* from the archive *

The CSU Institute for Teaching and Learning

June 25-27, 2001 Cal Poly San Luis Obispo

Workshop 1 FULL

How successful-for you and for your students-are the laboratory portions of courses you teach? Are you considering new assignments, new approaches, new tools and structures but need time for planning and proven ideas that can work in the CSU? Try out a chemistry lesson in a combined lecture-lab set-up at Cal Poly, with Professors Christina Bailey and Theresa Bolanos , and work with colleagues on adaptations to implement in your classes. This is a workshop for faculty in science and science education who are interested in making use of technology (hardware, software, course management tools) and who want to streamline and improve the educational effectiveness of lectures and the related (or supposed to be) lab.

Christina Bailey , Professor of Chemistry at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, directs the Chemistry Studio Project and coordinates the course sequence taught in the studio classroom. Recent publications include "An Integrated Lecture-Laboratory Environment for General Chemistry" (Journal of Chemical Education February 2000), and, with P.S. Bailey, Organic Chemistry: A Brief Survey of Concepts and Applications (6th Edition, Prentice Hall Publishers, 2000). Tina started teaching at Cal Poly in 1973. She has received numerous awards, among them Cal Poly Outstanding Professor Award (1981-82), Cal Poly Nominee for CSU Trustees' Outstanding Professor Award (1993), College of Engineering Student Council Outstanding Teacher Award (1998), and Faculty Woman of the Year (1999), by Women's Week, February 2000.

Theresa Bolanos, assistant professor and secondary education coordinator, has recently joined the Cal Poly SLO Chemistry Department. She teaches in the studio classroom and collaborates with Tina on offering workshops for faculty and visitors. One of her current projects is to revise the general education chemistry course for the lecture-lab integrated format.

Workshop 2 FULL

Engaging Students in Five Dimensions of Learning

Don Maas will describe, model, and involve participants in five dimensions of learning that are based on educational research and theory:

1. Positive attitudes and perceptions about the college classroom and about learning.
2. Acquiring and integrating knowledge: developing strategies to acquire different types of knowledge.
3. Extending and refining knowledge: "deep" processing, reasoning about, and analyzing what is being learned.
4. Using knowledge meaningfully: applying what is being learned to make decisions, investigate issues, and solve problems.
5. Developing productive habits of mind, such as critical thinking, creativity, and reflection.

Participants in this workshop will focus on improving student learning by planning courses that effectively engage students in these five dimensions of learning. This workshop is based on a successful faculty development series at Cal Poly, SLO, and Don is recognized throughout the system for his ability to engage faculty in reflections on their teaching.

Don Maas, Professor in the University Center for Teacher Education at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, has received numerous awards for his teaching and faculty development efforts, including Cal Poly’s Distinguished Teaching Award; the Innovative Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Technology Award; and the Phi Delta Kappa Outstanding Educator Award. In addition to teaching at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo for the past twenty-five years, Dr. Maas has taught faculty development seminars and workshops at numerous universities, including UCLA, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and the University of Guam, and he has conducted a series of teacher effectiveness workshops throughout the world for Phi Delta Kappa. His warmth, genuine concern for students and colleagues, expertise in engaging learners, and wide range of experiences uniquely equip him to make this outstanding contribution to our TSSI program.

Workshop 3 FULL

The Scholarship of Teaching: Investigating and Improving Learning in Our Courses and Programs

Almost all faculty are bound together by two common interests, the practice of teaching and the pursuit of knowledge. Indeed, these are the very interests that draw most of them to academic professions. We do not typically capitalize on the potential synergy between these two interests. The spirit and tenor of objective investigation applied to pursuit of knowledge in the disciplines has historically not been equally applied to the practice of teaching. That is a pity because every teacher in every course can carry out systematic inquiry into issues of teaching and learning without specialized training or a lot of extra work. To conduct such inquiry is not only fun and invigorating but also a form of scholarly endeavor that contributes both to the professional development and vita of the faculty member and to the advancement of student learning and teaching practice.

In this workshop, you will identify at least one issue or goal of relevance to your own teaching and the learning of students in your course. You will frame it as a researchable (answerable) question. You will gain an overview and extensive resources regarding research designs, methods, and measures. You will also read a few short but exemplary articles representing the scholarship of teaching and learning and discuss why they are exemplary. Applying workshop content as well as your own creativity and prior experience, you will design a practical study to investigate the research question you framed. In the final session of the workshop, you will present your project to peers and discuss it with them.

Samuel Thompson is Assistant to the Dean of the Faculties at Indiana University Bloomington. Originally educated as a physicist, his interest in improving undergraduate teaching and learning dates from the early 1970's while associate professor of mathematical sciences at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He initiated several educational research projects there in an era when scholarship of teaching was as yet unnamed. Later he headed the mathematics and science program for the University of Maryland in Europe and worked with hundreds of faculty in both Europe and Asia to improve mathematics and science learning in their courses. Following that, he directed faculty development in all disciplines for Maryland's Asian Division. Concepts and content of the SOTL initiative that he presently directs at Indiana University are widely disseminated nationally as models for research universities..

Carol Holder has been directing the CSU Institute for Teaching and Learning since January 1999, organizing programs like this summer institute and starting Exchanges, an online journal of teaching and learning in the CSU. Her term as director ends July 1, 2001. Carol is a Professor of English at Cal Poly Pomona, where she has coordinated writing programs and taught courses in literature, linguistics, and composition since 1969. She is best known throughout the CSU for her work with faculty in Writing in the Disciplines projects. She has made numerous presentations on assigning and evaluating writing in different disciplines and has consulted on more than 50 colleges and universities on a variety of instructional and professional development topics. From 1990 to 1998 she served as Founding Director of the Cal Poly Pomona Faculty Center for Professional Development. During that time she worked closely with her counterparts on other CSU campuses, forming with them the CSU Faculty Development Council. She has been assisting colleagues in the design and conduct of classroom research and scholarship of teaching projects since the early 1980s.

Workshop 4 is unusual. Instead of providing faculty with an opportunity to try a particular strategy or approach and develop applications for their own work, this session asks faculty to articulate challenges and successes in their own teaching and to work with colleagues to discover or develop solutions to problems that one or many face. The sessions will be informal but productive, structured but not scripted. This is a colloquium or seminar more than a workshop. Don't select this one unless you are willing to share what works and work on what doesn't in your own classes. This session is based on the Great Teaching Seminar.

Mike McHargue has an unusual title: Provacateur of Faculty Development, at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California. Mike has been a leader in faculty development in California and the nation. In addition to building an excellent center on his own campus, Mike has helped other center directors with designing and implementing successful programs, among them variations on the "Great Teaching Seminar." Mike will be joined in leading this seminar by a group of CSU faculty who will serve as facilitators of break-out and other sessions in the seminar.