| Effective Teaching and
Learning Centers
Best Practices and Emerging Models: A Teleconference
PBS, Thursday, Feb. 22, 2001, 1:30 – 3:00 ET |
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I. The Center for Teaching, Learning, & Technology, Gary Brown, Director,
Washington State University
a. History and structure
i. Has done a video about its mission, location, and work on a campus of
17,000 students, most of whom are residential
ii. Formed in 1996 out of a faculty senate committee and a professional
development committee
iii. Merged in 1997 with the technology team
iv. Merged in 1999 with the university’s production unit
v. Merging in 2001 with distance education
vi. Issues a monthly newsletter, daily and weekly email about events, a
whiteboard outside the Center’s classroom to announce daily activities
there
b. Staffing
i. Has now 18 full-timers, 4 graduate students, and a team of
undergraduate "Hypernauts" who participate in classes, help
faculty with the email load and facilitate online discussion after a
one-semester apprenticeship
ii. Includes program designers and programmers, graphic artists,
assessment specialists who help with surveying and costing, systems
specialists, and teaching specialists
c. Tasks = design, development, delivery, and integrated assessment
d. Accomplishments include
i. Workshops and on-campus brown-bag lunches, of course
ii. Speakeasy: more than 500 faculty and 21,000 students in
center-sponsored Online Learning Spaces
iii. The Bridge: matching the Learning Environment to the Professional
iv. Silhouette and Flashlight Online: With their survey tool, the Center
has given over 2000 surveys so far.
v. Building Communities of Inquiry on
1. Critical Thinking—Gains and Implications with a measuring
instrument
2. Goal Assessment:
a. Formative assessment looks at the processes of learning.
b. The fatal fallacy of education confuses dissemination of content
and students’ production of content.
c. Students’ performance can be predicted, such as when they will
perform less well. Performance of students, however, on critical
thinking measures and Freshman Year Experience courses showed an inverse
relationship with assessed writing skill.
d. The scoring rubric developed for critical thinking assignments
rates on a 6 point scale how students identify a problem, state a
position, provide support for that position, surface assumptions, and
state implications. Ratings on these scales are totaled.
e. Challenges
i. The best communication is faculty-to-faculty.
ii. "If you want more of something, measure it!" (Patricia
Cross?)
iii. Help techie staff and professional development staff see the big
picture for equitable resource distribution
II. Teaching and Learning Center, Diane Cyr, Community College of Denver
(est. 1969)
a. History
i. Established in 1990, the Center is guided by an Advisory Committee of
faculty, staff, and now one student.
ii. Funded by released time, the Center conducts a mini-grant program
with annual results shared in a showcase at the college.
iii. Values identified by the faculty and validated by the students are
incorporated into the faculty evaluation. See www.ccd.rightchoice.org
b. Staffing and funding
i. TLC uses human resources from around the college, along with expert
faculty who are trained and retained
ii. $24,000 in college general funds support the mini-grant program, but
practices require comparatively few dollars
iii. Annual funding has grown from $35,000 to $332,000, while staffing
has grown from .6 to 4.7 FTEF
iv. One state-of-the-art computer classroom and training lab is provided
by the Center.
v. A college-wide commitment has caused 65% of the faculty to participate
in the Center’s 125 classes, workshops, and seminars in 1999-2000.
c. Faculty Professional Development rules
i. In-house credentialing of faculty includes a requirement of 30 clock
hours per year for new faculty and 90 hours in five years for veteran
faculty as part of the annual pay-for-performance evaluation that includes
80% teaching, 10% professional development, including hours toward the
certificate, which expires, and 10% college service. If any part is
"unsatisfactory," the faculty member and division chair design a
development plan for one year [apparently with advice or participation by
Center staff].
ii. In-service activities support teaching and learning; in fact, faculty
who present workshops earn 2 clock hours toward their required hours.
Year-long plans for professional development should play up strengths and
alleviate weaknesses—both for the institution and for individuals.
d. Accomplishments: The Teaching and Learning Center includes
i. Service Learning Center
ii. Instructional Design and Technology Training
iii. New Faculty Orientation
iv. Resource Library
v. Curriculum Development Assistance
vi. A monthly newsletter
vii. The First Generation Scholars program is a model for
transformational change. A cohort of students are studying 2 disciplines
(classes) together, e.g. psychology and composition, with critical thinking
integrated. Started under a Title III grant and continued under a Title V
grant for Hispanic students, retention soared to 90% (vs. 65% for the rest
of the college).
viii. Other faculty groups are now developing strategies to replicate
features of the First Generation Scholars program.
ix. A guaranteed annual schedule for 2 years is made to increase
retention, even if not all classes or not all times.
x. Their critical thinking analysis model is a compressed form of Bloom’s
taxonomy: understand, share and apply, synthesize and analyze.
e. Challenges
i. Supporting efforts to diversify, e.g. the Weekend College, plus
distance education and web-enhanced classes for a "brick and
click" environment
ii. Perceived under-preparedness of students has lead to mandatory
placement testing and mandatory placement into developmental classes.
iii. Find models for transformational change to convert random acts of
practice into an ensemble of learning strategies.
iv. Supporting an integrated, seamless advising process, including
student tracking for notes toward interventions placed on a student’s
record.
v. If technology can be proven to help students, faculty will learn it
and use it. But faculty want "just in time support."
vi. Increasing use of part-time faculty makes it difficult to keep them
in the loop.
vii. Valid and reliable assessment for smart decisions with "good
data" on why students do and don’t succeed should support a systems
approach. Such "good data" is hard to find, even though college
research offices provide mandated reports; student success requires other
forms of data to keep students we have, which is at least as important as
recruiting new students. For instance, we need "disaggregated
data" by program, class, instructor to find students who do well and
don’t do well in varied circumstances, e.g. for minority and disabled
students.
viii. Working with administrators, especially department chairs and
deans, is necessary to free up time and to respect what happens in the
classroom.
III. Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, Steve Piscitelli,
Professor of History, Chair; 
Florida Community College at Jacksonville (FCCJ)
a. History and structure
i. From the Instructional Network (1983-1987), founded by Betsy Griffey
and Mary Sue Koeppel, which organized workshops on all campuses, sponsored
the Excellence in Teaching Awards, the Last Lecture on Earth, and began the
annual conferences, the Center for Advancement of Teaching and Learning was
developed in 1988 by 12 faculty after a workshop by Patricia Cross that
advocated three objectives:
1. To experiment with innovative teaching methods
2. To develop more effective teaching materials
3. To study research on teaching trends and issues in higher education
ii. FCCJ hosts 57,000 students, so it has 400 f-t and 1000 adjunct
faculty as a multi-campus college
iii. Florida Community College "University" exists for
professional development for the 1400 faculty, as well as for staff and
administrators. Produces an annual catalog of offerings.
iv. The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning
1. is represented on relevant committees, e.g. the Future’s Group
and the Faculty and Staff Training Committee.
2. has a Steering Committee of 8 faculty who are on staggered 3-year
terms, supported by released time; there is NO full-time staff at the
Center. The staggered terms help renew the committee but do cut down on
continuity.
3. The $24,000 operating budget covers supplies, newsletter cost,
speaker fees, etc.
4. The Executive Vice President for Instruction and Student Services
is the line officer associated with the Center.
b. Accomplishments
i. 15-20 workshops per year
ii. mini-grants for faculty research and/or product development, e.g.
CD-ROM development
iii. faculty mentors for online instructors
iv. white papers on improving learning in developmental math and
writing and reading using technology
v. newsletter and website: See www.teachlearncenter.org
vi. sponsors an annual international Conference on College Teaching and
Learning (2001 is the 12th year and hosted about 300 sessions);
the conference began on the assumption that it was most cost effective to
bring best practices to the college than to support only widespread travel
by the college’s faculty
vii. Each of 4 campuses has its own "mini-center" that
includes one mentor per campus for technical logistics and course design
viii. CREOLE = Creating Online Environments
ix. Academic Retreat of 25 general education and workforce faculty
regarding shifts in education
x. An annual survey asking faculty what they want for professional
development activities leads to an agenda for the following year.
xi. During 1998-1999, a college-wide task force conducted its
tenth-year review with recommendations to the Steering Committee.
xii. A 3-year plan to aid clarity and focus to the Center.
xiii. National Survey Results—22 Centers responded
1. The average teaching and learning center is in a community college
with fewer than 10,000 FTES.
2. It customarily includes a physical facility with an average budget
between $25,000 and $50,000 and two staff.
3. Services provided include consulting on technology, on teaching,
on using the Web in the classroom, on interactive learning, and on
curriculum development.
4. Wish List responses include the ability to provide consulting on
mastery learning, inquiry learning, distance learning, and regularly
scheduled speakers on teaching with technology.
5. Major challenges = funding continuity, time, staff, faculty
attitudes (buy-in), and administrative resistance
6. Perhaps such a survey can be a yardstick for new TLCs just forming
or for extant TLCs.
7. Conclusions:
a. Centers are advocates for teaching and learning issues.
b. Centers need to have a coordinated effort in order to thrive.
c. Centers can be a focus for helping to advance teaching and
learning at a college.
IV. Center for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Terry Wildman (Prof. of
Ed. Psych.),
Director; Virginia Tech.
a. History: When tuition increases caused more pressure on undergraduate
teaching and more concern about teaching at this research institution for
25,000 students, in 1992-93 a planning effort led to state-level funding
approval and the Center opened in 1993 with three ½-time faculty, which had
grown to 8-10 people, depending on how many work-study students are on board,
and an annual budget of $600,000.
b. Services: Now offering 100 events per year, the program includes—
i. Faculty development activities, grants totaling $130,000 per year,
resources, publications, and collaborations
ii. University Writing Program supporting writing-intensive courses with
a two-week institute on writing for faculty interested in offering a
writing-intensive course (see www.uwp.vt.edu)
iii. Budgetary support for the Exemplary Departments Program, Teaching
Academy, and the Diggs Teaching Scholar Program
iv. Center website: www.ceut.vt.edu
v. Development of collaborative networks
vi. Consulting, including a "Frequent Flyers" program with
followers of the lead teaching consultant, role models of effective
teaching, interviews for the newsletter,
vii. Safe places for discussing pedagogy = a study group program with
$300 stipends for meeting for one year
viii. Technology and Teaching including
1. Va. Tech’s "FDI"—infrastructure, training, computers,
and staff support
2. the Biological Sciences Initiative (BSI)
3. Center for Innovation in Learning (CIL)
4. Institute for Distance and Distributed Learning (IDDL)
5. Mathematics Emporium
6. ACITC
ix. International programs and curriculum development
x. SUCCEED (curriculum reform and teaching improvement in engineering)
xi. Teaching Assistant preparation
xii. Learning Communities Initiative, especially the First-Year
Experience and [research on] institutional barriers to learning
c. Successes and challenges
i. Knowledge growth takes more than one semester.
ii. Heightened visibility of teaching via a constant stream of programs
and activities
iii. Faculty Study Groups (See article in Innovative Higher Education)
iv. Integrating the Center into the life of the institution
v. Difficult to maintain focus on big issues (e.g. assessment of
teaching)
vi. Faculty Fellows program needs to be implemented.
vii. The newsletter is (and should be) PR for successful faculty projects
more than for the Center, about teaching more than hype.
d. Advice and good ideas
i. Form an alliance with the LRC as client and as partner for working
with faculty, especially on research by students, e.g. by adding a librarian
to your Center’s advisory committee.
ii. [Both university Center directors like the POD network.] See
www.podnetwork.org for annual POD conferences, which include an extended
opportunity to talk to other center directors. POD also includes a listserv
to share instruments and debates on learning issues; POD has solid
publications.
iii. Use faculty in Education Psychology departments or instructional
design [at local universities], especially if your program is too much
focused on technology and not enough on pedagogy.
iv. Use on-campus faculty, e.g. in a "Chitaqua" format that
involves role-playing approaches, such as the history and values of an era
(Diane Cyr).
v. Virginia Tech learning communities are in most residence halls.
vi. All Virginia Tech students are reading the same book, Einstein’s
Dreams and that fosters inter-disciplinary studies that cross department
boundaries and get around inflexible rules.
vii. Curricular barriers are often faculty perceptions of demands of
their disciplines and are not necessarily administratively imposed.
viii. Faculty want to learn about teaching, so find ways to capture the
time of these busy people.
|
1999