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Preface, Volume 28 (2010), Linda B. Nilson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Preface to volume 28 (2010) of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development, by Linda B. Nilson of Clemson University.

Acknowledgments, Volume 28 (2010), Linda B. Nilson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Acknowledgments for volume 28 (2010) of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development, by Linda B. Nilson of Clemson University.

Ethical Guidelines For Educational Developers

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Ethical guidelines for educational developers, prepared by Mintz, Smith, and Warren, January 1999. Revised March 1999, September 1999, and March 2000.

Developing Competency Models Of Faculty Developers: Using World Café To Foster Dialogue, Debra Dawson, Judy Britnell, Alicia Hitchcock

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Recent research by Chism (2007); Sorcinelli, Austin, Eddy, and Beach (2006); and Taylor (2005) speaks to the critical roles that faculty developers play in ensuring institutional success. Yet we have not as a profession identified the specific competencies necessary for success at different career stages. Our research generated these competencies for three faculty developer positions—entry-level, senior-level, and director—within a teaching and learning center. We used World Café, a collaborative discussion-based technique, to engage developers in building a matrix of competencies for each position and in determining how these competencies could be demonstrated.

A Conceptual Framework For Higher Education Faculty Mentoring, Pamela S. Lottero-Perdue, Steve Fifield

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

There is considerable variability in conceptions of faculty mentoring in higher education. Rather than view this diversity as a problem, we see it as a potential resource that can inform design, implementation, and evaluation of faculty mentoring. To learn from this diversity, we review the literature on facuity mentoring in higher education to create a conceptual framework of mentoring. The conceptual framework is a tool that program administrators, participants, and evaluators can use to adapt mentoring to the unique needs of particular faculty and institutions.

A Model For Putting A Teaching Center In Context: An Informal Comparison Of Teaching Centers At Larger State Universities, Wesley H. Dotson, Daniel J. Bernstein

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

An informal comparative analysis of teaching centers at larger state universities around the United States was conducted as part of a self-initiated ten-year review of our center. We compared centers along several dimensions, among them programs, resources, and size. This chapter offers our methods, results, and general impressions of the process as an example for others who might decide to conduct a similar analysis.

Promoting Dialogue And Action On Meta–Professional Skills, Roles, And Responsibilities, Michael Theall, Bonnie B. Mullinix, Raoul A. Arreola

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Collecting and using information about faculty skills can serve as an organizational development activity to guide faculty evaluation and professional development policy and practice with the goal of leading to improved teaching and learning. This chapter presents findings from a study with international, local, quantitative, and qualitative components. Readers are encouraged to explore data patterns and consider courses of action that these imply, and to reflect on the potential usefulness of the Meta-Profession model for furthering reflection, dialogue, and action on development and evaluation processes on their own campus.

Macgyvers, Medeas, And Bionic Women: Patterns Of Instructor Response To Negative Feedback, Allison P. Boye, Suzanne Tapp

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Few studies have examined instructor responses to negative feedback and their interplay with gender, but faculty developers must be cognizant of and sensitive to the needs of the instructors with whom they work. This chapter identifies six general patterns of response among male and female instructors to negative feedback from students and consultants, based on survey results, interviews, and observations. A combination of empathy, resources, and time is the key to understanding and responding to those patterns and meeting the needs of individual instructors. Further, comparisons across gender reveal interesting differences related to language use, internalization versus externalization of feedback, …

Conversations About Assessment And Learning: Educational Development Scholarship That Makes A Difference, Sue Fostaty Young, Susan Wilcox

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

To facilitate deeper understanding of teachers’ assessment practices, we undertook an educational development inquiry with college and university faculty. Our conversations with instructors about their assessment practices highlighted the complex relationship between teachers’ beliefs about teaching, their institutional contexts, and their experiences of teaching. The project gave us valuable opportunities to examine our interactions with faculty and enabled us to identify approaches to educational development that help postsecondary faculty understand and improve their practice.

Class Size: Is Less More For Significant Learning?, John Zubizarreta

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Mixed as it might be, educational research suggests that engaged students are more effectively stimulated and fulfilled in the small class. Of course, students can thrive in large classes if discipline, course level, teacher characteristics, goals, methods, assessment strategies, and outcomes work together to inspire and produce significant learning. The small class environment does not by itself necessarily ensure higher level learning, but studies indicate that if faculty and institutions want to promote and support the active learning pedagogies, mentoring, reflection, feedback, and personal relationships that result in deep and lasting learning, then less is more.

Weaving Promising Practices For Inclusive Excellence Into The Higher Education Classroom, María Del Carmen Salazar, Amanda Stone Norton, Franklin A. Tuitt

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Higher education is faced with an increasingly diverse student body and historic opportunities to foster inclusive excellence, meaning a purposeful embodiment of inclusive practices toward multiple student identity groups. Although the benefits of inclusive excellence are well established, college faculty often cite barriers to promoting it in classrooms, and this creates an opening for faculty developers to support them in weaving promising practices for inclusive excellence into their teaching. This chapter highlights the practices of inclusive faculty and the methods faculty developers can use to promote inclusive excellence along five dimensions: (1) intrapersonal awareness, (2) interpersonal awareness, (3) curricular transformation, …

Communication Climate, Comfort, And Cold Calling: An Analysis Of Discussion-Based Courses At Multiple Universities, Tasha J. Souza, Elise J. Dallimore, Eric Aoki, Brian C. Pilling

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

One of the challenges in discussion facilitation is creating a climate that allows multiple voices to be heard. Although the practice of calling on students whose hands are not raised has been used to engage the entire class in discussions, many believe that cold calling sabotages the communication climate and makes students extremely uncomfortable. This study examines the impact of cold calling on student comfort and communication climate. The results suggest that when instructors choose to cold-call, they must create a supportive communication climate to ensure student comfort. This study challenges the assumption that cold calling makes students uncomfortable.

Theoretical Frameworks For Academic Dishonesty: A Comparative Review, Michele Dipietro

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Academic dishonesty has so far been understood using theoretical frameworks derived from criminology literature. These frameworks contribute pieces of the puzzle and even enjoy some empirical support, but conceptualizing students as delinquents is problematic and ultimately ineffective. This chapter reviews the current frameworks, including their theoretical underpinnings, empirical support, and strategies they suggest, and goes on to analyze their limitations and suggest alternative frameworks.

Engaging Faculty In Conversations About Teaching Through A Research Proposal Workshop, Susanna Calkins, Denise Drane

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Faculty who consider themselves primarily researchers can be difficult to engage in faculty development activities. However, as agencies such as the National Science Foundation now require educational activities in research grants, proposal writing may represent a new avenue for engaging research faculty in their teaching. In this chapter, we outline an innovative workshop on writing the pedagogical component of a grant proposal that was developed for faculty at Northwestern University. During the workshop, while learning how to structure an education plan for their grant, faculty engaged in a lively discussion about formulating learning objectives and aligning them with pedagogical methods …

Developing And Renewing Department Chair Leadership: The Role Of A Teaching Center In Administrative Training, Mary C. Wright, Constance E. Cook, Chris O'Neal

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Most faculty development centers offer limited resources for leadership development, and most existing programs focus on training the new chair. The key questions we address are: What role do teaching centers play in administrative professional development? How can we develop programs that assist new chairs with their immediate questions, while also promoting continued growth in institutional leadership? We present one model at the University of Michigan, initiated by the provost and organized by the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, which involves an extensive needs assessment process, a developmentally oriented leadership training program, and an evaluation.

Survivor Academe: Assessing Reflective Practice, Laurel Johnson Black, Terry Ray, Judith Villa

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Reflective practice is a goal for many academic professional development programs. What do faculty participants gain from a reflective practice program, and how much reflection do they actually practice? Using interviews and grounded theory, we identified three crucial needs being met by such a program at our university. In addition, we compared participants’ comments to the elements of reflection established by Dewey and Rodgers to determine the extent of their reflection. The results call for more assessment to better align the structures of reflective practice programs with participant needs as well as further research on the effects of reflective practice …

Transforming Teaching Cultures: Departmental Teaching Fellows As Agents Of Change, Cassandra Volpe Horii

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The Departmental Teaching Fellows (DTF) program of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University employs doctoral students as peer teaching mentors. Four years of program assessment data include quantitative work inventories, surveys and self-reports, interviews of faculty and administrators, and a survey of all graduate students recently teaching in arts and sciences. Observed program outcomes include (1) better informal support for teaching, (2) higher quality and quantity of interactions between graduate students and faculty on teaching, and (3) more systematic opportunities for teaching-related professional development. Qualitative assessment data suggest that the DTFs occupy several liminal positions …

Beyond The Great Books: Increasing The Flexibility, Scope, And Appeal Of An Honors Curriculum, Matthew C. Altman

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Two traditional models for honors programs are a chronological Great Books structure and a theme-based approach. Recently, the comparative virtues of these two models have been the subject of practical and theoretical analyses at Central Washington University (CWU), which is in the process of implementing a new honors curriculum to replace its longstanding Great Books program. The new curriculum consists of variable topics courses that satisfy general education requirements and contribute to an honors minor, as well as an upperdivision scholarship experience in which students complete advanced research with faculty mentors.

As our experience demonstrates, a Great Books-based curriculum has …

Individual Achievement In An Honors Research Community: Teaching Vygotsky’S Zone Of Proximal Development, Kaitlin A. Briggs

Honors in Practice Online Archive

The years leading up to the 1917 Russian October Revolution must have been a dynamic environment for an emerging young intellectual living in Moscow. Eclipsed by such popular Western cultural representations as David Lean’s 1965 Academy Award winning film, Dr. Zhivago (based on Pasternak’s novel), this milieu included the writers Babel, Gorky, and Nabokov; the poets Mandel’shtam and Tsvetaeva; the composers Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Stravinsky; the theater director and acting teacher Stanislavsky; and the artists Chagall and Kandinsky (Van Der Veer, 23–4). There we find situated a law student, also studying philosophy, literature, and aesthetics, who went on to become …

Dedication: Donzell Lee

Honors in Practice Online Archive

An outstanding musician, teacher, and leader, Donzell Lee has been an important asset to honors for over twenty-five years. Having received his B.Mus. from Xavier University of Louisiana, his M.A. from Stanford University, and his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University, Donzell joined the faculty of Alcorn State University in 1981 and remains there as Professor of Music. His career in honors began in 1984, when he assumed the position of Director of the Honors Curriculum Program at Alcorn State. Since that time he has been active in the National Association of African-American Honors Programs, the Southern Regional Honors Council, and …