Higher Education and Teaching Commons^™

Developing Designer Identity Through Reflection, Monica W. Tracey, Alisa Hutchinson

Administrative and Organizational Studies

As designers utilize design thinking while moving through a design space between problem and solution, they must rely on design intelligence, precedents, and intuition in order to arrive at meaningful and inventive outcomes. Thus, instructional designers must constantly re-conceptualize their own identities and what it means to be a designer. Within instructional design, professional identity development is intimately linked to the concept of design precedents. Reflective practice appears to be a natural avenue for supporting identity development in student designers, as it challenges them to think deeply about concepts and experiences through interpretation, evaluation, and revision. The authors conducted a …

Workshop Development And Delivery, Joe S. Conte Jr.

Teaching and Learning Technologies Presentations

At Purdue University, the central IT organization (Information Technology at Purdue) is charged with helping instructors (Faculty, staff, and graduate students) use technology to enhance teaching and learning. Our group develops workshops (face-to-face and online)) and documentation (written, video, etc.) to assist in this effort.

This presentation describes

• The Facilitator Maturation Process - the steps our facilitators must take to go from a new hire to an independently deploy-able trainer
• Recent steps we took to redesign our workshops to make them more engaging and instill active learning techniques in their delivery.
• The documentation creation process/workflow we instituted to streamline and …

The D.B. Weldon Library's Instruction Portfolio: A Grassroots, Team-Based Approach, Kim Mcphee, Melanie Mills, Marg Sloan

Western Libraries Presentations

In an effort to address ever-shifting staffing levels and evolving service demands, staff in the Research & Instructional Services department of The D.B. Weldon Library at Western University developed and implemented a new and strategic approach to structuring their work. The ‘Portfolio Model’ provides a framework for organizing the primary functions of the department - collections, instruction and reference - while at the same time preserving liaison at its core. Through a close examination of this grassroots effort and in particular, the achievements realized and challenges faced by the team of librarians and library assistants who together comprise the ‘Instruction …

Teach Next Year, Lisa M. Gonsalves

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

Teach Next Year, a nationally acclaimed teacher residency program. TNY is an alternative, experiential urban school-based route to earning a master’s degree in education (M.Ed.) and Massachusetts initial teacher licensure through the UMass Boston in approximately 12 months. The program is designed to build on the interests and expertise of its students, faculty and the students in Boston Public Schools. Because it is an intensive site-based educational experience, it provides the support of professors, practitioners and colleagues while it supplies the challenge of study, practice and exploration.

Batec Bridge To Community College, Deborah Boisvert, Paula Velluto, Dawn Zapata

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

The Bridge to Community College Program is a comprehensive college program that creates postsecondary education access for nontraditional learners with limited technology skills. It offers two credit-bearing technology courses combined with English and Mathematics tutoring to reinforce the basic math and literacy competencies required for entry into a community college. The Bridge Program transitions students into higher education by partnering with trusted community organizations to offer introductory college technology courses at a community site with a facilitated transition to the partner community college.

Success Boston: College Completion Initiative, Liliana Mickle

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

2008: Initiative launches in response to Northeastern University study finding – only 35.5% of Boston Public School (BPS) graduates enrolled in college earned an Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree within 7 years (despite BPS having one of the highest college enrollment rates in country).

2010: 38 colleges/universities in MA accepted UMass Boston Chancellor Keith Motley’s invitation to join the initiative (25 submitted specific plans). Chancellor Motley is co-chair of Mayor’s Success Boston Task Force.

July 2010: UMass Boston implements Success Boston Embedded Model: Collaboration with American Student Assistance (ASA), Freedom House Inc., Bottom Line and Hyde Square Task Force to provide …

Ua64 Cebs Magazine, The College Of Education And Behavioral Sciences At Wku, Charles S. Evans, Dean, Pam Pierce, Editor-In-Chief, Wku College Of Education & Behavioral Sciences

College of Education and Behavioral Sciences Publications

No abstract provided.

Is The Sat The Root Of All Evil? Reviewing The Evidence On Admission Policies And Diversity In Higher Education, Loris Fagioli

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

It is imperative to achieve diversity in Higher Education. With affirmative action policies under fire, it is becoming difficult to enroll a diverse student body. Many critics see standardized tests, and the SAT in particular, as contributing to the problem. This paper reviews research on such criticism, about suggested alternative approaches, and regarding recommendations on how to improve the current situation. In general, this review finds little evidence against a judicious use of the SAT. Also, alternative approaches such as percent plans or abolishing the SAT have had little success in increasing diversity. However, most specialists agree that a comprehensive …

Exploring Gradient: An Interactive Online Peer-Review And Assessment Tool., Pat Reid, Akesha Horton

Teaching and Learning Technologies Presentations

Gradient is a web-based writing and peer assessment tool developed by the ITaP Informatics Team at Purdue University. It allows students the opportunity to develop critical reading and writing skills using various scholarly resources. Assignments can be designed to focus on discipline-specific domains, interdisciplinary topics, core curricula, or more general subject areas. Students develop critical-reviewing skills, which can be transferred to various contexts. What makes Gradient unique from similar products is its clean interface, the flexibility it offers for designing assignments, the ability to integrate graphics into assignments, and the process for scoring students.

A Faculty-Focused Course Design/Redesign Process, Pat Reid

Teaching and Learning Technologies Presentations

As a part of the IMPACT (Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation) project, faculty attend weekly developmental workshops. As these have become progressively more focused and interactive, we realized that many faculty members have little to no education in sound course design. As a result, we developed a faculty-focused, backward design process that offers a flexible, step-by-step model. The model provides both practical and theoretical background at each step, links to articles, videos, websites, and more for faculty who wish to delve deeper.

Im:Pact: Supporting Faculty Innovation In Course Redesign, Pat Reid

Teaching and Learning Technologies Presentations

M:PACT is a centrally supported program that encourages faculty innovation in the redesign of large-enrollment courses at Purdue University. In two years, IM:PACT has seen the participation of 61 faculty, representing 49 courses and 11 colleges. FLC (faculty learning community) sessions lead faculty through the course redesign process, focusing on creating student-centered learning and leveraging instructional technology. Faculty work closely with design teams composed of staff from the academic technologies division of the central IT organization (ITaP), the Center of Instructional Excellence (CIE), and Libraries. Participants will explore how to begin a similar program at their own institutions.

Teacher Training: Teacher Education In Transition, Muhammad Ali, Reshma Parveen

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

No abstract provided.

Navigating The New Normal, Terre H. Allen, Holly Harbinger, Donald J. Para

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Faculty socialization and satisfaction are critical to retaining quality teacher/scholars and key to a well-functioning teaching-intensive, research-driven university (Ponjuan, Conley, and Trower, 2011). This chapter reports on a year-long research project aimed at investigating faculty work life and satisfaction at a large, urban, comprehensive state university. Our goal was to use empirical evidence to understand and support faculty work under the "new normal" conditions characterized by reduced state funding and increased faculty workload. We discuss the results in terms of a revitalized direction for facuity and explore directions for organizational development within the context of the new normal.

Envisioning Creative Collaboration Between Faculty And Technologists, Gail A. Rathbun, Sally Kuhlenschmidt, David Sacks

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Faculty developers must often mediate conflicts resulting from differences between seemingly mutually exclusive cultures that university technolo gists and university teachers inhabit. Activity theory embraces workplace conflict as normal and as contributing to organizing health and adapta tion, in contrast to a functionalist approach that focuses on how to maintain system equilibrium. Engestrom’s (1987) interpretation of activity theory provides a theoretically informed framework for under standing different forms of human activity, mediated by culturally mol ded rules, values, and division of labor, without suffering from the polarizing effects of an us-versus-them approach.

Connect To Learning: Using E-Portfolios In Hybrid Professional Development, Bret Eynon, Judit Török, Laura M. Gambino

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Based at LaGuardia Community College, the Connect to Learning (C2L) project has developed an innovative hybrid professional development model using e-portfolios, online conversations, and face-to-(ace meetings to support campus leadership teams as they strengthen e-portfolio initiatives on twenty-five diverse campuses nationwide. The C2L model adapts a conceptual framework of inquiry, reflection, and integration to a hybrid context and addresses the challenge of local professional devel opment leadership for classroom and institutional change.

Developing A Faculty Learning Community Grounded In The Science Of How People Learn: A Year-Long, Faculty-Led Teaching And Learning Seminar, Alison Rudnitsky, Glenn W. Ellis, Patricia Marten Dibartolo, Kevin M. Shea

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter describes a multiyear professional development effort undertaken by a learning and teaching center at a liberal arts college. As part of its founding mandate, the center helps faculty improve teaching by paying attention to the current literature about how people learn. This core commitment of our center is pursued through support of a year-long faculty seminar. Now in its fourth year, the seminar has had a significant impact on its faculty participants and their thinking about teaching and learning. Moreover, the seminar has seeded a number of teaching and assessment initiatives at the college.

Faculty Development Scholarship: An Analysis Of To Improve The Academy, 1982-2011, Kathryn E. Linder, Suzanna Klaf

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

As To Improve the Academy enters its thirty-second year, this chapter offers a retrospective to honor the history of the field through a timely analysis of the content published in TIA and editorial and authorship trends over the previous three decades. Frequency distributions identify the most published authors, their institutional affiliations, the most written about topics, and patterns of collaborative authorship in volumes 1 (1982) through 30 (2011), and findings from a citation analysis of ten years of TIA (volumes 21-30), highlight trends in resources cited and types of resources.

Program Planning, Prioritizing, And Improvement: A Simple Heuristic, Peter Felten, Deandra Little, Leslie Ortquist-Ahrens, Michael Reder

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

As educational developers working with multiple constituencies and demands on our time, how can we efficiently and creatively improve our programming and prioritize our efforts? In this chapter, we offer a simple heuristic to prompt quick yet generative examination of our goals or programs in relationship to three key characteristics of effective educa tional development on three different institutional levels. We then describe uses and applications of the tool and reflective process, which allow developers to efficiently gain insight into their work and effectively frame priorities for planning and improvement.

A Consultations Tracking Database System For Improving Faculty Development Consultation Services, Jason Rhode, Murali Krishnamurthi

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The role of the facuity development center in supporting the academic environment of the institution often includes creating or sustaining a culture of teaching excellence, responding to individual faculty members’ needs, and advancing new initiatives in teaching and learning (Sorcinelli, Austin, Eddy, and Beach, 2006). The varied programs, resources, and services offered routinely result from efforts to meet the expressed needs of faculty. While workshops and seminars are effective for introducing new pedagogical approaches or emerging technologies, faculty often have unique questions within specialized contexts that cannot be fully addressed in a large group setting. In such instances, a more …

From Outsiders To Insiders: Graduate Assistant Development At State Comprehensive Universities, Kathleen M. Brennan, Laura Cruz, Freya B. Kinner

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

We assess graduate assistant competency in key skills that employers in and outside of academia value and examine whether these skills are developed in the context of the graduate assistantship (GA) at a specific state comprehensive university. The GAs in our sample rate themselves as competent or very competent on all skills and report their GA experience somewhat influenced or influenced their skill competencies. Furthermore, perception of how one’s graduate assistantship influenced skill compe tency was significantly associated with perceived skill competency level. Based on these findings, we qiscuss distinct gaps that could be addressed to facilitate GA development at …

Tomorrow's Professor Today: Tracking Perceptions Of Preparation For Future Faculty Competencies, Michael S. Palmer, Deandra Little

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The University of Virginia’s Tomorrow’s Professor Today (TPT) pro gram is a broadly conceived graduate student professional development program designed to facilitate the transition from student to academic professional. Begun in 2005 in response to the recommendations of a number of national reform initiatives, TPT focuses on improving pre paredness in three key areas: teaching, research, and service. We describe the key elements of the program and ongoing assessment efforts. Pre- and postprogram participant surveys from the first eight years show that TPT is improving perceptions of preparedness in twenty-one competencies tracked; follow-up studies support long-term impact.

Student Consultants Of Color And Faculty Members Working Together Toward Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, Alison Cook-Sather, Praise Agu

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Through positioning undergraduate students as pedagogical consultants to college faculty, Students as Learners and Teachers is a program that provides reconceptualized "counterspaces" for students and facuity members with whom they work. In our study of the experiences of consultants of color, we found that those students and their faculty partners used program counterspaces to explore links between their lived identities and pedagogical commitments and to share authority and responsibility in developing culturally sustaining pedagogy. In this chapter we report on participants’ experiences in these collaborations and how they legitimate the knowledge of students of color in faculty learning.

Mobile App Learning Lounge: A Scalable And Sustainable Model For Twenty-First-Century Learning, Michael H. Truong

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Twenty-first-century learning is increasingly defined by the use of mobile devices and applications. Centers for teaching and learning can help facuity and students acquire greater familiarity and fluency with just-in-time learning using mobile apps by creating informal, inviting, and informative learning spaces on their campuses. This chapter features the Mobile App Learning Lounge (MALL), a low-cost, high impact initiative of a center for teaching and learning at a California research university. Beyond sharing how MALL works, this chapter offers practical suggestions and strategies for replicating a similar ini tiative at other institutions.

Determining Our Own Tempos: Exploring Slow Pedagogy, Curriculum, Assessment, And Professional Development, Peter A. Shaw, Jennifer L. Russell

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Key concepts and values in the Slow Living movement speak to many questions and tensions arising around calls for change in higher educa tion, porous work/life boundaries, rapid developments in technology, concerns about sustainability, and a desire to question assumptions and move beyond tips and tricks to more fundamental issues in curriculum and pedagogy. We propose a framework for Slow learning and teaching that incorporates various trends in curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment with implications for the role of technology and for professional development.

Formal And Informal Support For Pretenure Faculty: Recommendations For Administrators And Institutions, Gwendolyn Mettetal, Gail M. Mcguire

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

We analyze interviews from sixty-five faculty and administrators to understand the formal and informal types of support that pretenure faculty use to navigate their way to tenure. By understanding the different types of support that pretenure faculty need, institutions can better address the diverse issues that junior facuity confront when preparing for tenure and can ensure that all candidates receive some type of support. We conclude that institutions need to be intentional about offering both formal and informal support to pretenure faculty at various points in their careers.

Assessing The Long–Term Impact Of A Professional Development Program, Marcia M. Tennill, Margaret W. Cohen

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This study was designed to explore the long-term impact of a year-long facuity development program on participants. Three guiding questions focused the study: In what ways did the program influence the profes sional lives of participants five years after completion? How did the participants integrate those experiences into their professional lives? and What recommendations for best practices in the field of facuity devel opment can be drawn? Donald Kirkpatrick’s four-level evaluation model was the template for this qualitative research. Results indicated that participants retained program learning over time.

Enhancing Vitality In Academic Medicine: Faculty Development And Productivity, Megan M. Palmer, Krista Longtin-Hoffmann, Tony Ribera, Mary E. Dankoski, Amy K. Ribera, Tom F. Nelson Laird

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The prevalence of low satisfaction and increased stress among faculty in academic medicine makes understanding facuity vitality in this field more important than ever before. To explore the contributors to and outcomes of faculty vitality, we conducted a multi-institutional study of faculty in academic medicine (N = 1,980, 42 percent response rate). Faculty were surveyed about climate and leadership, career and life management, satisfaction, engagement, productivity, and involvement in faculty development. Analysis reveals that controlling for other factors, academic medicine faculty who participate regularly in facuity development activ ities are significantly more satisfied, engaged, and productive.

Accessing The Inaccessible : Educational Development And Improvement Programme (Edip) An Extenstion Of The Diamir District Gilgit-Baltistan : A Case Study, Mola Dad Shafa, Haider Fancy

Professional Development Centre, Gilgit

No abstract provided.

Youth Development And Education In Pakistan : Exploring The Relationship, Dilshad Ashraf, Takbir Ali, Anya Hosain

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

This paper provides a critical examination of the inter-linkages between youth education, development, empowerment, and engagement in Pakistan. Currently, the majority of the population falls within the youth age bracket of 15-24 years. The country stands at a critical juncture, where it can capitalize on this demographic dividend for transformational and sustainable socioeconomic growth. However, this paper argues that there is inadequate intersection and convergence between Pakistan’s national and provincial Education and Youth policy frameworks. An indepth overview of current trends in terms of quality of education and access to and participation in various forms of education programmes indicates that …

In Search Of The Unpredictable: Complexifying The Classroom In The Age Of Globalization, Anne Dalke, Elizabeth Mccormack

Literatures in English Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.