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Full-Text Articles in Education

Anth 110: Introduction To Anthropology: A Peer Review Of Teaching Benchmark Memo, Taylor A. Livingston Jan 2021

Anth 110: Introduction To Anthropology: A Peer Review Of Teaching Benchmark Memo, Taylor A. Livingston

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This portfolio examines the extent to which the learning outcomes for Introduction to Anthropology (ANTH 110) were met through course assessments. The primary goal of this course is for students to engage with anthropological content, by introducing students to an anthropological perspective, which requires looking at issues from multiple contexts (holism), and having students add this to their “tool kit” to help them make sense of what they believe, why they believe it, and how to make sense of the world around them and their place in it. The alignment of outcomes and assessment was analyzed through an examination of …


Strengthening Graduate Student Teaching Through The Basic Course: Comm 101: Communication In The 21st Century, Allison Ronnau Bonander Jan 2021

Strengthening Graduate Student Teaching Through The Basic Course: Comm 101: Communication In The 21st Century, Allison Ronnau Bonander

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

Basic course instruction receives significant attention in relation to pedagogical practices and application. While this examination is very worthy, it often neglects to understand how Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) are trained, taught, and how their learning as teachers is examined. This portfolio examines COMM 101: Communication in the 21st Century, a large lecture basic course with recitations led by GTAs, as a means of understanding how GTAs are trained and taught to meet the “learning objectives” of teaching pedagogy of a basic course. A qualitative analysis of GTA training meetings transcripts as well as emails from GTAs – and select …


Implementation Plans For Course Redesigns: An Exploration Of Identified Strategies, Rebecca Campbell, Benjamin Blankenship Jan 2021

Implementation Plans For Course Redesigns: An Exploration Of Identified Strategies, Rebecca Campbell, Benjamin Blankenship

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Institutions are redesigning gateway courses—lower-division courses known to create student success bottlenecks—to influence persistence and completion goals. These initiatives, student success course redesigns (SSCR), are specialized versions of course design institutes (CDIs). This investigation into SSCRs uses content analysis to examine the implementation plans created during a SSCR. Results demonstrated that the majority of the strategies planned focused on the Learning key performance indicator (KPI), and the minority of the planned-for strategies focused on the Monitoring Student Performance KPI. A more granular analysis of the Learning strategies revealed five themes: Content, Assessment, Pedagogy, Syllabus, and Student Success. Additional results indicated …


Beyond Instructional Development: An Exploration Of Using Formal Pedagogy Training To Benefit Perceived Quality Of Life And Sense Of Community In Graduate Students, Matthew Mahavongtrakul, Ashley Hooper, Daniel Mann, Brian Sato Jan 2021

Beyond Instructional Development: An Exploration Of Using Formal Pedagogy Training To Benefit Perceived Quality Of Life And Sense Of Community In Graduate Students, Matthew Mahavongtrakul, Ashley Hooper, Daniel Mann, Brian Sato

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The Association of American Colleges and Universities calls for improvements in teaching preparation in graduate programs as a transferable skill for future faculty. However, the amount of institutional and faculty support for these programs is limited. For the relatively few programs that exist, rarely do they have their outcomes assessed in a data-driven manner. This is disconcerting considering that participation in professional development can improve work-life balance, and graduate students often work long hours, suffer from mental health issues, and face increasing career competition. In this case study, we explore how two teaching development programs impacted pedagogical knowledge, perceived quality …


Development Of A Faculty Appreciation Of Pedagogy Scale, Carol A. Hurney, Jordan D. Troisi, Lori H. Leaman Oct 2020

Development Of A Faculty Appreciation Of Pedagogy Scale, Carol A. Hurney, Jordan D. Troisi, Lori H. Leaman

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Evidencing the value of programs and services challenges educational developers to measure a range of outcomes. While direct measures of faculty use of effective teaching behaviors and student learning are desirable, these methods are time consuming and resource intensive. We provide a scale that is easy to deploy and can be adapted to different programs. Our psychometrically sound scale measures one facet of faculty learning about teaching—appreciation of pedagogy. The scale measures awareness, knowledge integration, emotions, beliefs, and self-reported behaviors related to the appreciation of pedagogy. We also examine scale correlates, including teaching identity, confidence, and control.


Workshopping A Workshop: Collaborative Design In Educational Development, Eleanor V. H. Vandegrift, Amy B. Mulnix, Jennifer R. Yates, S. Raj Chaudhury Jan 2018

Workshopping A Workshop: Collaborative Design In Educational Development, Eleanor V. H. Vandegrift, Amy B. Mulnix, Jennifer R. Yates, S. Raj Chaudhury

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Working remotely and collaboratively, our interdisciplinary team created an educational development workshop, Thinking Skills for the 21st Century: Teaching for Transfer, in which participants not only experience, apply, and reflect on teaching across educational settings but also connect this work to principles that have been demonstrated by learning science to support the transfer of knowledge. We used backward design to develop the workshop and evidence-based pedagogies in its implementation. We facilitated the workshop at two different national meetings for distinct audiences and also as part of an on-campus faculty development program. Here, we report on the workshop development and revision, …


Equity-Minded Faculty Development, Aeron Haynie Jan 2018

Equity-Minded Faculty Development, Aeron Haynie

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

A governing principle of equity-minded faculty development is a commitment to supporting marginalized populations who may feel unwelcome in academia: from minority college students to first-generation graduate students to faculty of color. Faculty development should encourage faculty to notice inequities and not dismiss them as student’s individual failures; to examine institutional data on student, graduate student, and faculty achievement patterns; and to collaborate with other campus partners on interventions. As we work with faculty to develop strategies to ensure all students can succeed, we must also enact the same empowering, strengths- based practices we promote.


Engl 487: English Capstone Experience—A Peer Review Of Teaching Benchmark Portfolio, Kelly Stage Jan 2017

Engl 487: English Capstone Experience—A Peer Review Of Teaching Benchmark Portfolio, Kelly Stage

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This portfolio documents the teaching objectives, strategies, and assessments for a capstone course in the English major at UNL. As the English Studies Capstone and as an ACE (Achievement-Centered Education) 10 course at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, English 487 must help students meet key outcomes for the department and the University, but it also allows flexibility and creativity in the methods chosen to meet these requirements and structure the course. This portfolio thereby reflects on the intellectual labor of designing a particular version of these requirements and on guiding students through the design. The assessments included here are measuring traditional …


Reconceptualizing Pedagogical And Curricular Knowledge Development Through Making, Steven Greenstein, Justin Olmanson Jan 2017

Reconceptualizing Pedagogical And Curricular Knowledge Development Through Making, Steven Greenstein, Justin Olmanson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

While making is typically tethered to narratives of entrepreneurship and business, it can provide a gateway to meaningful interaction and deepened understanding of both content and pedagogy. In this article we provide descriptions of two courses—one each at the pre-service and in-service levels—that engage teachers in making and design practices that we hypothesized would inform their pedagogical and curricular thinking. With a focus on the design of new tools to support teaching and learning through the use of human-centered design practices and digital fabrication technologies, these courses have teachers exploring at the intersection of content, pedagogy, and making. Specifically, they …


Educational Development Efforts Aligned With The Assessment Cycle, Phyllis Blumberg Jan 2017

Educational Development Efforts Aligned With The Assessment Cycle, Phyllis Blumberg

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Using an assessment cycle as an organizing framework, this article illustrates how educational development and assessment mutually complement each other. It describes an assessment study conducted to determine if two colleges at a small university met their strategic goals to increase the adoption of learning-centered teaching. This study served the parallel function of assessing the impact of sustained educational development efforts by the Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTL) to promote learning-centered teaching. The majority of interviewed faculty reported using learning-centered approaches. The data collection method itself also served as a teachable moment for faculty who do not attend CTL …


Comm 286: Business And Professional Communication—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Katherine M. Castle Jan 2016

Comm 286: Business And Professional Communication—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Katherine M. Castle

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This instructional portfolio is an inquiry into the a large, multi-section standardized course at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This course was recently flipped into a hybrid design in order to improve consistency in learning objectives across course sections, streamline assessment processes, provide a better student educational experience, and to manage continued growth in the course. This inquiry examines the effectiveness of the course in meeting stakeholder needs, reducing communication apprehension, improving student confidence to communicate effectively in professional environments, and in teaching professional communication competencies. It is a comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of the course to include student, GTA, …


Msym 109: Physical Principles In Agriculture And Life Sciences—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, David Mabie Jan 2015

Msym 109: Physical Principles In Agriculture And Life Sciences—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, David Mabie

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This benchmark course portfolio was developed for MSYM 109 - Physical Principles in Agriculture and Life Sciences. The class is a general service course taken by majors as a prerequisite for future coursework along with several other CASNR majors to fulfill their physics course requirement. MSYM 109 is a high enrollment course, with 115 students in lecture, along with four separate 30 person recitation sections. This portfolio was developed to assess the following objectives: 1. Identify, evaluate, and justify the course objectives 2. Assess and evaluate the course pedagogy and assessment methodology 3. Analyze the historical students assessment results against …


Caught In The Tractor Beam Of Larger Influences: The Filtration Of Innovation In Education Technology Design, Justin Olmanson, Fitsum Abebe, Valerie Jones, Eric Kyle, Lyrica Lucas, Katie Robbins, Guieswende Rouamba, Xianquan Liu Jan 2015

Caught In The Tractor Beam Of Larger Influences: The Filtration Of Innovation In Education Technology Design, Justin Olmanson, Fitsum Abebe, Valerie Jones, Eric Kyle, Lyrica Lucas, Katie Robbins, Guieswende Rouamba, Xianquan Liu

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

While emerging technologies continue to emerge, research into their use in learning contexts often focuses on a subset of educational practices and ways of using technologies. In this study we begin to explore the extent to which educational designs are influenced by larger societal and education-related factors not usually explicitly considered when designing or identifying technology-supported education experiences for research study. We examine patterns within and between factors via a content analysis across ten years and 19 different journals of published peer-reviewed research on technology-supported writing. Our findings have implications for how researchers, designers, and educators approach technology-supported educational design …


Teaching With Poetic Insight: A Practitioner Reflection And Dream Of Possibility, Dorothy Marie Bossman Jan 2014

Teaching With Poetic Insight: A Practitioner Reflection And Dream Of Possibility, Dorothy Marie Bossman

The Nebraska Educator: A Student-Led Journal

This reflection focuses on the case of a student who failed my English class when I was concurrently a PhD student and a middle school teacher. The pedagogical insight imbedded in the story of our time together adds to the literature on teacher content knowledge Shulman (1986) called the missing paradigm. The piece takes an unorthodox approach to a case study based on the twofold identity of the author as a researcher intrigued by the complexity of teacher thinking and an educator driven by concern for a particular student. This case reflects back on my experiences teaching this young man, …