A two-week OUC-UCLA workshop on instructional development was held from August 9 until August 22, 2015, at University of California at Los Angeles. College deans/deputy deans in charge of teaching and learning from Ocean University of China participated in the workshop.

Prof. Li Weiran, vice president of OUC, delivered a speech at the opening ceremony. He later had a talk with Dr. Scott L. Waugh, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost of UCLA, Dr. Cindy Fan, Vice Provost for International Studies and Global Engagement, Patricia A. Turner, Dean and Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, as well as instructors of the UCLA Office of Instructional Development (OID).

Twenty topics were discussed during the faculty development workshop series, including the governance of American universities, student-centered teaching and learning, the backward design of curriculums, teaching assessment, data analysis in evaluation, improvement of student academic performance, and faculty peer review. 

A series of lectures were given by the OID instructors. In addition, some well-known senior professors, including Dr. Elizabeth Bjork, a UCLA professor of psychology and Dr. Jay Phelan, one of the most popular professors of life science at UCLA, were also invited to give academic talks at the workshop. 

In addition to the seminars and discussions during the workshop, the Chinese participants also visited such teaching and learning support facilities as the Charles E. Young Research Library, Powell Library Modeling and Educational Demonstrations Laboratory, (MEDL), Schlinger Lab of Life Sciences, the Duan Laboratory, and the CHS Studio of UCLA. The OID staff also organized a guided tour to California Institute of Technology（CalTech）and University of California Santa Barbara（UCSB）. 

The workshop has provided a great opportunity for the OUC participants to learn more about the new concepts of student-centered teaching and learning and the learning support environment at world-class universities. They have also had a better understanding of such terms as SCL (Student-centered Learning), SOTL (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning), Bloom’s Taxonomy, higher order learning, backward design, I-clicker and faculty peer review. 

All of the OUC participants received UCLA certificates in recognition of program completion at the closing ceremony of the faculty development workshop.

OUC participants visit Schlinger Lab of Life Sciences

The Learning Glass

Translated by Daphne YAN

Proofread by William ZOU