May 29, 2014

Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTL) have become important arenas of faculty development in teaching and scholarship on many campuses, educating and supporting faculty to become more expert in all aspects of teaching, and to become scholars of teaching and learning. We analyzed our CTL activity to discern how it fits a model for integrated mentoring within a community of practice (Smith, Calderwood, Dohm & Gill Lopez, (2013), the situated context for faculty work and for faculty development activity. The center facilitated dyadic, network and co-mentoring activity across its offerings, infused throughout the 3 conceptual models of faculty work predominant on our campus, with network building and co-mentoring relationships predominating. This study adds the notion of mentoring leadership to Smith et al.’s structural-functional model. Implications for CTL’s are that mentoring within a Community of Practice Framework is appealing and empowering to faculty and professional staff, economically sound and organizationally sustainable.

During this session participants will learn about the teaching and learning benefits of an online collaboration platform. The presenters will briefly share their experiences using Blackboard Collaborate in teaching nontraditional learners. This hands-on session will be conducted in its entirety using Blackboard Collaborate. All participants will have the opportunity to actively participate in this virtual classroom, interact with the presenters and peers within the session, and reflect on how virtual classrooms could apply to their teaching and learning practices. The session will be archived for later access and review.

This session will offer strategies to participants which will empower them to design authentic research assignments that engage students and encourage the development of critical thinking and information literacy skills. The presenters will share and discuss their collaboration at Fairfield University, as a member of the biology faculty and an instructional librarian, to design an authentic assignment on the topic of the regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for an honors course that would incorporate information literacy skills. Participants will have the opportunity to analyze assignments and create their own authentic assignments using the concepts presented.

As many colleges and universities across the country are moving toward assessment-based models of teaching, instructors are now being asked to provide greater amounts and types of data to demonstrate the achievement of student learning outcomes in various courses. As Quinnipiac University is no exception, its Sociology Department has been working through a two-year program review in which departmental learning outcomes were created by its members to reflect a number of university-wide learning outcomes. These learning outcomes were established in a number of competency areas such as Communication, Critical Thinking, and Diversity, and they were designed to be differently addressed and built upon across courses at the 100-, 200-, and 300-level. As an instructor of an Introduction to Sociology course during the Fall 2013 semester, I attempted to assess a 100-level course diversity learning outcome using a pre-test/post-test quasi study (N = 32) in which I assigned a WAC-based writing-to-learn (WTL) low-stakes writing assignment that was issued during the first week and last week of class. Students responded in class to the same prompt, and I was able to gather responses for a preliminary round of data collection. Changes from the pre- to post-tests were coded along a four-point scale to reflect excellent, fair, marginal, and poor responses. Results demonstrate that approximately half of the students (n = 18) acquired “excellent” or “fair” responses based on overall development and/or elaboration of response from pre-test. While simple analysis of results demonstrate a surface-level gain in disciplinary knowledge of diversity within a sociological context, difficulties in evaluating such assessment revolve around a number of issues, the most obvious one being how to assess knowledge gained when pre-test responses are already initially strong.

We will present on the success of using the social media site Tumblr as a tool in the classroom for students to engage in visual mind mapping, image farming, video and sound sharing, personal and group design, e-portfolios, and digital composition. We will discuss the use of these digital tools as important components to writing personal and academic essays in the 21st Century classroom. We will also discuss issues of access, equity, literacy, and agency, when engaging digital media in the classroom, using both experience and theory in the discussion.

Approximately 600 undergraduates completed an introductory statistics course in 2013 in one of two learning environments at Suffolk University, a mid-sized “balanced arts and sciences” university in Boston. The comparison group completed the course in a traditional classroom-based environment, whereas the treatment group completed the course in a flipped-hybrid environment, viewing lecture material online prior to once-a-week face-to-face meetings. After controlling for observable differences, students in the hybrid environment performed better on the common final exam; however, there were no significant differences in the final grades or student satisfaction between the two environments.

Students participate in a semester-long interdisciplinary course on Cuba which revolves around a one week trip to Havana halfway through the semester. Prior to travel the course is devoted to learning about Cuban history, US-Cuban relations, and understanding the Cuban economy, culture, and the overall context for the renown Cuban health care system. During the immersion trip students attend lectures by Cuban scholars and professionals related to site visits (health clinics, hospitals, medical and nursing schools). Students also attend cultural events to round out the academic experience. There is daily reflection through guided discussion and individual journaling. Post-travel, students complete an on-going independent research project and incorporate their travel experiences to supplement the literature review.

The Interprofessional Community-Based Service Learning Seminars provided students with opportunities to collaborate on a community service learning project by working with, by and from each other. Students from multiple majors participated in a seminar with a focus on health, safety and/or wellness in the local community. Students worked together with various populations beginning with a needs assessment, planning and implementation of a health promotion program, and follow up after the program was completed. Various assignments including a reflection component throughout the experience were completed individually and collaboratively during the weeklong seminar. The feedback from the seminar was positive and there was a desire to shift this seminar to create a credit bearing course offering from the faculty, students, and administrators.

This course was set up to be a community service learning offering, however, it also encompassed a unique interprofessional focus unlike any existing service learning course. Learners were introduced to the Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice while learning about each other and the discipline s/he is pursuing in an interactive learning environment. Leaders emerged at various stages of development and implementation of the program. Upon completion of the seminar, the participants’ surveys reflected positive learning experiences both while working collaboratively with student peers and with the community partners.

This poster invites examination of intersections of teaching and student learning outcomes arising from a service-learning course that supports undergraduate students to understand the social construction of teaching and learning, contribute to student learning in local schools and communities with diverse populations, understand the complexities of schooling from multiple insider perspectives, and engage in the process of discerning whether to pursue a career in education.

This poster session will highlight specific applications of the flipped learning classroom approach to promote active reading in the elementary classroom. Screencasted, annotated lessons, online resources such as Khan Academy, Ted Ed, You Tube, Teacher Tube, Annenberg Media, etc. Teachers seeking student-centered, evidence-based reading strategies as per the ELA Common Core State Standards, will learn about an innovative way to increase depth of comprehension through student ownership of learning. Collaborative, problem based learning will play a key role in the classroom activity component. Classroom based research data demonstrating impact on student learning will be collaboratively analyzed by a research team of graduate students and higher education faculty.

The use of educational technology has a long history in medical education (Ellaway & Masters 2008). The use of web-based learning environments and tools has become pretty much de rigueur in many if not most medical schools today, but often with limited benefit to learners (Cook, 2009). The problem stems, we argue, from only asking, “What works?” and therefore relying on decontextualized evidence to inform the use of technology in complex educational environments. We should instead, we argue, follow the realist mantra of asking, “What works in this context with these learners at this time?” (Wong, Greenhalgh, Westhorp, & Pawson, 2012). Although our research is based on medical education, we believe that our conclusions are applicable to a broad spectrum of teaching and learning. These twelve tips represent a series of principles for the effective implementation (rather than design) of computer-assisted instructional materials.

12 Tips:

1. Match CAI difficulty to your learners’ developmental level
2. Minimize extraneous features that can inhibit learning
3. Balance interactivity with cognitive load
4. Provide rich feedback and guidance
5. Maximize learner control and agency in using CAI
6. Use CAI to enhance learning around as well as within it
7. Clearly define and communicate the reasons for using CAI
8. Integrate and make space for the CAI in the curriculum
9. Be explicit about how using CAI relates to assessment
10. Address faculty motives and perceptions
11. Identify and mitigate issues that may diminish the effectiveness of using CAI
12. Engage in quality monitoring and improvement

Dr. Bayers and Steffen developed and delivered an interdisciplinary upper division honors course on water in the Fall 2013. Why Water? Why Now? And What did we do? This poster will present an overview of how the course was developed, what we had students do, and how they responded. Water is essential for life. Water can bring horrible death and destruction. Water is both everywhere and invisible in our modern world. This course explored the nature of water as a physical substance (Why does NASA spend millions looking everywhere for it?) and as a metaphor for living. Weaving together political science (who owns water?), literature (Hetch Hetchy, Land of Little Rain, sacred texts), cinema (NOVA-Earth From Space, Rango, others), and field trips to local watersheds, this course challenged students to come to a deeper understanding of how critical water is for human civilization and how viewing it from different perspectives allows for a fuller understanding of its importance. We will describe how the course was structured, challenges we faced, and the student response to this course.