By Sue Carson, Office for Faculty Excellence Fellow
As NC State prepares to embark on our next QEP, you might be wondering about the status of TH!NK, the 2014-2019 QEP that focused on faculty development targeted to enhance students’ critical and creative thinking skills.
We are happy to report that TH!NK is up and running and fully integrated into the Office of Faculty Excellence Reflective Educational Design Certificate Program.
The RED TH!NK:Cultivating Critical and Creative Thinking Certificate (TH!NK: C3T) is based on the original program, but the static content is now delivered asynchronously in Moodle, while still providing face-to-face or hybrid opportunities for mentoring and peer interactions. The new format was piloted Spring 2022, and is now fully underway with the Spring 2023 cohort.
To provide broader access, we have created a YouTube playlist that contains all of the TH!NK content videos. The videos represent only a portion of the certification program, but may be helpful to inspire NC State faculty to participate in the certification program and/or external institutions to develop their own programs. For those who want to start their own programs in critical and creative thinking, we encourage the videos to be supported by faculty learning communities or organized peer mentoring sessions for maximum impact. Likewise, we encourage individual faculty who are inspired by this content to engage with their peers to support and provide feedback to one another. We are happy to share ‘assignment’ descriptions, timelines, reflective prompts, and other relevant material upon request by faculty developers from institutions of higher education. NC State Faculty who are interested in this content, please consider applying to the TH!NK Certificate. Applications for the 2024 cohort will open November 2023.