Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Tuesday Teaching and Learning
Today we have three items we would like to share: First, an article by Ken A. Graetz, the director of e-learning at Winona State University, discusses learning environments in his article "The Psychology of Learning Environments." Second, check out the article "Problem Based Learning: An instructional model and its constructivist framework" by Savery and Duffy. Lastly, try out Ask a Scientist, a website sponsored by HHMI (Howard Hughes Medical Institute), which the Institute's original charter states, "The primary purpose and objective of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute shall be the promotion of human knowledge within the field of the basic sciences (principally the field of medical research and medical education) and the effective application thereof for the benefit of mankind.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Tuesday Teaching and Learning
Today we have three items we would like to share:First: A dying 47-year-old professor gives an exuberant ‘Last Lecture’ Second, check out Grammar Girl's quick and dirty tips for better writing.Lastly, try out Ask a Biologist, a website sponsored by Arizona State University School of Life Sciences, which delivers on its promise: ask a biology question and they’ll send you an answer.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Rubrics
Want to creat a rubric for your class? Check out Rubistar at http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php
Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning: A Panel Discussion with Stanford Faculty
"Four panelists were invited to respond to one or more of the following questions: What is interdisciplinary thinking? How does interdisciplinary research inform teaching? What kind of student work does interdisciplinary teaching and learning produce? What are the pressing questions for you or for Stanford?"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(sm) eMAIL NEWSLETTER
http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php
Sponsored by The Stanford University Center for Teaching and Learning http://ctl.stanford.edu
Comments: http://amps-tools.mit.edu/tomprofblog
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Folks:
The posting below reports on a Stanford University panel discussion on interdisciplinary teaching and learning . It appeared in the newsletter: Speaking of Teaching, Center for Teaching and Learning, Stanford University - Spring 2007, Vol. 16, No.2, http://ctl.stanford.edu/Newsletter/ produced by the Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning. Reprinted with permission.
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Making the First-Year Classroom Conducive to Learning
Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning
----------------------------------------- 2,249 words ----------------------------------
Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning: A Panel Discussion with Stanford Faculty
This newsletter is dedicated to the issue of interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Thinking and teaching across the disciplines has long been an honored tradition at Stanford. In fact, the university's first interdisciplinary program was established in 1947. More than a thousand faculty members are currently affiliated with one or more interdisciplinary programs (IDPs), and together, these faculty members have created a rich web of scholarly thinking that has contributed significantly to the learning experiences of Stanford students, a quarter of whom graduate with an interdisciplinary major or minor. Recently, several multidisciplinary initiatives-among them the Arts Initiative, the Bio-X Program, the Initiative on Environment and Sustainability, and the International Initiative-have been launched to meet President Hennessy's call for the creation of new knowledge that responds to global challenges.
As a way to foster a discussion about interdisciplinary teaching and learning at Stanford, CTL dedicated a panel discussion to this topic at the Celebration of Teaching event in May 2006. Four panelists were invited to respond to one or more of the following questions: What is interdisciplinary thinking? How does interdisciplinary research inform teaching? What kind of student work does interdisciplinary teaching and learning produce? What are the pressing questions for you or for Stanford?
In this newsletter, we offer highlights of the comments by Professors Harry Elam, Pam Matson, Penny Eckert, and Eric Roberts to invite a discussion about interdisciplinary teaching and learning, and to reflect a range of views that are just as varied and diverse as the intellectual approaches that emerge from interdisciplinary scholarship.
Panel Highlights
Harry Elam, the Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities and Chair of the Drama Department,
explained how team teaching encourages professors to "step out of [their] comfort zone." He
pondered what different models of interdisciplinary teaching work well. Not only does research
inform interdisciplinary teaching, but to what extent are new practices, spear-headed by students,
already transforming the process of interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary thinking?
"I throw this out as a question. Is there a way that a solo person teaching a course can do interdisciplinary teaching? My wife and I now teach an IHUM [Introduction to Humanities] course together and one of the things that students like is the point of disagreement. Team teaching takes more time. And it takes an investment both in terms of time and resources. You can't just appropriate the material. You have to think about it in a way that the other person coming from a different discipline is getting at it. So, you have to deal with them, with it, in a variety of ways. This sense of team teaching, in terms of interdisciplinarity, is something that forces you out of your comfort zone. Within that comes the question of how many faculty want to step out of that comfort zone, and how productive it can be in terms of the classroom environment. My sense is that it is incredibly productive and fun, and a learning experience, not simply for the students, but also for the faculty engaged."
"One of the things that team teaching does, too, is open up different assignments and different potential for solutions, be they group projects or other projects that somehow ask students to approach a subject differently. The [group] projects produce some form that incorporates all the things that havehappened within the course and tries to get the students to think about them differently."
"One [model of interdisciplinarity] is what I would call the model of theory in practice, which happens in our department specifically, but also happens in the arts across the board at Stanford. In our department, we are looking at how the scholarship in performance works together with practice [and how] one informs the other. When you're doing scholarship on a play, thinking about it, interpreting it, how is it informed by seeing that play in practice? That is a process which is, in ways, interdisciplinary. And that is something that often takes you working with someone else or working and thinking about the process differently."
"One of the things that has changed interdisciplinary research is the power of the Internet, technology, the sense that lines are blurred in terms of what's open and what's available. How does that come into the arts? One of the ways, particularly at Stanford, that we can see things happening is something like the new design center-with engineering, with architecture, coming into drama in terms of stage design. There is a space for shared communication and a space for looking across at how the visual can inform the idea of what each of these fields do. ...In the Drama Department, we did a production with the dance division, something called Spring Migration, and the lights were done by an engineering student. They were just incredible, incredible what this student did. The magic you can see [is] that the training that he got in one [field] came together with the training he got in another. Students become, in some ways, the resource. They become the thing where you see interdisciplinarity, because they're doing it in a variety of different ways."
Pam Matson, the Chester Naramore Dean of the School of Earth Sciences, the Richard and Rhoda
Goldman Professor in Environmental Studies, and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute, drew on
her interdisciplinary research experience as a point of departure to reflect on how to teach
students new ways of thinking across disciplines. She suggested that the principles that hold true
in research could also inform interdisciplinary teaching. What concrete examples work well in
demonstrating the process of interdisciplinary thinking?
"The things I learned in interdisciplinary research hold for teaching as well. I think the first absolute is, if you want to do interdisciplinary research successfully, there has to be among all the players respect, respect for multiple perspectives, multiple ways of knowing multidisciplinary insights. We found it very important over time, not to privilege one discipline over another. We realized that interdisciplinary research takes a lot of extra time because it takes time to understand the language of different disciplines. It took me about a year to realize that economists and ecologists use the term productivity in completely different ways and that it matters to how we talk to each other, learn the tools, and understand the assumptions that underlie the different disciplines' research approaches and the perspectives they bring. So, all of those things I think are true in interdisciplinary research, and I think they're also really true in teaching. One of the challenges is to find the time and to make sure that we are actually bringing the students into the opportunity to learn the language, the assumptions, and the tools and the approaches, and to respect the different ways of looking at particular issues."
"[What] has been very useful for me is to illustrate the multiple perspectives in the process of teaching, and you can do that through team teaching. One of the first experiences I had in team teaching was at UC Berkeley with a sociologist before I came to Stanford- and you know I'm a biogeochemist-and we were teaching an environmental problem-solving course. It was so exciting to realize that we saw the world completely differently and neither of us had really understood each other's perspectives. We played this out in front of the students, which was incredibly frightening for them especially in the first year. By the second year we taught it, we had calmed it down a little bit, but basically what we were doing was showing the multiple perspectives in our teaching."
"Team projects are another way to go about doing [interdisciplinary thinking], asking each of the students to bring to it different perspectives, different world views, and different knowledge bases. I think that case-based education works really well, where you start with a problem, or an issue, or a question, and encourage the teams to explore the perspectives and the assumptions around that issue. So again, I've taught environmental problem-solving courses where you really explore issues from multiple points of view, and the students, as being part of that exploration, began to frame the issue not as a black and white issue, but as one that has many different levels of gray. And [the students] began to realize that they needed to understand those different levels of gray if they were going to actually work through the problem."
Penny Eckert, Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Program in Feminist Studies, found that
the often challenging conversations among faculty from different disciplines informed the basis of
her interdisciplinary work. She pondered how students can arrive at a kind of thinking that
integrates different disciplines. Don't students first need to learn the language of the disciplines
before they can begin to think in interdisciplinary ways?
"Interdisciplinarity for me was something that entered when I started pushing up against the bounds of my own research. My own life-changing interdisciplinary experience was at a research institute that was self consciously interdisciplinary. At first, we couldn't figure out how to talk to each other. There were computer scientists, psychologists, linguists, and anthropologists. So, what we did was to start a seminar and talk about the relation between the social and the cognitive when you are thinking about, for instance, learning. Of course, the split between the social and the cognitive sciences is where my interdisciplinary passion lies. Each person would assign a reading in their discipline, and we would all read this work. Then we would sit down and discuss it. Ultimately, what we had to do was come to terms with-in your discipline-what constitutes a question, and what constitutes an answer to that question, what counts as an answer to that question, and then what counts as an argument. It was really through fighting our way through these texts in all of these different disciplines that we actually got to a point where we could talk together about a new way of thinking of learning."
"When I think about interdisciplinary education at Stanford, and particularly about the fact that this all has to happen in four years, I think that good interdisciplinary education has to begin with good disciplinary education. I direct an IDP, and so I am constantly engaged in trying to make interdisciplinary education happen. One of the things that always surprises me is when the students show up to plan their major. In Feminist Studies, we make every student have a focus - usually some issue-and then they build their major around it. We sit down and we say, 'Well, what disciplines are currently the ones that you think are most relevant to your problem?' It turns out that students really aren't that clear about what the various disciplines do. What students really need to know is what a discipline is. I suggest that departments ought to be rethinking how they teach their introductory courses because people know what the subject matter is-like a literature course is about literature-but what is the practice that makes it a discipline? What did the discipline arise around? What are the questions that get asked? What kinds of answers do people look for? Who are the players?"
"I would encourage departments to provide a more disciplinary education, but then the question is: Do we want interdisciplinarity built into that? Or, do we want to leave the IDPs completely responsible for interdisciplinary stuff? I would guess the former rather than the latter. I would say, certainly, it would be a good idea to think about how you provide support for the IDPs, which are the main locus for the interdisciplinary teaching in this university."
Eric Roberts, Professor of Computer Science and the Charles Simonyi Professor in the School of
Engineering, teaches interdisciplinary courses as a way to help students think outside of the box.
He asked what professors can do to encourage complex thinking in light of the fact that students
often see themselves as "fuzzies" or "techies," and therefore may be reluctant to cross
disciplinary boundaries.
Talking about an introductory freshman course he taught with then Vice Provost for
Undergraduate Education Ramon Saldivar years ago, Professor Roberts described his reasons for
interdisciplinary teaching.
"The idea that got us thinking about this together comes out of the famous essay by C.P. Snow about the two cultures. I've always felt that it was perhaps better substantiated here at Stanford than at most places where he talks about the split between, if you will, techies and fuzzies. Literary intellectuals at one pole and at the other the scientists, most represented by the physical scientists, between the two of them, a gulf of mutual incomprehension, sometimes particularly among the young, hostility and dislike, but most of all, lack of understanding. So, what happens if we take a literary intellectual in Ramon and a scientific intellectual in me, and look at the same sorts of questions? How do we bridge that gap? How do we look at theories of science and writings about science?"
"The other course that was my most interdisciplinary course is the technology and society requirement for the School of Engineering and has most to do with computer science-computers, ethics, and social responsibility. I've taught it for about 12 years. Every student in the School of Engineering has to have some course in that area because people who are doing technology need to have some sense of what impact that technology has on the world. They don't just need to know something about how that technology affects the rest of their world. They [also] have to know something about the interdisciplinary ways of thinking about how you might assess the effect of technology. I find that either I, or most likely, people that I bring in, have to talk about various other disciplinary issues, because no single perspective will get you the right picture."
"By bringing in a series of guest lecturers from those different departments, I can encourage people to take a multidisciplinary view. The reason I think it's important to do that is to break down hostility between different disciplines so that you don't get that 'lording over.' It's not the economists who are gods or the computer scientists who are gods, but we all need to bring our perspectives to the table."
"I think we can do it in our own courses by bringing in different perspectives, and certainly by moving towards more team-taught courses where we take a broad overarching issue, such as the ones that the new initiatives are looking at, from a research perspective. Then take slices of it from different perspectives and synthesize those slices into a full spectrum of understanding of the problem." ®
* * * * * * *
NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to:
https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor
--
--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==
tomorrows-professor mailing list
tomorrows-professor@lists.stanford.edu
https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(sm) eMAIL NEWSLETTER
http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php
Sponsored by The Stanford University Center for Teaching and Learning http://ctl.stanford.edu
Comments: http://amps-tools.mit.edu/tomprofblog
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Folks:
The posting below reports on a Stanford University panel discussion on interdisciplinary teaching and learning . It appeared in the newsletter: Speaking of Teaching, Center for Teaching and Learning, Stanford University - Spring 2007, Vol. 16, No.2, http://ctl.stanford.edu/Newsletter/ produced by the Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning. Reprinted with permission.
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Making the First-Year Classroom Conducive to Learning
Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning
----------------------------------------- 2,249 words ----------------------------------
Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning: A Panel Discussion with Stanford Faculty
This newsletter is dedicated to the issue of interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Thinking and teaching across the disciplines has long been an honored tradition at Stanford. In fact, the university's first interdisciplinary program was established in 1947. More than a thousand faculty members are currently affiliated with one or more interdisciplinary programs (IDPs), and together, these faculty members have created a rich web of scholarly thinking that has contributed significantly to the learning experiences of Stanford students, a quarter of whom graduate with an interdisciplinary major or minor. Recently, several multidisciplinary initiatives-among them the Arts Initiative, the Bio-X Program, the Initiative on Environment and Sustainability, and the International Initiative-have been launched to meet President Hennessy's call for the creation of new knowledge that responds to global challenges.
As a way to foster a discussion about interdisciplinary teaching and learning at Stanford, CTL dedicated a panel discussion to this topic at the Celebration of Teaching event in May 2006. Four panelists were invited to respond to one or more of the following questions: What is interdisciplinary thinking? How does interdisciplinary research inform teaching? What kind of student work does interdisciplinary teaching and learning produce? What are the pressing questions for you or for Stanford?
In this newsletter, we offer highlights of the comments by Professors Harry Elam, Pam Matson, Penny Eckert, and Eric Roberts to invite a discussion about interdisciplinary teaching and learning, and to reflect a range of views that are just as varied and diverse as the intellectual approaches that emerge from interdisciplinary scholarship.
Panel Highlights
Harry Elam, the Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities and Chair of the Drama Department,
explained how team teaching encourages professors to "step out of [their] comfort zone." He
pondered what different models of interdisciplinary teaching work well. Not only does research
inform interdisciplinary teaching, but to what extent are new practices, spear-headed by students,
already transforming the process of interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary thinking?
"I throw this out as a question. Is there a way that a solo person teaching a course can do interdisciplinary teaching? My wife and I now teach an IHUM [Introduction to Humanities] course together and one of the things that students like is the point of disagreement. Team teaching takes more time. And it takes an investment both in terms of time and resources. You can't just appropriate the material. You have to think about it in a way that the other person coming from a different discipline is getting at it. So, you have to deal with them, with it, in a variety of ways. This sense of team teaching, in terms of interdisciplinarity, is something that forces you out of your comfort zone. Within that comes the question of how many faculty want to step out of that comfort zone, and how productive it can be in terms of the classroom environment. My sense is that it is incredibly productive and fun, and a learning experience, not simply for the students, but also for the faculty engaged."
"One of the things that team teaching does, too, is open up different assignments and different potential for solutions, be they group projects or other projects that somehow ask students to approach a subject differently. The [group] projects produce some form that incorporates all the things that havehappened within the course and tries to get the students to think about them differently."
"One [model of interdisciplinarity] is what I would call the model of theory in practice, which happens in our department specifically, but also happens in the arts across the board at Stanford. In our department, we are looking at how the scholarship in performance works together with practice [and how] one informs the other. When you're doing scholarship on a play, thinking about it, interpreting it, how is it informed by seeing that play in practice? That is a process which is, in ways, interdisciplinary. And that is something that often takes you working with someone else or working and thinking about the process differently."
"One of the things that has changed interdisciplinary research is the power of the Internet, technology, the sense that lines are blurred in terms of what's open and what's available. How does that come into the arts? One of the ways, particularly at Stanford, that we can see things happening is something like the new design center-with engineering, with architecture, coming into drama in terms of stage design. There is a space for shared communication and a space for looking across at how the visual can inform the idea of what each of these fields do. ...In the Drama Department, we did a production with the dance division, something called Spring Migration, and the lights were done by an engineering student. They were just incredible, incredible what this student did. The magic you can see [is] that the training that he got in one [field] came together with the training he got in another. Students become, in some ways, the resource. They become the thing where you see interdisciplinarity, because they're doing it in a variety of different ways."
Pam Matson, the Chester Naramore Dean of the School of Earth Sciences, the Richard and Rhoda
Goldman Professor in Environmental Studies, and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute, drew on
her interdisciplinary research experience as a point of departure to reflect on how to teach
students new ways of thinking across disciplines. She suggested that the principles that hold true
in research could also inform interdisciplinary teaching. What concrete examples work well in
demonstrating the process of interdisciplinary thinking?
"The things I learned in interdisciplinary research hold for teaching as well. I think the first absolute is, if you want to do interdisciplinary research successfully, there has to be among all the players respect, respect for multiple perspectives, multiple ways of knowing multidisciplinary insights. We found it very important over time, not to privilege one discipline over another. We realized that interdisciplinary research takes a lot of extra time because it takes time to understand the language of different disciplines. It took me about a year to realize that economists and ecologists use the term productivity in completely different ways and that it matters to how we talk to each other, learn the tools, and understand the assumptions that underlie the different disciplines' research approaches and the perspectives they bring. So, all of those things I think are true in interdisciplinary research, and I think they're also really true in teaching. One of the challenges is to find the time and to make sure that we are actually bringing the students into the opportunity to learn the language, the assumptions, and the tools and the approaches, and to respect the different ways of looking at particular issues."
"[What] has been very useful for me is to illustrate the multiple perspectives in the process of teaching, and you can do that through team teaching. One of the first experiences I had in team teaching was at UC Berkeley with a sociologist before I came to Stanford- and you know I'm a biogeochemist-and we were teaching an environmental problem-solving course. It was so exciting to realize that we saw the world completely differently and neither of us had really understood each other's perspectives. We played this out in front of the students, which was incredibly frightening for them especially in the first year. By the second year we taught it, we had calmed it down a little bit, but basically what we were doing was showing the multiple perspectives in our teaching."
"Team projects are another way to go about doing [interdisciplinary thinking], asking each of the students to bring to it different perspectives, different world views, and different knowledge bases. I think that case-based education works really well, where you start with a problem, or an issue, or a question, and encourage the teams to explore the perspectives and the assumptions around that issue. So again, I've taught environmental problem-solving courses where you really explore issues from multiple points of view, and the students, as being part of that exploration, began to frame the issue not as a black and white issue, but as one that has many different levels of gray. And [the students] began to realize that they needed to understand those different levels of gray if they were going to actually work through the problem."
Penny Eckert, Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Program in Feminist Studies, found that
the often challenging conversations among faculty from different disciplines informed the basis of
her interdisciplinary work. She pondered how students can arrive at a kind of thinking that
integrates different disciplines. Don't students first need to learn the language of the disciplines
before they can begin to think in interdisciplinary ways?
"Interdisciplinarity for me was something that entered when I started pushing up against the bounds of my own research. My own life-changing interdisciplinary experience was at a research institute that was self consciously interdisciplinary. At first, we couldn't figure out how to talk to each other. There were computer scientists, psychologists, linguists, and anthropologists. So, what we did was to start a seminar and talk about the relation between the social and the cognitive when you are thinking about, for instance, learning. Of course, the split between the social and the cognitive sciences is where my interdisciplinary passion lies. Each person would assign a reading in their discipline, and we would all read this work. Then we would sit down and discuss it. Ultimately, what we had to do was come to terms with-in your discipline-what constitutes a question, and what constitutes an answer to that question, what counts as an answer to that question, and then what counts as an argument. It was really through fighting our way through these texts in all of these different disciplines that we actually got to a point where we could talk together about a new way of thinking of learning."
"When I think about interdisciplinary education at Stanford, and particularly about the fact that this all has to happen in four years, I think that good interdisciplinary education has to begin with good disciplinary education. I direct an IDP, and so I am constantly engaged in trying to make interdisciplinary education happen. One of the things that always surprises me is when the students show up to plan their major. In Feminist Studies, we make every student have a focus - usually some issue-and then they build their major around it. We sit down and we say, 'Well, what disciplines are currently the ones that you think are most relevant to your problem?' It turns out that students really aren't that clear about what the various disciplines do. What students really need to know is what a discipline is. I suggest that departments ought to be rethinking how they teach their introductory courses because people know what the subject matter is-like a literature course is about literature-but what is the practice that makes it a discipline? What did the discipline arise around? What are the questions that get asked? What kinds of answers do people look for? Who are the players?"
"I would encourage departments to provide a more disciplinary education, but then the question is: Do we want interdisciplinarity built into that? Or, do we want to leave the IDPs completely responsible for interdisciplinary stuff? I would guess the former rather than the latter. I would say, certainly, it would be a good idea to think about how you provide support for the IDPs, which are the main locus for the interdisciplinary teaching in this university."
Eric Roberts, Professor of Computer Science and the Charles Simonyi Professor in the School of
Engineering, teaches interdisciplinary courses as a way to help students think outside of the box.
He asked what professors can do to encourage complex thinking in light of the fact that students
often see themselves as "fuzzies" or "techies," and therefore may be reluctant to cross
disciplinary boundaries.
Talking about an introductory freshman course he taught with then Vice Provost for
Undergraduate Education Ramon Saldivar years ago, Professor Roberts described his reasons for
interdisciplinary teaching.
"The idea that got us thinking about this together comes out of the famous essay by C.P. Snow about the two cultures. I've always felt that it was perhaps better substantiated here at Stanford than at most places where he talks about the split between, if you will, techies and fuzzies. Literary intellectuals at one pole and at the other the scientists, most represented by the physical scientists, between the two of them, a gulf of mutual incomprehension, sometimes particularly among the young, hostility and dislike, but most of all, lack of understanding. So, what happens if we take a literary intellectual in Ramon and a scientific intellectual in me, and look at the same sorts of questions? How do we bridge that gap? How do we look at theories of science and writings about science?"
"The other course that was my most interdisciplinary course is the technology and society requirement for the School of Engineering and has most to do with computer science-computers, ethics, and social responsibility. I've taught it for about 12 years. Every student in the School of Engineering has to have some course in that area because people who are doing technology need to have some sense of what impact that technology has on the world. They don't just need to know something about how that technology affects the rest of their world. They [also] have to know something about the interdisciplinary ways of thinking about how you might assess the effect of technology. I find that either I, or most likely, people that I bring in, have to talk about various other disciplinary issues, because no single perspective will get you the right picture."
"By bringing in a series of guest lecturers from those different departments, I can encourage people to take a multidisciplinary view. The reason I think it's important to do that is to break down hostility between different disciplines so that you don't get that 'lording over.' It's not the economists who are gods or the computer scientists who are gods, but we all need to bring our perspectives to the table."
"I think we can do it in our own courses by bringing in different perspectives, and certainly by moving towards more team-taught courses where we take a broad overarching issue, such as the ones that the new initiatives are looking at, from a research perspective. Then take slices of it from different perspectives and synthesize those slices into a full spectrum of understanding of the problem." ®
* * * * * * *
NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to:
https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor
--
--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==
tomorrows-professor mailing list
tomorrows-professor@lists.stanford.edu
https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Does Your College Really Support Teaching and Learning?
"The shortcoming of too many of these discussions focused on student learning, however, is that faculty-and the role that faculty play-is often an afterthought. While the integration of the diverse aspects of a student's educational experience can only be a good thing, we cannot lose sight of the fact that at most of our institutions, learning is "classroom-centered": the majority of student learning either takes place in or is directed through classroom activities. In order to affect any kind of widespread change in student learning, we need to offer specific pedagogical support to faculty who will play an essential role in that change."
--------
The posting below looks at how to create a create a "faculty community of critical practitioners who teach in a reflective and intentional manner that leads to better student learning." It is by by Michael Reder, director, Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning, Connecticut College. The article is from the Fall, 2007 issue of Peer Review, Volume 9, Number 4. Peer Review is a publication of the Association of American Colleges and Universities [www.aacu.org/peerreview] Copyright © 2007, all rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
--------
Does Your College Really Support Teaching and Learning?
Michael Reder
I believe that although small liberal arts colleges claim to care about teaching, the majority only give lip service to the idea. Small liberal arts colleges, for instance, have a reputation for being student-centered and focused on teaching as core to their mission. They emphasize the centrality of undergraduate education. They boast of small class sizes that allow for interactive learning. They go out of their way to hire faculty who "know" how to teach and are interested in working with our students. Good teaching is taken for granted at such institutions. I mean taken for granted in two senses, both good and bad: good teaching is assumed to be the norm (which is good). However, because it is assumed, there is often the collective illusion that good teaching happens "naturally" (which is bad) (Reder and Gallagher 2007.) The false logic goes something like this: "We all value teaching; that is why we are here; therefore, we must be good at it." Not surprisingly, most administrators are complicit with the idea that good teaching always happens on their campuses, without the need for support or intervention. And, as a whole, faculty members do care about their teaching and improving student learning, but caring is not enough. Too many institutions are failing miserably when it comes to actually supporting faculty to become the most effective teachers possible.
Although my remarks are focused on small liberal arts colleges, my argument is certainly applicable to a range of institutional types that claim to be focused on undergraduate teaching-which includes larger universities. I focus on such small colleges because as institutions they make special claims about their focus on the education of undergraduate students.
Another way of stating my point is this: Good teaching does not happen naturally-and when I say good teaching I mean effective teaching: the types of intentional pedagogical practices that lead to significant and deep student learning. In the past decade or so, higher education as a whole has spent a great deal of time and energy thinking about student learning and, in the case of the ever-growing pressure for accountability, how to measure the effect of the education we offer our students. Most of the recent movements in higher education are centered on improving student learning: the use of technology inside and outside of the classroom, experiential learning, information fluency, learner-centered teaching, community learning. The Association of American College and Universities' focus on liberal learning outcomes, civic learning, diversity, global education, residential learning, general education, and critical thinking echo this current trend of concentrating on student learning.
The shortcoming of too many of these discussions focused on student learning, however, is that faculty-and the role that faculty play-is often an afterthought. While the integration of the diverse aspects of a student's educational experience can only be a good thing, we cannot lose sight of the fact that at most of our institutions, learning is "classroom-centered": the majority of student learning either takes place in or is directed through classroom activities. In order to affect any kind of widespread change in student learning, we need to offer specific pedagogical support to faculty who will play an essential role in that change.
>From Faculty Teaching to Student Learning
Over the past ten years there has been a fundamental shift away from teaching (which views knowledge as central, something that is objective and simply passed on from teacher to student) to learning (and the idea that knowledge is something that is constructed and relational, a process in which the learner is central). It is a mistake, however, to think that this shift in focus away from what is being taught to who is learning de-emphasizes the importance of the teacher. If anything, the role of the teacher is even more demanding and complex, as she is forced to negotiate not only a body of knowledge, but also an ever-changing and diverse group of learners. As Robert Barr and John Tagg note, this new learning paradigm views faculty as designers of learning environments who work in consort with learners (and other support mechanisms on campus) to "develop every student's competencies and talents." They argue that, far from the traditional notion that "any expert can teach," "empowering learning is challenging and complex" (1995). In other words, although the learner may be at the center, the teacher's role is more varied and demanding.
This relatively new role provides an excellent opportunity for faculty to become learners themselves. As Trudy Banta asserts in a recent issue of Peer Review, "Most current faculty are not trained as teachers, so extensive faculty development is needed to raise awareness of good practice in enhancing teaching" (2007). The programs that I and my colleagues at other faculty teaching centers coordinate ask faculty to connect across disciplines and ranks in order to think critically about something they all share in common: teaching. Our work provides faculty with the opportunity to overcome what Lee Shulman, the president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, terms "pedagogical solitude." Faculty from different departments, some on the opposite ends of our campus, many with differing levels of teaching experience, work together and learn from each other. By providing occasions during which faculty may talk about their teaching, we create the opportunities for them to learn: from each other, from the literature about teaching and learning, from reflective practice.
>From Student Learning to Faculty Learning
Many at liberal arts colleges are quickly becoming aware of the reality that favorable conditions for good teaching are not the same as truly supporting teaching in a visible and intentional manner. This new emphasis on effective teaching explains the tremendous growth over the past five years in faculty development programs at such institutions (Mooney and Reder 2008). One strong indicator of this trend is the significant increase in small-college membership and participation in the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network, the professional organization for faculty and administrators running faculty development programs and centers for teaching and learning. Once mostly the domain of large research universities, centers for teaching are also being established at small "teaching" colleges all over the country, as such schools have realized that teaching deserves attention, and that for professionals to do something well, they need to practice their craft publicly and critically.
There are several widespread misconceptions about the work of faculty teaching programs, and I would like to address three that I encounter most often when working with faculty and administrators:
Misconception One-Programs for faculty teaching and learning are about remediation. In reality, programs that focus on faculty teaching are about intentionality and critical practice. People who do things well are constantly reflecting upon what they do, gathering information, and making it better. Our programming allows faculty to become more intentional, and therefore more effective, teachers. At Connecticut College, for example, the faculty regularly involved in the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) programming are not only exceptional teachers, they are also well-known scholars and campus leaders. Our most engaged faculty-in terms of research, teaching, and service-participate in and help lead our programming. Especially at a small liberal arts college, there is a symbiotic relationship between effective teaching and scholarship (see Misconception Three).
Misconception Two-Programs for faculty teaching and learning advocate one right way to teach. How one teaches is shaped not only by a person's individual identity (race, gender, age, sexuality, experience), but also the nature of the discipline, the difficulty of the material, the size of the course, and the experiences of the learners. Successful faculty teaching and learning programs must embrace a diversity of teaching styles in order to accurately reflect both the variety of disciplinary approaches and the individual personalities of faculty. Our work acknowledges this diversity of approaches; such diversity is essential because exposure to a range of options is required to allow faculty to make informed choices about their teaching practices. The discussions that the CTL fosters are almost always interdisciplinary, where scientists might learn from studio artists, or economists from humanists. Additionally, when we focus on the question of who is doing the learning, the diversity of the learners themselves becomes central to the educational enterprise. Thus, programs for faculty teaching address not only diversity related to teaching and content, but also diversity related to our students-in terms of their abilities, experiences, learning preferences, as well as race, gender, and class.
Misconception Three-Programs for faculty teaching and learning force faculty to make a choice between being scholars and being teachers. Teaching well and disciplinary scholarship require the same habits of mind: teaching and learning programs ask faculty to become learners themselves, in a way that is similar to their engaging in their research or creative work. As teachers we are asked to learn about our own teaching, about student learning itself, about designing learning activities, and about improving instruction and curricula. Like our research, which is reflected upon, made public, and therefore improved, our teaching should undergo the same processes. At many kinds of colleges, faculty are asked to be both teachers and scholars, and the lines between faculty teaching and research are often blurred, particularly when we involve our students in our own research. Above all, teaching needs to be conceived as a collaborative practice (something done within a larger community that is open to discussion) and a critical practice (something shared with an eye toward discovery, integration, refinement, and improvement), just as faculty do with their disciplinary scholarship.
Teaching and Learning: What Really Makes a Difference
Recent research suggests that there are specific classroom practices that lead to improved student learning. The preliminary results of parts of the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education create direct links between faculty teaching methods and achieving the goals of a liberal arts education. The results indicate that faculty interest in student development (both inside and outside of the classroom), a high level of challenge, and the overall quality of teaching, are just a few of the conditions that correlate positively with student growth in areas such as motivation, openness to diversity and change, critical thinking and moral reasoning, attitudes toward literacy, and the desire to contribute to the arts and sciences. Having clear goals, requiring drafts of papers, incorporating class presentations, offering prompt feedback, and utilizing higher-order assignments (writing essays, solving problems not presented in the course, and making and analyzing arguments), all contribute to student growth in areas that many schools identify as overall educational goals. Although these teaching characteristics may seem obvious, Charles Blaich, the director of Wabash's Center for Inquiry in the Liberal Arts, notes that preliminary results show great room for improvement in our classrooms: "... a majority of the students at our institutions are not getting 'high enough' levels of these teaching practices and conditions, which may explain why students, on average, do not seem to grow much in the first year on the outcomes we measured." Just as most colleges support faculty undertaking their own scholarship, it is equally important for schools to support faculty in their quests to become as effective teachers as possible.
Supporting Faculty as Teachers and Learners
Efforts focused on improving teaching can be coordinated using a variety of models, the most common of which include a faculty development committee, a dean's office, a rotating faculty coordinator, or a center model with a director. At many colleges, faculty learn about teaching in a variety of often-decentralized locations: first-year experience programs, community learning projects, information fluency initiatives, the writing program, instructional technology, and departmental discussions. Beyond helping to shape and connect faculty to these many initiatives and opportunities, an effective teaching and learning program will offer at least two types of programming: a yearlong experience designed specifically to meet the needs of incoming faculty with the primary goal of helping them make the successful transition to teaching at the institution, and some form of ongoing programming open to faculty of all ranks.
Supporting Incoming Faculty
Doctoral education emphasizes research, not teaching, and as the vast majority of faculty are trained at research universities, the need for faculty teaching development is particularly salient at small liberal arts colleges, where the teaching ethos and classroom practices contrast considerably. The excellent literature on early-career faculty (Rice, Sorcinelli, Austin 2000; Moody 1997; Boice 1992, 2000) clearly defines the challenges new faculty face across institutional types. However, faculty at small liberal arts colleges confront a variety of distinctive challenges that the literature does not directly address, including the small cohorts of incoming faculty and the relatively small size of departments and the faculty as a whole. In addition, diversity has been slow coming to many small liberal arts colleges, and new faculty, often hired to diversify the curriculum or the composition of the faculty in terms of race or gender, can be challenged to find like peers. Thus, early-career faculty might feel an isolation that their counterparts at larger institutions do not experience, not only in terms of their own research and disciplinary interests, but also in terms of pedagogical approaches, methodological training, and lifestyle.
There are additional issues that can impact early-career faculty at small colleges in ways different from their colleagues at larger institutions, such as the distinctive missions of many small colleges (including those with a religious affiliation) and their locations, which are often away from larger metropolitan areas (meaning that dual-career couples may need to commute to find employment, and faculty who are single may want to commute in from a larger community). Connecting incoming faculty to other early-career faculty across the institution provides them with a network of colleagues who have experience negotiating similar issues. Connecticut College, which uses a peer mentoring model to connect first-year faculty to each other and across cohorts to second- and third-year faculty (Reder and Gallagher 2007), and Otterbein College, which employs a single-cohort learning community (Fayne and Ortquist-Ahrens 2006), are two schools that have successful yearlong programs that are designed to address the issue that small-college faculty face.
Continuing Support for Faculty: Creating a Community of Learners
In addition to orienting new faculty, it is essential to support faculty at all stages of their careers. Although there are many types of programming for faculty beyond their first year, the programs that often have the most impact are ones in which faculty engage in a yearlong exploration of some aspect of teaching and learning, or programs that offer a series of standalone events that faculty can attend according to their interests and needs. Many of these discussions focus on curricular objectives to liberal arts values and goals, such as critical thinking or teaching writing or oral communication skills. Programs such as Colorado College's "Thinking Inside and Outside the Block Box" series (www.coloradocollege.edu/learningcommons/tlc/programs_luncheons.asp) and Connecticut College's "Talking Teaching" series (ctl.conncoll.edu/programs.html#talking) offer faculty the opportunity to discuss specific teaching issues with colleagues in an informal setting. Other successful yearlong programs include Allegheny College's Teaching Partners (Holmgren 2005), Macalester College's midcareer faculty seminar (www.macalester.edu/cst/Mid%20Career%20Seminar) St. Lawrence University's Oral Communication Institute (Mooney, Fordham, and Lehr 2005), and St. Olaf College's CILA Associates Program (Peters, Schodt, and Walczak 2008).
Colleges that support faculty in the development of their teaching skills recognize the difference between "caring about teaching" and "critically practicing teaching." They are working to create a faculty community of critical practitioners who teach in a reflective and intentional manner that leads to better student learning. And this community, composed of colleagues from across the disciplines right on campus, creates the opportunity for faculty to become lifelong learners.
References
Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). 2004. Portfolios transform writing assessment at Carleton College. AAC&U News 4 Jan. 2005 www.aacu.org/aacu_news/AACUNews04/december04/feature.cfm.
Banta, T. W. 2007. Can assessment for accountability complement assessment for improvement? Peer Review 9 (2): 9-12.
Barr, R. B., and J. Tagg. 1995. From teaching to learning: A new paradigm for undergraduate education." Change Magazine (27) 6: 13-25.
Blaich, C. 2007. Personal correspondence. 23 November.
Boice, R. 2000. Advice for new faculty members: Nihil nimus. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Boice, R. 1992. The new faculty member: Supporting and fostering professional development. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Fayne, H., and L. Ortquist-Aherns. (2006) Learning communities for first-year faculty: Transition, acculturation, and transformation. In S. Chadwick-Blossey and D. Reimondo Robertson (Eds.), To improve the academy: Vol. 24. Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development (pp. 277-290). Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.
Holmgren, R. A. 2005. Teaching partners: Improving teaching and learning by cultivating a community of practice. In S. Chadwick-Blossey & D. R. Robertson (Eds.), To Improve the Academy: Vol. 23. Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development (pp. 211-219). Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.
Jones, L. F. 2005. Exploring the inner landscape of teaching: A program for faculty renewal. In S. Chadwick-Blossey and D. R. Robertson (Eds.), To Improve the Academy: Vol 23. Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development. (pp. 130-143). Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.
Moody, J. 1997. Demystifying the profession: Helping junior faculty succeed. [3 papers.] New Haven: U of New Haven P.
Mooney, K. M., T. Fordham, and V. Lehr. 2005. A faculty development program to promote engaged classroom dialogue: The oral communication institute. In S. Chadwick-Blossey and D. R. Robertson (Eds.), To Improve the Academy: Vol. 23. Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development (pp. 219-235). Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.
Mooney, K. M., and M. Reder. 2008. Faculty development at small and liberal arts colleges. In D. R. Robertson & L.B. Nilson (Eds.), To Improve the Academy: Vol. 26. Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development (pp. 158-172). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Peters, D., D. Schodt, and M. Walczak. 2008. Supporting the scholarship of teaching and learning at liberal arts colleges. In D. R. Robertson and L.B. Nilson (Eds.), To Improve the Academy: Vol. 26. Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development (68-84). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Reder, M. and E. V. Gallagher, 2007. Transforming a teaching culture through peer mentoring: Connecticut College's Johnson Teaching Seminar for incoming faculty and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. In D. R.
Robertson and L.B. Nilson (Eds.), To Improve the Academy: Vol. 25. Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development (pp. 327-344). Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.
Rice, R. E., M. D. Sorcinelli, and A. E. Austin. 2000. Heeding new voices: Academic careers for a new generation. New Pathways Inquiry #7. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education.
* * * * * * *
NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to:
https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor
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The posting below looks at how to create a create a "faculty community of critical practitioners who teach in a reflective and intentional manner that leads to better student learning." It is by by Michael Reder, director, Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning, Connecticut College. The article is from the Fall, 2007 issue of Peer Review, Volume 9, Number 4. Peer Review is a publication of the Association of American Colleges and Universities [www.aacu.org/peerreview] Copyright © 2007, all rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
--------
Does Your College Really Support Teaching and Learning?
Michael Reder
I believe that although small liberal arts colleges claim to care about teaching, the majority only give lip service to the idea. Small liberal arts colleges, for instance, have a reputation for being student-centered and focused on teaching as core to their mission. They emphasize the centrality of undergraduate education. They boast of small class sizes that allow for interactive learning. They go out of their way to hire faculty who "know" how to teach and are interested in working with our students. Good teaching is taken for granted at such institutions. I mean taken for granted in two senses, both good and bad: good teaching is assumed to be the norm (which is good). However, because it is assumed, there is often the collective illusion that good teaching happens "naturally" (which is bad) (Reder and Gallagher 2007.) The false logic goes something like this: "We all value teaching; that is why we are here; therefore, we must be good at it." Not surprisingly, most administrators are complicit with the idea that good teaching always happens on their campuses, without the need for support or intervention. And, as a whole, faculty members do care about their teaching and improving student learning, but caring is not enough. Too many institutions are failing miserably when it comes to actually supporting faculty to become the most effective teachers possible.
Although my remarks are focused on small liberal arts colleges, my argument is certainly applicable to a range of institutional types that claim to be focused on undergraduate teaching-which includes larger universities. I focus on such small colleges because as institutions they make special claims about their focus on the education of undergraduate students.
Another way of stating my point is this: Good teaching does not happen naturally-and when I say good teaching I mean effective teaching: the types of intentional pedagogical practices that lead to significant and deep student learning. In the past decade or so, higher education as a whole has spent a great deal of time and energy thinking about student learning and, in the case of the ever-growing pressure for accountability, how to measure the effect of the education we offer our students. Most of the recent movements in higher education are centered on improving student learning: the use of technology inside and outside of the classroom, experiential learning, information fluency, learner-centered teaching, community learning. The Association of American College and Universities' focus on liberal learning outcomes, civic learning, diversity, global education, residential learning, general education, and critical thinking echo this current trend of concentrating on student learning.
The shortcoming of too many of these discussions focused on student learning, however, is that faculty-and the role that faculty play-is often an afterthought. While the integration of the diverse aspects of a student's educational experience can only be a good thing, we cannot lose sight of the fact that at most of our institutions, learning is "classroom-centered": the majority of student learning either takes place in or is directed through classroom activities. In order to affect any kind of widespread change in student learning, we need to offer specific pedagogical support to faculty who will play an essential role in that change.
>From Faculty Teaching to Student Learning
Over the past ten years there has been a fundamental shift away from teaching (which views knowledge as central, something that is objective and simply passed on from teacher to student) to learning (and the idea that knowledge is something that is constructed and relational, a process in which the learner is central). It is a mistake, however, to think that this shift in focus away from what is being taught to who is learning de-emphasizes the importance of the teacher. If anything, the role of the teacher is even more demanding and complex, as she is forced to negotiate not only a body of knowledge, but also an ever-changing and diverse group of learners. As Robert Barr and John Tagg note, this new learning paradigm views faculty as designers of learning environments who work in consort with learners (and other support mechanisms on campus) to "develop every student's competencies and talents." They argue that, far from the traditional notion that "any expert can teach," "empowering learning is challenging and complex" (1995). In other words, although the learner may be at the center, the teacher's role is more varied and demanding.
This relatively new role provides an excellent opportunity for faculty to become learners themselves. As Trudy Banta asserts in a recent issue of Peer Review, "Most current faculty are not trained as teachers, so extensive faculty development is needed to raise awareness of good practice in enhancing teaching" (2007). The programs that I and my colleagues at other faculty teaching centers coordinate ask faculty to connect across disciplines and ranks in order to think critically about something they all share in common: teaching. Our work provides faculty with the opportunity to overcome what Lee Shulman, the president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, terms "pedagogical solitude." Faculty from different departments, some on the opposite ends of our campus, many with differing levels of teaching experience, work together and learn from each other. By providing occasions during which faculty may talk about their teaching, we create the opportunities for them to learn: from each other, from the literature about teaching and learning, from reflective practice.
>From Student Learning to Faculty Learning
Many at liberal arts colleges are quickly becoming aware of the reality that favorable conditions for good teaching are not the same as truly supporting teaching in a visible and intentional manner. This new emphasis on effective teaching explains the tremendous growth over the past five years in faculty development programs at such institutions (Mooney and Reder 2008). One strong indicator of this trend is the significant increase in small-college membership and participation in the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network, the professional organization for faculty and administrators running faculty development programs and centers for teaching and learning. Once mostly the domain of large research universities, centers for teaching are also being established at small "teaching" colleges all over the country, as such schools have realized that teaching deserves attention, and that for professionals to do something well, they need to practice their craft publicly and critically.
There are several widespread misconceptions about the work of faculty teaching programs, and I would like to address three that I encounter most often when working with faculty and administrators:
Misconception One-Programs for faculty teaching and learning are about remediation. In reality, programs that focus on faculty teaching are about intentionality and critical practice. People who do things well are constantly reflecting upon what they do, gathering information, and making it better. Our programming allows faculty to become more intentional, and therefore more effective, teachers. At Connecticut College, for example, the faculty regularly involved in the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) programming are not only exceptional teachers, they are also well-known scholars and campus leaders. Our most engaged faculty-in terms of research, teaching, and service-participate in and help lead our programming. Especially at a small liberal arts college, there is a symbiotic relationship between effective teaching and scholarship (see Misconception Three).
Misconception Two-Programs for faculty teaching and learning advocate one right way to teach. How one teaches is shaped not only by a person's individual identity (race, gender, age, sexuality, experience), but also the nature of the discipline, the difficulty of the material, the size of the course, and the experiences of the learners. Successful faculty teaching and learning programs must embrace a diversity of teaching styles in order to accurately reflect both the variety of disciplinary approaches and the individual personalities of faculty. Our work acknowledges this diversity of approaches; such diversity is essential because exposure to a range of options is required to allow faculty to make informed choices about their teaching practices. The discussions that the CTL fosters are almost always interdisciplinary, where scientists might learn from studio artists, or economists from humanists. Additionally, when we focus on the question of who is doing the learning, the diversity of the learners themselves becomes central to the educational enterprise. Thus, programs for faculty teaching address not only diversity related to teaching and content, but also diversity related to our students-in terms of their abilities, experiences, learning preferences, as well as race, gender, and class.
Misconception Three-Programs for faculty teaching and learning force faculty to make a choice between being scholars and being teachers. Teaching well and disciplinary scholarship require the same habits of mind: teaching and learning programs ask faculty to become learners themselves, in a way that is similar to their engaging in their research or creative work. As teachers we are asked to learn about our own teaching, about student learning itself, about designing learning activities, and about improving instruction and curricula. Like our research, which is reflected upon, made public, and therefore improved, our teaching should undergo the same processes. At many kinds of colleges, faculty are asked to be both teachers and scholars, and the lines between faculty teaching and research are often blurred, particularly when we involve our students in our own research. Above all, teaching needs to be conceived as a collaborative practice (something done within a larger community that is open to discussion) and a critical practice (something shared with an eye toward discovery, integration, refinement, and improvement), just as faculty do with their disciplinary scholarship.
Teaching and Learning: What Really Makes a Difference
Recent research suggests that there are specific classroom practices that lead to improved student learning. The preliminary results of parts of the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education create direct links between faculty teaching methods and achieving the goals of a liberal arts education. The results indicate that faculty interest in student development (both inside and outside of the classroom), a high level of challenge, and the overall quality of teaching, are just a few of the conditions that correlate positively with student growth in areas such as motivation, openness to diversity and change, critical thinking and moral reasoning, attitudes toward literacy, and the desire to contribute to the arts and sciences. Having clear goals, requiring drafts of papers, incorporating class presentations, offering prompt feedback, and utilizing higher-order assignments (writing essays, solving problems not presented in the course, and making and analyzing arguments), all contribute to student growth in areas that many schools identify as overall educational goals. Although these teaching characteristics may seem obvious, Charles Blaich, the director of Wabash's Center for Inquiry in the Liberal Arts, notes that preliminary results show great room for improvement in our classrooms: "... a majority of the students at our institutions are not getting 'high enough' levels of these teaching practices and conditions, which may explain why students, on average, do not seem to grow much in the first year on the outcomes we measured." Just as most colleges support faculty undertaking their own scholarship, it is equally important for schools to support faculty in their quests to become as effective teachers as possible.
Supporting Faculty as Teachers and Learners
Efforts focused on improving teaching can be coordinated using a variety of models, the most common of which include a faculty development committee, a dean's office, a rotating faculty coordinator, or a center model with a director. At many colleges, faculty learn about teaching in a variety of often-decentralized locations: first-year experience programs, community learning projects, information fluency initiatives, the writing program, instructional technology, and departmental discussions. Beyond helping to shape and connect faculty to these many initiatives and opportunities, an effective teaching and learning program will offer at least two types of programming: a yearlong experience designed specifically to meet the needs of incoming faculty with the primary goal of helping them make the successful transition to teaching at the institution, and some form of ongoing programming open to faculty of all ranks.
Supporting Incoming Faculty
Doctoral education emphasizes research, not teaching, and as the vast majority of faculty are trained at research universities, the need for faculty teaching development is particularly salient at small liberal arts colleges, where the teaching ethos and classroom practices contrast considerably. The excellent literature on early-career faculty (Rice, Sorcinelli, Austin 2000; Moody 1997; Boice 1992, 2000) clearly defines the challenges new faculty face across institutional types. However, faculty at small liberal arts colleges confront a variety of distinctive challenges that the literature does not directly address, including the small cohorts of incoming faculty and the relatively small size of departments and the faculty as a whole. In addition, diversity has been slow coming to many small liberal arts colleges, and new faculty, often hired to diversify the curriculum or the composition of the faculty in terms of race or gender, can be challenged to find like peers. Thus, early-career faculty might feel an isolation that their counterparts at larger institutions do not experience, not only in terms of their own research and disciplinary interests, but also in terms of pedagogical approaches, methodological training, and lifestyle.
There are additional issues that can impact early-career faculty at small colleges in ways different from their colleagues at larger institutions, such as the distinctive missions of many small colleges (including those with a religious affiliation) and their locations, which are often away from larger metropolitan areas (meaning that dual-career couples may need to commute to find employment, and faculty who are single may want to commute in from a larger community). Connecting incoming faculty to other early-career faculty across the institution provides them with a network of colleagues who have experience negotiating similar issues. Connecticut College, which uses a peer mentoring model to connect first-year faculty to each other and across cohorts to second- and third-year faculty (Reder and Gallagher 2007), and Otterbein College, which employs a single-cohort learning community (Fayne and Ortquist-Ahrens 2006), are two schools that have successful yearlong programs that are designed to address the issue that small-college faculty face.
Continuing Support for Faculty: Creating a Community of Learners
In addition to orienting new faculty, it is essential to support faculty at all stages of their careers. Although there are many types of programming for faculty beyond their first year, the programs that often have the most impact are ones in which faculty engage in a yearlong exploration of some aspect of teaching and learning, or programs that offer a series of standalone events that faculty can attend according to their interests and needs. Many of these discussions focus on curricular objectives to liberal arts values and goals, such as critical thinking or teaching writing or oral communication skills. Programs such as Colorado College's "Thinking Inside and Outside the Block Box" series (www.coloradocollege.edu/learningcommons/tlc/programs_luncheons.asp) and Connecticut College's "Talking Teaching" series (ctl.conncoll.edu/programs.html#talking) offer faculty the opportunity to discuss specific teaching issues with colleagues in an informal setting. Other successful yearlong programs include Allegheny College's Teaching Partners (Holmgren 2005), Macalester College's midcareer faculty seminar (www.macalester.edu/cst/Mid%20Career%20Seminar) St. Lawrence University's Oral Communication Institute (Mooney, Fordham, and Lehr 2005), and St. Olaf College's CILA Associates Program (Peters, Schodt, and Walczak 2008).
Colleges that support faculty in the development of their teaching skills recognize the difference between "caring about teaching" and "critically practicing teaching." They are working to create a faculty community of critical practitioners who teach in a reflective and intentional manner that leads to better student learning. And this community, composed of colleagues from across the disciplines right on campus, creates the opportunity for faculty to become lifelong learners.
References
Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). 2004. Portfolios transform writing assessment at Carleton College. AAC&U News 4 Jan. 2005 www.aacu.org/aacu_news/AACUNews04/december04/feature.cfm.
Banta, T. W. 2007. Can assessment for accountability complement assessment for improvement? Peer Review 9 (2): 9-12.
Barr, R. B., and J. Tagg. 1995. From teaching to learning: A new paradigm for undergraduate education." Change Magazine (27) 6: 13-25.
Blaich, C. 2007. Personal correspondence. 23 November.
Boice, R. 2000. Advice for new faculty members: Nihil nimus. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Boice, R. 1992. The new faculty member: Supporting and fostering professional development. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Fayne, H., and L. Ortquist-Aherns. (2006) Learning communities for first-year faculty: Transition, acculturation, and transformation. In S. Chadwick-Blossey and D. Reimondo Robertson (Eds.), To improve the academy: Vol. 24. Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development (pp. 277-290). Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.
Holmgren, R. A. 2005. Teaching partners: Improving teaching and learning by cultivating a community of practice. In S. Chadwick-Blossey & D. R. Robertson (Eds.), To Improve the Academy: Vol. 23. Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development (pp. 211-219). Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.
Jones, L. F. 2005. Exploring the inner landscape of teaching: A program for faculty renewal. In S. Chadwick-Blossey and D. R. Robertson (Eds.), To Improve the Academy: Vol 23. Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development. (pp. 130-143). Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.
Moody, J. 1997. Demystifying the profession: Helping junior faculty succeed. [3 papers.] New Haven: U of New Haven P.
Mooney, K. M., T. Fordham, and V. Lehr. 2005. A faculty development program to promote engaged classroom dialogue: The oral communication institute. In S. Chadwick-Blossey and D. R. Robertson (Eds.), To Improve the Academy: Vol. 23. Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development (pp. 219-235). Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.
Mooney, K. M., and M. Reder. 2008. Faculty development at small and liberal arts colleges. In D. R. Robertson & L.B. Nilson (Eds.), To Improve the Academy: Vol. 26. Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development (pp. 158-172). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Peters, D., D. Schodt, and M. Walczak. 2008. Supporting the scholarship of teaching and learning at liberal arts colleges. In D. R. Robertson and L.B. Nilson (Eds.), To Improve the Academy: Vol. 26. Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development (68-84). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Reder, M. and E. V. Gallagher, 2007. Transforming a teaching culture through peer mentoring: Connecticut College's Johnson Teaching Seminar for incoming faculty and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. In D. R.
Robertson and L.B. Nilson (Eds.), To Improve the Academy: Vol. 25. Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development (pp. 327-344). Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.
Rice, R. E., M. D. Sorcinelli, and A. E. Austin. 2000. Heeding new voices: Academic careers for a new generation. New Pathways Inquiry #7. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education.
* * * * * * *
NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to:
https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor
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