Workshops for Iraqi Faculty
The CELT team had an opportunity to learn about the challenges facing University faculty in Iraq. In April of this year, at the request of Tom Clayton, professor of English, and Susan Carvalho, Associate Provost for International Affairs, staff from the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching worked with Iraqi faculty from the University of Kufa located in the city of Najaf in southern Iraq.
The faculty visited the University of Kentucky as part of a U.S. State Department project known as the university-linkages program. The three-year program involves partnerships between five American institutions and five universities in Iraq that will focus on curriculum review, the development of online courses, real-time instruction via videoconferencing, career development, and faculty, staff, and student exchanges. The University of Kentucky was selected as one of the American universities to participate in the program. Jeannine Blackwell, Associate Provost for Academic Administration, was part of the UK contingency that visited Iraq last year to help coordinate the program. Two additional groups of faculty will visit over the next two years.
The six visiting faculty were from programs in Civil Engineering, Business Management and English as a Second Language. Representatives included Ahmed Abdulhussein Talib Al Immarah and Muiead A. Kalal Al Fadhel from the School of Business; Ali Naji Attiyah and Sadiq Mohammed Ali Jasim from Civil Engineering; and Siham Mohammed Hasan Sadiq Al-Jasham and Hussein Dhahi Muzhir with English as a Second Language/Linguistics.
Kathi Kern, Director of CELT, coordinated the center's participation in the program. Three workshops were conducted with each of the CELT staff delivering a portion of the agenda and facilitating the discussion and application of the content. The workshop topics addressed were the use of Blackboard as a learning management system (David Sacks), characteristics of an effective lecture and using a rubric of effective lecture traits when observing teaching at UK (Bill Burke) and principles of course design to include the development of course learning outcomes (Kathryn Cunningham). Kathryn also reviewed the syllabi created by the ESL faculty.
Like faculty at UK, the University of Kufa faculty face challenges that include increasing class sizes and declining resources. In addition, the Iraqi faculty described the impact of war and reconstruction on their teaching. Faculty in Iraq need access to new technologies, professional journals in their fields, and teaching materials. Because many of the private companies in their country are in a state of rebuilding, faculty lack access to "real-world" placements for their students. An increasing burden shifts to faculty to simulate those experiences in their courses. Finally, the faculty described some of the cultural challenges they face in the classroom. Students with the highest grades in secondary school are selected for medical school. So the remaining students (those studying Engineering, Business and English) can be disaffected and lacking in motivation. But the Kufa faculty also confront unique problems for which they have generated creative solutions. Professor Ali Naji Attiyah, an engineering professor, grew tired of losing electricity in his classroom. Looking for a method by which he could continue to present his material, Professor Attiyah rigged a battery pack to an overhead project: "This way I can project for one hour."