This roundtable will seek to attract teaching and learning professionals/faculty members/instructional designers and assessors who might be interested in discussing their progress in the uses of electronic portfolios to support student learning, professional development, and the assessment of learning and curriculum. The roundtable facilitator will discuss the applications of wordpress.com, a freeware blog site, by undergraduates to organize their learning, reflect on the integration of their experiences and practice with course theory. A case study in the reflections of undergraduates who participated in a global field experience in Jamaican schools will illustrate the uses of electronic portfolio for creativity, reflection, and personal growth. The roundtable facilitator will discuss the uses of AAC&U Integrative Learning VALUE rubric to assess student electronic portfolios, course redesign that encourages students to archive their coursework in an ePortfolio to empower them to reflect on their learning and the integration of campus experiences to connect theory and practice.

Roundtable participants will be encouraged to discuss their uses of electronic portfolio to enhance learning and pedagogy, the potential impact of the growing uses of “student success portfolios” in PK-12 schools on learning and teaching in post-secondary settings, and their practices and planning for assessment which may be enhanced using student ePortfolios. We will also discuss the uses of electronic portfolios to encourage collaborations inside the learning community and outside in the wider community of parents, family members, and other stake-holders. This session would conclude with the development of a listserv for further discussions and collaborative support among the participants.

Now in its fourth year, the Avery Point Learning Community, “Local Environments, Global Citizens” is extending its interdisciplinary, experiential work beyond the campus community collaborating with public schools and libraries, environmental organizations, community artists, and other outreach programs. This session will highlight specific projects cultivated through the Avery Point Learning Community and the community-building successes resulting from those collaborations.

Community college students are oftentimes precariously balancing employment, families, career-change stress, college demands, and more. The number of students who are showing up in class without having read the materials is on the rise, with many consequences and certainly also causing the rise of the instructor’s blood pressure. Quality classroom learning requires that students have read and thought about the assigned materials. All of this requires time. Time that more and more students, even if willing, are unable to find. In their book, “How Learning Works,” Ambrose, et al. state, “learning is a process that leads to change, which occurs as a result of experience and increases the potential for improved performance and future learning.” (p. 3) Howard Gardner speaks about the “correct answer compromise” and how it affects our students’ abilities to actively learn and engage with written material. The RWRR strategy was designed to support the process of learning content from written material. In addition, it supports students’ study habits, their grasp of the value of reflective practice, and the skill of thinking about their own thinking and writing. For the instructor, it supports all students’ attention to and grasp of the reading assigned.

In preparation for this session, please read: http://www.profsharon.net/cae/

At the Eleventh Annual Summer Conference – Innovative Pedagogy & Course Redesign – at Fairfield University, 2011, we presented a session on Active Productive Listening. Since that time our interest in the role of listening as a key component of critical thinking pedagogy has evolved into an interactive workshop with students and faculty at Southern Connecticut State University (November 2011) entitled Listening as a Precondition to Critical Thinking, surveys of over 250 students regarding their desire or ability to listen in the classroom, a paper The Role of Active Productive Listening in Communication, Pedagogy, and Thinking Critically published in the Journal of Business Management and Change, and a presentation at the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Conference (January 2013) entitled In One Eye and Out the Other. As our listening research continues we realize that in today’s world students learn visually as well as aurally. Students learn from “visual listening” – listening related to reading texts, emails, and tweets. They are “listening” to conversations "visually" with their eyes. This presentation discusses our findings on student learning – listening and “visual listening” in order to think critically and explores the need to capture this unique way of “listening” and incorporate it into teaching students to think critically. Participants will an opportunity to experience various interactive aspects of the presentation during our session.