Instructional Development and Faculty Support

The Office of Transformational Learning (OTL) is committed to supporting faculty at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business with a wide range of resources and opportunities to ensure that faculty are prepared to deliver an innovative and meaningful learning experience to our students. We achieve this level of faculty support through a combination of coaching sessions, workshops and onboarding.

For more information on any of the components below, please contact us at SmithTeach@umd.edu.

Faculty Coaching

The Office of Transformational Learning offers both ad hoc and peer review forms of faculty coaching. For ad hoc consultations, OTL offers faculty one-on-one sessions with teaching experts to discuss a wide range of teaching and learning issues. We help design or redesign courses, whether online, blended, in class, or experiential. Consultations can address specific student feedback, peer evaluations, and teaching portfolios. Through partnerships with department chairs and the Teaching Enhancement Committee, we seek to maintain and expand our portfolio of outstanding faculty, develop creative ways to better achieve learning outcomes, and promote excellence in teaching to improve learning experience.

Workshops

OTL offers workshops for instructors on a variety of topics related to teaching and learning. Where possible, we also collaborate with the Teaching and Learning Transformation Center on campus. Teaching workshops are in addition to new faculty orientation and onboarding activities. 

OTL began to offer workshops in May 2014 and currently offers department-specific workshops each year. Most recently, we have offered workshops on online assessment and increasing student engagement in the classroom. New workshops are constantly in development, as  OTL continues to identify and target specific needs of teaching teams across the departments.

New Faculty Onboarding

In collaboration with the Dean’s office, OTL facilitates an onboarding process for all new hires, to include an emphasis on best practices in learning and teaching. Our goals include maintaining and expanding our portfolio of outstanding faculty as well as developing creative ways to better achieve learning outcomes and promoting excellence in teaching to improve the learning experience. Collaborations with department chairs, Smith Human Resources, and the Teaching Enhancement Committee have further supported these efforts.  New faculty attend an orientation at the beginning of the semester in which they are teaching and then receive subsequent coaching as needed. 

For more information reach out to our faculty development team at SmithTeach@umd.edu.