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Nefdc Conference Program, Fall 2016, New England Faculty Development Consortium

New England Faculty Development Consortium Conference Programs

New England Faculty Development Consortium

Civic Engagement and Service-Learning

November 18, 2016

College of the Holy Cross

Worcester, Massachusetts, United States

Keynote address: Randy Stoecker, Toward Liberating Service Learning

Nefdc Exchange, Volume 29, Fall 2016, New England Faculty Development Consortium

NEFDC Exchange

Contents

President’s Message -Dakin Burdick, Mount Ida College

Save the date, spring conference - Student-Faculty Research Collaborations, keynote speaker, Alan November, founder of November Learning; keynote address: Helping Students Build a Global Network for Lifelong Learning

Exploring the Universe Through a Cultural Lens - Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State University

Scientific Literacy Skills for the 21st Century - Cynthia Brandenburg, Champlain College

Using Celebrity to Discuss Diversity - Kellie Deys, Nichols College

Reacting to the Past: Learning Diversity of Perspectives Through Role Playing - Frances Alexakos, Roger Williams University

Mindsets Matter in Education - Cheryl Williams, Salem State University

The …

Community Partnerships In Urban, Title 1 Elementary Schools: A Mixed-Methods Study, Jae L. Strickland

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to identify and describe community partnerships in Urban, Title 1 Elementary Schools.

Fifty-one principals from the Southern and Midwestern regions of the United States completed a 19-question on-line survey designed to explore community partnerships in Urban, Title 1 Elementary Schools. Of the 51 principals who completed the survey, 26 agreed to participate in a semi-structured interview.

The findings of the study suggest that community partnerships play an essential role in supporting Urban, Title 1 Elementary Schools. Finding community partners can be challenging. Principals who wish to engage community partners should identify the needs …

Intersecting Asset-Based Service, Strengths, And Mentoring For Socially Responsible Leadership, Lindsay J. Hastings

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Faculty Publications

Grounded in a youth leadership and mentoring program, this chapter discusses the value of asset-based community development from the service-learning literature and the concept of generativity from the leadership development literature.

College students are frequently engaged in the community through local mentoring programs, as mentoring youth has become an increasingly popular service-learning pedagogical strategy among many higher-education institutions (Schmidt, Marks, & Derrico, 2004; Wells & Grabert, 2004). While many mentoring programs are designed to build resiliency in at-risk youth, mentoring has been identified as an effective practice in leadership development (Day, 2000; Dziczkowski, 2013).

This chapter will discuss the value …

Evolving Roles Of Librarians: Juggling Print And Electronic Collections While Making Meaningful Connections, Jorge Leon Jr., Barbara Pope

Nebraska Library Association: Conferences

The traditional role of librarians has long been to support the university’s needs through instruction, collection development, and research assistance. Pittsburg State University’s challenge has been to balance our print and electronic collections at a university whose programs sometimes do not draw enough on library resources while also creating meaningful connections with students and faculty. In an effort to increase the relevancy of our collections and create meaningful connections with the university community, we have been actively creating opportunities for patrons to create content in the library. This has allowed users to engage with library resources and services in a …

Hist 340: American Legal History—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Inquiry Portfolio, Katrina Jagodinsky

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This inquiry portfolio measures the success of revisions made to HIST 340: American Legal History after a previous benchmark portfolio revealed a number of problems in communicating to students the importance and meaning of the course objectives, in correlating assessments to the final grade, and in documenting student learning and quality of instruction. The findings, outlined below, indicate that identifying a clear course theme; more strongly aligning readings, assessments, and discussions to course objectives; and restructuring the verbal and written analysis of readings dramatically improved students’ performance and satisfaction. Measures used include formal and informal student evaluations of instruction, formal …

Matl 260/360: Elements Of Materials Science—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Bai Cui

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

The goal of MATL 260/360 Elements of Materials Science is to make undergraduate students understand the fundamental concepts of the microstructure-property relationship of materials. This course portfolio addresses several key questions in teaching, such as how to teach new knowledge more effectively, how to increase student engagement, how to promote students’ interests and motivations, and how to use this course to improve students’ analysis and critical thinking skills.

To address each of key questions, the course activities include: relating the new knowledge with daily-life and industry examples; giving PPT slides for after- class study; assigning homework questions after each lecture; …

Agro/Hort 403/803: Scientific Writing And Communication—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Inquiry Portfolio, Brian M. Waters

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

Scientific writing is a skill that is useful for science students, since many of them will write about their research in a thesis, dissertation, or in journal articles. The goal of my course is to provide students with practice and training in scientific writing so that after they take the course they are confident and ready to write drafts independently. The class uses many learning activities, such as reading, writing, peer reviewing, revising, and class discussions. However, the first two iterations of the course did not have built-in ways to practice sentence and paragraph editing, or to gauge quality of …

Ae 2250: Construction Graphics And Design—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Asregedew Woldesenbet

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This course portfolio designs and documents AE 2250 (Construction Design and Graphics) course that is taught in Spring 2016 at UNL's College of Engineering under the Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction program. The course is intended to introduce BIM (Building Information Modeling) to architectural engineering, construction engineering, construction management and civil engineering students ranging from freshman to juniors. This course portfolio documents the challenges associated with delivering this course, tailors the course objectives, activities and tracking measures to meet the course objectives throughout the semester. This portfolio uses quantitative and qualitative measures to track student performances and learning …

Plpt 496/892: Disease Dynamics & Evolution—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Sydney E. Everhart

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This benchmark course portfolio was developed as a component of the University of Nebraska Peer Review of Teaching. The course selected for this portfolio was a new course developed and taught as an Independent Study PLPT 496/892. The working title for the course was Disease Dynamics and Evolution. This course was designed to cover core concepts of disease ecology and pathogen emergence/evolution. Concepts were organism-agnostic and important for understanding infectious diseases of humans, animals, and plants. The course format was lecture-based and inquiry driven, using primary literature as case studies. The goal of this course was to use interesting and …

Modl: 398: Women In Quran—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Inquiry Portfolio, Abla Hasan

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This project highlights the experience of teaching Quran as a literature through MODL 298: “Women in Quran”. This course is an attempt to read Quran as a diachronically approached literature and discover what would the analytic, linguistic as well as the critical study of both the Qur’anic text and its exegesis reveal when it comes to feminism and gender issues in Islam.

Alec/Adpr 207: Communicating To Public Audiences—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Inquiry Portfolio, Karen J. Cannon

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

A significant amount of research in teaching and learning is conducted exploring large enrollment courses. Often it seems as if we believe that the panacea is smaller class sizes. However, challenges exist in smaller enrollment courses as well. This inquiry portfolio explores an introductory, sophomore level course in strategic communication with an enrollment of 20 students. Despite the smaller number of students in the course, significant challenges exist and over the five spring semesters I’ve taught the class, one consistent challenge remains – how to bridge the wide range of student ability, knowledge, and experience of students in the course. …

Pols 430: Political Communication—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Brandon Bosch

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This course portfolio was created to articulate, assess, and reflect upon my course objectives for a political communication class that I taught in Spring 2016. Of particular note was my objective in trying to use a Verbal Exam to assess student learning. Although I encountered some difficulties in implementing the Verbal Exam, students seemed to be either neutral or somewhat supportive of having a Verbal Exam, with students generally inclined to thinking that they learned something about interviews from the process and showing some mild support for them being used in other classes. It is worth noting that the Verbal …

Csce 411h: Data Modeling For Systems Development—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Inquiry Portfolio, Hongfeng Yu

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

A new course CSCE411H has been developed in 2015-2016. The course tackles the learning of traditional and emerging data modeling techniques in big data related areas from the system and application perspectives. The students have mixed background in Business, Engineering, and Art and Science with different levels. These have introduced a unique set of challenges in the development of this new course. In this inquiry portfolio, I investigated if the adjustment of assignments can benefit the team work of the students with a variety of background. Through the data collection and analysis, the investigation showed that the new assignment design …

Geog 140: Human Geography—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Inquiry Portfolio—"Music And The Geography Of Place: Engaging The Geographical Imagination", Katherine Nashleanas

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

The present project uses cooperative learning strategies that requires students in large classes to collaborate in applying intellectually challenging articles on place, space, sacred spaces, tourist places, and commodification of place to the development of a video project linking music to place and landscape. As an extension of their group activity, students are teaching each other how to apply concepts from the assigned articles to their projects in creative ways while engaging in critical thinking and exercising their geographical imagination.

Math 433: Nonlinear Optimization—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Adam Larios

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

My intention in this portfolio is to highlight various approaches to teaching higher-level mathematics with a programming component that I tried in a course on nonlinear optimization. There is a particular focus on students with little or no previous programming experience. Several case studies are done using "pre- and post-course" surveys which examined items such as student confidence in programming, and particular programming skills. Sample examples and sample homeworks are presented and discussed. Also presented are several materials I designed to lead students into programming and shed light on certain problems. These Materials assume some basic mathematical reasoning and knowledge, …

Tmfd 146: Visualization Studio—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio—Student Perceptions Of Learning To Draw The Human Form, Michael Burton

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This course portfolio examines student experiences while taking Visualization Studio and illustrates the various drawing and design projects they complete. While this document illustrates the overall course experience it focuses on student perceptions of learning to draw the human form by two students. Student A, Alesha, demonstrates a high pass example and student B, Mallory, demonstrates a mid pass example.

I feel it is obvious to compare high and low pass samples but the difference between high and mid is much harder to differentiate. Key elements are highlighted to identify the differences between them. Although final course grades were close …

The Challenges Of Promoting Instructional Improvement: Teaching Behaviors And Teaching Cultures At Liberal Arts Institutions In The Associated Colleges Of The South, Kent Andersen, Barbara Lom, Betsy A. Sandlin

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

One goal of faculty development is to improve instructional practice (McKee, Johnson, Ritchie, and Tew, 2013; Ouellett 2010; Sorcinelli, Austin, Eddy, and Beach, 2006). This goal accords with the design of the Associated Colleges of the South Teaching and Learning Workshop, a faculty development workshop begun in 1992 for 16 residential, liberal arts institutions that comprise the ACS consortium. We surveyed ACS faculty members and observed that they are most likely to engage independently rather than collaboratively to improve their instructional practice, despite stated desires for collaborative opportunities for such work. We recommend that faculty development programs and institutions promote …

Receive, Reorganize, Return: Theatre As Creative Scholarship, Sara Armstrong, Theresa Braunschneider

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This article focuses on the use of theatre as a mode of creative scholarship, from the research involved in sketch creation to the presentation of that research to academic audiences. We particularly focus on a specific sketch developed by the CRLT Players—one that explores the consequences of subtle discrimination faced by women scientists in research laboratory settings— to illustrate the ways in which theatre can engage audiences with research results. The article explains how participation in such performances promotes a more active exploration of scholarship than simply reading or hearing a presentation. Interactive theatre directs and focuses an audience’s attention …

Designing An Evaluation Of Instructional Consultation In A Higher Education Context, Karen Elizabeth Brinkley Etzkorn, David Schumann, Beth White, Tiffany Smith

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Individual instructor consultation is a common service provided by centers focused on educational development in higher education. The importance of this service has been reflected in its history, increasing demand, and strong anecdotal evidence to its effectiveness. However, the extant literature reveals that comprehensive assessment of consultation effectiveness has proved challenging. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to (a) provide an overview of consultation and summarize the relevant work evaluating this service, and (b) propose a comprehensive process for evaluating consultation services that was piloted at one large research intense university. The goal is to provide a systematic method …

Connect, Change, And Conserve: Building A Virtual Center For Teaching Excellence, Anne M. Schoening, Sarah Oliver

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

In an era of limited fiscal and human resources, educational developers are seeking innovative ways to connect with their constituents. Developing a “virtual” center for teaching and learning (CTL) is one approach to consolidating development resources and reaching busy full time and adjunct faculty. This article will describe the process used to create and sustain a Virtual Center for Teaching Excellence (vCTE) at a diverse, mid sized university campus. This process required connection between departmental faculty developers and stakeholders, change of the campus mindset, and conservation of resources through shared efforts. Challenges faced and recommendations to overcome those challenges will …

Institutionalizing Faculty Mentoring Within A Community Of Practice Model, Emily R. Smith, Patricia E. Calderwood, Stephanie Burrell Storms, Paula Gill Lopez, Ryan P. Colwell

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

In higher education, faculty work is typically enacted—and rewarded—on an individual basis. Efforts to promote collaboration run counter to the individual and competitive reward systems that characterize higher education. Mentoring initiatives that promote faculty collaboration and support also defy the structural and cultural norms of higher education. Collaborative mentoring initiatives, however, support all faculty to be lifelong learners. We analyze a reciprocal model of mentoring—a community of practice for mentoring—that integrates collaborative mentoring into faculty’s daily work. Additionally, we examine the dilemmas, benefits, and costs of institutionalizing a community of practice model for mentoring in higher education. Our analyses indicate …

The Scholarship Of Educational Development: A Taxonomy, Laura Cruz

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This is a visual representation and commentary on a taxonomy for the emerging scholarship ofeducational development.

Good, Fast, Cheap: How Centers Of Teaching And Learning Can Capitalize In Today’S Resource Constrained Context, Michael H. Truong, Stephanie Juillerat, Deborah H. C. Gin

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This article provides leaders and educational developers of Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTL) with innovative and practical strategies on how to increase their centers’ capacity and impact by focusing on quality, efficiency, and cost. This “good, fast, cheap” model represents a promising way that CTL can continue to grow, scale, and innovate in the midst of limited resources. By leveraging existing campus resources, external vendor products, and low cost technologies, CTL are able to remain effective and impactful, without compromising quality or requiring abundant resources. This article will include real use case examples from a CTL at a mid …

Don’T Box Me In: Rubrics For Ártists And Designers, Natasha Haugnes, Jennifer L. Russell

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Two faculty developers at a professional art and design university were met with uneasy faculty attitudes toward grading when they opened their CTL 13 years ago. Conversations revealed that the faculty artists and designers suspected that grading would somehow shatter the fragile muse of creativity, which is so central to the processes of producing art and design. The developers’ quest for transparent, consistent grading, and assessment practices resulted in an approach to rubric creation that taps into artists’ reverence for the critique. This narrative account reveals how the approach allowed an interactive introduction of rubrics as teaching tools, ensured their …

The Use Of Song To Open An Educational Development Workshop: Exploratory Analysis And Reflections, Lawrence Lesser, Song An, Daniel Tillman

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Song has been used by faculty of many disciplines in their classrooms and, to a lesser extent, by educational developers in workshops. This paper shares and discusses a new song (about an instructor’s evolving openness to alternatives to lecture only teaching) and its novel use to open an educational development workshop. Self reported participant data from an exploratory survey suggest that the song was most effective in reducing stress as well as in increasing motivation, morale, engagement, and connection. Practical implications and implementation considerations are discussed regarding the song as well as related creative work.

Subjectivities In The Sandbox: Discovering Biases Through Visual Memo Writing, Bethany Lisi

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Having insider status at an organization under study can present a researcher with benefits and challenges. Insider researchers may have access to honest dialogue with study participants but may also be vulnerable to uncomfortable conversations and organizational conflicts. Insider researchers also have to contend with their own biases they bring to a study. By using the reflexive practice of memo writing, insider researchers can be mindful of their own subjectivities during data collection and analysis. The purpose of this article is to share one approach to memo writing that incorporates visuals into the analysis and reflection. Through my use of …

Systematic Assessment Of A High Impact Course Design Institute, Michael S. Palmer, Adriana C. Streifer, Stacy Williams Duncan

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Herein, we describe an intensive, week long course design institute (CDI) designed to introduce participants to the scholarly and evidence driven process of learning focused course design. Impact of this intervention is demonstrated using a multifaceted approach: (a) post CDI satisfaction and perception surveys, (b) pre /post CDI surveys probing pedagogical confidence and perceptions regarding importance of syllabi components, and (c) pre /post CDI syllabi analysis using a reliable syllabus rubric validated for higher education courses. The combined results of these qualitative and quantitative studies indicate that participants value the CDI experience, believe they learn basic principles of learning focused …

A Faculty Wellness Workshop Series: Leveraging On Campus Expertise, Thomas M. Brinthaupt, Arielle Neal, Sheila Otto

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTL) that suffer from funding and staffing issues must rely on outside resources to enhance their effectiveness. Even if funds and staff are adequate, most CTL can improve their reach and effectiveness by the partnerships they establish across their campuses. In this article, we describe a faculty wellness workshop series that illustrates the strategic leveraging we have been able to accomplish on our campus. The series included free standing faculty workshops devoted to stress management (partnering with Counseling Services), work life balance and workplace civility (with members of our faculty learning communities), voice coaching (with …

Improv(Ing) The Academy: Applied Improvisation As A Strategy For Educational Development, Jonathan P. Rossing, Krista Hoffmann Longtin

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Improvisational theater training (or “improv”) is a strategy employed by many business leaders and educators to cultivate creativity and collaboration amid change. Drawing on improv principles such as “Yes, And…” and “Make your scene partners look good,” we explore the ways in which educational developers might apply principles of improv in 3 contexts: teaching and building classroom community, organizational development, and research collaboration. Faculty developers who successfully engage the principles of improv have the potential to help colleges and universities respond more effectively to complex problems and to manage the uncertainty of the future. By highlighting successful applications of improvisation …