CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND THE BABY BOOMER GENERATION: RESEARCH,POLICY AND PRACTICE PERSPECTIVES Edited by Laura B. Wilson and Sharon P. Simson

A unique development program was designed to assist faculty in integrating gerontological concepts in selected undergraduate courses. The disciplines of social services, human performance, psychology, nutrition, audiology, and nursing were targeted for the program. The faculty development program took place in four phases over a 17‐month period. In Phase 1, faculty members studied theoretical concepts in gerontology relevant to their academic discipline. During Phase 2, faculty members obtained practical experience in gerontological settings to complement the knowledge gained in the first phase. In Phase 3, the faculty developed instructional units for their courses based on their Phase 1 and 2 experiences. During Phase 4 the faculty pilot tested, implemented, and revised the curricular materials. In addition, Phase 4 included opportunities for each faculty member to develop a research agenda for the continued study of gerontology. As a result of knowledge gained in the project, 10 faculty members developed SO instructional units, which were integrated into existing undergraduate courses. Approximately 300 students demonstrated significant gains in knowledge in gerontological concepts during the first semester of implementation. It is estimated that continued use of the modules will result in more than 800 students per year being exposed to gerontological concepts.     

A review of factors that influence the diffusion of innovation when structuring a faculty training program

The purpose of this paper is identify those characteristics of instructional technology that may influence a faculty member's willingness to integrate it in his/her teaching by drawing upon the diffusion of innovation literature. It then presents the results of a study, conducted at a small liberal arts college, on the effectiveness of a faculty training program that was designed to encourage faculty to adopt a course management system in their classroom-based, undergraduate courses. The training program was based on an approach that considers those factors that influence the adoption rate of technology, specifically the course management system, Blackboard.     

The faculty's perception of the mature adult: A case study

With the rise in numbers of mature adults becoming interested in returning to college, information is needed if programs are to be designed to meet the needs of these students. A critical input into the re-designing of programs is the faculty. This study was undertaken to identify the needs of the mature adults by use of a questionnaire sent to undergraduate faculty asking for their perceptions of mature (ages 25 or older) adult student. Results indicate that there is intense interest in the needs of the mature adult population but that there is little experience with this audience among the faculty. This and other data suggest that there is a need for an orientation program to acquaint the faculty with the mature adult population, and to develop an instructional program to fulfill their needs.     

Investigating Undergraduate Science Students’ Conceptions and Misconceptions of Ocean Acidification

Scientific research exploring ocean acidification has grown significantly in past decades. However, little science education research has investigated the extent to which undergraduate science students understand this topic. Of all undergraduate students, one might predict science students to be best able to understand ocean acidification. What conceptions and misconceptions of ocean acidification do these students hold? How does their awareness and knowledge compare across disciplines? Undergraduate biology, chemistry/biochemistry, and environmental studies students, and science faculty for comparison, were assessed on their awareness and understanding. Results revealed low awareness and understanding of ocean acidification among students compared with faculty. Compared with biology or chemistry/biochemistry students, more environmental studies students demonstrated awareness of ocean acidification and identified the key role of carbon dioxide. Novel misconceptions were also identified. These findings raise the question of whether undergraduate science students are prepared to navigate socioenvironmental issues such as ocean acidification.     

For want of a better word: unlocking threshold concepts in natural sciences with a key from the humanities?

The process of identifying threshold concepts invites experts to reflect on their discipline in a new way with the ultimate goal of improving learning and teaching. During a workshop to identify threshold concepts in biochemistry, we asked a group of natural scientists to explore ‘signification,’ a threshold concept from the humanities, as a mechanism to push them out of their comfort zones and recall how it feels to experience learning from a student’s perspective. In addition to accomplishing this goal, we subsequently realized that signification could also help us uncover and remedy ways in which use of scientific terminology impedes learning in biochemistry. Using the results of a survey of university teachers that aimed at refining a list of possible threshold concepts, we present three scenarios to illustrate the challenges that teachers and students encounter when attempting to cement a label (the signifier) and a concept (the signified) into a coherent sign. Based on these findings, we propose that teachers can better explore threshold concepts if they carefully consider the role terminology plays in learning and teaching. Thus we describe the ‘terminological canyon’ through which university teachers must journey in order to produce effective learning and teaching activities related to the threshold concepts. While the work described here pertains to biochemistry, we believe the process and findings can be generalized to a broad range of disciplines.     

Faculty socialization and instructional productivity

Difficult financial times appear to lie ahead for higher education, and efforts to increase instructional productivity may be required. What kinds of efforts will faculty members support or at least condone? The answer would appear to lie in awareness of the process of faculty socialization. It is argued that through the collegiate experience, the future college professor is socialized to a conventional teaching role, which is grounded firmly in a traditional instructional model, and that efforts to increase instructional productivity must be cognizant of and consistent with this role and model. Empirical data from faculty in eight Pennsylvania colleges supported the hypothesis—with one important refinement: adjustments must be made for the implications of enlightened faculty self-interest.     

Instructional Design and the Importance of Instructional Alignment

This paper highlights the instructional design process followed by the Maricopa Community College faculty in the creation of instructional modules in Digital Visual Literacy. The paper categorizes 10 tasks that an instructional designer, a teacher, or a trainer performs during the design phase of the instructional design process. The importance of alignment between each of these 10 instructional elements is stressed in the paper. Also described are two different design models (top-down model and the matrix model) that were used by the faculty in the design of instructional materials. The matrix model has been found to be more effective in aligning the 10 instructional elements. Also included are survey results on the importance of the instructional design elements and if instructors include these elements in their lesson design in a community college setting.     

Meeting in the circle: examining identity,attitudes, and pedagogy in the context of an early childhood teacher education program in the United States

As a team of teacher educators at a university in the United States, we engage in participatory action research to reflect on how reflective tools which we design engage teacher candidates (TCs) in their reflecting on teaching. In this paper, we describe how we invite TCs to write in-class reflections, respond to self-assessment probes, and practice problem-solving processes. We critically analyze our approaches and identify further intentional approaches to promote university students’ understandings of (1) links between the self and working with children and families and (2) connections between attitudes and pedagogy towards social justice and inclusion. We conclude that we must continue to explore how the teaching practices we use affect students’ understandings of social justice in education. Doing so demands our focus on examining attitudes through self-reflection among and between faculty and university students so that identity, relationships, attitudes, inclusion, and social justice are prioritized as pillars of curriculum in early childhood education at all levels of schooling.     

Student and Faculty Perceptions of an Effective University Instructional Climate

Abstract

This study sought to ascertain perceptions of an effective instructional climate through use of a seventy-one item questionnaire. Usable responses were received from 1,237 students and 268 faculty members. Statistical analysis yielded a list of forty “significant” attributes grouped into seven clusters. Factor loading values were derived for the attributes to facilitate utilization in describing and assessing instructional climate. Students and faculty agreed generally on a global concept of instructional climate and as to the “significance” of many individual attributes. Greater “significance” was attached to instructors and their teaching role than to students and their learning role. Practical uses of the results are suggested.     

Faculty planning for distance teaching

Abstract

How faculty in higher education plan instruction is an area about which little is known. The purpose of this study was to describe instructional planning by faculty teaching adult learners via interactive telecommunications technology and to identify their principal concerns when designing distance instruction. Qualitative methods were used to collect and analyze data on planning by eleven full‐time faculty members teaching on an audio‐graphic distance network. Their distance instruction planning process was characterized by three features: term rather than day‐to‐day planning, a primary emphasis on content rather than process, and reliance on the syllabus as the focal point of planning.     

Faculty Development and Universal Instructional Design

Centers for teaching and instructional development offer consultation services and resources materials for faculty members and graduate teaching assistants designed to promote excellence in undergraduate teaching. This article considers how such efforts may better address the needs of students with disabilities enrolled in postsecondary education by exploring the intersections of instructional development models.     

Middle-level Academic Management: A case study on the roles of the Heads of Department at a Vietnamese university

Although information technology is increasingly used to deliver distance and conventional courses, there have been few studies of the effect of technology‐enhanced education on the organization and purposes of academics’ instructional work. I explore this issue in undergraduate and masters level education through the vehicle of case analyses of technology‐rich classes taught in a public research university in the United States. What the cases illustrate is an emergent pattern of what I am calling ‘Mode III’ instructional production, in which the production of a course involves a matrix of non‐faculty support personnel, and may be oriented to commercial purposes reflective of an increasingly embedded academic capitalism in the new economy.     

Faculty Motivation to Mentor Students Through Undergraduate Research Programs: A Study of Enabling and Constraining Factors

Undergraduate research experiences are a “high impact” educational practice that confer benefits to students. However, little attention has been paid to understanding faculty motivation to mentor undergraduate students through research training programs, even as the number of programs has grown, requiring increasing numbers of faculty mentors. To address this, we introduce a conceptual model for understanding faculty motivation to mentor and test it by using empirical data to identify factors that enable and constrain faculty engagement in an undergraduate research program. Using cross-sectional survey data collected in 2013, we employed generalized linear modeling to analyze data from 536 faculty across 13 research institutions to examine how expected costs/benefits, dispositional factors, situational factors, previous experience, and demographic factors predicted faculty motivation to mentor. Results show that faculty who placed greater value on the opportunity to increase diversity in the academy through mentorship of underrepresented minorities were more likely to be interested in serving as mentors. Faculty who agreed more strongly that mentoring undergraduate students was time consuming and their institution’s reward structures were at odds with mentoring, or who had more constrained access to undergraduate students were less likely to be interested in serving as mentors. Mid-career faculty were more likely than late-career faculty to be interested in serving as mentors. Findings have implications for improving undergraduate research experiences, since the success of training programs hinges on engaging highly motivated faculty members as mentors.     

Reformed undergraduate instruction and its subsequent impact on secondary school teaching practice and student achievement

The Arizona Collaborative for Excellence in the Preparation of Teachers (ACEPT) Program is one of several reform efforts supported by the National Science Foundation. The primary ACEPT reform mechanism has been month‐long summer workshops in which university and community college science and mathematics faculty learn about instructional reforms and then attempt to apply them in their courses. Previous ACEPT evaluation efforts suggest that, when implemented, the reforms boost undergraduate student achievement. The initial purpose of the present study was to discover whether enrollment of preservice teachers in one or more of these reformed undergraduate courses is linked to the way they teach after they graduate and become in‐service teachers. Assuming that a link is found, a second purpose was to discover whether the presumed positive effect is in turn linked to their students' achievement. In short, the answer appears to be yes, at least among the biology teachers and students surveyed. Compared with controls, the biology teachers who had enrolled in one or more ACEPT reformed course during their teacher preparation program demonstrated significantly higher scores on the measure of reformed instruction and their students demonstrated significantly higher achievement in terms of scientific reasoning, nature of science, and biology concepts. These results support the hypothesis that teachers teach as they have been taught. Furthermore, it appears that instructional reform in teacher preparation programs including both methods and major's courses can improve secondary school student achievement. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 40: 939–957, 2003     

Faculty members' provision of instructional accommodations to students with LD

The existing research on the instructional accommodation process of college students with learning disabilities focuses on attitudes and theoretical models without delineating actual practices. To date, the discussion of facilitating factors and barriers to this process has been broad and lacking specificity. Surveys were mailed to 485 faculty members at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who received an instructional accommodation form from the office of Learning Disabilities Support Services in the fall of 1995. The survey focused on faculty members' reported degree of ease or difficulty in implementing instructional accommodations, their perceptions regarding adequacy of support, and their own beliefs and understandings concerning the need for and benefit of providing instructional accommodations. The results indicate that beliefs about the helpfulness of and need for instructional accommodations were associated with the provision of the accommodations. Also, a perception of support from the University influenced the ease of providing instructional accommodations. A significant difference was found between the behavior of tenure-track faculty and non-tenure-track faculty.     

A behavioral change model with implications for faculty development

A model of voluntary behavior change is developed and applied to faculty in higher education and the process of instructional innovation. The model identifies individual and organizational variables that determine whether or not a faculty member will change his instructional practices by adopting methods, techniques, or ideas that are new to him and the likelihood that he will succeed if he decides to try to innovate. Some implications of the model for faculty development programs are discussed.     

Understanding students’ experiences of professionalism learning: a ‘threshold’ approach

Professionalism is a core element of curricula in many disciplines but can be difficult to teach and learn. This study used audio-diary methodology to identify professionalism threshold concepts in a small group learning setting in undergraduate medicine and to understand factors that might facilitate students to ‘get’ such concepts. Fifteen students and seven tutors kept audio-diaries over two terms. Data were analysed qualitatively for content. The key themes were then cross referenced to threshold concept criteria (e.g. where language indicated that learning was troublesome, integrative or transformative). Seven potential threshold concepts were identified which centred on students’ developing professional identities including working with uncertainty, considering the bigger picture, not needing to know everything and professional culture. Reflection on workplace experiences within a small group helped students ‘get’ these concepts. The study concludes that threshold concepts and audio-diaries are useful tools for understanding lived experiences of professionalism learning.     

An analysis of the scholarly productivity of instructional technology faculty

The resumés of 132 instructional technology (IT) faculty were analyzed in an effort to assess the scholarly productivity of IT faculty. Faculty were surveyed to identify leading basic and applied IT journals and to determine overall publication patterns. The findings indicate that individuals who are now full professors have a higher publication rate than faculty at lower ranks in instructional systems/educational technology programs. On an annual basis, individuals in educational psychology programs published more applied, basic, and overall research than faculty in other academic affiliations.     

Lights,Camera, Action: Facilitating the Design and Production of Effective Instructional Videos

This paper outlines a rudimentary process intended to guide faculty in K-12 and higher education through the steps involved to produce video for their classes. The process comprises four steps: planning, development, delivery and reflection. Each step is infused with instructional design information intended to support the collaboration between instructional support staff and faculty to produce video that will be meaningful to students and support their success in a class. In outlining this approach, the paper also explores technological and pedagogical considerations related to each of these steps that can help faculty and staff determine how best to incorporate video into online classes. Finally, supported by research on best video practices and with examples from our own experiences as instructional designers and instructors, the paper outlines how these steps relate to four broad categories of video: introduce, model, explain/inform and feedback.     

The localization,diagnostic, and monitoring functions of student ratings in a model for improving university teaching

A diversity of student questionnaires are used by colleges and universities to provide data on faculty teaching performance. Yet the purposes for collecting this data are frequently unclear, and at times superficial. Rarely is student rating data used as a tool to improve faculty teaching. A more relevant approach incorporates a variety of types of student ratings into a model for improving university teaching. One type of student rating data is used to identify broad instructional problem areas. Another type pinpoints probable causes and solutions for the instructional problems. Instructional improvement procedures are designed on the basis of this data. A third type of student rating data evaluates the instructional improvement procedures and indicates when modifications are needed. In addition to these three types of student ratings, and the generation of appropriate questionnaires, this paper presents an overview of the teaching improvement model and discusses its effectiveness.