Skillful teachers attempt to find out how students experience learning and then use that information to make good pedagogic decisions. Without some knowledge of how our students are learning, the choices we make concerning how and what to teach are stabs in the dark. Teaching skillfully involves us deliberately placing ourselves in the role of student and reflecting on the experience of how we, and they, confront difficult and intimidating learning. In this speech, Stephen Brookfield will draw on his autobiography as both learner and teacher to show how this frames four core assumptions of skillful teaching: that good teaching constitutes whatever helps students learn, that the most effective teachers reflect critically on their assumptions, that the most important pedagogic knowledge we need is an awareness of how our students learn, and that context changes everything.

Since beginning his teaching career in 1970, Stephen Brookfield has worked in England, Canada, Australia, and the United States, teaching in a variety of college settings. He has written fifteen books on adult learning, teaching, critical thinking, discussion methods and critical theory, five of which have won the Cyril O. Houle World Award for Literature in Adult Education (in 1986, 1989, 1996, 2005 and 2011). He also won the 1986 Imogene Okes Award for Outstanding Research in Adult Education. His work has been translated into German, Korean, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, and Polish. In 1991, he was awarded an honorary doctor of letters degree from the University System of New Hampshire for his contributions to understanding adult learning. In 2001, he received the Leadership Award from the Association for Continuing Higher Education (ACHE) for “extraordinary contributions to the general field of continuing education on a national and international level.” In 2008 he was awarded the Morris T. Keeton Award of the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning for “significant contributions to the field of adult and experiential learning.”

He currently serves on the editorial boards of educational journals in Britain, Canada and Australia, as well as in the United States. During 2002, he was a Visiting Professor at Harvard University. In 2003, he was awarded an honorary doctor of letters degree from Concordia University (St. Paul). After 10 years as a Professor of Higher and Adult Education at Columbia University in New York, he now holds the title of Distinguished University Professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota where he recently won the university’s Diversity Leadership Teaching & Research Award and also the John Ireland Presidential Award for Outstanding Achievement as a Teacher/Scholar. In 2008, he also received the Morris T. Keeton Award of the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning for his outstanding contributions to adult and experiential learning. In 2009, he was inducted into the international Adult Education Hall of Fame, and in 2010, he received an honorary doctor of letters degree from Muhlenberg College.

Free for registered participants.

Join mentor-teachers from across the disciplines for informational conversations about teaching.

Lunch Discussion Hosts:
Joani Bedore (Communication)
Paula Ruth Gilbert (Modern & Classical Languages/Women & Gender Studies)
T. Mills Kelly (Global Affairs)
Eden King (Psychology)
Howard Kurtz (Theater)
Lisa Lister (English)
Janette Muir (Provost Office/New Century College)
Star Muir (Communication)
Julie Owen (New Century College)
Shannon Portillo (Criminology, Law & Society)
Larry Rockwood (Undergraduate Biology Program)
Esperanza Román-Mendoza (Modern & Classical Languages)
Danielle Rudes (Criminology, Law & Society)
Anastasia Samaras (Graduate School of Education)
Kelly Schrum (Higher Education Program)
Lesley Smith (New Century College)
Ryan Swanson (History & Art History)

Through service learning, students can experience the transformative power of working collaboratively with partners in a community to respond to pressing needs. In such programs, students and faculty encounter rich cultural diversity and environments that are rife with potential for cultural misunderstandings and ethical dilemmas. The development of a reflective practice in service learning environments allows students and faculty to increase self-awareness and integrate theory and practice in ways that enhance engagement with a community, and deepen learning. Reflective practice is paying close attention to that which informs our practice and is the foundation of ethical practice. This session will offer examples of a reflective practice approach from Service Learning Intensives (SLIs) offered in Liberia, Colombia, and West Virginia. We will draw examples from each SLI to illustrate what reflective practice can look like in varied settings, and how this approach provides guidance for students and faculty as they encounter ethical challenges in a service learning environment. The session will include a brief presentation on reflective practice, as well as an interactive portion in which participants will be guided through the reflective practice approach, using an example of an ethical dilemma from a Service Learning Intensive.

Professor Hudgins has just been told she must now offer an on-line version of a course she has taught face to face for several years. She has never taught online before, but this class is scheduled to begin in six weeks. She has many resources, activities, and assessments she has used before, but she wonders, “How in the world do I create an online version of this class, and how can I possibly do it in six weeks?!” This presentation will introduce a process for rapidly developing an online version of a course based on available resources and online teaching best practices. Participants first will work together in groups and with the presenters to assess the face-to-face syllabus and plans used to teach this class face-to-face. They then will discuss tools and practices including course templates, DE-specific syllabus guides, DE rubrics to plan for quality student engagement, and available technology resources as a strategy for developing a quality course that meets the deadline without compromising quality learning or student engagement. We will focus small-group discussions and planning on course templates and mapping/aligning learning objectives with assignments and assessments.

In true liberal arts fashion, literature can be used to promote understanding of major core concepts while enhancing students’ reading and writing abilities. With creative foresight and careful book selection, this literature based approach can be adopted for any department major or discipline, in either an online or face-to-face format. In the completely online course, Community Health and Literature (GCH 320), students read four novel length books from a variety of genres (fiction and non-fiction) that cover events of historical significance as well as modern day issues. The selected books reinforce key concepts in public health. Weekly writing assignments alternately comprise a Reading Reflection Journal or an Interactive Discussion Forum. These are designed to cultivate the students’ skills in critical thinking and analysis as well as improve their writing capabilities. The course culminates in a Final Essay with an option for early submission for feedback and revisions. This workshop will include opportunities to discuss and brainstorm ways in which this approach can be implemented across a variety of disciplines.

Instructors in ENGH 302 have spent the last year creating and refining short (20-60 minute) in-class exercises that introduce students to key concepts related to one or more Students as Scholars (SAS) Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs). This session is designed to allow ENGH 302 instructors to share their experiences with instructors who may be earlier in the process of incorporating SAS SLOs into their courses, and to further a dialogue between ENGH 302 instructors and those in other courses that target SAS SLOs. Each presenter will briefly describe the exercise she developed or refined, what SAS concepts it addresses, and how it worked in practice.

The Virginia Initiative for Science Teaching and Achievement (VISTA) is helping create multi-university collaborative professional learning communities through the Science Education Faculty Academy (SEFA) portion of the VISTA program. Faculty members from universities across the state of Virginia meet for one week of intensive professional development, discussion, and growth. Faculty participants determine what is core to their respective content areas and what content is vital to their respective courses, creating continuity across the state. Participants have the opportunity to share experiences, successes, and ideas related to their work. Participants continue to communicate after SEFA, allowing even those at smaller institutions the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues. While SEFA focuses on science educators across the state, it is a working model for how professional learning communities can be established in all disciplines.

This presentation explores an innovative approach for engaging undergraduate students in the writing process. As universities across the country struggle with finding ways of improving student writing and critical thinking, the Students as Scholars initiative (under the Quality Enhancement Plan—QEP) encourages faculty to create new and exciting ways of inspiring students to embark a life-long path of scholarly inquiry and writing improvement. Through an iterative, intensive, hybrid course design that includes both in-classroom and online (distance education) teaching, our course affords students multiple opportunities for learning, practicing and reflecting on the craft of academic writing. This presentation discusses how we integrate writing into a Capstone in Criminology, Law & Society course where students learn a new topic, independently and collectively collect and analyze data, and write a research paper complete with an introduction, literature review, findings section and discussion/conclusion—all in the course of one semester. Based on two and half years of participant observation and pre- and post-semester survey data, we discuss the processes students undergo while learning to research and write as scholars. We find the development of engaged research and writing reinforces course learning objectives and produces student outcomes beyond what we initially expected.

Classroom debate is a pedagogical strategy that can serve to reinforce critical thinking and presentation skills, enhance perspective-taking, and increase meaningful student engagement with course materials. One of the presenters has been successfully incorporating role-playing debates into upper-level psychology classes for a number of years. This presentation will include a discussion of the benefits and challenges of including debates in large, lower-level, undergraduate psychology classes typically taught in a lecture-discussion format (specifically, Introductory Psychology and Developmental Psychology). Preliminary results of an ongoing study comparing debates to more traditional discussions of controversial issues will be presented. It is expected that results would generalize to large lecture classes in other disciplines.

Focus groups have untapped potential for classroom teaching, student-generated research, and evaluation of student learning. In this session, presenters share experiences developing and teaching an experiential learning activity titled, “Engaging Students through Focus Group Methodology.” Designed to offer advanced students a capstone experience in conducting and presenting original research using focus group methodology, the activity also facilitates other forms of student learning and faculty research. For instance, when advanced students conduct focus groups consisting of students in other classes, research-related learning goals, such as data gathering skills, are “scaffolded” into other courses. Moreover, the focus group exercise allows students to explore diversity among themselves. For instance, research on social media and conflict conducted by our students revealed diverse perspectives keyed to aspects of identity. Finally, instructors can use focus groups for evaluative research on teaching and learning. Focus groups have limitations: they work best in small groups, data collection requires practice, analysis is time-consuming, and conclusions are not always generalizable. Nonetheless, focus group exercises contribute much to many kinds of classrooms, including acquainting students with skills for the workplace. This session will use several pedagogical strategies, including focus group methodology itself, to present experiences and gain audience feedback.

Knowing how to use web 2.0 platforms such as wikis, Etherpad, and Google Docs in order to work collaboratively with colleagues across distances will prove an important skill for students of many disciplines. We can help them learn to do this now through collaborative writing assignments. Initial efforts can sometimes result in the “I’ll write section one and you write section two” results, rather than in true collaboration. This session will describe how a thorough introduction to the concept and etiquette of collaborative authoring and thoughtful assignment design can result in students learning to create a truly group-written work.

Jigsaw is an active learning technique that allows collaborative learning for subject matter with a wide range of topics. The standard jigsaw-based approach is used frequently in classes where the discussion is subjective. Motivated by the peer review model prevalent in STEM fields, this activity was modified to make it suitable for graduate and undergraduate classes in engineering and computer science. A competition-based assignment was setup for a graduate class. The spirit of competition and blind evaluation allowed students to think critically and design creative solutions towards solving the problem. The future goal would be to use frameworks like Kaggle-in-class. The topic or class module is split amongst students, so that groups of students are responsible for a particular sub-topic. These students are expected to read, and study the sub-topic at sufficient depth so as to call themselves as experts of the particular topic. During class students first convene in expert groups, discuss the sub-topic amongst them.

This session will focus on strategies to promote student engagement, learning, and accountability in student learning teams. In our experience, students frequently complain about an uneven labor distribution when working collaboratively on course assignments. In order to increase student accountability in teams, we implemented a number of interventions throughout the semester. Students were grouped students based on their availability for meetings and demographic characteristics, thus promoting diversity while increasing student perceptions of procedural justice and control. The first project deliverable was a team charter, requiring groups to set clear norms for communication and conflict resolution. As the teams began working and norms were established, students completed “Team Experience Surveys” and an interim feedback activity that enabled students to reflect on their collaboration processes and adjust strategies for the second half of the group project. Finally, at the end of the semester, students provided self- and team member evaluations of their contributions which were used in determining an individual’s project grade, further promoting accountability. The session will expand on our experience in each of the areas described above and will provide practical strategies for implementing our methods in other student teams as well as discuss the technology that enabled our approach.

De-briefing is an integral part of many experiential learning activities in the classroom. The art of de-briefing is rooted in crafting questions that expand the student’s conceptualizations of the content of the exercise and the conclusions they were able to draw. Going beyond simply verifying understandings, de-briefing sessions allow students opportunities to engage in developing critical thinking skills as they reflectively engage in linking and exploring key course learning objectives. This session will provide an overview of different debriefing approaches when conducting debriefs, the nature of why certain kinds of questions work, best practices when conducting de-briefings, and examples of effective types of debriefing questions. Handouts will be provided for session participants.