Tuesday, November 19, 2013

4 ways improve higher ed teaching/learning: Better than nothing? FridayLive! Intervu Tom Angelo 2pmET 11/22 tlt.gs/frlv free online #TLTGfrlv

Join our discussion online FridayLive!  Nov 22, 2013  2:00-3:00 pm ET - online, highly interactive, free to all 
Live on location of 33rd Annual  International Lilly Conference on College Teaching
Guest Interviewee:  Tom Angelo, co-author Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs), Assistant Provost, Director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence (CAFE) and Professor of Higher Education, Queens University of Charlotte. 
More info, free registration:  tlt.gs/frlv

We'll discuss:
4 categories of programs to improve teaching/learning in higher ed: Any better than laissez faire?  

- Increase Faculty Collegial Communication re Teaching/Learning
- Increase Use of Technology 
- Increase Professional Staff Support for Instruction
- Increase Evidence-Based Teaching/Learning
These four broad approaches to improving teaching/learning in higher education are described below.*  

Noteworthy Differences?
Who has been looking for noteworthy differences among these broad categories of widely(?) admired efforts to improve teaching and learning, and what has been found?  What have these approaches accomplished better than "Laissez Faire" - making no organized, systematic effort at all?

4 Categories:

- Increase Faculty Collegial Communication re Teaching/Learning
Activities that encourage and support faculty to increase their communication with respected colleagues about ways to improve teaching and learning (includes both informal departmental activities and "Faculty Learning Communities").

- Increase Use of Technology 
Activities that encourage and support faculty to increase their understanding and use of information resources and technology to improve teaching and learning.

- Increase Professional Staff Support for Instruction
Activities that increase the availability of professional staff to encourage and support faculty members' individual efforts to improve teaching and learning.

- Increase Evidence-Based Teaching/Learning
Activities that encourage and support faculty to increase their understanding and use of evidence-based ways to improve teaching and learning (activities that include, for example, instructional design, faculty development, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Assessment, adaptation of research in cognitive sciences, ...).

Beyond 10%?
For many decades, improvements in teaching and learning in higher education have been developed, announced, supported, advocated, and implemented to a certain extent.  Like innovations in general, not only in higher education,  it has been common for 5-10% of those eligible to participate (ie, affiliated faculty within one institution) to begin to adopt and continue to use an improvement with good results in the eyes of those paying attention to that change.  (See work of Everett Rogers and those who followed him about the 5-10% pattern.)  Have some improvements cumulatively reached 15 or 20%?  More?  Has the combined impact of all reached  more than 25%?  50%?

Belief,  Evidence, More Questions
Do you believe one of the approaches is significantly more deserving of continuation or expansion than the others?
What would convince your more skeptical (or uninterested) colleagues to agree with you?
Would anything convince your most skeptical colleagues that at least one of them is more worthy of continuation than doing nothing at all?


  • What kinds of changes in the use of tools, strategies, practices, resources, principles,  ...?  
  • What kinds of changes in measurable, observable student accomplishments...
  • What kinds of moral, political, economic arguments...?
  • What else?
  • Do some of the above seem much better-suited to some academic disciplines more than others?  Why?  
  • Do some of the above seem much better-suited to some kinds of colleges or universities than others?  Why? 
  • Do some of the above seem much better-suited to some kinds of teachers than others?  Why? 
  • Do some of the above seem much better-suited to some kinds of students than others?  Why? 
Are these good questions? 
What kinds of information available about differences among the above categories of activities is already influencing  changes in further implementation and/or support for them?

Which activities within each of the above categories seem to have demonstrably engaged more than 10% of the affiliated faculty within a couple years... with the apparent potential to increase that percentage further if continued in subsequent years?

Who is asking better questions about differences among the above? What are the better questions?  Perhaps those that include but go beyond:

*The above categories are intended to include most significant instructional improvement activities that have been sustained for more than two years and that involve faculty affiliated with at least one college or university.  Do the 4 categories omit any important efforts to improve higher education in the past decades?
They are intended to include  even initiatives that only encourage or support the stated purpose as a by-product of pursuing other stated purposes.


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