Facilitating Student Learning,the Assessment of Learning,and Curricular Improvement Through a Graduate Social Work Integrative Seminar

Social work programs undertake to educate competent professionals and to promote critical thinking among students who are expected to become lifelong learners. In addition, programs are called on to develop reliable and valid measures for assessing student learning outcomes and to use assessment results to reflect upon and strengthen curriculum. This study explores the use of a graduate integrative seminar to accomplish these goals. The authors describe the learning and assessment processes of the seminar. The authors used a mixed-method research design to analyze data from students over a 3-year period regarding the effectiveness of the seminar as well as from graduate faculty regarding student achievement of curricular objectives. Results indicate that formative assessment processes promote student learning in a manner that mobilizes students to strive for excellence, and that an embedded measure of learning outcomes in the form of a final integrative project may serve as a rigorous assessment tool.     

COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS' OPINIONS REGARDING THE VALUE OF THEIR FRESHMAN SEMINAR EXPERIENCE

Students enrolled in a community college freshman seminar course were interviewed to gather qualitative data on their opinions regarding the value of the course. Existing dissatisfaction among students, faculty, and administrators initiated this study . Data analysis revealed that randomly grouping students with wide - ranging levels of academic abilities and life experiences in a freshman seminar class had a number of drawbacks, as older adult learners differ greatly from younger student learners in aptitude, ability levels, maturity, and academic needs. The findings suggest that older adults need a different kind of freshman seminar course than the traditional first - year student, and that "gifted" older students might be used to provide "on - campus apprenticeships" for other first - year students.     

Student/Faculty Connections in the Development of Teaching

This project directly involved students in two different models of instructional development. The first model was a Student Consultant program in which faculty selected from a menu of instructional services carried out by students. Typical services included attending class as impartial observers, soliciting feedback from other students on their learning experiences, videotaping class sessions, and evaluating course Web sites. The second model of instructional development was a program of student‐assisted teaching seminars for college faculty. Student Associates helped serve as panelists and facilitators. Assessments of attitudes toward teaching indicated that faculty members viewed both professors and students as collaborators in the classroom as a result of the seminar series.     

Pedagogy and Diversity: Enrichment and Support for Social Work Instructors Engaged in Social Justice Education

The primary purpose of faculty development is to create and sustain a culture of teaching excellence. For social work faculty, an important part of teaching excellence involves incorporating core social work values such as social justice and diversity across the curriculum and developing pedagogical skills and strategies to teach these issues effectively. In this article, we present a model of a faculty development seminar that offers a facilitated space for instructors to discuss how issues of diversity, social identity, and oppression influence their teaching, the classroom environment, student interactions, and the overall campus climate.     

Towards Contextual Experimentation: Creating a Faculty Learning Community to Cultivate Writing-to-Learn Practices

In order to explore ways to integrate new pedagogical practices, five faculty members created an informal faculty learning community focused on writing-to-learn practices, an inquiry and process-based writing pedagogy. The faculty members learned the writing-to-learn practices together, periodically met to discuss how they implemented the practices, and reflected on each other’s instructional methods in the contexts of their own experiences. The faculty members engaged in a self-study in order to understand how the collaborative nature of the learning community helped them to learn and use the new teaching practices. After participating in a series of workshops together, they shared written reflections about their experiences of employing the practices in their own classrooms. The findings of this study reveal that participation in a faculty learning community provided an engaging and effective way to learn and make use of new pedagogical practices. Participants gained practical adaptive strategies from each other, felt supported in their experimentation with the new practices, and analyzed more deeply the ways in which the new practices could be integrated into their teaching. The authors describe how an informal faculty learning community can be an effective tool for faculty to research, learn, and analyze the learning of specific pedagogical practices.     

Inside the politicized classroom: A student''s account of a seminar on Indian treaty rights

In Summary The Indian treaty rights seminar faculty taught me almost nothing about the subject for which they had ostensibly convened the seminar. The did not even define their terms. That is, we students were never instructed as to what an Indiantreaty is, nor were we shown how the courts extrapolated the controversial new Indian rights from certain treaty stipulations. What they did teach is that undemonstrable assertions, at least when they are grounded in correct politics, constitute legitimate support for scholarly conclusions. On the other hand, solid facts that undermine correct politics can be dismissed by “view[ing them] within the context of a larger view.” Furthermore, the faculty, who were supposedly dedicated to diversity, demonstrated in word and deed that people whose experiences and perspectives do not support political orthodoxy should be ridiculed and despised or at least ignored. To what degree the other students in the seminar accepted the faculty's ideologically motivated behavior as valid scholarly praxis, I do not know. I suspect that several of them have accepted it. But such a mockery of liberal education ought to be of concern to academics even if, as was true in my case, the politically correct classroom serves only to demoralize. Mona Walsh Holland completed her undergraduate work while raising a family and is now in the Notre Dame Law School     

How teacher educators created a course curriculum to challenge and enhance preservice teachers' thinking and experience with diversity

Recognizing that students of color often do not achieve as well as their White counterparts, the authors of this article acknowledged the need for preservice teachers to study racial and cultural issues as they relate to teaching in diverse classrooms. For four months prior to the beginning of the course that the authors would co-teach, they systematically read multiple articles and book chapters about racial and cultural issues in schools and met weekly to discuss, from their own perspectives and experiences, their reactions to the readings. Simultaneously, they considered emerging possibilities for a course curriculum where preservice teachers would explore issues important to what they called creating culturally celebratory pedagogy and classrooms. The authors, a Black faculty member and a White faculty member in a teacher education program, share key questions that emerged from their readings and discussions, describe four major components they integrated into the course curriculum, and present assignments that may reduce preservice teachers' deficit knowledge and thinking about racial and cultural issues in classrooms and schools. The authors also consider students' initial reactions to the course content and what the students' reactions might mean for the structure and restructure of the course.     

Interdisciplinary Faculty Development Seminars: A Model for Learning Emerging Technologies While Developing Interdisciplinary Partnerships

A series of faculty development seminars at Haverford College has been designed to address the issue of keeping science faculty teaching and research up-to-date, while building bridges between departments. To ensure coverage of emerging areas of science, we have elected to train existing faculty in new methods using a series of workshops for which faculty receive either teaching release time or stipends. The goals of these seminars include developing faculty expertise in important new topics and methodologies, stimulating the inclusion of these skills into their research and the curriculum, and broadening the scope of teaching and research collaborations. The initial three workshops have been targeted at areas of particular concern: boosting faculty expertise in scientific computing, bioinformatics, and issues surrounding the relationship of science and society. The seminar format has been designed to foster dialogue between different departments, as well as individual faculty, by including time for informal conversations and shared workshops, and by requiring collaborative curricular projects. The initial focus on the natural sciences has broadened into topics of interest to faculty in the social sciences and humanities.     

In practice—Student as teacher: The insiders' view of peer instruction

Rutgers College, the oldest college of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, relies solely on peer instructors to teach its first‐year seminar course. The authors offer a look inside the selection and training of these peer instructors and share the students' thoughts on their experiences.     

Changing Contexts in the Professoriate

The current reform movement in higher education involves efforts to alter the missions of universities and the forms of scholarship necessq to accomplish these missions. The authors explore the changing contexts in the professoriate based on this redefinition of scholarship and cite the impact of changes on faculty roles and responsibilities, faculty socialization, and faculty evaluation. They indicate that the current reform movement will lead to significant changes in the way faculty work Department faculty will be given the autonomy to determine the mission of the department, the kinds of scholarship needed to fulfill that mission, and how to evaluate scholarship in their discipline. Formalized, structured socialization processes will be needed to provide consistent formal and informal messages to faculty regarding their changing roles and responsibilities, especially since individual faculty may have very different roles and responsibilities. Faculty will work in interdisciplinary, collaborative groups to bring together the knowledge bases needed to solve current societal problems.     

The digital course training workshop for online learning and teaching

A primary concern with Information Technology (IT) training has been that IT-based training focuses upon the technical or point and click aspects of learning management system (LMS) platforms and pedagogy-enhancing software without any concern for the content of the courses. The Digital Course Training Workshop (DCTW) approach examined in this article addresses this concern by supporting a content-first approach. The DCTW approach—an initiative at a Midwestern University—is aimed at supporting faculty through the process of transitioning from face-to-face (F2F) courses to online teaching. Participating faculty enter the week-long seminar with traditional course content and leave with digital content transitioned into the appropriate LMS platform. This article is intended to stimulate reflections on the need for systematic faculty professional development programs and activities to help higher education faculty in the transition process from traditional to online courses.     

Engaging New Faculty in the Scholarship of Teaching

This article describes how scholarly teaching projects were conceived, implemented, and evaluated by junior faculty from a variety of disciplines at a medium-sized midwestern university. The authors explore: considerations in designing scholarly teaching projects, methods used to evaluate teaching effectiveness, and outcomes of the teaching projects. Finally, two of the teaching projects illustrate how junior faculty with diverse courses, class sizes, and teaching concerns approached the task of improving their teaching.     

A Thirst for Justice in the Arid Southwest: The Role of Epistemology and Place in Higher Education

How is the university connected to the pressing social and environmental problems that confront citizens in its region? What sorts of communities will students build in this changing cultural and environmental landscape as a result of their experiences in education? In this article I explore how an ethnobotany seminar uses critical pedagogy of place to engage students in the social, economic, and ecological relationships beyond the university campus. I describe how ethnobotany, the study of plants used by human cultures, is one way for students to explore the epistemology of Western science and traditional ecological knowledge. In this course, I encouraged students to ask, What counts as science? Whose knowledge is valued? What knowledge can sustain our communities? In our ethnobotany seminar, the topic of access and quality of water in the Southwest became a focal point for understanding the relation between place, epistemology, and ecojustice.     

研究生读书报告质量管理体系的研究与实践

针对近年来研究生读书报告的质量有所下降的现象，我们在管理上做了探索性研究，形成了一整套包括读书报告的组织、宣传、计划、质量评价指标、评分标准、奖惩措施等的读书报告管理体系。实践表明，该体系对提高研究生读书报告质量、培养研究生严谨的治学态度、规范读书报告量化管理等方面有积极的促进作用，具有重要的理论价值和相当的推广应用前景。     

案例教学法与研讨式教学模式相结合在泌尿外科实践教学中的应用探索

该文研究之目的:探讨在泌尿外科实践教学中采用案例教学法与研讨式教学模式相结合的效果,为泌尿外科学教学提供依据。之方法:选择5年制临床医学生,分为实验班(2017年6~12月临床实习学生)和对照班(2018年1~6月临床实习学生)。在泌尿外科实践教学中,对照班应用传统教学模式,实验班实施案例教学法与研讨式教学模式相结合教学模式。通过出科考试成绩和问卷调查的方式评价教学效果。之结果:出科考试成绩实验组专业基础知识、临床技能操作、病历书写、临床分析能力均优于传统教学模式组,差异有统计学意义(P<0.05)。两组学生在提高学习兴趣、提高沟通能力和对教学满意度等方面,实验组优于对照组,差异有统计学意义(P<0.05)。之结论:案例教学法与研讨式教学模式相结合提高了泌尿外科的教学效果,激发了学生的学习兴趣,提高了学生的自主学习能力。     

How to assess for improvement of learning

This review summarizes and builds on a seminar about assessment of student learning in higher education. Assessment can be looked upon as simply something that has to be done at the end of a course. During the course of discussions at the seminar the participants became more aware of how assessment can have an impact on learning. This means that assessment can be used as a means to improve learning. This realization is not a new one, but it is highlighted here in a more coherent and concise way than usual. Many alternative methods of assessment are possible. Some instructional design rules will be presented here for designing assessment sessions in such a way that learning can be improved. When designing an assessment method, one can be guided by the following considerations. The content of assessment should be chosen in accordance with the learning outcomes one hopes to achieve. The organization of assessment can be designed in such a way that the desired learning process is promoted. The outcome of assessment can provide feedback to many of the stakeholders: to the students on their learning process; to the faculty on its outcomes; and to the teacher by pointing out the following steps to be taken in improving assessment, learning and teaching.     

Leading a system-wide pedagogical change: how a faculty of education invests in developing communication proficiencies?

The article presents a system-wide change initiated in the faculty of education at a major teachers’ college aimed at developing students’ reading, and written and oral communication proficiencies, while focusing on clarity and coherence, and the use of rich, correct and precise language for purposes of studying, teaching and research. The ‘philosophy’ section introduces the theoretical basis of the process, defines the essence and the nature of the academic change and explains its context and timing. The ‘process’ section reports on the survey, which addresses students’ perspectives on the subject of academic writing, describes how the agenda was implemented and how the commitment among the faculty members was developed. The ‘outcome’ section presents the characteristics of the agenda as were designed by the steering committee and the analysis of the discourse that took place during the faculty seminar sessions. The advantages of a participatory action research approach when implementing a broad academic-pedagogical change are discussed.     

Faculty seminar on publishing in the academy

A seminar, Publishing in the Academy, offered to all full-time faculty of the City University of New York (CUNY), through a program jointly sponsored by the Professional Staff Congress and CUNY, is described by two participants of the course. The authors share their experience, describe the process involved in publishing an article in a scholarly journal, and provide recommendations for setting up a writing group.Judith Entes received her Ph.D. in 1989 from Fordham University, specialization in Reading. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Academic Skills at Baruch College, CUNY. Her present research is examining co-authored published research. Rafat Ispahany received her M.A. in 1987 from City College, CUNY. She is an Associate Professor and Head of the Cataloging Division at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY. She is interested in book conservation for community college libraries.     

Faculty Salaries and the Maximization of Prestige

Through the lens of the emerging economic theory of higher education, we look at the relationship between salary and prestige. Starting from the premise that academic institutions seek to maximize prestige, we hypothesize that monetary rewards are higher for faculty activities that confer prestige. We use data from the 1999 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF), and regression analysis to examine the determinants of salaries. The results are consistent with the theory that faculty members are financially rewarded for enhancing institutional prestige. There is some evidence that the rewards are higher in science and engineering. Spending more time on teaching has no effect on salary, even in comprehensive universities and liberal arts colleges. Findings suggest that other types of institutions are emulating research institutions in their pursuit of prestige. Looking at faculty salaries through this lens raises serious questions about the implications of the current reward system in higher education. Article Note Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Economics of Education seminar, Stanford University School of Education, March 2004, and the American Education Finance Association, Louisville, KY, May 2005.