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Faculty Support Offices

Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning

The Karen L. Smith Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning (FCTL) promotes the success of the UCF full-time, part-time, and graduate student faculty—and, indirectly, the students they serve and the staff and administrators with whom they work. The Faculty Center is commissioned by the UCF Faculty Senate, to whom it reports annually.

The Faculty Center provides pedagogical and instructional support to faculty through consultations, observations, scheduled workshops throughout the year, and annual conferences every summer and winter.

Faculty Excellence

Faculty Excellence is committed to supporting and strengthening faculty through recruitment, development, and retention of outstanding scholars and educators. It promotes the growth of academic leaders through professional development programs and institutional policies designed to strengthen the university’s collective faculty who advance its mission of discovery, learning, and engagement.

Faculty Excellence is the home of several key faculty programs:

See http://facultyexcellence.ucf.edu for more information.

Office of Instructional Resources

The Office of Instructional Resources (OIR) supports the academic, research, and administrative goals of the university by utilizing multimedia, interactive, and digital media resources.

OIR is the primary audio-video resource for the university. OIR provides classroom design and support, lecture capture, webcasting, and online collaboration resources. OIR can also provide consultations to determine the most appropriate AV solution to meet your teaching, research, or collaboration needs.

OIR does NOT schedule classroom spaces. Faculty should work with their department or college scheduler to schedule an event, reserve a classroom, or to change a class meeting space. See http://oir.ucf.edu/.

Faculty Multimedia Center

The Faculty Multimedia Center (FMC) is UCF’s media production facility dedicated to faculty and their needs. Located in Classroom Building I, Room 202, the FMC is home to:

  • a practice teaching space
  • videoconference and collaboration services
  • high-end media production workstations
  • a Lightboard studio
  • podcasting resources
  • high-speed document and slide scanners
  • rental 360-video camera equipment
  • photographic services for faculty to have a photo taken for use on a website or for publications, or to document research or creative work.

See the FMC main page at https://cdl.ucf.edu/support/fmc/, and book an appointment at https://cdl.ucf.edu/support/fmc/booking/.

Center for Distributed Learning

The Center for Distributed Learning (CDL) serves as the central agent for online learning at UCF, providing leadership in distance-learning policies, strategies, and practices. CDL’s primary purpose is to help you be successful at teaching online. Here is an overview of CDL’s key functions:

  • Policy, Planning, Standards, Credentialing, and Reporting: CDL is responsible for establishing and supporting relevant policies and guidelines for distributed learning across the university. CDL reports data to colleges, departments, and senior administration to ensure compliance with accreditation requirements and to collaborate on the strategic development of online courses and programs.
  • Faculty Development: CDL provides a suite of professional development programs to help prepare faculty to teach online, as well as a number of modalities.
  • Course Design: The CDL instructional design team works closely with faculty as consultants to help design and structure online courses and programs.
  • Course Production: CDL’s course production model is designed to support all faculty teaching online, regardless of their technical skills or comfort with media production. CDL will work with faculty to help them produce their own material or will create original media on their behalf. CDL’s production services include course programming, graphics, interactive exercises, games/simulations, animations, and video with on-location and full studio capabilities.
  • Technical Support: Once a course has been designed and developed, CDL offers support throughout its delivery. Specialized technical support is provided to faculty and students to ensure a successful course experience.
  • Assessment: The Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness (RITE) supports UCF faculty in formulating and implementing research on effective teaching practices in higher education. This research is used to inform CDL’s policy formation, faculty development, course design/development, and technical support functions.

Library

The UCF Libraries is a gateway to academic resources, providing services and facilities in support of teaching and learning, research, intellectual growth, and enrichment of the academic experience. The Libraries provides access to a wealth of resources through the online catalog and electronic databases, including online journal subscriptions and full-text books.

Library faculty and staff extend an open invitation to email, call, or stop by and learn more about the resources and services available to you and your students. Contact information for your subject librarian can be found at http://library.ucf.edu/subject/All/.

A working group of librarians and instructional designers supports teaching faculty in transitioning to free, library-sourced, or low-cost alternatives to traditional textbooks. For information, see http://guides.ucf.edu/textbooks/home or contact your subject librarian.

Office of Research

The UCF Office of Research (OOR) coordinates all sponsored research at UCF. OOR also supports the grant application and submission processes. See https://www.research.ucf.edu/.

Undergraduate Research

The Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) connects undergraduate students and faculty interested in pursuing research, and showcases their efforts. See https://academicsuccess.ucf.edu/our/.

Student Accessibility Services

Student Accessibility Services (SAS) is committed to providing an accessible educational environment for students with disabilities by working closely with the campus community to minimize barriers that impact academic and campus experiences. See https://sas.sdes.ucf.edu/.

Experiential Learning and Service-Learning

Experiential Learning staff support faculty in the development of internship and service-learning courses, provide best practices workshops, and maintain statistics on experiential learning across campus. The office develops and maintains relationships with industry and community partners. This office is part of the High Impact Practices hub. See more at https://explearning.ucf.edu/. For more specific information about service-learning, see https://explearning.ucf.edu/faculty/service-learning-resources/.

UCF Global

UCF Global is the organizational division on campus dedicated to international outreach and opportunity. Its quest is to transform lives by providing access to high-impact, international experiences across the UCF and global communities and to serve as a model of excellence for innovation, partnership, and services. This is accomplished in part through the administration of the English Language Institute, along with multiple compliance units offering support services to international students, faculty, and staff. Visit https://global.ucf.edu/.