With the support of the Office of the Provost, each year the Center for Teaching Excellence identifies key initiatives that draw on the most recent research in higher education learning and teaching and then develops programming based on these initiatives that will provide faculty with opportunities to enhance and innovate their courses.
Digital technologies have made it possible to expand the boundaries of the classroom to include fully online courses, blended and flipped courses and more. Whether they are just thinking of teaching online or whether they've taught online for many years and want to push their courses to the next level, our Distributed Learning initiative supports USC's commitment to providing quality distributed learning courses by offering a range of opportunities and services for faculty.
We know from the research that students in all fields learn best when they can combine learning high-level content with opportunities for hands on learning. The Flipped Learning model has gotten a lot of attention and our Flipped Learning initiative seeks to support faculty who want to develop high quality flipped courses by offering workshops, expert faculty who are experienced in this mode and grants that provide faculty with the resources necessary to develop flipped courses. We have an Associate Faculty Director of Innovative Teaching who is available for consultations to help faculty pull together the resources and partners they need to develop this type of classroom innovation.
USC is a leader nationwide in helping students think about how their learning extends beyond the classroom. The CTE's Integrative Learning initiative, in conjunction with USC Connect, focuses especially on introducing faculty to opportunities to help students make thoughtful connections between the courses they teach and outside the classroom experiences such as service learning, internships, field work and student involvement. We give faculty opportunities to learn about and interact with some of the offices and programs on campus that provide high quality co-curricular programming for students. We then support them in developing teaching strategies, courses and curriculum by offering teaching innovation grant programs, a variety of workshops and also a cohort program for instructors who are working with students to graduate with leadership distinction.
In recent years we've seen a robust movement in the development of research and literature that looks at what is successful in teaching in higher education. Through our Pedagogy initiative, the CTE distills the best of that research and of best teaching practices that have been identified and then develop programs, events and workshops that give faculty the building blocks they need in order to engage their students and design good courses that foster student learning in the best possible way. This initiative seeks to raise the bar in higher education pedagogy through engagement with the discourse nationwide on what is best teaching practice. It is our effort to help keep faculty at the forefront of the ever evolving understanding of how students learn and what types of best practices good teachers should engage in.