Resources
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank colleagues who have contributed materials in the spirit of sharing successful practice. Some contributions are anonymous. If you have sent us any of these and either wish to claim authorship, or would prefer them to be removed from this website, please contact c.bryan@cssd.ac.uk
About the Resources
These resources are intended for tutors and for students. They aim to raise awareness and/or develop and assess group processes. The student guides and activities have been trialed in diverse group situations. The Resources section includes:
'How to' Guides and Activities
Commentaries
Assessment Criteria & Procedures
Forms and Documents
Reading and useful links
Today, I am presenting at the 10th Annual NJ Best Practices Showcase on using blogging as a reflective process for my students. You can view the presentation on my Slideshare page. NJEDge.Net and the host school, the College of St. Elizabeth, are also recording the presentations and hoping to post them to the new NJVid site. In this post, I want to go into a bit more detail than I can do in my presentation about reflective practice itself.
Though I reference the book The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action by Donald Schön, what I am discussing does not appear in his book since blogging did not even exist in 1995 when the book was published. He was an MIT social scientist and consultant, and in that book he examines five professions (engineering, architecture, management, psychotherapy, town planning). The book is very much about how professionals go about solving problems.
He introduced reflective practice as a continuous process that involves the learner considering critical incidents in his or her life's experiences. The concept immediately gained traction in teacher education, and also health professions and architectural design. For a teacher-in-training and active in the field, the process of studying his or her own teaching methods and determining what works best for the students is essential. I think it is important that all students (practitioners-in-training) also consider their own experiences in applying knowledge to practice, especially while being "coached" by professionals (instructors,mentors) in their discipline.
Education is my focus here, but all three disciplines also make use of portfolios of a kind. If you use portfolios (paper, electronic or objects), you are probably already using reflection as a part of that practice.
Educational Research and Evaluation at Alverno College
In 1976, the college formally established an office of educational research and evaluation that would investigate a series of questions at the behest of the faculty, with special attention to linking the outcomes of college to the curriculum,establishing the validity of assessment techniques and the assessment process,
and demonstrating the link between college-learned abilities and alumnae performance in the world of work, personal life, service, and citizenship.
Our initial concerns were for assessment activities that operated at the level of individual students and were integral to their learning. (For additional information, go to Student Assessment-as-Learning.)
Alongside this use, assessment can also be an instructor's tool for improving learning or a policy tool for planning and improvement. We have gradually developed a program of assessments that operates at the levels of individual student, program, curriculum, and institution.
In this context, educational research and evaluation are part of a dynamic learning system based on the educational principles and values underlying Alverno's mission and supported by structures that ensure coherence and continuing improvement. One such structure is the Research and Evaluation Council, made up of senior faculty, staff, and administrators. However, responsibility for review of program, curriculum, and institution-wide effectiveness lies with departments faculty and staff across this institution.
What it Means to Educate Today's Students
February 4th, 2009
Comments
The Carnegie Foundation is focusing on where and how technology can add value as we seek to advance more ambitious learning goals for all students, and where we can assist educators as they move toward making these new learning goals universal. The Foundation has enlisted expert advisers to help us look at how technology is transforming how we educate. One of these advisors is Nichole Pinkard, Director of Innovation at the Urban Education Institute, University of Chicago.
Assessing How Students Learn
Bill Cerbin
In higher education the dominant mode of assessment is to measure what students have learned in a course or program. By measuring what students learn educators can monitor student progress, determine learning gaps and gains, and document achievement.
But measuring what students learn is of limited use if our goal is to improve their future performance. It is akin to taking a person's temperature. You may learn the individual has a fever but the measurement produces no insight into the cause. Suppose we find that students score in the 60th percentile on a standardized test or that half the students in a course have significant writing problems. What should we do to improve future performance? Unfortunately, the assessment data provide little direction. The result is a kind of guesswork by which we consider alternative teaching practices or programs without understanding how or why they would work better than standard approaches.
The Knowledge Media Laboratory works to create a future in which communities of teachers, faculty, programs, and institutions collectively advance teaching and learning by exchanging their educational knowledge, experiences, ideas, and reflections by taking advantage of various technologies and resources.
The KML is currently working with its partners, including Carnegie Foundation programs, to achieve the following goals:
* To develop digital (or electronic) tools and resources that help to make knowledge of effective teaching practices and educational transformation efforts visible, shareable and reusable.
* To explore synergy among various technologies to better support the scholarship of teaching and learning.
* To build the capacity for faculty and teachers independently to take advantage of information and communications technologies that enable them to re-examine, rethink and represent teaching and student learning, and to share the outcomes in an effective and efficient way.
* To sustain communities of practice engaged in collaboratively improving teaching and student learning by building common areas to exchange knowledge and by building repositories for the representation of effective practice.
The Carnegie Foundation
Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and chartered in 1906 by an act of Congress, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is an independent policy and research center with a primary mission "to do and perform all things necessary to encourage, uphold, and dignify the profession of the teacher and the cause of higher education."
The appropriate role of the professoriate has been a topic of ongoing debate in higher education. As different types of educational institutions have emerged, the focus of scholarly pursuits and their relative value to the organization have evolved. This module examines how Boyer's model of scholarship can be used to clarify and balance roles of college faculty.
Expanded Definition of Scholarship
Boyer (1997) proposed an expanded definition of "scholarship" within the professorate based on four functions that underlie the Profile of a Quality Faculty Member (1.2.4): discovery, integration, application, and teaching. He argues that, within this framework, all forms of scholarship should be recognized and rewarded, and that this will lead to more personalized and flexible criteria for gaining tenure. He feels that, too often faculty members wrestle with conflicting obligations that leave little time to focus on their teaching role. Boyer proposes using "creativity contracts" that emphasize quality teaching and individualized professional development. He recommends that this model be based upon the life patterns of individuals and their passions.
The first element of Boyer's model, discovery, is the one most closely aligned with traditional research. Discovery contributes not only to the stock of human knowledge but also to the intellectual climate of a college or university. He stresses that new research contributions are critical to the vitality of the academic environment, and that his model does not diminish the value of discovery scholarship.
The second element, integration, focuses on making connections across disciplines. One interprets one's own research so that it is useful beyond one's own disciplinary boundaries and can be integrated into a larger body of knowledge. He stresses that the rapid pace of societal change within a global economy have elevated the importance of this form of scholarship.
The third element, appl
The Scholarship of Teaching: New Elaborations, New Developments
By Pat Hutchings and Lee S. Shulman
Note: This article was originally published in Change, September/October 1999. Volume 31, Number 5. Pages 10-15.
It's the middle of June as we begin this article, and our writing faces serious competition from the spirited company of 43 faculty in residence here at The Carnegie Foundation. Members of the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL), these "Carnegie Scholars"selected through the Pew National Fellowship Program, one of CASTL's components-examine teaching and learning issues in their fields in order, as our program materials say, to 1) foster significant, long-lasting learning for all students, 2) advance the practice and profession of teaching, and 3) bring to teaching the recognition afforded to other forms of scholarly work. One Scholar is studying "moments of difficulty" as opportunities for student learning; another is pilot-testing a new model for teaching accounting; several have focused their work on ways to make students more purposeful, self-directed learners.
The Boyer Commission
on Educating Undergraduates
in the Research University
REINVENTING
UNDERGRADUATE
EDUCATION:
A Blueprint for
America's Research
Universities
welcome to the ADM-HEA website
Supporting and developing learning and teaching in art, design, media, history of art and the history of design in higher education
Professional standards
The UK Professional Standards Framework (UK PSF) for teaching and supporting learning, launched in February 2006, is a flexible framework which uses a descriptor-based approach to professional standards.
There are three standard descriptors each of which is applicable to a number of staff roles and to different career stages of those engaged in teaching and supporting learning. The standard descriptors are underpinned by areas of professional activity, core knowledge and professional values.
The framework provides a reference point for institutions and individuals as well as supporting ongoing development within any one standard descriptor.
The framework was developed by the Academy on behalf of Universities UK (UUK), GuildHE and the four UK higher education funding councils after extensive consultation with the higher education sector. They recognise the diversity of institutions and enable a sector-owned approach to learning and teaching standards.
Engaged Learning: Enabling Self-Authorship and Effective Practice
David C. Hodge, Marcia B. Baxter Magolda, and Carolyn A. Haynes
There is now broad consensus that higher education must extend beyond content-based
knowledge to encompass intellectual and practical skills, personal and social
responsibility, and integrative learning. The college learning outcomes needed for
success in 21
st
century life include critical thinking, a coherent sense of self, intercultural
maturity, civic engagement, and the capacity for mutual relationships. Yet, research
suggests that college students are struggling to achieve these outcomes in part because
skills needed to succeed in college are not those needed to succeed upon graduation.
One reason for this gap is that these college learning outcomes require complex
developmental capacities or "self-authorship" that higher education is not currently
designed to promote.
Promoting Self-Authorship to Promote Liberal Education
Marcia B. Baxter Magolda, Miami University
1
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Abstract
Contemporary college learning outcomes such as critical thinking and intercultural maturity
require transformative learning. Self-authorship-the capacity to internally generate one's beliefs,
values, identity, and relationships-is a necessary foundation for transformational learning. This
essay describes the evolution of self-authorship and the conditions that promote it based on a 22-
year study of adult learning and development. Learning partnerships model how to promote self-
authorship and enable learners to take charge of their learning.
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Purpose of the Experience\n\nInnovation continues to occur on the internet at an extremely lively\npace. What was once the realm of email, FTP, Gopher, and the Web is\nbarely recognizable a mere 10 years later. Keeping up with the speed of\ninnovation and maintaining a familiarity with the most recent tools and\ncapabilities is handy in some professions and absolutely critical in\nothers. This course is designed to help you understand and effectively\nuse a variety of "web 2.0″ technologies including blogs, RSS, wikis,\nsocial bookmarking tools, photo sharing tools, mapping tools, audio and\nvideo podcasts, and screencasts.
There are growing expectations among college students to be able to access and manage their course materials over the World Wide Web. In its early days, faculty would create web pages by hand for posting this information. As Internet technologies and access have matured over the past decade, course and learning management systems such as Blackboard and Web CT have become the norm for distributing such materials. In today's Web 2.0 world, wikis have emerged as a tool that may complement or replace the use of traditional course management systems as a tool for disseminating course information. Because of a wiki's collaborative nature, its use also allows students to participate in the process of course management, information sharing, and content creation. Using examples from an information technology classroom, this paper describes several ways to structure and use a wiki as a course management tool, and shares results of a student survey on the effectiveness of such an approach on student learning.\n\nKeywords: Wiki, Course Management, Collaboration, Web 2.0, Content Creation, Student Learning.