June 15, 2012

Dr. Komkham Pattanaporn with Dr. Charles Shuler, dean of UBC Dentistry, at the graduation ceremony for recipients of the UBC Faculty Certificate on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, May 18, 2012.

When Dr. Komkham Pattanaporn received her Certificate on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education this past May, she, like many dentistry faculty before her, joined an already long list of educators at UBC and around the world that completed the intensive UBC Faculty Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Leadership Program.

Offered by the Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at UBC’s Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, the program responds to a university commitment toward excellence in teaching and learning. The program is also an ideal resource for Dentistry’s faculty development, the long-term goal of which ultimately is to enhance the student experience—a central theme of Dentistry’s strategic plan.

Information on teaching and learning is not a component of dental curricula, consequently when an individual joins a dental faculty their level of teaching skill does not match the level of their patient care skills, says Dr. Charles Shuler, dean of UBC Dentistry. “UBC is fortunate to have a program that provides a way for dental clinicians to build their expertise in the areas of teaching and learning. Completing this certificate allows the faculty members to become even more effective facilitators of learning for our dental students.”

Pattanaporn, a clinical assistant professor, sees the program as essential for instructors in higher education. Skills such as critical thinking and reflecting, researching, and devising evidence-based assessments are high on the list of the program’s learning objectives; at the end of the program, the design of a learning-centred course/curriculum and the demonstration of effective leadership and collaboration are testaments to a solid foundation in the scholarship of teaching and learning.

“We developed our own teaching dossier in which we articulated a personal philosophy of teaching/curriculum practice and also provided an evidence-based assessment of our practice context, processes and outcomes. These exercises,” she says, “would definitely beneficial to any educators in their practice.”

In the program emphasis is placed on collaboration and peer feedback, and for her, this held the most appeal: “It is a valuable experience to be an observer and then have my peers observe my teaching. I received many great comments and suggestions from my assessors to help improve my tutoring.” Pattanaporn, an instructor in Dentistry’s Professionalism and Community Service (PACS) program, also improved her knowledge about writing student assessment reports in a formative way.

One of the main assignments of the eight-month program is to develop a learning-centered syllabus which, as Pattanaporn learned, presents explicit connections between content, learning objectives and assessments. On curriculum, she understands how it needs to engage students in the learning process in order to achieve the effective learning outcomes.

The research skills component of the program, and in particular the insight she gained around developing pedagogical research questions, was particularly useful for Pattanaporn. Of that she sees an immediate take-home benefit: to plan the evaluation of learning outcomes for her PACS module.

Graduates of the UBC Faculty Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Leadership Program, May 18, 2012. Dr. Komkham Pattanaporn is seen in the front row, third from right.

Komkham Pattanaporn is Dentistry’s most recent graduate of UBC’s Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Leadership Program. Preceding her are many more faculty members. Current faculty graduates include: Drs. Jolanta Aleksejuniene, Nancy Black, William Brymer, Lamia El-Adwar, Ingrid Emanuels, Mark Fogelman, Karen Gardner, David MacDonald, Anthony McCullagh, James Richardson, Clive Roberts, Eli Whitney, and Tracy Wong.

For more information about UBC’s Faculty Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Leadership Program click through here >>