FACULTY DEVELOPMENT

PRACTICES IN SPS &

RUTGERS

Spring 2011

What did you find most interesting or impressive about

this practice? What did you really like & learn about it

this practice? What questions does it raise?

SPS plan for a series of three linked faculty development sessions in

July, one of which will happen asynchronously online. By the end of

the three sessions, participating faculty will create assignments that

will be integrated into their Fall courses. We like that this faculty

development exercise is both grounded in the literature on reflection

and focused on producing real results that faculty can use

immediately.

SPS’ faculty development sessions raise the question of whether

three meetings are enough to produce positive results. Will the

faculty be encouraged to share their successes and failures after

they have tried out their assignments in the Fall?

Is there evidence that this practice was effective? Explain. What suggestions

might you make, in terms of future evidence gathering? Does it demonstrate

any of the Angelo principles we’ve discussed? Does it suggest other

principles?

SPS’ faculty development series is to be implemented this summer,

so no evidence has been collected yet. They plan on surveying the

participants at the end of the third session—which is good—but we

would also suggest a focus-group debrief of these faculty at the end

of the Fall term.

SPS’ faculty development project demonstrates building trust

through the cohort meetings and building a common language

through their grounding in the literature on reflection.

How is SPS’ approach similar or different to SLCC’s FDP? What

could you borrow or adapt to use at SLCC? Offer suggestions

or ideas for further strengthening your C2L partner’s practice?

SPS faculty development sessions are similar to

SLCC’s four-session series. One suggestion is for

SPS to add another session at the end of the Fall

term for this cohort of faculty to get together and

compare their experiences.

What did you find most interesting or impressive about

this practice? What did you really like & learn about it

this practice? What questions does it raise?

Rutgers plan to have three learning communities ―formulate their

programming and syllabi around environmental themes.‖ This

practice impresses us because of the communities that it wants to

―merge‖ into one larger learning community: sciences; social justice;

women and creativity.

Rutgers’ learning communities within a larger learning community

initiative made me wonder what assignments, projects, etc. might

students produce? Will the larger community (students) work on

assignments/projects together or report to each other on them? Why

these learning communities? Why environmental themes?

Is there evidence that this practice was effective? Explain. What suggestions

might you make, in terms of future evidence gathering? Does it demonstrate

any of the Angelo principles we’ve discussed? Does it suggest other

principles?

Rutgers’ environmental focus initiative among learning communities

is still in development which means that there is no concrete

evidence that this practice will be effective – although the potential

for it to work is great!

Rutgers’ design for their initiative demonstrates 1-6 of Angelo’s

principles.

1-6 are all centered on building trust and making connections.

Rutgers cannot make the initiative come to fruition without

building trust within the learning communities and having the

communities work together on developing curriculum that

connects multiple disciplines together.

How is SPS’ approach similar or different to SLCC’s FDP? What

could you borrow or adapt to use at SLCC? Offer suggestions or

ideas for further strengthening your C2L partner’s practice?

Rutgers’ approach to integrative teaching and learning proposes to produce the following: ―create a model of integrative teaching;‖ develop curriculum using multi-modal strategies; increase student engagement in integrative learning; foster rich collaboration among faculty and students. We want to achieve these same goals at SLCC.

We cannot have meaningful ePortfolio work if we don’t develop and model these kinds of teaching and learning methods.