rom June 7 to June 11, 2008, 24 deans, directors, and professors from the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI) participated in the Seminar on Effective Teaching and Learning on the campus of Harvard University. The seminar, which was organized by LASPAU as a part of the Initiative for the Development of Academic Innovation (IDIA), was designed to help strengthen UAI’s educational model, promote the implementation of a student-centered learning framework, and provide the participants with information, tools, and methodologies oriented toward enhancing their teaching skills. The seminar presenters, who were experts in different areas of higher education, were from Harvard University and other prestigious universities in the United States and Latin America.

LASPAU first began working with UAI when, through IDIA, LASPAU staff arranged for four top-level administrators from UAI, including the university president, to meet with directors of centers for teaching and learning at renowned universities throughout New England. The visit, which took place in November of 2007, provided the impetus for the creation of UAI’s own Center for Innovation and Learning, which opened April 2008 and focuses on the pedagogical development of UAI faculty. All of the July 2008 seminar participants were involved in the planning, development, and promotion of the Center.

Some of the seminar’s sessions addressed current issues and trends in higher education such as the role of the professor, how to engender “deep learning” (e.g. critical analysis of new ideas) in students, and the challenges for higher education in a globalized world. Other sessions were more hands-on and focused on specific teaching practices such as syllabus design, student assessment, and techniques for leading an interactive classroom and for promoting critical thinking skills. The week also included two panel discussions featuring directors of teaching and learning centers at Harvard, MIT, Brown University, and Clark University, as well as the vice president of a local consortium of universities. The panelists shared the primary achievements and challenges in promoting student-centered teaching and learning at their institutions.

On the last day of the seminar, the participants had the opportunity to meet with professors from local universities who teach in their subject areas (literature, history, psychology, engineering, and economics), providing them with the opportunity to focus on discipline-specific pedagogical issues. On the same day, Niels Rivas, the Director of the Center for Innovation and Learning at UAI, led a wrap-up session in which the participants met in small groups to brainstorm and then presented ideas for how to incorporate what they had learned in the course of the seminar into teaching practices at UAI upon returning to the university.