May 30, 2013

At Widener University, much of our mission is based upon engaging students in service projects as part of an integrative undergraduate learning experience. Within the sciences, we are especially receptive to having students work on international service projects that are linked to conservation and/or sustainable development initiatives. The current project outlines a unique relationship between Widener University, Golden Valley Farms Coffee Roasters (GVF), Las Lajas, a coffee farm in Costa Rica, and a food service provider. Collectively we are assisting farmers in Costa Rica convert their conventional coffee farms to a more environmentally friendly operation that employs the use of organic cultivation practices. We are attempting to change one of the most environmentally exploitative agricultural industries to one that favors a species-rich pesticide/herbicid-free environment. Since critical reflection and research are essential components of an exemplary undergraduate service learning experience, our students will document this cultivation-to-cup transition, while learning about the impact of their purchasing decisions in a global context. This proposal will outline the development of this innovative venture and describe how other institutions can become involved. We are looking for partners to help augment this unique service-oriented sustainable development initiative.

An interactive demonstration of various teaching methods using Remote Response Systems (Automated Response Systems, Personal Response Systems, "Clickers") as they were applied to the small sized class (< 20 students). Most of the research with clickers has been in large classes. The methods used (peer instruction, group discussion, and simple polling with contingency teaching) will be demonstrated and results of the initial study with a class of 14 students will be presented. Internet access for all participants (local computers, laptops, or phones) will be necessary for this activity.

Interdisciplinary courses and curricula moved from the shadows of academe in the 1960’s to a prominent place in colleges and universities during the first decade of the 21st century. Sometimes viewed as a panacea to challenges in higher education, interdisciplinarity is also considered a necessary stepping stone to prepare students for complex and globalized societies, economic and environmental challenges, growth in diverse knowledge industries, etc. Despite the fact that interdisciplinary approaches are necessary, constructing interdisciplinary competence in faculty and students is a hard and arduous process and faces multi-layered challenges: Faculty are often not trained in interdisciplinary research methods, pedagogies, curricular design and collaboration. Students are often times not aware of disciplinary methodologies and feel inept at synthesizing knowledge models in interdisciplinary courses; and lastly, after interdisciplinary programs are introduced and maintained, experimentation with curricular designs often comes to a halt. In the proposed conference session, we will address these complex problems and present examples of improving faculty competence with regard to interdisciplinary course design, share practices which empower students’ comprehension of both disciplinary and interdisciplinary methodologies and discuss strategies to keep interdisciplinary programs fluid and vibrant.

Classroom experiences can be improved by interweaving content delivery with reflective activities that promote meaning making and inquiry. Our team was attracted to the prospect of using iPads to couple powerful presentation technology with the ease with which multi-touch tablets can be used for annotation and extemporizing. However, our experience was that iPads alone fall short of the functionality we sought because (1) the feature sets of iPad apps are usually limited, and (2) multi-touch technology doesn’t yet support overlaid applications (providing a graphics “transparency” for annotation of slides) because this would constitute a potential security breach in a multi-touch environment. We report on the use of an application called Doceri that allows us to merge the fuller feature set of our laptops with iPads. In this system, the laptop (connected to the projector) sends a mirrored video signal of its screen image to Doceri on the iPad. Doceri provides versatile annotation tools to annotate the laptop’s screen image, which is transmitted back to the laptop in real time. This technology enables much more extemporization and flexibility in classroom activities. We will illustrate the use of Doceri and then break into multiple stations of laptop-iPad pairs so that participants will be able to play with the technology.

Social media offers a unique opportunity to give students power and accountability over their learning experience. It stretches class discussion 24/7, increases transpar­ency, integrates real-time news and information, and builds stronger, more lasting learning communities. The very social media applications that have become instrumental in our everyday lives can and will be used to enhance Higher Ed learning experiences and drive learn­ing outcomes -- as soon as we figure out how to do so effectively. This session explores the question: How can faculty-directed use of social media enhance and expand course themes and content, and increase undergraduate student engagement, empowerment and collaboration? Sharing examples and fresh findings from social media pilots conducted in Fall 2012 and Spring 2013 in three different classes, the presentation will showcase what is possible in learning and collaboration when social media is lever­aged with the ultimate goal of driving measurable learning outcomes.

Collaboratively teaching an interdisciplinary course provides faculty members with an opportunity to grow as professionals, teachers, and intellectuals. Research has demonstrated that this type of learning experience fosters students’ abilities to make connections across disciplines. In this session we will explore the challenges and benefits of a campus-wide effort to offer collaboratively taught interdisciplinary courses to students in their second semester of sophomore year. We will examine faculty approaches to their work together, from syllabus development through planning, teaching, and grading. Techniques that work and approaches that have not been as successful will be considered. The potential for empowering faculty and students through interdisciplinary collaborative teaching will be explored using the experience on one campus as a starting point for discussion.

Molecules & Minds is in its 8th year of researching how to improve the effectiveness of simulations based on kinetic molecular theory. Our immediate goal is to help learners explore and understand observable, symbolic, and explanatory levels of representation through interactive multimedia resources that allow learners to control variables and pacing. Our key findings: big ideas need a simple design; icons work better than symbols; freedom to explore supports learning and engagement; problematizing narratives that bring science from the classroom into the everyday world lead to better learning outcomes; and that topic order may be important for learning, are presented.

There is a growing body of literature focused specifically on faculty mentoring in institutions of higher education. The literature describes two dominant models of mentoring. The first is a dyadic model where senior faculty members are paired with junior faculty members to pass down their wisdom and advice. The second prevailing model is more collaborative; it promotes co-mentoring through reciprocal relationships with a two-way exchange of knowledge and support. The authors of this proposal sought to develop a mentoring system that reflects key features of the second model - collaboration, responsiveness, reciprocity and inclusiveness. The proposed poster session builds on the second model to describe a third conceptualization of mentoring –a community of practice for mentoring. In a community of practice, members learn through joint engagement in and contribution to the community. Applying this paradigm to mentoring, mentoring arises out of faculty’s joint engagement in shared academic tasks. In a community of practice that mentors, ideally everyone mentors and everyone gets the mentoring they need to increase their competence for a variety of purposes, including tenure, promotion, reflection, and rejuvenation. Visitors to our poster presentation will learn about a new model of mentoring that has the potential to transform a workplace, empowering all those who work there by helping them to feel supported and valued. Specifically, they will learn the characteristics of a community of practice that mentors; the benefits of participating; and our learnings from our initial efforts to implement such a model.

This poster session describes a partnership between Fairfield University's Program in Applied Ethics and the Rotary Club of Fairfield, in which they designed and led ethics breakfast programs at the University Bookstore. This poster session will describe two elements of the ethics programs: 1) The epistemological underpinnings of the collaborative approach to the design and development of the workshops; and, 2) The practical steps for identifying the workshop participants and working with them to facilitate a collaborative exchange. I believe this session’s chief strength lies in its correlation of philosophy and practice: It will show how certain epistemological commitments translate into specific practical steps to organize people with diverse perspectives for a successful collaborate public discussion. This poster session will describe these details from the Rotary-University collaboration: identifying ideas and speakers, developing a program agenda, and facilitating the discussion. It will emphasize practical implications of the underlying philosophical ideas.

Through engaging descriptions and visuals, the poster will present the Jesuit Universities Humanitarian Action Network (JUHAN), a pioneering domestic and global partnership to promote humanitarian scholarship and action. The poster will demonstrate how humanitarian objectives have been integrated into a wide range of multi-disciplinary courses; how JUHAN as a platform will explore great questions; how the JUHAN assessment tools measure student learning in the context of humanitarian coursework and co-curricular engagements; and JUHAN accomplishments and best practices from community outreach and humanitarian projects. The session will be of particular interest to participants who wish to: explore and enhance humanitarian studies on their own campuses, look at ways to deeply engage students in great questions through multi-disciplinary courses, and further humanitarian action both in their local communities and abroad.

The use of online courses on college campuses has grown substantially in recent years, despite limited information on how these courses are perceived by faculty and students, compared to traditional (classroom) classes. We surveyed for 1) student and faculty perceptions of online versus traditional courses; 2) perceptions of students who take online courses and students’ motivations for taking online courses; 3) perceptions of faculty members who teach online courses; and, 4) demographic characteristics. Significant findings from this research show that compared to faculty perceptions, students tend to see online courses as more self-directed, do not see online platforms as conducive to collaborative learning, and believe that online students must be more willing to teach themselves. Students in online courses also feel more disconnected from professors and fellow students than professors believe them to be. In addition, faculty tends to see the role of the professor as more critical to the success of online courses than students do.

The recent Institute of Medicine report on the Future of nursing states that Nurses must achieve higher levels of education and training in response to ...increasing [healthcare] demands” (IOM, 2010, p. 2). This statement comes at a pivotal time in nursing education. Nurses interested in pursuing careers in advanced practice are now being educated at the doctoral level through new Doctorate of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree programs. In light of this shift toward doctoral education for advanced practice nurses, master’s programs in nursing are in a tenuous position, and it is questionable whether the remaining master’s level educational programs are meeting the needs of consumers, healthcare institutions and students. Given the great need for clinical leadership in healthcare, it is essential to re-examine master’s nursing education in order to ensure that educational institutions are meeting both the needs of nurses interested in obtaining advanced degrees and the needs of consumers and health care systems. Globally, there is a strong call for developing models of interprofessional education, training and practice. Many academic institutions that educate nurses do not educate other health professionals and therefore, interprofessional education is a unique challenge. Given these challenges, Fairfield University’s School of Nursing redesigned a Nursing Leadership program to allow nursing professionals increased diversity of academic studies and greater exposure to the richness of gradate education throughout the campus. The outcomes of the model will be studies in a triangulated approach which includes a digital portfolio model.

The Software Engineering program at Fairfield University has integrated a service learning component into its curriculum to expose software engineering students to the community-engaged scholarship learning model reflecting Fairfield University’s mission of integrating living and learning. The Capstone Project course in the Software Engineering program was designated as the first service-learning course in the School of Engineering in 2009 to provide service to community organizations that are in great need of quality software applications to facilitate their work. The poster will provide the technical details of the system with diagrams and snapshots as well as the summary of students’ leaning through reflection and reports. The future improvement of the project is also included.

As the use of technology continues to evolve and society demands more productivity in less time, instructors seek innovative ways and technological tools to connect with and instruct students. The current generation of college students is so adapted to the digital world they have been labeled the multi-tasking generation (Foehr, 2006; Wallis, 2006). Unfortunately, it is more common today for instructors to see students staring at their various media devices than reading course textbooks. One reason may be that traditional textbooks do not meet the needs of the digital generation. Could we harness the media addicted behaviors of students to improve their reading habits? For educators to tap into the multi-tasking, time conscious nature of students, it is necessary to think about innovative ways to encourage students to access assigned reading more frequently and efficiently. This study explored student perceptions of the use of audio books for course reading assignments as an innovative technological tool in an effort to encourage consumption of textbook materials. Findings revealed preference is tied to learning style and student perceptions of audio books is highly dependent on the level of engagement developed by the audio book, the navigability of files, and the ability of the audio book to be used by multiple devices.