Spring Institute on College Teaching and Learning

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Integrating Active Learning:
Classroom, Online & Global Instruction

May 19-22, 2009

Program A:
Design and Implementation of Active and Cooperative Learning in Large Classes

Presenter: Karl Smith
Location: Gold Room, MSU Union

An ongoing challenge of teaching large classes is engaging students with one another and with the instructor. Many faculty members are exploring cooperative learning or other forms of active engagement to encourage students to be active participants in their own learning as well as the learning of other students. But how do we structure these experiences to ensure that they lead to enhanced learning?

This workshop, back by popular demand, emphasizes the instructor’s role in designing and implementing individual and group strategies in connection with active and cooperative learning. Individual strategies include engagement writing, reflection exercises, and several classroom assessment techniques. Key elements of cooperative learning that are research-based are explained. These include positive interdependence, individual and group accountability, face-to-face interaction, teamwork skills, and group processing.

Participants will learn about the instructor’s role in designing, structuring, and implementing active and cooperative learning in large classes. At the close of this program, participants will be able to;

• Develop/refine a rationale for active and cooperative learning;
• Describe key features of cooperative learning, especially interdependence and accountability;
• Apply cooperative learning to classroom practice
• Make connections between cooperative learning and desired outcomes of courses and programs.

Challenges and barriers to implementing active and cooperative learning and how to overcome them will be addressed. Participants will experience hands-on activities, video examples, small and large group discussion, and have the opportunity to design and review activities for their own course. All participants will receive a free copy of a text on the workshop topic. Ten spaces in this workshop are reserved for MSU graduate students.

Fee: Free to MSU affiliates; $210 for all others.
Tuesday - Wednesday, May 19-20, 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. Light breakfast and lunch included.

Karl Smith is Cooperative Learning Professor of Engineering Education at Purdue University and Morse-Alumni Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Minnesota.

Program B:

Blended 101: Combining Online and Traditional Instruction

Presenters: vuDAT Team, led by Brandon Blinkenberg
Location: Parlor A, MSU Union

Participants should: (1) bring a laptop (2) bring a syllabus for an existing course to “blend,” (3) be comfortable with basic computer technology (e.g., Microsoft Office and ANGEL), and (4) allow time during the week and immediately prior to the course to participate in online activities and to meet individually with Virtual University Design & Technology (vuDAT) consultants.

Blended courses combine the best aspects of online and traditional instruction for a flexible learning experience that benefits students, faculty, and administrators. Participants in this workshop will experience blended learning as they develop a blended course plan.

During the first day of the workshop, we will meet face-to-face to explore the pedagogies, technologies and communication strategies implemented in award-winning blended courses at MSU. As part of our exploration, participants will work hands-on with the technologies presented to practice blending their own lessons. On days two and three, we will not meet as a group, rather participants will meet individually with vuDAT consultants to discuss their technological interests and refine their blended course plans. The final day of the workshop will again be face-to-face where participants will share their plans so far, and will continue to work with current examples of successful blended course practices.

Blended 101 is limited to 15 participants.
Please register for this workshop by May 8, 2009.

Fee: Free and open to MSU faculty only.

Tuesday-Friday, May 19-22, 8:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Only the first day of this workshop is in the MSU Union. Light breakfast and lunch included.

* This session is currently full. A waiting list will be maintained in case of cancellations.

Brandon Blinkenberg and Jessica Knott are eProducers with vuDAT.

This workshop is jointly sponsored by the Office of Libraries, Computing & Technology and F&OD.

Program C:
Creative Teaching

Presenters: Punya Mishra and Mike DeSchryver
Location: Parlor B, MSU Union

Here’s to the ... rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently… You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing that you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
—Apple Computer’s Think Different Campaign
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different)

This workshop will focus on how one can become a more creative teacher. We will explore a range of questions related to creativity including: What does it mean to be creative? How can creativity be developed and nurtured? What does the creative process look like? What is the relationship between creativity, play and humor? (In other words, do creative people have more fun?) How can we become more creative in teaching? What is the role of technology in this process?

A critical part of becoming creative is being able to play—to play with ideas, with tools, and with pedagogical techniques. In this workshop participants will engage in an interactive series of activities that will allow them to explore the meaning of creativity—how it is defined—and explore some strategies for developing, nurturing and supporting creativity, particularly in their teaching. This workshop will provide multiple hands-on and minds-on opportunities for discussion and exploration. Each of the issues/topics will also be illustrated with multiple examples from the world of education, psychology, and business, interspersed with games and puzzles connected to the ideas being discussed. A key part of the workshop will be helping participants develop a creative solution to a key problem of practice all instructors face.

At the close of this program participants will:

• Be able to define and identify creativity in professional, personal and institutional contexts, and recognize two key models of decision making.
• Learn the five standard steps in the creative process, particularly the importance of finding and imposing patterns.
• Engage in multiple creative tasks based on the idea of finding and seeking patterns and will seek to apply these to their own teaching practices.
• Learn multiple strategies for applying creativity in their professional lives as educators.

Fee: Free to MSU affiliates; $100 for all others.

Wednesday, May 20, 10:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m. Lunch provided.

* This session is currently full. A waiting list will be maintained in case of cancellations.

Punya Mishra is an Associate Professor of Educational Technology in the MSU College of Education, and Mike DeSchryver is a doctoral candidate in the MSU Educational Psychology and Educational Technology program in the Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology and Special Education.

Program D:
Designing and Implementing Effective Faculty Mentoring Programs

Presenters:

Deborah DeZure, Assistant Provost for Faculty and Organizational Development
William Anderson, Professor, College of Human Medicine
Melissa McDaniels, Project Director, Advancing Diversity through the Alignment of Policies and Practices (ADAPP), an NSF ADVANCE Grant Program
Elizabeth Simmons, Dean and Professor, Lyman Briggs College
David Rayl, Professor, College of Music

Location: Gold Room, MSU Union

A preponderance of research evidence indicates that faculty mentoring, when well designed and carefully implemented, is a highly effective approach to supporting and retaining early career faculty. This program has several goals: 1) to review the research on effective practices in faculty mentoring; 2) to identify key decisions and options when designing an effective faculty mentoring program within a college, school or department; 3) to explore the role of chairs and directors in the mentoring process; 4) to identify key skills embedded in mentoring; 5) to feature exemplary and varied mentoring models at MSU; 6) to share resources on faculty mentoring; and 7) to enable participants to begin to develop faculty mentoring programs.

This workshop has three segments. Deb DeZure will first share effective practices in faculty mentoring programs; then a panel of representatives from MSU unit-based faculty mentoring programs will describe successful mentoring programs at the college, school and department levels; and after lunch, participants can begin to work collaboratively on developing their own unit-based faculty mentoring program. This program is intended for academic administrators, members of unit personnel and advisory committees and unit-based teams, particularly those that are considering developing a faculty mentoring program.

Fee: Free to MSU affiliates; $100 for all others.

Thursday, May 21, 8:00 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Light breakfast and lunch included.

Deborah DeZure is Assistant Provost for Faculty and Organizational Development at Michigan State University.

Co-sponsored by the Office of Faculty & Organizational Development and the ADAPP ADVANCE Grant.

** This program has been cancelled. We hope to offer this in the future and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. **
Program E:
Discovering Sustainability Across the Curriculum

Presenters: Peggy F. Bartlett and Geoffrey W. Chase
Location: Green Room, MSU Union

Universities around the country are moving rapidly to respond to the challenges of sustainability by supporting those who wish to infuse issues of sustainability into their courses, curricula, programs and units. How would disciplines as diverse as finance, anthropology, art, and geology find common ground? What are the key components of sustainability and how do they connect to courses, programs and units? What pedagogical approaches make sustainability come alive in classrooms and spaces across the curriculum?

Drs. Geoffrey Chase and Peggy Barlett, national leaders and editors of Sustainability on Campus: Stories and Strategies for Change, MIT Press, 2004, have offered “train the trainer” workshops sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. These workshops have led to a dozen curriculum change programs based on the Ponderosa/Piedmont models developed at N. Arizona and Emory Universities.

Curriculum change is time-consuming and sometimes challenging for institutions, and experience shows that the best way to overcome those constraints is: a) to offer intellectually stimulating experiences, b) to build strong, collegial networks of support, and c) to emphasize that units remain in control of their courses, but are supported by the sustainability efforts, paradigms, and teaching innovations of their peers. The creation of interdisciplinary alliances strengthens a willingness to invest in curriculum development, and it also creates new research collaborations and new skills for problem solving across institutional silos of specialization.

The workshop will offer a range of useful strategies and experiences from other institutions, offer intellectual stimulation around the “triple bottom line” of sustainability through talks by local resource experts, build connectedness to place through outdoor activities, and support dialogue among participants from across the university. Collegial networks through face-to-face exercises in small groups, discussions, and planning will be key features of the workshop.

This workshop seeks to catalyze an enthusiastic, confident, and creative group of leaders who can build a broad and sophisticated program for sustainability across the curriculum at MSU.

Fee: Free to MSU affiliates; $250 for all others.

Tuesday-Wednesday, May 19-20, 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Light breakfast and lunch included.

Peggy F. Bartlett is a professor of Anthropology at Emory University and Geoffery W. Chase is Dean of Undergraduate Studies at San Diego State University.

This program is co-sponsored by the Office of Campus Sustainability, the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education, and F&OD.