Faculty induction Programme

Faculty member is “the driving force behind the institution—therefore, assisting that person to be as productive as possible will make the entire institution more productive.”

“Faculty development needs” are those where institutional solutions may be imagined that enhance the knowledge, skills, and capacities of individuals. We also identify a set of “systemic problems,” where a broader range of strategies such as faculty development initiatives would be invigorated. In defining the content of this report, we categorized “faculty development needs” as those problems that might be solved by generating, publicizing, and applying resources that focus on enhancing the career progress, skills, or capacities of individuals. In this respect, our empirical definition of faculty development largely agrees with professional development. Most teaching has at its core an emphasis on ensuring that the student knows how to access, evaluate, understand, and produce information. Therefore, it is the role of faculty members to define the desired student outcome, to outline where in the curriculum certain skills are developed and practiced, to consider the range of potential learning experiences, and to select the most appropriate teaching strategies.

Faculty members can improve student learning by encouraging students to explore and analyze ideas creatively. To improve the analytical power of students, faculties must have proficiency in language. Pedagogical approaches to teaching students to find and evaluate sources are as distinct as individualized teaching styles, as varied as the disciplines involved, or as common across disciplines as interdisciplinary relationships permit. However, the basic principles can be addressed in formal lectures, discussion sections, library visits, writing workshops, computer labs, or via distributed learning technologies such as MOODLES and Blackboard Teaching Students to Evaluate and Understand Content with each learning experience. It starts when the student frames the research question, then identifies and accesses information sources, evaluates the information, and finally uses the information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose. Having achieved understanding, the student then selects the information that he will incorporate into his knowledge base and makes a conscious determination. The ability to use language becomes the evidence of understanding and the effective use of the information is to produce critical insights about information literacy through their own production of information which is likely to be the result of some form of active learning opportunities—those that go beyond lectures and require students to make critical decisions about the information they evaluate and produce, especially as they try to formulate a response.