Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons^™

Best Practices In Using Student Response Systems (Srs), Sarah Grison, Robert Bartsch

Psychology Faculty

These slides are from a workshop describing the various types of student response systems, the benefits of using SRS over other response methods, and the best practices for SRS to improve student learning. Guidance on implementing SRS and supporting resources for improving pedagogy are also included.

It Takes Discipline: Learning In A World Without Boundaries, Stephen Healey

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

As Plato suggested, pedagogy is inextricably related to the polis. The learner and teacher are constituted by social, political, and economic bounds, and yet the twenty-first century polis is increasingly a world without boundaries. This is a perilous and exciting time to teach and learn. As agents of terror have shown, political boundaries are uncomfortably permeable. Economically, culturally, and religiously, globalization has reduced the power of nation-states and threatened erasure of their boundaries. Isolated identities—nationalistic, religious, linguistic, sexual— are under siege. Nothing is immune from alteration by these large-scale forces. Plato’s insight is that the pressures and possibilities, which determine …

Anatomy Of A Scientific Explanation, Cassandra Volpe Horii

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

“If I’m going to explain this theory, the question is, are you going to understand it? Will you understand the theory?” - -Richard Feynman, 1979 Douglas Robb Memorial Lectures

In this way, Richard Feynman, recipient of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics and renowned teacher, author, and bongo player, introduced scientific explanation as an interesting problem with understanding as its testable outcome. Making quantum mechanics understandable to an audience of non-specialists is no easy task. Feynman had his audience in stitches, on this occasion, after noting that advanced graduate students in physics often “do not understand it either, and that’s …

Non-Science For Majors: Reforming Courses, Programs, And Pedagogy, Jennifer Frederick

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Scientific advances fill news headlines and find audiences in popular movies, legislative bodies, and courtrooms, suggesting that society is broadly engaged by scientific issues. Science students typically learn concepts and methods that ignore the social and cultural foreground as well as religious and ethical implications of science practice. These excluded factors often reappear in scientific developments such as genetic engineering of herbicide-resistant plants, environmental effects of chemical and biological waste management strategies, and medical and health implications of sequencing the human genome. Though today’s science professors are already burdened by expanded content from introductory to advanced courses, now more than …

Making Sure That Peer Review Of Teaching Works For You, Nancy Van Note Chism

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Peer review of teaching: A hastily arranged visit to the classroom of a faculty member in desperate need of quick testimony on teaching effectiveness, resulting in a bland letter stating that the class is interesting and students seem engaged.

Given this prevailing practice in peer review of teaching, no wonder most faculty members fail to see its inherent usefulness. To many, this limited view and practice have rendered it a necessary evil, only to be used under duress. This essay seeks to expand both definition and practice. Let’s begin with another definition:

Peer review of teaching: Collegial efforts to understand …

Orienting Students To An “Inside-Out Course”: Establishing A Classroom Culture Of Interactive, Cooperative Learning, Karlene Ferrante

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

I have developed a course in communication theories that foregrounds active learning, with structured opportunities for support. The result is an “Inside-Out Course” in which students are required to turn in a “ticket” for entry to class— usually a concept map of the reading. Since the first exposure to material is through homework, class time is used for quick overviews and learning activities designed by student teaching teams. Students are motivated to create good concept maps for tickets, since they are allowed to use those maps for the case study exams, taken with open notes. Assessments require students to select …

"How Did I Spend Two Hours Grading This Paper?!" Responding To Student Writing Without Losing Your Life, Eric Lemay

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

The specific critical moves and writing conventions of your discipline probably differ from mine, but your discipline certainly has them and when teaching them to students becomes your aim, your responses to their writing will take less time and be more effective. No longer will you have to transform novice papers into expert ideas. Instead, you can focus on the novices themselves. You can use their writing to teach them the next thing they need to know as novice historians, philosophers, or anthropologists. Given that they’re novices and you’re an expert, that thing is almost always obvious to you, although …

Working Toward A Third Space In The Teaching Of Elementary Mathematics, Ryan Flessner

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Building on work in the area of third space theory, this study documents one teacher’s efforts to create third spaces in an elementary mathematics classroom. In an attempt to link the worlds of theory and practice, I examine how the work of other theorists and researchers – inside and outside the field of education – can create new lenses for classroom practitioners. In addition, the article provides evidence that third spaces may be more difficult to realize than others have described. Rather than forcing a third space to emerge, what this study finds more important is creating an environment that …

Beyond Student Ratings: “A Whole New World, A New Fantastic Point Of View”, Ronald A. Berk

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Unfortunately, student ratings have dominated as the primary and, frequently, only measure of teaching performance at colleges and universities for the past four decades (Seldin, 2006). In fact, the evaluation of teaching has been in a metaphorical cul-de-sac with student ratings as the universal barometer. Only recently has there been a trend toward augmenting those ratings with other data sources to broaden and deepen the evidence base (Arreola, 2007; Berk, 2006b; Braskamp and Ory, 1994; Centra, 1993; Knapper and Cranton, 2001; Seldin, 2006).

Although much has been learned over the 60-year history of faculty evaluation and the 50-year his- tory …

Facing The Challenge Of Quality In Mexican Private Higher Education: A Study Of Three Cases, Gus Gregorutti

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Western Guide To Graduate Supervision, Elizabeth Skarakis-Doyle, Gayle L. Mcintyre

Purple Guides

Based on the experiences of Western's graduate supervisors, this 30 page guide addresses the supervision of graduate students and focuses on best practices in mentoring, promoting student progress, and clarifying expectations in the supervisor-student relationship.

What Helps Law Professors Develop As Teachers? -- An Empirical Study, Gerald F. Hess, Sophie M. Sparrow

Law Faculty Scholarship

The overall goal of this article is to provide concrete suggestions for how law schools can improve teaching and enrich law student learning. In doing so, it reviews and analyzes the data collected from two national surveys about the kinds of faculty development activities that are most effective in improving law professors’ teaching. One survey was designed to quantify how many law teachers engaged in twenty-two types of teaching development activities over the previous five years and to assess the effectiveness of each of those activities. The other survey focused on the effectiveness of a national conference on teaching and …

Building Assignments That Teach, Mary-Ann Winkelmes

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

We have come to take assignments for granted as a necessary part of undergraduate education, largely because they provide the basis for a student's grade. But assignments can accomplish much more. In addition to helping students learn course content, assignments can enable students to practice the most essential skills of a discipline. Further, assignments can offer an opportunity for students to become better evaluators of their own academic work.

Thoughtfully structured assignments offer teachers an opportunity to build students’ mastery of essential disciplinary skills alongside their content knowledge; to improve students’ ability to evaluate their own academic work; and even …

Beyond Writing: Integrative Learning And Teaching In First-Year Seminars, David H. Krause, Robert C. Lageaux

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Campuses across the country continue to establish first-year seminars that promise students integrative and transformative learning experiences necessary for the twenty-first century. This trend inevitably challenges faculty members to teach in ways that transcend or subvert both their disciplinary expertise and their familiar, comfortable ways of teaching. These challenges become especially visible in the design and evaluation of assignments. At Columbia College Chicago, for example, where the majority of students aspire to careers in the arts, media, and communication, teachers have been negotiating the place of writing in a required firstyear seminar in liberal learning. These negotiations play out differently …

Role-Play: An Often Misused Active Learning Strategy, Stephanie Nickerson

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Role-play is a special kind of case study, in which there is an explicit situation established with students playing specific roles, spontaneously saying and doing what they understand their “character” would, in that situation. Role-plays differ from other case studies in the immediacy of the experience. Students find themselves in the role-play. In a case study, they read about situations and characters. One of the reasons role-play can work so well is because of the power of placing oneself in another’s shoes. This provides opportunities for learning in both the affective domain, where emotions and values are involved, as well …

Teaching, Learning, And Spirituality In The College Classroom, Allison Pingree

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

landscape is provoking a heightened focus on spirituality and religion in the academy. For example, UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute (HERI), best known as the administrators of the CIRP Freshman Survey for over 40 years, is conducting a major research project, Spirituality in Higher Education (https://www.spirituality.ucla.edu), drawing data from over 112,000 students and 40,000 faculty at over 420 institutions. Defining spirituality in broad strokes (as the “interior” and “subjective” aspects of our lives, that which reflects the “values and ideals that we hold most dear,” gives us “meaning and purpose,” and invokes “inspiration, creativity, the mysterious, the sacred, …

Western Guide To Mentorship In Academia, Donald Gordon Cartwright

Purple Guides

This guide addresses the importance of mentoring for new faculty members, describes the pros and cons of various mentorship models, and offers advice for mentors and mentees.

Collaboration Or Plagiarism? Explaining Collaborative-Based Assignments Clearly, Tuesday Cooper

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Much has been written about the use of collaborative learning as a pedagogical tool to enhance student learning. Collaborative learning, or group work as it is commonly known, can be defined as a structured process where students are required to work in groups to complete a common task or assignment for a particular course. It has been identified as one of the most effective ways for students to become actively engaged in classroom activities (Davis, 1993; McKeachie, 1999; Nilson, 1998).

Although there are many positive aspects of group work, there are negatives as well. One particular problem occurs when students …

Developing The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning Using Faculty Learning Communities, Milton D. Cox

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) have proven successful in producing teaching projects, as evidenced by a survey of institutions with FLCs. It follows that these groups should provide ideal conditions for a subsequent development of those projects into peerreviewed publications and presentations, or the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). This essay offers faculty practical advice for producing such SoTL products based on what started as a teaching project in an FLC. My advice is based on work with FLCs for 28 years on my campus and others (Cox, 2003).

The Right Start: Reflections On A Departmentally Based Graduate Course On Teaching, Craig E. Nelson

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Full credit courses on teaching offered by academic departments for their own graduate students and postdocs have many advantages. Many students come to graduate school because they want teaching to be an important part of their future professional life. Most who are hired in academia will go to jobs where teaching is important. Indiana University’s Graduate School noted that 95% of its PhDs who landed tenure-track positions found those positions at liberal arts colleges, smaller comprehensive universities, and urban institutions. They noted that their teaching experience at Bloomington did not necessarily prepare them fully for these jobs.

I offered a …

The Useful, Sensible, No-Frills Departmental Assessment Plan, Barbara E. Walvoord

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Academic departments from physics to philosophy to physical therapy face new demands for “assessment of student learning.” It’s hard to argue against the basic idea of assessment: when a department invests time and resources trying to nurture student learning, it should ask itself: Are they learning? Yet departments may also fear that assessment will require them to dumb-down their teaching; use standardized tests; teach alike; or compromise academic freedom. Every department wonders how it will find the time and resources for one more thing.

This essay suggests a simple, sustainable, and useful departmental assessment plan that capitalizes on what departments …

Assessment Of Informal Learning: Critical Review Of Current Methodologies And Research Into Appropriate Instrument(S), Deirdre Goggin

Theses

This thesis seeks to examine the recognition and formal assessment of informal and non- formal learning, paying particular attention to the methodologies that are currently being used and identifying the possibility of more appropriate instruments. This examination is conducted within the context of the national emphasis on the creation of a learning and knowledge intense society, the requirements necessary for this to become a reality and the increasing discussion on the recognition of informal and non formal education and training.

In order to discuss the above comprehensively, this research will examine the Irish education framework which supports the recognition of …

Nefdc Exchange, Volume 18, Number 2, Fall 2007, New England Faculty Development Consortium

New England Faculty Development Consortium Exchange

Contents

Message from the President - Judy Miller, Clark University

From the editors - Tom Thibodeau, New England Institute of Technology, and Jeanne Albert, Castleton State College

NEFDC Fall Conference, Friday, November 9, 2007, Worcester, Massachusetts; theme: Engaged Learning: Fostering Student Success; keynote speaker: George Kuh, Indiana University

Engaged Learning: The Foundation for Student Success, Note from our Fall Conference Keynote Speaker - George Kuh, Indiana University

Fall Conference Agenda

Learning Through Community Engagement - Kevin R. Kearney, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

Reciprocal Mentoring - Mathew L. Ouellett and Susan E. McKenna, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Helpful …

Evaluation Of An Adult Education Technology Program, Iwasan D. Kejawa

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the adult education technology program at a chartered alternative adult education center in Florida. The adult education center had a low rate of students passing the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). This study examined the impact of the use of computer technology in an effort to improve student learning in mathematics, reading, and science. Computers at the institution were used by all students for tutorials to prepare them for the FCAT and to obtain a high school diploma. The research questions for this study were as follows: 1. Is the education technology …

Nefdc Exchange, Volume 18, Number 1, Spring 2007, New England Faculty Development Consortium

New England Faculty Development Consortium Exchange

Contents

Message from the President - Judith Kamber, Northern Essex Community College

From the editors -

Encounters With George: Information Literacy and Mathematics at Berkshire Community College - Karen Carreras-Hubbard and Annette Guertin, Berkshire Community College

Achieving Information Literacy Goals Through Collaboration - Pamela Bedore, University of Connecticut, Avery Point

Teaming Up! The Sociology/English Composition I /Librarian Embed Experience at Northern Essex Community College - Linda A. Desjardins, Northern Essex Community College

Common Learning Outcomes for First-Year Information Literacy - Mary Adams, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth; Gabriela Adler, Bristol Community College; Susan Berteaux, Massachusetts Maritime Academy; Marcia Dinneen, Bridgewater State …

The Social Construction Of Authorship: An Investigation Of Subjectivity And Rhetorical Authority In The College Writing Classroom, Johannah Rodgers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although we use the term author on a daily basis to refer to certain individuals, bodies of work, and systems of ideas, as Michel Foucault and other critics have pointed out, attempting to answer the question “What is an Author?” is by no means a simple proposition. And, starting from the position that there is no single, or definitive answer to this complex question, this dissertation seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the genealogy of authorship by investigating the ways in which conceptions of the author have informed models of the writing subject in the field of rhetoric …

When Motivating Generation Y In The Classroom, Jim Westerman

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Generation Y students have matured and developed in an artificial, technologically-centered environment significantly different from what prior generations have experienced. This essay examines the impact of this environment on student classroom expectations and provides suggestions for how faculty can adapt their pedagogy to be successful.

Student Plagiarism: How To Maintain Academic Integrity, Ludy Goodson

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Plagiarism detection tools undermine academic integrity when they ignore student copyright protections, contribute to a vendor’s unauthorized commercial gains, fail to detect many forms of plagiarism, and require instructors to do the real detection. By becoming aware of these realities and possibilities, instructors can develop more effective strategies to reduce plagiarism while simultaneously enhancing students’ academic performance.

Information Literacy: Imperatives For Faculty, Leora Baron-Nixon

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

With the burgeoning of information, and especially the unfettered growth of online information, long-held assumptions about students’ access to and interaction with information have to be re-evaluated. Faculty play a key role in ensuring that information literacy skills are acquired and practiced at all levels of instruction.

When Disability Enters A Teacher’S Life, Must The Teacher Stop Teaching?, Laura L. B. Border

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Disabilities are usually discussed in academe in the context of the undergraduate student population; nevertheless, graduate students and faculty also represent a certain percentage of persons with disabilities. This essay presents a case study and an analysis of a consultation with a graduate instructor, inviting us to examine the issues of disability in the life of a teacher.