Other Education Commons^™

Sustaining The Undergraduate Seminar: On The Importance Of Modeling And Giving Guidelines, Shelley Z. Reuter

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Student-led discussion is a valuable means of involving students in the collaborative creation of knowledge. This activity becomes especially important in the seminar course where, either individually or in small groups, students lead their peers through a set of readings. Unfortunately, student-led discussions often focus more on summary than critical analysis, largely because seminar leaders, left to their own devices, do not know what a seminar should look like or how to lead one effectively. This chapter demonstrates tliat undergraduates can learn seminar leadership when provided with guidelines and opportunities to see the skill modeled.

Faculty Development In Student Learning Communities: Exploring The Vitality Of Mid–Career Faculty Participants, Shari Ellertson, John H. Schuh

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Student learning communities result in numerous benefits for students and institutions, but less is known about the influence of learning community participation on faculty renewal and development. This qualitative study examines mid-career faculty members’ involvement in student learning communiities to explore the degree to which the construct of vitality appropriately describes and illuminates their experiences. Findings suggest that learning communities foster vitality by serving as a boundary-spanning activity where faculty can merge various work interests, allowing them to engage in purposeful production and providing them with experiences that help generate feelings of energy, excitement, and engagement with their work.

Making Meaning Of A Life In Teaching: A Memoir–Writing Project For Seasoned Faculty, Kathleen F. O'Donovan, Steve R. Simmons

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The University of Minnesota’s faculty development project, “Making Meaning of a Life in Teaching,” promotes collegiality and enhances self-reflection for those who are cxperienced classroom instructors. Started in October. 2003, this project provides a forum that invites participants to examine specific memories from their teaching lives and to transform those recollections into a written memoir. This chapter explores the use of memoir as an effective tool for faculty development, describes the project’s structure and components, and presents both co-facilitator and participant perspectives on the process and the memoir product.

Transforming A Teaching Culture Through Peer Mentoring: Connecticut College's Johnson Teaching Seminar For Incoming Faculty, Michael Reder, Eugene V. Gallagher

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter describes a yearlong seminar focused on teaching that is offered to all incoming tenure-track faculty at Connecticut College, a small residential liberal arts college. This seminar is distinctive because it is facilitated by second- and third-year faculty. We argue that this peer-mentoring model has three distinct benefits. First, it avoids many of the pitfalls identified with traditional one-on-one mentoring. Second, it addresses the distinctive challenges that faculty face at small colleges. Third, it provides a strong base for faculty to pursue the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). We believe that our peer-mentoring model may well be adaptable …

Inside Unlv, Cate Weeks, Brenda Griego, David Ashley, Mamie Peers, Shane Bevell, Gian Galassi

Inside UNLV

No abstract provided.

Unlv Magazine, Cate Weeks, Shane Bevell, Erin O'Donnell, Eric Leake, Lori Bachand, David G. Schwartz, David Ashley

UNLV Magazine

No abstract provided.

Inside Unlv, Diane Russell, Cate Weeks, David Ashley, Mamie Peers, Lori Bachand, Shane Bevell, Regina Vaccari, Jennifer Vaughan

Inside UNLV

No abstract provided.

Inside Unlv, Cate Weeks, Shane Bevell, Diane Russell, Leora Baron

Inside UNLV

No abstract provided.

Unlv Magazine, Carol C. Harter, Karen Sharp, Gian Galassi, Tony Allen, Jennifer Lawson, Shane Bevell, Lori Bachand, Regina Vaccari, Pete Codella, Cate Weeks, Erin O'Donnell, Diane Russell, Phil Hagen

UNLV Magazine

No abstract provided.

Inside Unlv, Diane Russell, Shane Bevell, Carol C. Harter, Lori Bachand, Cate Weeks, Mamie Peers

Inside UNLV

No abstract provided.

Unlv Magazine, Carol C. Harter, Joe Cockrell, Tony Allen, Regina Bacolas, Lori Bachand, Jennifer Lawson, Bret C. Birdsong, Steve Parker, Erin O'Donnell, Jennifer Robison

UNLV Magazine

No abstract provided.

Inside Unlv, Diane Russell, Shane Bevell, Carol C. Harter, Cate Weeks, Mamie Peers, Regina Vaccari

Inside UNLV

No abstract provided.

Mentoring Teacher's Stories: Caring Mentors Help Novice Teachers Stick With Teaching And Develop Expertise, Jarene Fluckiger, Sheryl Mcglamery, Nancy Edick

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

The article describes the challenges being faced by novice teachers and the role of mentors for novice teachers to stay in the profession and develop expertise. Educators have gathered evidence showing the need for mentors to help novice teachers stay in teaching and develop into master teachers. Longitudinal quantitative studies have indicated that novice teachers participating in this comprehensive induction program improved their effectiveness faster than their peers not in such a program. A frequently cited reason for attrition is teacher isolation.

An Adventure On Pod's High Cs: Culture, Creativity, And Communication In The Academy: A Humanist Perspective, James Downey

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Keynote address given at the November 2004 POD Conference in Montreal, Quebec.

The Advantages Of A Reciprocal Relationship Between Faculty Development And Organizational Development In Higher Education, Leora Baron

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

No campus organization exists in a vacuum, nor can it afford to be an island unto itself. Thus, the functions of faculty development need to be viewed in the context of the entire institution. The effectiveness of faculty development, and sometimes its very survival, are dependent to a large extent on its ability to influence and participate in organizational development outside of its own confines. This chapter suggests practical ways in which faculty development can contribute to, and indeed benefit from, a reciprocal relationship with institutional organizational development.

The New Demand For Heterogeneity In College Teaching, George Keller

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The past half century has brought an astounding increase in U.S. college and university enrollments. The rapid rise of mass higher education has forced major changes at every institution and is reshaping the U.S. higher education enterprise. Each college needs to ask itself what the huge expansion means for future faculty hires, programs, and modes of teaching.

Not Making Or Shaping: Finding Authenticity In Faculty Development, Patricia Cranton

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Authenticity is defined as a multifaceted concept that includes self-awareness, awareness of others, genuine relationships, awareness of contextual constraints, and living a critical life. Authenticity develops over time and with experience; a developmental continuum for authenticity is discussed. Drawing on a three-year research project on authenticity in teaching in higher education, this chapter suggests ways in which faculty developers can help foster authentic practice.

Tailoring Faculty Development Programs To Faculty Career Stages, Peter Seldin

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

College faculty progress through a series of sequential career stages. Each is characterized by different motivations and professional development needs. Yet, too often, faculty developers rely on hunches rather than empirical data to guide programming decisions. This chapter describes the important research findings of a just completed national study to determine the different programming interests and needs of more than 500 beginning, mid-career, and senior-level faculty in the United States.

Creating Engaged Departments: A Program For Organizational And Faculty Development, Kevin J. Kecskes, Sherril B. Gelmon, Amy Spring

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Portland State University encourages faculty participation in service-learning by providing faculty with individual incentives to support and reward them. Now, in recognition of this central role of the department in higher education, administrators interested in creating sustained civic engagement initiatives on campus are looking to the department as a strategic leverage point for change. This chapter investigates a yearlong engaged department initiative and finds that a collective approach can (re)connect individual faculty to their initial motivations for engaging in the profession, to a community of scholars, to their students, and also to their surrounding community.

Promoting Intellectual Community And Professional Growth For A Diverse Faculty, Dorothe J. Bach, Marva A. Barnett, José D. Fuentes, Sherwood C. Frey

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Minority faculty retention is key to increasing faculty diversity at most colleges and universities. Because retention depends on individual faculty choice and administrative tenure decisions, institutions need to help junior faculty develop a tenurable profile and enhance their desire to remain at their institution. This chapter examines a fellows program that supports beginning faculty in developing successful long-term careers, taking into account research on helping diverse faculty members thrive. It also presents strategies for establishing viable peer support networks and partnerships with senior consultants and for creating programming that ensures new faculty successfully transition into teaching, research, and the university …

Helping Faculty Learn To Teach Better And “Smarter” Through Sequenced Activities, Barbara J. Millis

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Faculty developers can help faculty learn to intentionally sequence assignments and activities to promote greater learning when they understand the convergent research—with its practical implications for teaching—on how people learn, on deep learning, and on cooperative learning. Such a sequence includes a motivating out-of-class assignment (homework), in-class “processing” that includes active learning and student interactions, and feedback and assessment, often given in multiple ways. This approach is modeled through two examples using graphic organizers.

Exploring The Application Of Best Practices To Ta Awards: One University's Approach, Laurel Willingham-Mclain, Deborah L. Pollack

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter explores how to adapt best practices from the general literature on teaching awards in higher education to graduate student teaching assistant (TA) awards. Although most criteria apply, they must be fitted to the career stage and aspirations of TAs. The Duquesne University Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Teaching serves as a case study demonstrating how these practices can be modified to both recognize excellent teaching and promote the professional development of graduate student instructors.

Expeditionary Learning: A Low–Risk, Low–Cost, High–Impact Professional Development Model, Chris Carlson-Dakes, Alice Pawley

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

We describe a low-risk, low-cost, high-impact professional development program to help faculty, instructional staff, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students create space in their lives to explore the diversity of their campus community and reflect on beliefs about teaching and learning in higher education. Along with small group discussions, participants have “expeditions” onto campus to explore learning situations and academic life in ways that they have never before experienced. We describe our theoretical model, programmatic and evaluation structure, and some participants’ insights into why they participated and what they learned from our first implementation.

Learning Communities For First–Year Faculty: Transition, Acculturation, And Transformation, Harriet Fayne, Alice Ortquist-Ahrens

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

To enhance new faculty members’ chances for teaching and career success, Otterbein College piloted a yearlong learning community program and encouraged first-year faculty to participate. Four new faculty members took part in opportunities designed to enhance their teaching, to orient them more fully to a new institution and student body, to foster collegial community, to encourage reflective practice, and to introduce them to the scholarship of teaching and learning. This qualitative case study tracks their developmental trajectory, which led them from an initial concern with self and survival to an eventual focus on student learning.

Building It For Them: Faculty–Centered Program Development And Emanagement, Bonnie B. Mullinix

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This article documents the effectiveness of a responsive, multilevel, web-based system for identifying and responding to faculty interest and needs for training and development. A case-based description illustrates the advantages of using a web-facilitated approach to schedule sessions according to faculty interest and availability. From needs assessment survey, to session design and scheduling, to registration, communication, and monitoring of participation, to evaluation and feedback, this integrated system has proven effective in engaging faculty. Data collected over two years of program implementation is shared and implications for the design, facilitation, and evaluation of such approaches are considered.

Introduction. Volume 24 (2006), Sandra Chadwick Blossey

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Introduction to volume 24 (2006) of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development, by Sandra Chadwick Blossey of Rollins College.

A Theory–Based Integrative Model For Learning And Motivation In Higher Education, Chantal S. Levesque, G. Roger Sell, James A. Zimmerman

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The shared mission of higher education institutions is to develop educated persons who are able to make connections and build on knowledge acquired across disciplines and fields and through various life experiences. This chapter offers a theory-based model that can be used by researchers and practitioners to enhance academic learning and motivation. Educators can create learning environments that move students from external regulation to self-determined forms of motivation. This model is used to describe conditions that enhance/restrict learning. It also has the potential to be used to interpret research on teaching and learning in higher education.

Anti-Ethnography?, Ian Barnard

English Faculty Articles and Research

"Many of the ongoing difficulties teachers face revolve around the 'translation' of disciplinary knowledge—especially critical theory—into pedagogical praxis. It often seems that our teaching lags behind our theoretical knowledge by about two decades, and sometimes we wonder if it will ever catch up. This sense of disjunction has been compounded by the difficulty of teaching postmodern understandings of subjectivity, truth, and epistemology in an increasingly commodified teaching context, where consumers expect to purchase a clear, identifiable, and literally usable product, and where 'knowledge' often means easily digestible and repeatable content rather than analytic skills, critical understandings, or complex world views. …

Jaepl, Vol. 12, Winter 2006-2007, Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Linda T. Calendrillo

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Essays

Lynn Z. Bloom and Carla Hill. High Stakes Gambling in the Master Class

High Stakes Gambling in the Master Class explores some of the unarticulated intangibles in a relationship between Master Teacher and Honors Student (who collaborated in writing this essay), calculated to produce a distinguished honors thesis, sometimes out of thin air, gambling, playing the hunches that will allow a gleam in the eye to metamorphose into gold on the page.

Judith Beth Cohen. The Missing Body—Yoga and Higher Education.

Using her own yoga practice as a basis, this author argues for more bodily involvement in learning …

Writing Aphrodite: Imagining A Rhetoric Of Desire For A Feminist Writing Course, Hildy Miller

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Reaching back to the post-Jungian goddess feminism of decades past, this essay shows how the mythical figure Aphrodite can serve as an image for an alternative rhetoric of desire in a contemporary feminist writing class.