The Center for Teaching and Learning Organizes a Series of Professional Development Seminars for the Dhofar University’s Faculty

As a part of DU’s plans to promote quality teaching and learning, the Center for Teaching and Learning organized a series of professional development seminars for the university’s faculty. The presenters were Dr. Kenneth Bartlett and Dr. Gillian Bartlett from the University of Toronto, Canada. Dr. Kenneth Bartlett is a professor of history and the Director of the Office of Teaching Advancement at the University of Toronto. He was awarded many prizes from his home institution (1993, 2000, 2003, 2007, 2006) and others from the Province of Ontario (2007) in addition to a 3M prize for Excellence in Teaching in Canada (2005). He has wide experience in monitoring and training university faculty. As for Dr. Gillian Bartlett, she is the founding director of the Certificate Program in Communication for Professionals at the School of Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto. She has been engaged for over thirty years in teaching English at the post-graduate, college, and secondary levels for native and non-native speakers of English. In addition, she has written and edited several books on language teaching.
The seminars were divided into three parts. The first part lasted for two days and  discussed successful teaching, defining it, recognizing it and achieving it. In the opening session, there was a lot of discussion of what it means and how to be a successful teacher and there was a discussion of the criteria of success for both students and instructors. Participants discussed how they define successful teaching, what they do to achieve it, and how they realize it. The second part also lasted for two days, which included putting the theory of success into practice.  The participating faculty members worked with their own materials – syllabi, textbooks, and assessment instruments previously prepared. Activities focused on analyzing these materials and making suggestions as to how they can be reshaped to increase teaching success as defined in Part I. The last part discussed critical thinking and had two sections. The first had to deal with discussing the possibilities of offering a research model for undergraduate students and using the example from the University of Toronto. The other section “Sentence Combining: Grammar Meets the Composing Process” was offered to English faculty and illustrated how critical thinking can be used to teach grammar.