Two senior faculty-members from England’s Birmingham City University (BCU, UK) reached Lovely Professional University, where they conducted two-day ‘Faculty Development Programme’. The prestigious ‘workshop’ allowed experienced LPU faculty members to fuse their personal development and emphasise on their professional practice within higher education. For this, Dr Mark Paul Hetherington and Dr Vivek Padmanaabhan Indramohan from the Faculty of Health, Education and Life Sciences at BCU (UK) delivered important inputs for their LPU colleagues. Both of them guided LPU faculty members on how to be ‘Fellow’ in England’s Higher Education Academy (HEA, UK).

 

In addition, the workshop supported improvements in the quality of students’ educational experiences also. This effort provided an interdisciplinary learning forum to share innovation and good practice in higher education for both learning and teaching. On successful completion of the workshop and associated formative coursework, the participants received their ‘Associate Fellowship’ status within the Higher Education Academy (HEA), UK. Successful participants are now entitled to pursue and excel in their professional development by working towards their ‘Fellowship’ status.

 

In fact, in the United Kingdom (UK), the Staff and Education Development Association (SEDA) is the professional association for staff and educational developers. Being accredited by SEDA, such faculty development workshops are highly valued by a growing number of international institutions. Such programmes are accredited by the Higher Education Academy (HAE, UK) for conferring the status of Associate Fellow, Fellow, Senior Fellow and Principal Fellow on the learners.

 

Endeavoured by LPU Division of International Affairs and Human Resource Development Centre, the workshop had six-sessions, where elite resource persons shed light on Learning and Teaching philosophy; Techniques for Active Learning in Big and Small Groups; Classroom Behaviour Management; Curriculum-Aims, outcomes and objectives; and, more.