The LUMS Learning Institute (LLI) was established in 2019 as a state-of-the-art centre for teaching and learning. Inspired by successful models from universities around the world, the Institute engages students as partners in educational development, supports faculty with instructional skill development and critical inquiry on the impact of their teaching on student learning, and promotes an environment for sustained effort and shared responsibility for quality enhancement.
The LLI’s core mandate is to strengthen teaching and learning communities, cultures and practices at LUMS university. The LLI provides leadership in teaching and learning by encouraging and, supporting the scholarly exploration, innovation, implementation, evaluation and dissemination of teaching and learning practices. LLI’s focus is on four key areas:
The LLI core programs are co-lead by LUMS faculty, LLI staff and student partners. The Institute engages students, individual faculty and departments in conversations and collaborations on teaching and learning through four inter-connected programs.
The faculty development programme currently has 3 main focus areas. To date, the 3-day Instructional Skills Training (IST) workshop is one of the most popular teaching development opportunities at the LI. In the IST, participants work in small groups to learn how to implement lesson design and increase student engagement in learning. Each day they design and deliver three 10-minute lessons and receive verbal, written and video feedback from their peers and trained facilitators. In 2019-2020, 65 faculty and PhD students participated in the IST. Six facilitators were also trained through the LLI in an effort to develop local capacity at LUMS to sustain the IST workshops
The blended Teaching Experimentation course provides an extended opportunity for teachers to practice and develop their lesson design and instructional skills in courses currently in session. Teachers use a combination of video and online annotation tools to offer feedback to peers on their lessons.
The 2-day course design seminar offers teachers the opportunity to design or redesign courses. Teachers work on developing course syllabi, attend short workshop sessions, and receive feedback from peers in small groups. The session is offered twice a year in face-to-face and blended formats.
The student-faculty pedagogical partnership program aims to introduce new opportunities for students and faculty to work in partnership on pedagogical initiatives, while also supporting existing partnerships across LUMS. The goal is to support teaching, learning and research excellence with students as collaborators and active contributors. Partnership programs are well-embedded in several international universities and have been found to be extremely beneficial for both faculty and students in enriching their teaching/learning experiences. As the program continues to develop at LUMS, we aspire to engage and work with several groups of faculty/student partners and offer grant funding to support their work. Students and faculty will have opportunities to submit proposals for funding for pedagogical projects in the near future.
LUMSx is a university-wide initiative to enable faculty to create online and blended learning experiences which will transform teaching and learning at the LUMS, and beyond. This program offers instructional design, pedagogical and technological support to faculty in order to assist them in their technology-driven learning initiatives.
Additionally, LUMSx aims at improving teaching and learning via online platforms by enabling faculty to conduct research through experimental design and longitudinal studies on online pedagogies and students’ learning behavior in online settings. As a strategic initiative, LUMSx is also working closely with the Rausing Executive Development Centre and the Centre for Continuing Education to transform executive education as well as contribute to lifelong learning.
