This conference, held on May 20-22, 2012 at Grand Valley State University, focuses on the scholarship in teaching and learning. The conference website contains a variety of information including the program [pdf]. This conference was organized by Grand Valley State University, Ferris State University, and Grand Rapids Community Colleges.
Session 1: Workshop — Room eC 201 Writing, Publishing and Teaching With Cases
Susan K. Jones Ferris State University
You teach with cases or you would like to improve your skills in this area, so why not write and publish your own cases, too? This workshop provides the process of identifying case subjects, writing cases and teaching notes that intrigue students, and preparing your cases for publication. You’ll also get some ideas on how and where to collaborate on and publish cases. This workshop welcomes faculty from all disciplines to a supportive atmosphere with an experienced, published case writer who want to see you meet your case writing, case teaching, and publication goals.
- Case Studies Popularity
- How many of you use cases in your classes? These work well for relevancy and real-world approaches.
- How do students respond? Students seem motivated by concrete examples to connect the curriculum to their lives.
- When selecting a case, what do you look for?
- Benefits of Using Cases
- Causes students to be actively involved in learning through questioning, probing, and responduing.
- Stimulates thought and creativity
- Opens one's view for critical analysis by colleagues
- Aids development of communication skills
- Provides instructor feedback on student learning
- Empowers students to enter their field with confidence
- Case Method Objectives
- Provide an understanding of the important managerial problems in the area of study
- Increase student's ability to develop ideas and alternative solutions
- Develop good judgment in making and implementing decisions
- Improve the students' communications skills, both spoken and written
- Criteria for Selecting a Case Interest on part of students
- "Real" has managerial expectations
- Enough information to make the decisions (a detective story with cluse to solve it)
- Well written and clear structure or time sequence
- Must have one or more issues
- Different viewpoints as appropriate
- Clear difference between facts and opinions
- Develop Process
- Hook - who is the decision maker and why do we care
- Decision Point/Conflict - what are the focal programs
- Call to Action - what do you want students to do
- Learning Objectives - what do you want students to learn
- Best Practices for Teaching with Cases
- Selection of cases to make up a class - focus on issues
- Time devoted to each case - some shorter, longer, some group/individual
- Methods of draing out students in discussion
- Group work vs individual
- Keep cases fresh
- What a case is NOT:
- Well defined problem with a specific solution
- An example
- Written to illustrate a correct or incorrect handling of a situation
- What a case IS:
- Desc of a management solution
- Vehicle for emphaizing thought or decision process
- Means for learning through real work experience
- Simulation that helps synthesize knowledge.
- Cases Include:
- A case preview (who is decision maker, when/where does it take place, what are the focal problems)
- List of exhibits
- Statement of intended use of the case
- What learning objectives are connected to the case
- Case Writing
- Before the first visit learn everything possible (organization, environment, industry, etc.)
- Prepare interview outline
- Gather all possible data regarding teh key issues and personalities of the organization.
- Identify the power sources in the organization, especially with respect to getting release (organizations like to see examples and understand confidentiality)
Keynote:
Engaging Student Voices in the Study of Teaching and Learning: Ordinary People, Plain Pretzels, and Conversational Scholarship
Carmen Werder
Director, Teaching-Learning Academy, Writing Instruction Support, & Learning Commons
Blair Kaufer
Undergraduate Student Western Washington University Bellingham, WA
Engaging Student Voices in the Study of Teaching and Learning: Ordinary People, Plain Pretzels, and Conversational Scholarship
Involving college students as co-inquirers in research on teaching and learning seems like an obvious need. Yet, in higher education, we often overlook the voices of those learners that can tell us the most about what we need to know and change. And, in employing only traditional methods of undergraduate research, we risk slighting more organic ways of engagement, namely dialogue. The speakers describe the dialogue structure they have built at their university to engage a range of students including student leaders, disenfranchised students, and those students just trying to earn enough credits to get a degree. Presenters will invite participants into the dialogue process they call “structured informality” or “conversational scholarship.”
Biographies
Blair Kaufer is in her third year as an undergraduate at Western Washington University in Bellingham with plans to double major in Cultural and Archaeological Anthropology. She got her start in WWU’s Teaching-Learning Academy (TLA) in her first year of college as part of an education class on “Exploring the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning,” and she has continued to participate as a volunteer ever since. Influenced by the TLA’s values
about collaboration, Blair applied for and was accepted to participate in cultural study on the value and meaning of community in Thailand and India during Winter Quarter 2012. She hopes to build on that experience and study by doing graduate work in anthropology. She is very excited to participate in her first academic conference!
Carmen Werder directs the Teaching-Learning Academy and the Writing Instruction Support program at Western Washington University, where she also teaches rhetoric and civil discourse. As a 2005 Carnegie Scholar, she initiated an ongoing study of the use of personal metaphors in developing a sense of agency. She headed up both Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) initiatives on working with students as co-inquirers in the scholarship of teaching and learning: the Sustaining Student Voices cluster (2003-06) and the Institutional Leadership Program Student Voices themed group (2006-09). Carmen currently co-chairs the “Students as Co-inquirers” special interest group within the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL). Carmen co-edited the book Engaging Student Voices in the Study of Teaching and Learning.
- WWU Teaching-Learning Academy - "Exploring multiple views of teaching and learning at Western Washington University"
- Objectives
- Civil discourse
- Deeper understanding of teaching and learning relationships
- Best individual / institutional perspectives and collective contributions
- Develop action projects to enhance WWU's learning culture
- Integrate student voices into institutional learning initiatives
- Participants
- Staff / Students / Faculty / Administrators / Community Members
- Activities
- Meet bimonthly in dialogue groups
- Participate and sponsor campus forums on teaching and learning
- Create partnerships with related campus programs
- Share findings locally, nationally, and internationally
- Structured Informality
- Whole Group Opening (treats are included... announcements and topics)
- Small Group Dialogue (response to common prompt and group notes, comm 339 dialogue facilitators)
- Whole Group Closing (highlights scribed)
Session: Workshop — Room eC 201 enhancing Student Learning Through Principles of Video Game design
Tim Brackenbury, John Folkins, Ryan Bronkema, Allison Hadley, Michael Kudela, Matt Mieure, Yeon Ju Oh Bowling Green State University
Once derided as a waste of time and potential cause of educational decline, gaming is now being analyzed for its powerful effects in motivating students to learn. Research is showing that video games provide high levels of motivation that leads to focused attention, social interaction, tolerance for failure, and complex problem solving. This workshop will discuss the literature on gaming and education to determine how we might use video games to motivate and improve student learning. Participants are encouraged to come with specific courses that they would like to enhance, so that we can work together for an epic win.
Notes:
- Principle #1 - Create an Entire Experience
- Not just a single form of play
- Good games address grand themes
- Principle #2 - Integration of Multiple Features
- Mechanics of the game
- Social interaction
- Degree of challenge
- Motivation
- Principle #3 - Direct Application of New Knowledge
- New tools and skills are presented when needed
- Principle of flow
- Principle #4 - Learning through Discovery
- No manuals
- Directions iterspersed or online
- Play and learn
- Principle #5 - Encourage Rick Taking
- Failure is an expected part of play
- Risk taking is rewarded, minimally punished
- Players routinely face highly complex challenges
- Principle #6 - Captialize on Reward Systems
- Intrinsically build in reward systems
- Customized to the player
- Occur frequently
- Signal achievement
- Principle #7 - Support Development of Unique Identity
- Players take on specific identities
- Identities impact what they can do and how other perceive them
Session: Presentation — Do Learning Management System tools help student’s learn?
Maryly Skallos, Sherri Chandler - Muskegon Community College
Do Learning Management System (LMS) tools help student learning? What is the comfort level of students in a higher education setting with LMS? Of all LMS tools available, do students perceive several more helpful than others? Five-hundred and fifty students were surveyed across twenty-one in-class sections of General Psychology enrolled at community college to determine student s perceptions of learning using LMS. This presentation reviews the conclusions of this research conducted by a teacher and an instructional designer.
Notes:
- Students need structured environments* (* Blackboard) with explicit objectives and timely feedback. - Pascarella & Terenzini (2005)
- Engagement for learning:
- student > course objectives
- teaher > student
- student > peers
- independent practice
- Frequent Assignments and Testing
- Opportunities for learners to recall and produce information
- Term retention advantage for efforful processing
- Learners benefit with timely feedback and opportunity to monitor progress and adapt performance to achieve goals.
- Survey to collect feedback from students at MCC
- N=545
- 89% Response Rate
- Student population were on campus in face to face sections
- Surveyed Introductory Psychology classes
- Over 50% of psychology instructors use Bb
- "How many college courses have you successfully completed in the past two years?" 75% of students within the first semester of classes completed
- "Have you completed an online course?" 21% said yes
- "Are you currently enrolled in in-class college course where instructor used Bb?" Only 58 (10%) students reported "no experience with Bb"
- "Check all Bb tools used in your in-class course" Announcements, SafeAssign, Discussion Board, Gradebook, lecture notes, online tests, wikis, journals, surveys, Bb IM, Adobe Connect Pro, Webassign, Connect, eBook, blog, links to web sites, video assignments, and simulations.
- Top tools used (in order of highest use): announcements, gradebook, teacher notes, quizzes, discussion board, and web site links with webassign and other tools being the most popular.
- Most useful tool reported (in order of highest rated): gradebook, announcements, tests/quizzes, teacher notes, discussion board, webassign, safeassign
- Students rated high the value of:
- better access to class notes and information outside of class
- helps to monitor grades/course progress
- helps with organization of course materials and my time
- better course learning with LMS tools
- Conclusions:
- Students valued LMS tools for learning. (Especially, announcements, teacher notes, gradebook, rubrics, safeassign, tests/quizzes)
- Standardization and streamlining of tools across courses is recommended. (Common places for syllabus link, consistent use of announcements, week and folder structures)
Keynote: An apprenticeship in democracy: The Future of SoTL and engagement in Higher education
Dan Butin Merrimack College
Democracy, so the saying goes, is not a spectator sport. Yet a troubling paradox exists in higher education: even as more and more students and faculty argue for ever deeper models of collaborative engagement (e.g., service-learning, undergraduate research, translational research), the contemporary culture, and models of higher education actually diminish the opportunities for meaningful, sustained, and impactful outcomes in, with, and for local and global communities. This presentation explores how the SoTL movement is, and should be even more, a meaningful part of institutions’ commitment to the practices of engaged scholarship and its impact on the college classroom and beyond.Notes:
An Apprenticeship in Democracy: The Future of SoTL and Engagement in Higher Education
- Dan Butin, Merrimack College
- Lecturing as worst form of teaching
- Teaching as "Dangerous"
- Dewey: No teaching without learning!
- Power of place-based experiential learningEngagement & SoTL
- Civic engagement, research, service learning, community engagement, public scholarshipClayton Christensen's "Disrupting Higher Education"
- Online courses are expected to b up to 90% of all in the future
- Open Courseware Movement
- Wikipedia
- Kahn Academy / Flipped Classroom
- New Charter University, StraighterLine
- Western Governors University
- Volume / Variety / Velocity / VariabilityDisruption is Real...
- 25% of students are traditional... the traditional institution model is dead.
- 2/3 of faculty are now non-tenure trackIt Gets Worse... MITx's Disruption
- MOOC (massively open online course)
- Coursera
- 120,000 students signed up 6.002X Circuit and Electronics
- Free
- Automated interaction... Everything is scalable.
- edX is MIT and Harvard partnership
- Stanford was first out of the gate on this idea.Interlinkage of wikipedia and netflix... the idea is they have undermined the need to go to school to get a certificate.Learning analytics can be leveraged for intelligent tutoring, adaptive testing, etc. "Big Data" When technology increases - efficiency increases. There is a limit to MOOCs - Connections outside of Learning I can't occur with MOOCs. Meta-cognition. Can't code for all permutations. We can't code for the world.
1) Zero Learning - Input and output is the same. No change based on trial and error.
2) Learning 1 - Response is due to trial and error
3) Learning II - Change in the process of Learning IPedagogical Moments of Doubt
- Learning occurs in the "forked-road... moment of uncertainty" - Dewey We have to climb a tree to see the facts that you thought were facts in a new light and the landscape changes.
- Wittgenstein's ladder
- Fish's "self consuming pedagogy"
- Foucault's obliteration of epistemic certaintyNovice/Expert Research: Deliberate Practice - Practice the stuff you don't know... You can't know what you don't know. Against automaticity (edge of chaos - zone of proximal development)
Teaching as Bricolage - Standardization of practice (I-R-E sequences / initiate / respond / evaluate), repetoire enlargement (improvisational strategies)Antifoundational Service-LearningLearning a new strategy is important as a master teacher.Spheres of influence...
