Michael Palmer, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Virginia and also the associate director of the university’s Teaching Resource Center. In 2009, he started a weeklong program called the Course Design Institute (CDI).9 He created the CDI to help professors design the courses they’d be teaching. On Monday morning, the professors bring in their draft syllabi, and by Friday afternoon, they’ve overhauled them and created an improved game plan for their courses. “The dirty secret of higher education is that faculty aren’t taught how to teach,” said Palmer. Over the course of
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