(Written by Kelly Cara, Assessment Research Coordinator)

I just returned from a conference held in Atlanta, Georgia.  The conference focused on faculty development and diversity, so I thought I would share some thoughts and experiences with my colleagues.  First, this was a totally unique conference from my experience.  Attendees were encouraged to skip conference sessions so that they could participate in excursions to interesting places in and around Atlanta.  The three main reasons for this were as follows

1. One can only absorb so much information in a conference setting – it is best to take some breaks (especially when the conference spans four days!).
2. Getting away from the conference sessions provides a unique opportunity to get to know colleagues from other institutions while in a more relaxed setting.
3. With a focus on diversity, what better way to start interesting conversations and learn about diversity-related issues than to explore a new city?  Exploring historic and cultural sites in Atlanta directly applied to the mission of the conference.

Needless to say, I took full advantage of the opportunity to explore.  I visited the Centennial Olympic Park which was created as part of a beautification project for the 1996 Centennial Summer Olympic Games.  I ran with a colleague along the 19-mile Stone Mountain “PATH” (Don’t worry.  We only ran 7 miles of it).  The PATH goes from the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site all the way to Stone Mountain Park (both of which I also visited).  The last excursion I took with the group was to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra which played Rachmaninov’s The Bells, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Nyx, and Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy.

Talk about an experience in diversity and inclusion!  Between all of these excursions and through my interactions with others at the conference, I was exposed to diversity in several different areas including socio-economic background, political viewpoint, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious preference, dietary preference and needs, physical and mental disabilities, and professional status – not to mention the contrast between work and play.

Upon reflection, what stands out to me the most is that we often tend to limit the term “diversity” as meaning variety in skin tone and geographical culture, but diversity is a much more inclusive term than that.  Diversity can refer to our different knowledge and skillsets, our different backgrounds and experiences, our various preferences and dislikes, or our individual capacities.  Regardless of what it means, when we focus on diversity and on diversifying ourselves and our surroundings, we tend to learn, push our own limits, gain understanding about ourselves and others, and generally improve.

Diversity is present in Springfield and on our campus, and I would encourage all of us to explore the different opportunities available to us here.  As we begin to bring in more racially and ethnically diverse staff and faculty to our University, we will need to be willing and able to open ourselves up to new and diverse experiences and conversations.  What are we doing today to begin these conversations with our colleagues, students, family members, and community affiliates?  What are we doing to ensure we are prepared to best serve students from different backgrounds and with different needs?

As a final remark, one thing that impressed me the most about the conference was a presentation by a group of students from Fort Valley State University called the Wildcat Force.  These students are proud to be a part of their university, and they use their diverse talents and interests to recruit new students and promote their university’s excellence and goals.  We too have student groups on campus that are doing outstanding things to promote diversity and awareness.  The Giving Voice theatre troupe is one in particular that is helping faculty and staff learn the importance of appropriately confronting sensitive topics in and out of the classroom setting.  If you ever have an opportunity to attend a session with the Giving Voice troupe, I would HIGHLY encourage you to do so.

Written by Kelly Cara
Have you ever been to a conference where the speakers did nothing more than tell you what you already knew?  I have.  Twice in the last year, I spent hours preparing for conferences by reading all necessary materials, making notes, discussing the topics with others, and contemplating the readings until I fully understood the processes that would be covered.  With all of this preparation, which the organizers assured me was necessary, I was surprised and disappointed that at both conferences the presenters did little more than regurgitate everything I had been told to read.  What was the point?  Why did I travel more than 200 miles to be given a PowerPoint presentation on what I already knew?  I felt my efforts, my time, and my companies’ money had been wasted.

Leaving the last conference, which happened to be about improving student learning, I realized that all I had really learned was that I don’t have to read the materials they send because they’re just going to hand feed the information to me anyway.  It was apparent in the conference that the presenters did not trust us audience members to do our homework or to understand what it was that we read.

Is this how our students feel?  Are we hand feeding our students knowledge?  Is this why many of my students don’t read before coming to class (even though I emphasize that they do so with BOLD CAPS and italics in my syllabus)?  Am I asking them to read chapters and supplemental materials outside of class but offering little more than summaries or explanations about what they just read?  Is it their laziness or my lack of trust in their ability to follow-through that has stunted the learning process?

This is not any easy question to answer.  It requires a real honest look at my classroom practices, the spoken and unspoken messages I send my students, the expectations I uphold for them, and whether or not I actually allow them to meet those expectations.  I know I am an effective teacher, and I know that the majority of my students learn something from my classes, but the point (since that’s the question at hand) is that I want them to learn as much as possible and to grow intellectually and individually when they are under my supervision.

To increase the effectiveness of course delivery, we must begin by asking some important questions:  What do my students need?  What, from this material, is truly relevant in today’s world?  How can I help my students?  How can I be useful to them as they try to transition gracefully into the world?  And how will I know when I’ve achieved these goals?

In essence, if we want to be effective educators, we really need to have strong plans for addressing each of these questions, and that is where the Assessment Cycle comes in.  Though I dislike this title (Growth Cycle or Learning Cycle might be more appropriate), I believe very strongly in the process.  As seen below, the cycle begins by clearly defining and planning realistic learning outcomes or goals.  At the University of Northern Texas, instructors who are working through their Next Generation Course Redesign™ Project are required to spend three months crafting these outcomes!  The reason for this is that pinpointing appropriate goals is a very serious business that takes a lot of time, dedication, planning, and patience to accomplish.  And that’s just the first step!  From there, teachers must determine whether students are meeting the goals, whether students even can meet the goals (we get pretty lofty sometimes), and where adjustments can and must be made in order to help them succeed.  There are many resources available at the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning to assist with this process, as it is our goal to help strengthen the teaching and learning process at Missouri State University.

Students come to our classrooms eager and excited on the first day.  We can either foster that excitement by directing it toward the wonders of our disciplines, or we can stamp it out by reading off of PowerPoint slides day after day and stating expectations for genuine learning that we do not then support with our actions.  So before entering the classroom, before preparing a lesson plan, and before telling a student to read a text, ask yourself, “What is the point?”  If we are serious about asking this question (and answering it), our students shouldn’t have to.

It is my pleasure to formally introduce to you the two new Instructional Designers in the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning (FCTL).  They began their work in the Center and with the instructional community in January 2011. As you will see after reading the short bios they wrote, they are both passionate about helping and supporting the entire instructional community as we engage in online and blended pedagogy as well as the enhancement of large face-to-face classroom environments.  Jo Ann and Bruce have joined Nancy Gordon to form a highly efficient and qualified team of instructional designers.  If you have not done so already, I invite you to come by the FCTL in the library to see what we have to offer and meet our staff and instructional designers.

Chantal Levesque-Bristol,
Director, FCTL

Jo Ann Mattson

My name is Jo Ann Mattson. I am an Instructional Designer in the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning. I have taught students and mentored teachers in technology integration in all levels of education.  Using technology in education and online distant learning is my passion.   I will use my knowledge of instruction, learning theories and technology to help our Missouri State University instructional community develop quality distant learning courses for our students. I have taught in the traditional face to face, blended and online environments. I have also served as a peer reviewer for online courses. I have dedicated my career to research best practices in education and have served on several pilot programs to bring innovative technologies into the classroom.

I look forward to working with our Missouri State University instructional community to create engaging learning opportunities for our students. I am here to assist in the development and delivery of online courses, including working directly with faculty to build online courses in Blackboard. I will also coach and instruct faculty in the use of instructional technology in online, blended and face-to-face environments.

On a personal note, my husband and I recently moved to Springfield from St. Louis, Missouri.  I am an avid sports fan. Being from St. Louis, I am a lifelong Cardinal fan! I also enjoy outdoor activities such as boating, bike riding, hiking and camping.

Bruce Richards

My name is Bruce Richards. I am an Instructional Designer in the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning (FCTL). I was hired by FCTL in January of 2010 in the support of the instructional community at the university in the development of blended and online courses after working as the Research and Instructional Design Coordinator in Sponsored Research and Programs. One of my main goals is in emphasizing pedagogical methods in courses using the Blackboard course management system, as well as managing the development of multimedia assets useful for teaching and learning.

Clay P. Bedford said, “You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives”.

This quote exemplifies my belief of learning and using knowledge to grow as a strong citizen within the community.

My background has been within information technology and how best to use it to enhance my work towards successfully producing a solution. Coupled with my 10-plus years’ experience as a technology professional and trainer, the field of instructional design became a natural fit for me, leading to my enrollment in the Instructional Media Technology Master’s program at Missouri State as a full-time student and graduate assistant. After graduating in 2005 with a Master’s of Science, I began this focus with the creation of numerous e-Learning projects at the university, with various departments from Sponsored Programs, Office of Research Compliance, Graduate College, the Extended campus, among others.

Most recently, I have been exploring how existing and emerging Web technologies can be used to create e-Learning assets that enhance the successful transfer of knowledge for student and teacher alike. This position as an Instructional Designer offers me the opportunity to put into practice the practical application of cognition, educational psychology, information technology, graphic and Web design, and problem solving; all leading to the creation of an instructional environment for student success.

My goal is to apply the lessons of instructional design towards engaging students and faculty alike towards providing a rich learning and teaching experience.

On February 24^th and 25^th, the FCTL will be hosting the Next Generation Course Redesign workshop.  Three scholars from the University of North Texas will share their 9-year project experience, to transform large enrollment undergraduate courses by engaging and enabling faculty members to design, apply, and assess innovative instructional techniques.  In this workshop, you will reflect on student learning objectives for your particular courses and learn how to use lecture, small group experiential learning, and online experiences to meet specific student learning objectives. This approach emphasizes the rigor of course offerings by more specifically focusing on essential learning objectives, including critical thinking skills, while also fostering student retention and success.  If you want to learn more about the Next Generation Course Redesign approach, you can visit the following website http://qep.unt.edu/.

The team will be lead by Dr. Philip Turner, professor of library and information science, and learning enhancement specialist at the Center for Learning Enhancement, Assessment, and Redesign (CLEAR) at University of North Texas.  Dr. Turner lead the way at UNT, starting in 2004, by discussing and exploring ways to improve teaching  and learning in large-enrollment lecture classes, through the integration of methods that had worked well in online learning—low-stakes quizzes, online message boards, and frequent interaction among students and with instructors.  He will be joined by two other guest speakers from UNT.

Dr. Tracey Gau has led the redesign of World Literature I and II at UNT, and is currently part of the team redesigning English Composition at UNT.  Dr. Brenda McCoy was part of the team that redesigned Introduction to Sociology at UNT and is currently redesigning an introductory sociology research methods course.

There are still seats available for the open session on February 24^th.  Registration information can be found at http://calendar.missouristate.edu/viewevent.aspx?eventid=69616&occurrenceid=117753 and on the FCTL website http://www.missouristate.edu/fctl/. We hope to see you there!

Written by Dr. Gary Rader

The Distance Education Division of the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning is launching its first annual recognition award for excellence in online course design and pedagogy.

Online teaching has been a feature of the academic landscape for the past decade at Missouri State University.  It is past time that we recognize and promote excellence in the online classroom.

With the reorganization of the former Missouri State Online office and integration with the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning, Distance Education at MSU now has in place an evolving support network for instructional technology, virtual course design and assessment.

By recognizing an exemplary online course, we are providing a venue for students, peers and faculty to share with the rest of the campus achievements in online teaching and learning.  This year’s recipient will be honored on campus, receive an iPad prize and present his or her master online course to the faculty and staff at the fall 2011 Showcase for Teaching and Learning.

Faculty are welcome to self-nominate or you can nominate one of your peers who deserves recognition for excellence in online teaching and course design.  Students as well can nominate online courses which they think deserve recognition as exemplary.

I hope this new initiative will produce a good response with a large number of applicants submitting their courses or courses of their peers for consideration.

Further information and forms for nominations can be accessed on the Distance Education website at http://www.missouristate.edu/fctl/90862.htm

Please take a closer look at this endeavor and encourage someone you know to nominate themselves or submit a nomination for them and help us make the first annual recognition award a successful and ongoing event at Missouri State University.

Written by Nancy Gordon

Instructional Designer, FCTL

Fourteen faculty members took time from their busy day on September 21st to attend the pre-recorded seminar, “Teaching More Effectively with Customizing Learning Experiences.” This seminar was presented by Judith Boettcher, a cognitive psychologist and instructional designer who has published much research on designing learning experiences and the future trends of technology in teaching and learning. Dr. Boettcher is someone I have admired greatly since meeting her and Rita-Marie Conrad at a League for Innovation conference several years ago when they presented a workshop designed to assist faculty moving courses to the web. I still have Rita-Marie Conrad’s business card when she was an instructional designer at Florida State University. There, that is my confession – I collect business cards from published professions in my field just as a baseball fan collects player cards of their favorite homerun hitters! Perhaps someday I’ll share with you my meeting and conversations with Ruth Clark.
Many of the theories and models Dr. Boettcher presented in this seminar can be found in her latest book The Online Teaching Survival Guide: Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips©2010, Jossey-Bass Publisher and her Designing for Learning website ( http://www.designingforlearning.info/index.html). What the pre-recorded seminar lacked in production quality (the session started abruptly apparently due to technical problems during the live session and Dr. Boettcher had connected from her Florida office so her audio sounded somewhat like a long-distance phone call), was quickly forgotten after the first polling question. The audience was asked their favorite design practice for engaging and customizing learning and the majority of responses were “a well-structured course.”
Dr. Boettcher’s model of a well-structured course provides a framework of learning experiences where the learner is at the center of the teaching and learning process. Boettcher’s model simplifies the process of designing and managing instructional experiences by capturing a complex set of interactions among the four elements of an instructional event 1) learner, 2) mentor, 3) knowledge, and 4) environment.

Boettcher’s Learning Experiences Framework
Learner (students; who and why)
Mentor (faculty; designs, directs, supports, and assesses)
Environment (infrastructure; where, when, with whom, and how)
Knowledge (content and resources; with what and how accessed)

Boettcher made an important distinction in regard to instructional design that we have all experienced, “we design for the probable learner and customize for the actual learners.” Very wise words indeed.
The majority of the seminar was dedicated to the “Nine Points of Customization” and in Boettcher’s fashion she left us with a “Checklist for Customizing a Course.”
Checklist for Customizing a Course (Boettcher, 2010)
1. Do you use a getting-acquainted posting that encourages pictures, stories and personal sharing so you and learners are able to get to know each other as 3D people and as a way of launching your course community and building quick trust?
2. Do you have a discussion thread or forum in the first week requiring learners to review course goals and outcomes and to specify what they want to learn for what purposes so they set explicit personal goals for learning?
3. Do you review course structure, assignments and expectations on deadlines, required meetings, etc with your learners to ensure that the structure will work as well as possible for learners’ needs, expectations and goals?
4. When designing the course and during the course delivery, do you provide for differentiated assignments and readings to customize learning experiences to get a closer fit of assignments to learners’ readiness and interests?
5. Team assignments and peer review are powerful community building and assessment tools’ but they are not necessarily for everyone. Do you allow for some flexibility in how teams work and how peer review works?
6. Leadership opportunities. Have you designed opportunities for some learners to go deeper or to assume some additional learning community responsibilities?
7. Course projects are essential assignments that give students the opportunity to customize their learning. Do you have a project proposal process that cycles between you and the learner for a good learning and interest match?
8. Peer review of project proposals, projects-in-progress and finished projects helps build community, extend learning, and reduce grading burdens and surprises. Have you built peer review into your course somewhere?
9. Projects can have two points of review, one for the finish project and one for sharing the project with others. Have you designed flexibility into the “project sharing” point, letting learners choose between papers, websites, presentations, etc?

I read Boettcher’s latest book, The Online Teaching Survival Guide: Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips this summer and found the book as well as the information presented in her seminar to be relevant and practical. Just like the title. . . . Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips this seminar provided theory-based techniques for customizing learning experiences for our students. If you are interested in reading the book or reviewing the pre-recorded seminar, contact the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning and reserve a copy.

The Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning has been extremely busy and productive in the past year. My long absence from the blog is not representative of the quantity and quality of the programming in the FCTL. Beginning with this blog post, I will commit to blog every few weeks to bring to the attention of the instructional community the many exciting opportunities and changes related to pedagogy, assessment, instructional design, classroom technologies, and distance education. In addition, by exploring our website, you will get a feel for all of the changes that have taken place in the past year.

In this blog post, I would like to focus on teaching and learning best practices. In the Spring 2010, we conducted a book discussion on What the Best College Teachers Do, authored by Ken Bain. Over 30 faculty members regularly participated in this book discussion. This past June, I took 3 faculty members with me to the Best College Teachers summer institute. It was, without a doubt, one of the best conferences that I ever attended. It was engaging, inspiring, powerful, and most importantly gave us some practical suggestions for improving teaching practices and ultimately student learning. These experiences led to a Showcase Presentation at the 24th Showcase on Teaching and Learning this past month, as well as the creation of a best practice document compiling sixteen best teaching and learning practices from the Ken Bain book. You will find those best practices on our website at the following link http://www.missouristate.edu/fctl/89072.htm. Our Showcase Presentation can also be accessed on the FCTL website at the following link http://www.missouristate.edu/fctl/88665.htm.

In the next few months, we will begin a series of workshops focused on best practices for teaching and learning. The workshops will be interactive and engaging. In each workshop you will learn about practical strategies and tools that you can use to improve teaching and foster student learning in your classroom. For your convenience, our events are advertised in the Provost’s Communiqué, in the University calendar, and on the main page of the FCTL website

http://www.missouristate.edu/fctl/default.htm

Teaching Professor February, 2010 issue-article

Submitted by James Moyer, Prof. of Religious Studies and Provost Fellow for the Faculty Center of Teaching and Learning, Missouri State University

In this article I found the list of 10 rewards that come to those who teach to resonate with my own experience, and could not add any more reasons. However, I want to make some comments on the article.
1. Teaching is the greatest job in the world for all 10 of these rewards noted in the article.
2. I consider myself a patriotic citizen who is serving his country because I am training future citizens and thereby making our country more competitive in the world as a result of my effective teaching.
3. At one point in my forty-year-career there were four of my former students who were upper level administrators ranging from Deans to Vice Presidents serving the University. That was most gratifying to me.
4. I have served as both administrator and classroom teacher. Of the two, the greatest rewards are for classroom teachers by far. My discussions with others who have served as administrators are uniformly similar. When they return to the classroom they say that they are rediscovering the real reasons they went into higher education in the first place.
5. I have posted this in my Department as a reminder to all of us that in tough and gloomy economic times right now, there are many other rewards beyond a simple job to support ourselves.

Although the Showcase on Teaching and Learning took place a month ago, I still think about the exchange that Rachelle Darabi and I had with the session participants that day. During this session, we discussed what constitutes good teaching and how we can capture it. Should we teach only content or are we supposed to teach much more than that? It became clear throughout the discussion that we are not only concerned with the facts students learn, but also how will they use those facts in the future. A great concern for educators is whether students will be able to flexibly and responsibly use what they have learned in the classroom once they find themselves acting as professional after they graduate. How can we create the conditions to foster this kind of learning in students? Teaching content seems to be the easy part. Teaching critical thinking skills, creativity, metacognition, reflection, fostering motivation and engagement seems to be much more difficult and puzzling.

High impact practices such as service-learning and linked learning communities contribute to this goal of creating powerful conditions which foster student learning. Rachelle Darabi discussed the development of linked learning communities at Missouri State University and how they contribute to learning environments that satisfy students’ needs and produce life-long learning. As mentioned by the session participants, these high impact practices although very effective require a lot of effort on the part of the instructor for successful implementation. It is true. Whether it is through linked learning communities or other techniques, good teaching requires a lot of time and effort, however it is worth it. If we are to successfully teach students more than facts, figures, and concepts, we will need to further explore the usefulness of high impact practices.

Successful instructors understand students’ perspective while simultaneously setting high standards. They are able to achieve a balance between high standards and expectations and the need to reach out to students and meet them where they are. This notion is something that we are currently exploring more specifically in the networking book discussion What the Best College Teachers Do. If you are interested in further exploring what the best college teachers have in common, join us for the book discussion in the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning. It is serving as a nice extension of the Showcase session we did last month. In my next blog, I will spend time discussing the practices of some of the best college teachers.

Chantal has summarized a splendid article from the December, 2009 issue of The Teaching Professor, p. 2 “Teachers Who Improved and commented on its value. This article resonates with my experience as well. I want to add a slightly different way I have used to improve student learning and improve course evaluations. Early in my career students complained that my courses were too hard. I reexamined everything I did and said in class because I did not want to give up my standards. I decided I was offering plenty of tutorial help for all those who wanted it. However, I realized that I had to change student perceptions. So I tried telling students how I much I wanted them to succeed, and I would coach and tutor them to that success. I said that from day one to the end of the course, and I told them how much potential each of them had, and how much they had to teach me. The results were significant as student achievement improved and the course evaluations also improved. What I was doing was trying to change student perceptions and it worked.

I found it worked with new faculty as well when I was Head of the Religious Studies Department, and when I led the FCTL new faculty workshops. I urged these new faculty to think carefully about how they could change student perceptions with what they said in class and outside class. New faculty often reported similar success to my own. If faculty can articulate their course content, then they should be able to articulate how student supportive and friendly they are. I urge all faculty to do this because it works.

I invite anyone to come to The Teaching Professor monthly discussions I am leading in Library 204 (the Faculty Center of Teaching and Learning). We discuss the monthly issue according to the schedule posted on the FCTL web site.

Submitted by Dr. James Moyer, Provost Fellow for the FCTL