2015: Collaborations for Empowerment & Learning

Many of us recognize that the traditional college classroom—that in which the professor presents fact-based information to students and then tests them on their retention of those facts—is falling short of teaching students to think effectively in the discipline. Yet, few would disagree with the notion that problem solving should be a goal for students in any discipline. Today’s workshop explores various practical approaches to integrating critical and creative thinking into every step of course design—from developing course goals and student-learning outcomes, to creating meaningful activities and assignments, to conceiving and grading authentic assessments.

For faculty teaching large lecture-based courses, it is often a struggle to envision how to successfully execute the flipped classroom method when barriers such as technology or classroom constraints exist. In this session, participants will learn about strategies that can be used to transition a large lecture course into a flipped classroom. The session will draw largely on the experiences of the presenter in implementing case studies and the flipped classroom method in a large (250+ students) Introductory Biology class, but the approach is broadly applicable to any discipline. Tools for preparing original didactic videos and strategies for presenting case studies will be discussed. The session will also examine how the flipped classroom has changed teaching and learning habits and experiences, for both faculty and students.

This presentation will report on a national study conducted on the current institutional practices, structures, resources, and policies that are needed to ensure that online courses are accessible for all students in higher education. Specifically, it will focus on the need to better articulate who is responsible for online accessibility; the need for institutional investment; and the sense of overwhelm of where to begin. Finally, this presentation will close with a review of best practices for ensuring accessible online courses. At the conclusion of the session, participants will receive A Guide to Increased Collaboration for Online Accessibility Initiatives.

Ever since the first personal computers, there has been interest in teaching with digital technologies. This interest greatly expanded with the rise of the Internet and online resources, and information technologies offer important tools that can enhance our classroom teaching. But too often, not enough attention is focused on matching specific technology tools to individual student need. This presentation will provide an overview on how to assess classroom technology resources within the context of UDL pedagogies.

Creating a culture of trust and cooperation allows for learner autonomy. The presenters have been experimenting with models of student-led environments and will demonstrate how they have adapted the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument for Classrooms (OCAI-C) in their academic communities. In this interactive session, presenters and participants will engage in a process to understand and implement creative problem solving in the 21st century. Faculty will reflect on ideas of how to decentralize power in the classroom without giving up accountability.

It is no secret that Learning Communities have long been proven to be part of a series of high impact practices in higher education. Digging more deeply into the basics of first-year learning communities, the facilitators of this session will illustrate the many layers of community building they have successfully used over the years with their first-year students. Teaming (on both the student and faculty level), engagement in community service-learning, and use of project-based learning that involves students, faculty, and nonprofit agencies will be highlighted. Session participants will come away with concrete ideas on how to incorporate these community-building aspects into their own classrooms.

This session has a twofold focus in showcasing a delivery format for using technology to facilitate learning, the “drop-in and learn” event, and also providing a hands-on example of using TubeChop. TubeChop is a web-based application that allows faculty members to cut a section of a YouTube video and insert it into their PowerPoint. No more scrolling through the video to find the few moments you need!

Universal Design of Learning (UDL) “is a set of principles for curriculum development that give all individuals equal opportunities to learn” (CAST.org). It is growing in popularity in elementary and secondary education and has started to gain a foothold in some colleges across the country. If nothing else, college faculty need to be aware of the UDL system in order to serve students who will come to college with a personal UDL “history.” This session will present an interactive (UDL style) opportunity for college administrators and faculty to learn about UDL and experience a short UDL lesson and investigate the creation process of a UDL assignment.

This session is based on a course that I am currently teaching at Pine Manor College, Leadership in Action: Using Sports to Achieve Social Change (Note: The course ends on May 1, 2015). The course enables college students to examine how sports can help create positive changes for both individuals and society as a whole. For their service learning project, my students will be designing and implementing a series of activities and reflective exercises (incorporating motivational sports slides with words and/or images) for middle school students in an after-school program at the Boys and Girls Club in Boston. The service learning project is intended to benefit the Boys and Girls Club students through their experience and appreciation of sports as well as my students in their roles as facilitators of social change. My session is directly connected to the theme of collaboration leading to empowerment and learning.

This session will highlight the use of course-based research in the lab portion of Organic Chemistry II. We will describe the origins of the research idea as an undergraduate thesis in biology, its adaptation into a research project for 16 students in Organic II, and its current status as an undergraduate thesis project in chemistry. We will explore the scientific outcomes of the investigation and the extended student-faculty collaborations over two departments, two thesis students and 16 teaching-lab students. Comparative data between regular and research-based lab students will be presented.

Session Prezi presentation can be accessed online at: https://prezi.com/p8uejzwwkvdb/student-faculty-collaboration-in-organic-chemistry-a-course-based-research-experience/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Teachers are responsible for teaching a growing amount of information and skill sets in a finite amount of time. The use of technology can help make this challenge more manageable. The use of random technologies is an ineffective strategy. Teachers should choose technologies thoughtfully with specific learning objectives in mind. Strategies like asynchronous discussions, communication resources, and assessment tools will be discussed. Multiple technology resources will be shown, but only one resource will be demonstrated and discussed for each strategy to maximize productivity in the session.

Presentation available online through Google Slides: https://goo.gl/fdzyLF

Academic advising is a precursor and companion to instruction and the curricular content of students' education. It can become a secondary act to our teaching and yet it is primary to developing a relationship in which students become known to us as teachers and in which students come to know themselves as life-long learners. Using contemplative practices and a developmental advising framework this poster demonstrates how academic advising can be used in advising with social work and public health students to achieve holistic student development in collaboration for learning and empowerment.

As faculty transition to teaching in Team-Based Learning classrooms, they must make decisions not only about their pedagogy, but also about how they will situate their instruction within a team-based learning environment using a variety of technology tools. However studies have largely ignored the perceived technology barriers and adoption factors faculty experience in these classrooms (Walker, Brooks, & Baepler, 2011). This study investigates a group of faculty members converting a traditional lecture course to a team-based learning class for the first time providing an opportunity to investigate the perceived technology barriers and adoption factors in team-based learning classrooms.

Do we really understand everything we think we know about fostering significant learning? Are our instructional practices sufficiently focused on addressing deeply rooted misconceptions that arguably are the most powerful impediments to learning? And are our assessment methods revealing whether students’ learning experiences are in fact changing the cognitive patterns deeply rooted in their misconceptions? Participants at this session will reflect on how they address student misconceptions, exchange views with colleagues, and compare their approaches to a model suggested by the facilitator.

Data Structures ranks as one of the most challenging courses in our Computer Science curriculum and as one that has the steepest learning curve for our students. An on-going problem we face in teaching data structures is finding time and mechanism to cover the mathematical concepts that are necessary for understanding the critical aspects of the course. In this poster presentation, we share our interdisciplinary approach, the challenges we faced, what worked and well and what still needs improvement. We share survey results showing that students had the opportunity to make connections not only between these two courses, but also between how what is being learned in the classroom fits into a broader scope of learning.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one of three adults over sixty-five years falls each year. Choi and Hector (2012) conducted research on fall prevention programs between 2000 and 2009 to assess the effectiveness of fall prevention programs and found most fall prevention programs decreased fall rates by 9 or 10%. Simulation has been utilized in health provider education (Rodgers, 2007) with extensive literature regarding its use and success with interprofessional education (Rossler, 2013). This presentation will showcase the incorporation of midlevel fidelity simulation into an interprofessional fall prevention program for seniors in the community.

According to Neal Lerner, laboratory learning is “a clarion call for hands-on learning and social interaction among students with each other and collectively among faculty and staff and students” (The Idea of a Writing Laboratory). Laboratory learning, within and outside the classroom, provides a frame for the good work of higher education. If we act now, if we accept the concept of kairos, we will do more than help our current students. We will be sustaining higher education for the future. We will be a laboratory experiment that works–for students, for faculty, for staff, and in the larger higher education community.

Goodwin College is a new baccalaureate with an expanding faculty for four, current academic departments. At the start of the 2014-2015 academic-year Goodwin College implemented an approved Faculty Mentorship Program across the four departments. Institutions are using mentoring at an increased rate to bolster faculty developments and student retention. The program director matched senior faculty with early-career faculty in the mentorship program for one year duration. This poster session brings aspects of the proposal, design, approval, implementation and evaluation of year-one of formal faculty mentoring at Goodwin College (e.g. challenges and strengths). Lessons learned are explored and described to poster viewers so that they may start or improve their faculty mentoring program.

As part of Fairfield University’s campus-wide initiative to promote quantitative reasoning (QR), two faculty members, one from Mathematics and one from Psychology, created faculty development workshops titled “Statistics for Everyone.” These interactive and interdisciplinary workshops provided valuable background material and teaching resources so that faculty could more confidently integrate statistics into their classes, and thus help students develop statistical reasoning. This poster will highlight the resources and materials presented to the more than 40 workshop participants across campus, and discuss some of the outcomes, successes and challenges of this type of QR initiative.

Robert Kalm develops graduate communications pedagogy, both online and on campus, taught primarily through mobile social media (blogs and microblogs, content communities, social networks, and collaborative websites)(e.g. Twitter, Wordpress, Wikipedia, etc.) and outside of any managed virtual learning environments like Blackboard or Moodle. His poster will share five years’ course development and show professors how any type or level of program can utilize online and mobile technology to foster the global, interactive, virtual classroom.

Classes with a short-term travel abroad component are becoming more popular as an alternative to semester long study abroad. Faculty led classes provide an unique opportunity to connect the knowledge/skills practiced in the classroom with their application on global scale, especially when the interactions involve cooperation with institutions in another country. This allows students to see solutions to their questions from the perspective of other cultures and compare them with their own understanding. This poster will explore practical methods of incorporating the travel abroad into class curriculum, and discuss logistics of travel with student groups.

The poster depicts our World of Learners Wheel, which allows those professionals who work with students to quickly assess, and ultimately address common student barriers. This model, derived from our original research, is the visual tool which we created to represent those specific factors within Four Domains of Learning that represent common obstacles for many college students, especially those within the at-risk population. Barriers, applied strategies, and the positive attributes are shown in relationship to one another. The intention of this instrument is to support students in transforming their own learning, which in turn can lead to a certain level of empowerment as they shift any challenges to the more productive positive attributes required for academic success.

In team-teaching classes of first-year undergraduate Honors students, we have found that even well-motivated students complain of “too much reading.” We can make it easier for students to read extensively and critically, particularly via interdisciplinary pedagogy. Many of our students’ “ah-ha” moments combined historical with economic perspectives showing the creativity that results from reading economic monographs, historical texts, and an historical novel in the same course. We found outlines, discussion questions, study guides, and glossaries useful, but we also selected our course readings to ensure significant topical overlap. The diagrammatic methods of Economics helped students comprehend more loosely-connected historical narratives. We used matrices and other visual methods to accustom students to different patterns of prose, giving them practice in what Nancy Spivey calls the “reorganizing” of unfamiliar texts to conform to the students’ schemata.

The WELL program enables undergraduate students to connect with Bay Path University’s mission in challenging women to become leaders and to become confident and resourceful contributors to our increasingly interdependent world. The WELL program prepares students to be reflective and capable people, students, and professionals who can influence and advocate for others. A component of this program is a connection with a community partnership. This workshop will introduce the partnership between Friends of the Homeless and Bay Path University. As a result of this partnership a thrift shop was opened that provides a shopping experience for the homeless population allowing them to receive essential items at no cost.