Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Commons^™

How Songbirds Learn To Sing Provides Suggestions For Designing Team Projects For Computing Courses, Ashwin Satyanarayana, Radhika Natarajan, Lior Baron

Publications and Research

Understanding how our brain works and how we learn is perhaps one of the greatest challenges facing twenty-first computer science. Songbirds are good candidates for trying to unravel some of this mystery. Over the last decade, a large amount of research has been made to better understand how songbirds learn complex songs. The Canary (Serinus canaria) and the Zebra Finch (Taeniopygia guttata) have been widely used bird models to study these brain and behavior relationships. Like songbirds, we humans are vocal and social learners. In such learners, the development of communication is initially steered by social interactions with adult tutors. …

More Than Free: Equity In Open Educational Resources, Nicole Williams, Kathryn Anastasi

Open Educational Resources

Faculty creation and adoption of OER and ZTC materials can provide students with benefits that extend beyond no-cost or low-cost considerations. These materials can be the foundation of more culturally relevant classroom materialsthanstudents are used to seeing. They can increase the accessibility of instructional materials to students with disabilities. They can be employed to support student-centered learning ideas which upend traditionalnotionshow information flows between teachers and students. Using OER and ZTC materials has the potential to address many of the concerns about inequality that faculty and students alike have about the current educational model. Although OER and ZTC initiatives present …

"Our Stories" Of Becoming A College Student: A Digital Writing Project For First Year Students, Philip Kreniske, Karen Goodlad, Jennifer Sears, Sandra Cheng

Publications and Research

This blogging assignment serves as a low-stakes activity that encourages students to make sense of the social, emotional, and bureaucratic challenges in their transition to college, and to simultaneously develop digital literacy.

Place-Based Learning Across The Disciplines: A Living Laboratory Approach To Pedagogy, Karen Goodlad, Anne E. Leonard

Publications and Research

Faculty participants in a fellowship designed to engage students at an urban commuter college of technology in their general education curriculum evaluated and redesigned their courses to include place-based learning (PBL) using the Living Laboratory model of pedagogy. Focused on faculty perception of the relationship between PBL and its influence on general education, the study illustrates how faculty from across disciplines apply PBL techniques to revitalize general education learning outcomes. Findings include the influence of the fellowship on the design of PBL activities and perceived levels of student engagement, especially when compared to more traditional classroom instruction.

Cultivating Critical Reading: Using Creative Assignments To Promote Agency, Persistence, And Enjoyment, Nate Mickelson

Publications and Research

Skillful and attentive critical reading is crucial for success in college. Research has shown that pedagogies that foreground the transactional nature of reading are more effective than those that frame reading as a process of decoding meanings transmitted in the text. Despite this, existing approaches to reading instruction often reinforce a transmission model of reading that prioritizes the decoding of textual meaning over more active engagement. Assignments that explicitly or implicitly define reading as a process of identifying correct interpretations in this way risk reinforcing the shame and frustration students experience as they struggle to interpret texts. As an alternative, …

Opening Up To Oers: Electronic Original Sourcebook Vs. Traditional Textbook In The Introduction To American Government Course, Shawna M. Brandle

Publications and Research

Traditional American Government textbooks are expensive and often unpopular with students. New technologies and Open Educational Resources (OERs) open up the potential for change, but questions of quality are ever present: can OERs really help students learn better, or are they just cheaper? I developed an OER based on original sources and compared student learning outcomes with the OER section to those in a free digital textbook section. While the OER I created did not work as well as I had hoped, I nonetheless developed a redesign of my course and my approach to teaching, which is the true benefit …

Evidence-Based Instructional Strategies For Adult Learners: A Review Of The Literature, Rebecca Carlson Mccall, Kristy Padron, Carl Andrews

Publications and Research

Students who are older than age 25 are increasingly becoming a higher portion of enrollments in higher education. These students, known as adult learners, have different educational needs, expectations, and interests than traditional college students because they enter college with life and work experiences as well as responsibilities. Andragogy is the main theory of adult learning that addresses ways to teach adult learners. While the construct of andragogy is subject to debate, the education field draws on its findings to create learning environments for adult learners. Academic libraries can apply andragogy in their library and information literacy instructional practices. This …

Why World Art Is Urgent Now: Rethinking The Introductory Survey In A Seminar Format, Gretchen Holtzapple Bender

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

Ultimately, what can and should an introductory course in the history of art do? What difference can it make and what work can it perform? To fully contemplate these questions and radically rethink the standard large-lecture survey, in an experiment, it was taught as an advanced seminar to both majors and general education non-majors, with “global understanding” privileged over extensive content knowledge. The classroom environment moved from the authoritative stance imposed by a lecture format to a space for speaking and listening that was collaborative and exploratory, nurturing curiosity and critical thinking not just about disciplinary knowledge and methods, …

Editors' Note: New Research In Sotl-Ah, Virginia Spivey, Renee Mcgarry

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

No abstract provided.

Using Visual “Bait” To Hook, Engage, And Empower New Community College Writers, Nicola Blake

Publications and Research

This reflective article focuses on a series of semester-long activities conducted with developmental writers in an urban community college classroom. It builds on the research of John Berger (1972) and Sondra Perl (1994) who highlight seeing and perception as key components of self-composition. The article showcases assignments where students created photo journals as a way to share their lives, thoughts, and experiences. The use of structured prompts allowed students to actively engage with their neighborhoods -- a sort of text to be read, captured, and ultimately decoded through written explanation. The examples will be useful to practitioners who may be …

Emancipatory Learning, Open Educational Resources, Open Education, And Digital Critical Participatory Action Research, Jason Leggett, Jay Wen, Anthony Chatman

Publications and Research

Given that we must prepare students for the future workforce today how can we use the power of Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Digital Social Science research to improve student learning and help students develop technical skills needed for the high-tech workforce? In this article, we use transformative learning theory (Mezirow, 1978) and Digital + Critical Participatory Action Research (D+CPAR) to analyze the effectiveness of integrating OERs into a course and reflect on how we used OERs to support student learning and make civic engagement more equitable at an urban community college. In a criminal justice course analyzing the legal …

Learning Places At The Intersection Of Information Literacy And Place-Based Learning, Anne E. Leonard

Publications and Research

This information literacy lesson enhances assignments in a range of social science disciplines, including geography, sociology, anthropology, and political science. It was designed with undergraduate social sciences and interdisciplinary courses in mind. Interdisciplinary courses that engage with one or more social science disciplines should be included. Graduate students in urban planning, architecture, social work, and public affairs will benefit from this module as well.

Proceedings Of The Cuny Games Conference 4.0: The Interactive Course, Robert O. Duncan, Joe Bisz, Julie Cassidy, Kathleen Offenholley, Maura A. Smale, Carolyn Stallard, Deborah Sturm, Anders A. Wallace, Cuny Games Network

Publications and Research

Proceedings of the CUNY Games Conference, held from January 22-23, 2018, at the CUNY Graduate Center and Borough of Manhattan Community College.

Critical Play with History (Panel) - Composition & Storytelling - Health & Cognitive Sciences - Gaming Anthropology: Teaching Culture and Power Through Games and Design (Panel) - Twine & Writing Games - Easy Ideas II - STEM Games - Global Games for Change Catalog (Panel) - Comics & Active Learning - Fact Checking & Research - Computer Science & Game Design - SimGlobal: Building a Serious Roleplay Course for the Social Sciences (Panel) - Role Playing Games, Narrative, …

Symptomatic Leadership In Business Instruction: How To Finally Teach Diversity And Inclusion For Lasting Change, Linda L. Ridley

Publications and Research

Are business faculty complicit in mythologizing business concepts by ignoring historical precedence?

The refusal to examine in totality the history of discrimination and racism allows us to perpetuate a mythology of white supremacy that is enhanced through impotent diversity programs repeated throughout corporate America. This paper examines the importance of demythologizing the business curriculum through symptomatic thinking, which allows faculty and students to untangle the quagmire of diversity and inclusion in corporate America. Students are thereby equipped with tools for behavior transformation in the workplace that uses a symptomatic, rather than symbolic approach, to decision making and problem solving.

In Transit Vol. 8 Fall 2017, 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.

Introduction: History And Conceptual Basis Of Assessment In Higher Education, Peter Ewell, Tammie Cumming

Publications and Research

Assessment and accountability are now inescapable features of the landscape of higher education, and ensuring that these assessments are psychometrically sound has become a high priority for accrediting agencies and therefore also for higher education institutions. Bringing together the higher education assessment literature with the psychometric literature, this book focuses on how to practice sound assessment.

This volume provides comprehensive and detailed descriptions of tools for and approaches to assessing student learning outcomes in higher education. The book is guided by the core purpose of assessment, which is to enable faculty, administrators, and student affairs professionals with the information they …

Design And Revision Of An Open-Educational Resource Microbiology Lab Manual Using Student Feedback, Joan Petersen, Susan K. Mclaughlin

Publications and Research

Open educational resources are becoming increasingly important in higher education, and are a valuable resource for instructors who want to customize course content while saving their students money. We designed, revised, and assessed an open educational resource for our Principles of Microbiology course. Student feedback was used to guide the revisions, which took place over the course of several semesters. Student survey responses to lab manual content were very positive, and students overwhelmingly favored a no-cost online manual over one that is commercially published. The process we used to develop this lab manual serves as an example for others who …

Enhancing And Evaluating Scientific Argumentation In The Inquiry-Oriented College Chemistry Classroom, Annabel D'Souza

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The research presented in chapters 2, 3, and 4 in this dissertation uses a sociocultural and sociohistorical lens, particularly around power, authority of knowledge and identity formation, to investigate the complexity of engaging in, supporting, and evaluating high-quality argumentation within a college biochemistry inquiry-oriented classroom.

Argumentation skills are essential to college and career (National Research Council, 2010) and for a democratic citizenry. It is central to science teaching and learning (Osborne et al., 2004a) and can deepen content knowledge (Jiménez-Aleixandre et al., 2000; Jiménez-Aleixandre & Pereiro-Munhoz, 2002). When students have opportunities to make claims and support it with evidence and …

Pulling The Plug On Microscopes In The Anatomy And Physiology Laboratory, Zvi Ostrin, Vyacheslav Dushenkov

Publications and Research

Virtual microscopy (VM) has been widely available for more than a decade, especially in clinical settings and medical schools. In recent years the movement away from conventional optical microscopy (OM) and towards VM has been accelerating and several VM websites are now available online and readily accessible to educators. VM can enhance the instructor’s ability to teach the histology component of anatomy and physiology classes, facilitate student learning, save time for both students and instructors, and ultimately save money that can be more productively used for other facets of the laboratory. The many pedagogical and practical advantages provided by VM …

Active Learning In Art History: A Review Of Formal Literature, Marie Gasper-Hulvat

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

This article surveys the formal, academic literature on active learning in art history. It considers the history of active learning in art history and outlines the unique combination of approaches that art history takes towards active learning. A meta-analysis of the literature considers its relationship to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). This survey of literature indicates that although scholarly research on active learning in art history is a burgeoning field of scholarship, it also leaves many avenues open for additional research.

Editors’ Introduction: Continuing The Conversation, Renee Mcgarry, Virginia Spivey

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

No abstract provided.

What Impacts Do Oer Have On Students? Students Share Their Experiences With A Health Psychology Oer At New York City College Of Technology, Cailean Cooney

Publications and Research

This article reports findings from a study conducted with students in three sections of a Health Psychology course that replaced a traditional textbook with open educational resources (OER) as the primary course material. The purpose of the study was to learn how OER impacted students. Data were collected in Fall 2015 with students from New York City College of Technology (City Tech), of the City University of New York (CUNY), a comprehensive college located in Brooklyn. Students were assigned the OER by their course instructor, who developed it as part of a library funded OER pilot initiative. Two research instruments …

Understanding The Whole Student: Cuny Undergraduates’ Lived Experiences, Mariana Regalado, Maura A. Smale

Publications and Research

This presentation is a broad overview of research into how CUNY undergraduates fit their academic work into their lives, focusing on study locations, the technology they use, and how they engage in the research process.

Personalized Outreach To University Students With A History Of Reading Difficulties: Early Screening And Outreach To Support Academically At-Risk Students, Hélène Deacon, Rebecca Tucker, Bradley W. Bergey, Annie Laroche, Rauno Parrila

Publications and Research

We examined whether identification of and personalized outreach to a group of students with a history of reading difficulties would impact their use of support services and academic outcomes. Using a brief self-report questionnaire, we identified students with a history of reading difficulties (n = 175) and a comparison group of university students without a history of reading difficulties (n = 100). One half of the students with a history of reading difficulties were individually invited to visit the Academic Advising Centre; the other students received standard university communications about and access to university support services. Students with …

As If By Magic: Unleashing Critical And Expressive Voices Through A Rhetoric Of "This/And" In First-Year Composition, Nolan Chessman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation engages academic, creative, and student genres in conversation in order to challenge the strict discursive and stylistic boundaries placed around college writing, particularly in first-year composition. Because this project aims to thrust first-year writing pedagogy beyond the confines of fixed genre forms, its inquiry is multimodal, intermingling writing styles and research modes so that, in scholar-teacher Wendy Bishop’s words, “I can think in and through them all” (“Places to Stand” 17). The particulars—or “data”—informing this study are primarily archival, textual (often a combination of the two), experimental, and experiential. Broadly speaking, this inquiry consists of seven chapters, which …

Reinventing The Wheel Of Teaching Business? Learning In The Academic Classroom - The Case Of The Business Consulting Course, Francesco R. Frova

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study is to use the case of the Business Consulting course to demonstrate and enhance the significance of the application of effective and experiential learning in the academic classroom. Three Learning Theories are considered: Classical, Social, and Experiential Learning. Principles of effective learning and learning goals are described, and are looked at through the description of a Business Strategy and Business Consulting courses run in a US North-Eastern public university. The Business Consulting course is then compared with a standard lecture course and a course that uses case studies to demonstrate how the learning goals can …

Using Pre-Reading Strategies To Provide Historical Context In A Literature Course, Tisha Ulmer

Publications and Research

Students find that pre-reading activities which help them make a personal transaction with the past also help them read earlier African American writers with intensified insight.

Teaching College: The Ultimate Guide To Lecturing, Presenting, And Engaging Students, Norman Eng

Publications and Research

Your students aren’t reading. They aren’t engaged in class. Getting them to talk is like pulling teeth. Whatever the situation, your reality is not meeting your expectations. Change is needed. But who’s got the time? Or maybe you’re just starting out, and you want to get it right the first time.

If so, Teaching College: The Ultimate Guide to Lecturing, Presenting, and Engaging Students is the blueprint. Written for early career instructors, this easy-to-implement guide teaches you to:

• Think like advertisers to understand your target audience—your students
• Adopt the active learning approach of the best K-12 teachers
• Write a syllabus …

Digital Literacies And Visual Rhetoric: Scaffolding A Meme-Based Assignment Sequence For Introductory Composition Classes, Andie Silva

Publications and Research

Introducing students to the practice of academic writing ideally goes beyond teaching strategies like drafting, outlining, and revising in order to encourage deeper skills such as critical thinking and metacognition. This post discusses an assignment series focusing on reflection, genre analysis, and multiliteracies leading up to the design of original memes.

Looking Beyond The Canon: Localized And Globalized Perspectives In Art History Pedagogy, Aditi Chandra, Leda Cempellin, Kristen Chiem, Abigail Lapin Dardashti, Radha J. Dalal, Ellen Kenney, Sadia Pasha Kamran, Nina Murayama, James P. Elkins

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

Our pedagogical choices make art history classrooms political spaces of cultural production. Through a global exchange of ideas we consider questions of imbalance between western and non-Western materials and differing art history pedagogies in introductory courses and reveal teaching methods shaped by varied local contexts.

Kristen L. Chiem suggests re-routing students to the fundamentals of art historical inquiry rather than to a specific time or region. Abigail L. Dardashti’s essay re-configures the global art history course by focusing on artworks that defy the neat West and non-West categories. Radha J. Dalal discusses a curriculum that includes a series of courses …