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The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at Western Carolina University - Summer Institute 2003 - Focus Topics

Focus Topics, Facilitators and Faculty Members

Assessing Student Learning: Dixie McGinty, Educational Leadership & Foundations

The "A" word need not evoke thoughts of "outcomes data" and accreditation reports. In a different sense,"assessment" simply refers to the various ways in which we, as individual instructors, evaluate the performance of students in our courses.

Participants in this group are invited to raise and critically examine difficult issues—philosophical, logistical, or pedagogical—related to the assessment of student learning. As a result of these discussions, participants identify assessment-related challenges in their own courses, and develop their own projects (e.g., designing an alternative assessment) to address those challenges. Individual projects are shared with and critiqued by the members of the group as they are developed. The goal is to finish the Institute with a "product" that is both applicable in a particular course and grounded in the participant's own philosophy of assessment.

Best Practices in Teaching an On-Line Course: Linda Venturo, Instructional Technology Consultant, ITS, and part-time instructor, Online Criminal Justice

Program Participants address the following questions that are central to the processes of developing and teaching online:

• Why should I consider delivering my resident course partially or totally online?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of teaching in an online environment?
• What are some best practices for online teaching that I can readily use with my
  resident course material?
• How can I start preparing to teach on line?

Reading ,Writing and Learning: Marsha Lee Baker, English

Reading is not just a way to find out what to learn, nor is writing merely a demonstration of what has been learned. Reading and writing are methods for how to learn. Participants explore ways to facilitate learning, including annotation techniques, double-entry notebooks, and approaches for writing-like-a-reader and
reading-like-a-writer. Help students learn how people in a discipline write and read, and, in turn, students will learn the discipline itself (even those students who claim they “don’t read” or “can’t write”).

Team members: Eliza Dean (B-K & Elementary Education), Glenna Straeffer (English), John Slater (Communication & Theatre Arts), Bill McClendon (Business Law), Katherine Cipriano (English)

Cooperative Learning: Valorie Nybo, Health and Human Services

Participants focus on the basic characteristics of cooperative learning, including creating a class setting in which students perceive cooperative learning activities to be safe and productive and converting lectures and “non-cooperative” activities to cooperative activities. Participants are encouraged to consider individual and/or whole-class activities they currently use in teaching and explore ways to make these activities cooperative. The goal is to develop a collection of cooperative activities that is both applicable in a particular course and grounded in the principles of cooperative learning.

Team members: Bill Papin (Health and Human Performance), Jane Eastman (Anthropology & Sociology), Kathy Starr (Physical Therapy), Lee Rayburn (Associate CIO)

Creating Your First Year Seminar: Brian Railsback, English

Participants complete a syllabus for a fall First Year Seminar. We begin by discussing the Liberal Studies goals for the First Year Seminar and experiences participants have had with first year students at WCU. We work through the syllabus from general policies and assignments down to the week-by-week schedule. Ideally, we have a mix of participants from a variety of disciplines who have taught First Year Seminar and those faculty members who will be trying it for the first time. Faculty members who are not teaching First Year Seminar soon, but who may teach the seminar some day also are welcome.

Team members: Carroll Brown (Hospitality & Tourism), Mae Claxton (English), Mary Ellen Griffin (Psychology), Vera Holland Guise (Political Science), Richard Boyer (English), Mark Couture (Modern Foreign Languages)

The emphasis of each of these focus teams was on application - on how you can use what you’ve learned in one or more of your courses. Each team’s work was intensive, hands-on and interdisciplinary.