Faculty Learning Communities
Using Assessment to Drive Students' Learning and Measure Learning Outcomes
Facilitator: Terry Doyle (FCTL)
PDI: $400
Description:
In this Faculty Learning Community, each faculty member will develop a comprehensive assessment plan for a course. The community members will work together to help one another to clarify their courses learning outcomes in detail, explore numerous assessment tools and methods, and, finally, match the two together into a comprehensive plan that can be used in Fall 2008.
This Faculty Learning Community will explore how to design and develop assessment tools that both drive students' learning and show clear evidence to what extent course learning outcomes have been met by each individual student. To develop highly effective assessment tools a teacher must:
- Determine, as clearly as possible, what it is they want students to have learned as a result of taking their course where "what's learned" includes knowledge, skills, behaviors, attitudes and thinking strategies.
- Become informed about the dozens of established assessment activities, tools, and methods that could be used to measure learning.
- Work to match the two together so the data and findings of the assessments used reveal accurate information about what the students have or have not learned.
Transforming a Course toward More Learner-Centered Teaching
Facilitator: Terry Doyle (FCTL)
PDI: $400
Description:
The goal of this Faculty Learning Community is for faculty to leave the community with a complete learner-centered course that is ready to be taught in Fall 2008. Participants will work together to adopt specific learner-centered teaching methods, and classroom activities, assignments, and assessments. The community will also discuss how to give students a greater role in their own learning and how to get them to take greater responsibility for their own learning. This community will focus squarely on preparing to use principles and practices of learner-centered teaching in a Fall 2008 course.
Critical Thinking Dialogue
Facilitators: Donna Smith and George Nagel (College of Arts & Sciences)
PDI: $400
Description:
Having completed Level I: Practioner of the Fundamentals of Critical Thinking Faculty Learning Community, faculty are now prepared to become masters in the art of critical thinking. The Level II (Master) learning community provides participants opportunities to learn and apply the latest theories and models in the pedagogy of critical thinking. Participants develop a heightened sense of the verbal and nonverbal dimensions, and explicit and implicit levels of communication. They develop interpersonal, group, public, and leadership skills, and they learn how to facilitate student-centered discussion. The emphasis is on getting students to take responsibility for their own learning while providing them with the resources to make that possible. Graduates will be capable of developing a self-sustaining culture of critical thinking in the classroom.
Innovative Uses of Technology in the Classroom
Facilitator(s): Bill Knapp (FCTL) and Gloria Lukusa-Barnett (University College and FerrisConnect Co-Project Manager)
PDI: $400
Description:
The members of this Faculty Learning Community will explore classroom technologies such as Sympodium, interactive whiteboards, document cameras, DVDs, student response systems, and other tools, and how they may be used in innovative ways to improve teaching and learning. Participants will commit to two hours per week in peer-led presentations and discussions considering the effective and innovative uses of various classroom technologies. Members will have an opportunity to practice with various technologies and will produce plans describing how they intend to implement such technologies into their own teaching.
Inquiries into Teaching and Learning
Facilitator: Todd Stanislav (FCTL)
PDI: $400
Description:
The Academic Affairs' Assessment Committee and the Faculty Center for Teaching & Learning invite you to engage in systematic assessment of student learning outcomes. This principle aim of the project, like that first articulated by Walvoord and Anderson (1998) and later by Savory et al. (2007), is "to help you approach your own teaching in a more structured fashion, as you investigate teaching (and learning) questions that you really care about, that cycle back into your teaching for improved student learning, that are embedded within a specific classroom context, and that you may have encountered over successive course offerings."
Faculty Discussion Groups
The Art of Changing the Brain
Facilitator: Terry Doyle (FCTL)
- This discussion of James Zull's book, The Art of Changing the Brain, will be online and will use MyFSU groups as our online vehicle. Complete directions on how to participate will be sent once the group has been established.
Description:
Research in neuroscience and other fields is enriching our understanding of how people learn and, as a result, informing how we should teach. James Zull's, The Art of Changing the Brain, is the first book ever written about the biology of learning and offers great insights into how students learn and how we should teach. It is written in a non-technical language that all can understand. This book gave me a greater understanding about human learning than any other book I have read. All group members will receive a copy of the book.
A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain
Facilitator: Terry Doyle (FCTL)
Description:
A User's Guide to the Brain is one of the very best books ever written about how the human brain works and learns. Dr. James Ratey, psychiatrist and researcher, explains current neuroscience research about human learning in an easy-to-read, non-technical way. Chapter titles include: Development, Perception, Attention and Consciousness, Movement, Memory, Emotion, Language, and The Social Brain. This book will enlighten those who read it about how their students look at and engage in learning. All group members will receive a copy of the book.
For more information about any of the above, please contact the faciliator(s) or Laurie Daniels (danielsl@ferris.edu) or ext. 2440.
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