2. What did you find most interesting or impressive about
this practice? What did you really like & learn about it
this practice? What questions does it raise?
SPS plan for a series of three linked faculty development sessions in
July, one of which will happen asynchronously online. By the end of
the three sessions, participating faculty will create assignments that
will be integrated into their Fall courses. We like that this faculty
development exercise is both grounded in the literature on reflection
and focused on producing real results that faculty can use
immediately.
SPS’ faculty development sessions raise the question of whether
three meetings are enough to produce positive results. Will the
faculty be encouraged to share their successes and failures after
they have tried out their assignments in the Fall?
3. Is there evidence that this practice was effective? Explain. What suggestions
might you make, in terms of future evidence gathering? Does it demonstrate
any of the Angelo principles we’ve discussed? Does it suggest other
principles?
SPS’ faculty development series is to be implemented this summer,
so no evidence has been collected yet. They plan on surveying the
participants at the end of the third session—which is good—but we
would also suggest a focus-group debrief of these faculty at the end
of the Fall term.
SPS’ faculty development project demonstrates building trust
through the cohort meetings and building a common language
through their grounding in the literature on reflection.
4. How is SPS’ approach similar or different to SLCC’s FDP? What
could you borrow or adapt to use at SLCC? Offer suggestions
or ideas for further strengthening your C2L partner’s practice?
SPS faculty development sessions are similar to
SLCC’s four-session series. One suggestion is for
SPS to add another session at the end of the Fall
term for this cohort of faculty to get together and
compare their experiences.
5. What did you find most interesting or impressive about
this practice? What did you really like & learn about it
this practice? What questions does it raise?
Rutgers plan to have three learning communities ―formulate their
programming and syllabi around environmental themes.‖ This
practice impresses us because of the communities that it wants to
―merge‖ into one larger learning community: sciences; social justice;
women and creativity.
Rutgers’ learning communities within a larger learning community
initiative made me wonder what assignments, projects, etc. might
students produce? Will the larger community (students) work on
assignments/projects together or report to each other on them? Why
these learning communities? Why environmental themes?
6. Is there evidence that this practice was effective? Explain. What suggestions
might you make, in terms of future evidence gathering? Does it demonstrate
any of the Angelo principles we’ve discussed? Does it suggest other
principles?
Rutgers’ environmental focus initiative among learning communities
is still in development which means that there is no concrete
evidence that this practice will be effective – although the potential
for it to work is great!
Rutgers’ design for their initiative demonstrates 1-6 of Angelo’s
principles.
1-6 are all centered on building trust and making connections.
Rutgers cannot make the initiative come to fruition without
building trust within the learning communities and having the
communities work together on developing curriculum that
connects multiple disciplines together.
7. How is SPS’ approach similar or different to SLCC’s FDP? What
could you borrow or adapt to use at SLCC? Offer suggestions or
ideas for further strengthening your C2L partner’s practice?
Rutgers’ approach to integrative teaching and learning
proposes to produce the following: ―create a model of
integrative teaching;‖ develop curriculum using multi-
modal strategies; increase student engagement in
integrative learning; foster rich collaboration among
faculty and students. We want to achieve these same
goals at SLCC.
We cannot have meaningful ePortfolio work if we
don’t develop and model these kinds of teaching and
learning methods.
