles can become a great learning experience for all, but if ignored, they can lead to various types of misunderstandings, which in turn may lead to each side assigning blame for the breakdown in communication. This session will discuss different orientations of culturally diverse communication styles, which will be further complimented by ‘actual’ AUS classroom incidents for illustration purposes. Click here to view PPT
iLearn End of Semester Workshop
Thursday, November 22, 3:30 - 4:30 PM
Academic Computing Staff
With the fall semester coming to a close, it's time to do final touches on your iLearn course website. During this session we will focus on: (1) Online testing best practices (2) Tips on finalizing your grade book (3) Getting an offline copy/backup of your course (4) Tips for preparing for spring
Please send an e-mail message to iLearn@aus.edu confirming your attendance, or in case you have any enquiries regarding this event.
Listening Inside and Out: How to Stack Extra-curricular Conversation into Classroom Performance
Wednesday, November 28, 4:00 - 5:00 PM
Jeremy Keymer
No one learns more than when one has been heard. But our curricula are fixed before we hear what students need and want. Create classes out of a listening process, and students will respond. I discuss an example of how a conversation circle outside of class led to the creation of a class. In turn, that class evoked great student interest, leading eventually to a research project. Students, faculty and AUS benefited. Click here to view PPT
Evaluating Teacher Effectiveness
Tuesday, December 11, 12: 00 - 1:15
Christine Coombe, Dubai Men’s College
Research shows that students who have high quality teachers make significant and lasting learning gains. These findings make the evaluation of teacher effectiveness a major concern in today’s educational context. The presenter will discuss what different groups within education define as good teaching. The major approaches and methods within teacher evaluation will also be reviewed. Click here to view Dr. Coombe's Bio. Click here to view PPT
Spring, 2007
Teaching Across Cultural Diversity: The AUS Classroom
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Ahmad Al-Issa & Martin Giesen |
People carry their culture wherever they go, and that culture influences how people behave and respond to others’ behaviors. Despite the beauties and uniqueness of every culture, when two different cultures come together, there is a strong likelihood that some clashes may occur. The classroom is a place where students' cultural values and expectations of the teaching and learning processes may differ significantly from those of the teacher. This workshop will demonstrate how cultural differences, if ignored or overlooked, in the AUS classrooms can lead to clashes during classroom interaction between culturally diverse teachers and Arab students. Participants in this workshop will analyze 'real' classroom incidents in order to spot the conflict, discuss its causes, and work together on finding ways to turn a conflict into a teaching and learning experience for both teachers and students. There will be no lecturing! This is a 100% hands-on workshop. Participants will be divided into groups of 5, and each will be asked to analyze at least two different scenarios/anecdotes. Specific instructions for this activity will be given to each group. Each group will have a leader who will present the findings of her/his group's analysis to everyone. This will be followed by a period of discussion and reflection by all participants.
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Reflective Teaching: Do you See what I See? |
Cindy Gunn |
It is generally believed that regularly reflecting on our teaching practice can lead away from possibly falling into an attitude of routine, repetitive “one size fits all” teaching to more skillful, productive teaching. Since skillful teaching is said to be central to a high-quality learning environment the learners who are being taught by a reflective teacher will benefit as well as the teacher. However, in an AUS professor’s busy life, how does one find time for reflection? In this workshop, there will be no lecturing but Cindy will first introduce the participants to the Teacher Knowledge Project developed by Donald Freeman and his colleagues at the School for International Training. The participants will then, in groups of four, work through the Inquiry Cycle of Reflective Practice adapted from the Teacher Knowledge Project to share their experiences with other members of their groups. The Inquiry Cycle encourages collaboration amongst
peers and focuses on non-judgmental observations from peers to help the participants gain a better understanding of classroom events from a variety of perspectives.
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Faculty Forum on Writing Across the Curriculum--Implementing Writing in Content Courses
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Ahmad Al-Issa, Kevin Mitchlle, Samer Kherfi, Isaac Wait, Tina Richardson, Lynne Ronesi, Maria Eleftheriou |
Many of us feel an issue of immediate relevance to teaching & learning at AUS is our students’ writing skills and identifying ways for improving them. This forum aims at discussing the issue of broadening the scope of students’ writing beyond the confines of the required writing courses. Participants in this forum will share their experiences in providing their students with writing opportunities in their content courses (i.e., Design courses, Engineering and Business courses), and then discuss the ‘Writing across the Curriculum’ approach as a means for promoting writing in all content courses, as well as ways of implementing it. In addition, participants in this forum will raise and attempt to answer several relevant questions. Some of these questions include: 'Why should teachers in disciplines that traditionally do not emphasize writing try to get their students to write more or to focus more on how they write?' How can writing be a built-in component in content courses? What kind of writing assignments can students do in content courses? Do teachers of content course have to be experts in writing? What are the available resources we have at AUS which can help content teachers implement writing in their courses? What are the outside resources that can help teachers implement writing in their courses? How beneficial is this for students? For teachers? And for the institution?
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Learning Styles of Computer Programming Students: A Middle-Eastern and
American Comparison |
Imran ZualkerNan & Qadah Gassan |
Identification of learning styles is an issue with a long history, most of it taking place outside of science and engineering education. In this presentation, the learning style profiles of introductory computer engineering students at the American University of Sharjah and computer science students at the University of Minnesota, Duluth (United States) will be compared. Our results indicate that there are strong similarities in learning styles of these culturally diverse students. However, it is difficult to establish a clear relationship between learning styles and course outcomes across cultures.
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Refworks information session |
Joe Threlfall |
RefWorks is an online research management, writing and collaboration tool that is designed to help researchers easily gather, manage, store and share all types of information, as well as generate
citations and bibliographies. The session, presented by a Refworks representative, will provide an overview of the product and highlight specific features useful for AUS faculty while conducting ongoing research.
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Who is an Effective Teacher? Student Evaluations of teaching at AUS |
Ahmad Al-Issa & Hana Sulieman |
The presenters will briefly report the findings of three related studies they conducted at AUS concerning student evaluations of teaching (SET) and teaching effectiveness. The three studies are:
‘Student Evaluations of Teaching: Perception and Biasing Factors.’
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‘L2 Learners and Student Evaluations of Teaching: Issues of Language Comprehension at AUS.’
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‘Who is an Effective Teacher? Here is What AUS students Say.’
Our discussion of the finding and their implications will hopefully shed more light on improving the process of conducting SET, the interpretation of students’ input, and the awareness of the validity and reliability of SET in different cultural and linguistic settings.
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Tablet PC – As an in Class Teaching Tool |
Ali Kawajah |
A tablet PC in its simplest form can be used to replace the white board. It gives the additional benefit of providing more than just a blank template. It can be used to display and comment on a variety of tools; power-point slides, internet, any range of applications. Additionally the class session can be recorded for future review for students. |
Teaching/Learning Circles
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Achieving the most with your students: Educating the whole person while teaching your subject |
Jeremy Keyme, CAS |
In this circle, I help teachers brainstorm about how they can achieve the most with their students. Two hypotheses govern the exercise: First, learners tend to respond better to lessons when they can see the point of them. Second, it is easier to see the point of a lesson if it connects with your whole life. I also draw on two hypotheses about how one connects a lesson with a whole life. First, lessons tend to connect up with our whole lives better if we are being taught as whole persons, not just as abstract minds. Second, lessons tend to connect up with out whole lives better if we can connect a lesson with our interests. Using these four hypotheses, I take teachers through a series of exercises that help them identify: (1) how to connect with the whole person while teaching their subject, and (2) how to connect lessons with student interests while maintaining the syllabus. We then share our ideas and discuss easy ways to implement them. An attractive subtext to our discussion will be the finding, and idea, that having excited students in class tends to add to the research productivity of teachers.
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Teaching at AUS: What works and what doesn’t? |
Marios Katsioloudes, SOB |
Teaching effectiveness and critical thinking are two topics that I will discuss in light of what has worked for me in the classroom for the last 26 years as an academic, in the USA, Cyprus, Greece, the UAE and many other countries that I have taught as a visiting professor. The course syllabus is an extremely important document which I see as a contractual agreement between the students and the instructor. The first day of class is very crucial in sending a clear message to the students and explaining very clearly the expectations, demands, responsibilities, etc of all the parties involved in creating a learning environment where everybody learns from each other. The use of critical thinking is a pedagogical approach that I have been using with successful results.
I will share many examples with the audience from both graduate and undergraduate courses.
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IT Testimonial |
Waleed A. Hakim, e-Learning Specialist |
This teaching Circle will be in the form of short testimonials from selected faculty members; each followed by discussions and then summary statements from the event facilitators. Testimonials might include these online features:
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Online content delivery
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Online testing and quizzing
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Class online discussions
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Assignment management and plagiarism prevention
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Course assessment and grading
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Online tools for team based learning
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