8: Developing a Faculty Learning Community Grounded in the Science of How People Learn (original) (raw)

Faculty Development and Student Learning: Assessing the Connections

2016

Considering the time, effort, and resources invested in professional development on campuses nationwide, it's worth considering if this investment pays off in improved teaching and learning. With their new book, Faculty Development and Student Learning: Assessing the Connections, William Condon, Ellen R. Iverson, Cathryn A. Manduca, Carol Rutz, and Gudrun Willett provide both college instructors and administrators with local evidence that professional development not only improves student learning, but also improves the quality of instruction over time. Noting the earnest response to Richard Haswell's (2005) call to increase the amount of "Replicable, Aggregable, and Data-Supported (RAD) Scholarship," in writing studies, this book provides a valuable model for making "data-supported" claims about the connections between professional development and student learning (201). Given the promising results of this WAC research project, this study is likely to serve as a vital framework for conducting similar research on other campuses. Grounded in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), this book also provides a public acknowledgement of the invaluable contributions of WAC researchers to the rich discussions of pedagogy, teaching practice, and professional development work central to successful undergraduate education on many campuses.

Faculty knowledge of influences on student learning

Faculty Knowledge of Influences on Student Learning, 2002

This article comprises findings from a research project investigating faculty pedagogical content knowledge. The research took place at a private university in the South that had been involved in a campus-wide project to improve teaching. Drawing on qualitative methods, we describe several significance aspects of faculty pedagogical content knowledge.

A Faculty Learning Community on the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning: A Case Study

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2010

Excerpt: What happens when a group of faculty interested in SoTL gets together? This essay presents a case study of the Faculty Learning Lommunity [FLC] on SoTL at Georgia Southern University since its inception in 2006. Included in the discussion are the history and origins of the FLC, its evolution over the last four years, the products and outcomes of the FLC, and reflections from recent members on the influence of the FLC on their teaching,...

See one, do one, teach one...two faculty member's path through student-centered learning

1998

The practice of using active learning as a teaching paradigm has been a mainstay of the K-12 community for a long time. Its success at keeping students engaged and learning has been well documented. In 1994, Drs. Barb Licklider and Howard Shapiro at Iowa State University started a program called Project LEA/RN (Learning Enhancement Action / Resource Network) whose goal is to provide training, resources, and encouragement to faculty members who want to improve student learning by employing active learning techniques in their classrooms. Interested faculty commit to bi-monthly LEA/RN groups (workshops) where they learn and practice effective teaching strategies. Each workshop session gives a faculty member a new or refined strategy to try out in their next class. This paper describes the journey started by professors Davis and Jacobson, both faculty in Computer Engineering at Iowa State, to improve their classes from a traditional lecture format to a student-centered interactive learning experience. The paper will address how the two made the transition from workshop participants to actually facilitating their own workshops. Issues discussed in the paper include: the importance of facilitator training, how to model active learning in the workshops and in class, methods for keeping faculty interest in the workshops, methods to show other faculty members the benefits of learner-centered pedagogy.

A Faculty Professional Development Model That Improves Student Learning, Encourages Active-Learning Instructional Practices, and Works for Faculty at Multiple Institutions

CBE life sciences education, 2018

Helping faculty develop high-quality instruction that positively affects student learning can be complicated by time limitations, a lack of resources, and inexperience using student data to make iterative improvements. We describe a community of 16 faculty from five institutions who overcame these challenges and collaboratively designed, taught, iteratively revised, and published an instructional unit about the potential effect of mutations on DNA replication, transcription, and translation. The unit was taught to more than 2000 students in 18 courses, and student performance improved from preassessment to postassessment in every classroom. This increase occurred even though faculty varied in their instructional practices when they were teaching identical materials. We present information on how this faculty group was organized and facilitated, how members used student data to positively affect learning, and how they increased their use of active-learning instructional practices in ...

Preparing and Fostering Learner-Centered Faculty

2012

When instruction is learner-centered, teachers take on a facilitative, guiding role. According to Maryellen Weimer, author of Learner-Centered Teaching, faculty "position themselves alongside the learner and keep the attention, focus, and spotlight aimed at and on the learning process." Weimer advocates that learnercentered teachers adopt an approach that is guided by the following seven principles: 1. Teachers do learning tasks less. Teachers must stop always doing the learning tasks of organizing the content, generating the examples, asking the questions, answering the questions, summarizing the discussion, solving problems, constructing the diagrams, etc. 2. Teachers do less telling; students do more discovering. We tell students everything. We do a demonstration, and we tell students what we are going to do; when we have done it, we tell them what happened. We tell students to do the reading and what parts of it are important…what is there left for students to figure out for themselves? Are all these messages necessary? Do we know for sure that they promote learning? Do we know how they affect student attitudes toward learning? 3. Teachers do more design work. Activities and assignments become the vehicles by and through which learning occurs. The most effective ones accomplish one or more of the following goals: (1) they take students from their current knowledge and skill level and move them to a new place of competence; (2) they motivate student involvement and participation; (3) they involve students in doing authentic and legitimate work of the discipline; and (4) they develop content knowledge and learning skills and awareness. 4. Teachers do more modeling. How do you as a skillful learner approach learning tasks? What goes through your mind? What mystified you-and how did you figure it out? Share your reflections, including what did and did not help you. Students need to see examples of how learning is hard, messy work even for experienced learners. 5. Teachers do more to get students learning from and with each other. Research establishes the value of students working together. Like every other instructional method, good group learning experiences do not happen automatically. They are more likely to occur when faculty attend to (1) group dynamics and (2) the design of group tasks and structures. 6. Teachers work to create climates for learning. Creating activities and events that move students steadily toward a place of intellectual maturity and responsibility is key in learner-centered teaching. Students need to find the motivation and learn how to take responsibility for their own learning. That motivation is not something a teacher can force or require, but research has shown that certain kinds of learning climates foster it. 7. Teachers do more with feedback. Grading responsibilities remain intact in learner-centered environments, but what changes is the focus of those efforts. Evaluation events are used in ways that maximize their learning potential. More time, energy, and creativity are devoted to finding and using mechanisms that allow the constructive delivery of feedback to students. These seven principles combine to form an approach to teaching that moves the teacher from the center of the classroom. If followed, these principles will help teachers serve as facilitator, resource person, mentor, instructional designer and master learner.