| Summary: | 碩士 === 臺灣大學 === 圖書資訊學研究所 === 98 === Pursuing of teaching excellence is essential for the World Class Universities. University instructional resources center is a teaching oriented institution, and it is intended to provide teaching support services for enhancing teaching qualities. Therefore, it plays an imperative role in excellent instruction. This study aims at exploring the instructional resources center’s function and role in excellent instruction, its background, goals, strategies, organizational design, support in excellent instruction, and the partnership.
In this study, interviews with directors from instructional resources centers of six universities, and questionnaire surveys of directors of instructional resources centers of the universities funded by the Ministry of Education’s University Teaching Excellence Program in recent five years are conducted. After that, further result and suggestions are given.
The result indicates the instructional resources center is mainly established between 2005 and 2007 as a result of the University Teaching Excellence Program, to enhance teaching quality, increase university competitiveness, and reengineer. The short-term goal is to maintain stable functions of instructional resources center function stably, to acquire funding by the University Teaching Excellence Program every year and execute the program effectively. The mid-term and long-term goal is about the aspect of system and attitude. The long-term operational strategies are as follows: (1) to obtain stable budgets, personnel and resources, (2) to obtain enough administrative supports, (3) to apply the customer-centered philosophy. Above 80% of university instructional resources centers are newly-established units, most of which are subsidiary department subordinate to the office of academic affairs or the separate first-level unit. The budgets of instructional resources centers are mainly from the grants of University Teaching Excellence Program. Over 70% of the universities indicate that they will continue to budget for the coming year after the University Teaching Excellence Program ends, and the current trend is towards the decrease of reliance on grants gradually. The professional background of instructional resources center directors are mainly Engineering, Education and Business Management. The number of staffing of most instructional resources centers is below 10. Personnel are mainly administrative staffs and informal employees, and it’s not easy to hire professionals. For staff development, instructional resources centers send the staffs to take part in the training courses on campus or off the campus and they also encourage in-service training.
The instructional resources centers mainly provide support to excellent instruction through works on faculty development, instructional design, teaching evaluation and research, student development and media service. In other words, the instructional resources center is a teaching support, research and development, excellent instruction planning, and learning support unit. Instructional resources centers often cooperate with the computer and information networking center, the office of academic affairs and other administration, Department of Education, other department supporting teaching assistants and some other colleges. Instructional resources centers join alliances, share teaching resources, and cooperate with other universities.
In the end, this study suggests as follows: (1) to improve the personnel structure and pay attention to the training and development of human resources; (2) to obtain enough administrative support, stable budgets, resources and personnel; (3) to organize the system and upgrade the level of services; (4) instructional resources centers should make efforts in having teachers understand the importance of enhancing professional capability; the universities ought to set up the rewarding measures and rating methods to inspire teachers’ motivation to teaching. (5) to consider revising the policies and standards of University Teaching Excellence Program.
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