Education Commons^™

In Transit Vol 5 Spring 2011, Laguardia Community College

LaGuardia Community College Publications

In Transit is the LaGuardia Journal on Teaching and Learning. It is published by the Center for Teaching and Learning at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY.

Beyond Friending: Buddypress And The Social, Networked, Open-Source Classroom, Matthew K. Gold

Publications and Research

Classrooms have always been networks, of a sort, with professors and students forming an interlaced series of nodes that take shape over the course of a semester, but tools like BuddyPress and WordPress can make those networks more open, more porous, and more varied. In very useful ways, the classroom-as-social-network can help create engaging spaces for learning in which students are more connected to one another, to their professors, and to the wider world.

The C.R.E.A.T.E. Approach To Primary Literature Shifts Undergraduates’ Self-Assessed Ability To Read And Analyze Journal Articles, Attitudes About Science, And Epistemological Beliefs, Sally G. Hoskins, David Lopatto, Leslie M. Stevens

Publications and Research

The C.R.E.A.T.E. (Consider,Read, Elucidate hypotheses, Analyze and interpret data, Think of the next Experiment)method uses intensive analysis of primary literature in the undergraduate classroom to demystify and humanize science. We have reported previously that the method improves students’ critical thinking and content integration abilities, while at the same time enhancing their self-reported understanding of “who does science, and why.” We report here the results of an assessment that addressed C.R.E.A.T.E. students’ attitudes about the nature of science, beliefs about learning, and confidence in their ability to read, analyze, and explain research articles. Using a Likert-style survey administered pre- and postcourse, …

About Us And Not About Us: Theorizing Student Resistance To Learning About Race And Racism From Underrepresented Faculty, Eve Tuck, Karanja Keita Carroll, Michael D. Smith

Publications and Research

Three early-career scholars write across their experiences as underrepresented faculty who teach required diversity courses to future educators in a predominantly white, small, state college. The authors theorize student resistance to course material and to faculty of color teaching about race and racism in a series of tableaus of their classrooms. They examine the ways that students' tactics of avoidance, consuming the Other, and "I won't learn from you" are simultaneously ''about us and not about us," unmasking uneven assumptions about the role of diversity courses in teacher preparation programs.

The Messy Teaching Conversation: Toward A Model Of Collegial Reflection, Exchange, And Scholarship On Classroom Problems, Heidi L. Johnsen, Michelle Pacht, Phyllis E. Vanslyck, Ting Man Tsao

Publications and Research

Whether we teach in junior or senior colleges, we often represent our teaching in the best possible light, leaving little room for acknowledgment or discussion of uncertainty or errors. It seems that the only way to discuss a set back is as part of a larger narrative, one where a failure is simply a precursor to success, a way of highlighting a challenge overcome.This wall of silence about our "messes" prevents us from honestly discussing our day-to-day work in the classroom. This article models just such a "messy teaching conversation."

In Transit Vol 4 Fall 2009, Laguardia Community College

LaGuardia Community College Publications

In Transit is the LaGuardia Journal on Teaching and Learning. It is published by the Center for Teaching and Learning at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY.

General Education Inquiry Groups: The Story Of A Pedagogical Conversation, Gina Cicco

Touchstone

In September of 2007, I was asked to serve as leader of the Education Department’s Inquiry Group at Hostos Community College. At the time, the General Education initiative to form inquiry groups across all academic departments was fairly new. The first goal for our department was to define “inquiry group” and to establish a precise purpose for our group.

In Transit Vol 3 Fall 2008, Laguardia Community College

LaGuardia Community College Publications

In Transit is the LaGuardia Journal on Teaching and Learning. It is published by the Center for Teaching and Learning at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY.

Touchstone Volume 1.1 (Spring 2008), Hostos Community

Touchstone

No abstract provided.

Celebration Of The Committee On Beautiful Ideas, Judith Summerfield

Touchstone

I take this project seriously, this COBI. It is, for me, the most unconventional, sound, and forceful project at CUNY. The project is unconventional: it flies in the face of prevailing winds that make us to attend to depersonalized gerunds and reified nouns: teaching, learning assessment; to outcomes, summations, totals that signal failures, deficiencies; to inabilities that signal impossibilities. Failure rates, killer courses, remediation, that can level the faint at heart.

How The Presentation Of Electronic Gateway Pages Affects Research Behavior, Lisa Finder, Valdeda Dent, Brian Lym

Publications and Research

Purpose

The paper aims to provide details of a study conducted at Hunter College Libraries in fall 2005, the focus of which was how presentation of initial digital resource pages (or gateway pages) on the library's web site impacted students' subsequent steps in the research process.

Design/methodology/approach

A group of 16 students from English and History classes at Hunter College were recruited to participate after having had basic library instruction. They were given computer‐based key tasks to perform in a proctored classroom setting, using the library's homepage. A second group of students was recruited to participate in two small focus …

Learning Communities And The Future Of The Humanities, Phyllis E. Vanslyck

Publications and Research

According to Profession's 2005 Presidential Forum, one reason for dwindling enrollment in the Humanities is lack of interdisciplinarity. Learning communities, courses clustered around a common theme and taught to the same group of students are a powerful example of a kind of interdisciplinarity that is flourishing on more than five-hundred campuses in the United States.This essay looks closely at the expanding learning community movement and its relevance to revitalizing the Humanities.

How To Incorporate External Activities Into Courses For Your Students’ Benefit, Marissa Moran

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Writing Intensive Courses In Theatre, Alisa Roost

Publications and Research

Most professors believe writing matters. Through writing our students are better able to synthesize ideas, communicate those ideas, and make connections across fields. While it can take significant time to grade all the assignments, it can threaten coverage of material, and our students rarely appreciate it, writing assignments can be crafted to reduce grading, add depth to coverage, and spark interest. What follows is an overview of how I incorporate writing into my theatre courses and some ways of crafting engaging writing-intensive courses.

The Face Of The Future: Engaging In Diversity At Laguardia Community College, Gail O. Mellow, Phyllis E. Vanslyck, Bret Eynon

Publications and Research

Non-traditional, first generation, college students are changing the face of higher education in the United States. More than one third of today's students are minorities, eighty percent of those are employed and attending school part-time and more than one quarter are single parents. Diversity at LaGuardia means many things besides culture, ethnicity or nationality.It also refers to age, social background, fluency in English, academic expectations, learning styles and academic preparation. We argue here that we need to rethink curriculum in relation to this new understanding of diversity.

Learning As We G(R)O(W): Strategizing The Lessons Of A Fledgling Rhetoric And Writing Studies Department, Jane Hindman

Publications and Research

Published in one of the first collections to focus on independent writing programs, A Field of Dreams. The volume offers a complex picture of the experience of the stand-alone. Included here are narratives of individual programs from a wide range of institutions, exploring such issues as what institutional issues led to their independence, how independence solved or created administrative problems, how it changed the culture of the writing program and faculty sense of purpose, success, or failure.

Repositioning Ourselves In The Contact Zone, Phyllis E. Vanslyck

Publications and Research

This essay investigates ways students respond to cultural differences and cultural conflicts presented in literary texts and considers effective pedagogical strategies for dealing with such issues in the classroom. How can we encourage an exploration of cultural issues that texts embody and critique in a way that encourages an understanding of ways values are culturally constructed?