NUTSHELL NOTES "Teaching tips in a nutshell" - The University of Colorado at Denver's One-page Newsletter for Teaching Excellence

 

Office of Teaching Effectiveness & Faculty Development  1250 14th St. Room 720 Denver, CO 80217-3364

Phone (303) 556-4915 FAX (303) 556-5855 Volume 10 Number 4 May, 2002

 

ALERT: Lights Out in Office of Teaching Effectiveness?

 

The content of this final Nutshell Note is furnished at the request of the Teaching Committee. The last issue (V 10, n 3, p 2) revealed that the Teaching Effectiveness director has been recruited away from UCD by Idaho State University. Questions looming before faculty here are: "Will there still be a UCD Office of Teaching Effectiveness?" and, if not, "What services are the most essential to retain?" Below is a list of the most routine services provided to faculty for many years. Faculty initiative actually started this Office, and services have come from its annual operating budget of about $26,000. Please express which services that you think are most important to retain to the Teaching Committee Chair, Mark Tanzer. (Email - mark.tanzer@cudenver.edu or phone 556 -6373). In order to retain any of these, it is important that you express yourselves.

 

(1) Newsletter Nutshell Notes Issues archived at http://thunder1.cudenver.edu//OTE/nn/index.htm provide a record of most activities of this Office since its founding. The newsletter now has a local distribution of 1600, and is accessed online by faculty from many other institutions. The major use is to convey information that is immediately practical and follows a carefully planned thematic structure to create a campus culture that is cognizant of current trends in teaching, learning and thinking.

 

(2) Major Thematic Workshops The director in consultation with faculty chooses themes for most major workshops. The first workshop given in 1993 verified the effectiveness of coordinating a development theme between newsletter and workshop. Resulting registrants totaled about 120. Following the workshop, 70 more requests resulted from UCD faculty for U of MN presenter Karl Smith's book. Smaller workshops and book discussion groups are also offered as result of interest and demand. These have included many workshops on alternative pedagogies such as case method, instructional technology, teleconferences, etc.

 

(3) Formative Survey with consultation. In terms of an hour spent, no service yields greater benefits. It is the first line of defense for a faculty member in trouble. Trying to consult without benefit of a formative survey is like trying to set broken bones without benefit of X-rays. Providing such services will require maintaining the NCS bubble sheet scanner hooked to a computer that is networked. Since early 1994, over 450 formative surveys were run, nearly all accompanied by individual consultation. When a faculty member invites this class survey, the results are usually waiting under her/his door at the end of class.

 

(4) Knowledge surveys, described at http://www.cudenver.edu//OTE/nn/vol10/10_3.html have been introduced as both an assessment and a teaching improvement tool. They were a major method used to assess NVTI courses, and became more widely used at UCD since 2000, particularly in the College of Arts and Media. In terms of student learning, research shows that the most important effort a faculty member can make lies in the planning and organization of the course. Knowledge surveys lay out an entire plan of content and disclose it to students. Once this plan is clearly seen, one can analyze the course in sophisticated ways that allow one to target levels of learning and verify that content is delivered at that level. This in turn permits selection of appropriate pedagogies and rubrics to assure that the chosen learning and thinking outcomes are met. Finally, surveys given at the beginning and end of the course allow one to verify success at a level of unprecedented detail. These surveys currently require use of the same NCS bubble sheet scanner. (As an aside, other units rely on this scanner for grading tests and conducting various surveys.)

 

(5) Student Management Teams draw on the basic quality circle concepts of Demings and Juran, and allow them to be applied in the classroom (see http://www.cudenver.edu//OTE/nn/vol2/2_2.htm and http://www.cudenver.edu//OTE/nn/smt/smt.htm). Since 1990 faculty at over 400 other institutions have used these, and so have many UCD faculty. Many have published on the success of their use of these as a development tool. A bibliography of most of these reports is provided in A Handbook for Student Management Teams. The Office funds four students at a rate of about $60/student for any faculty member who wishes to tune up their course or their teaching through employing a team.

 

(6) Boot Camp for Profs�� is a week-long summer intensive program founded in 1993, and this coming year's camp is described briefly at http://thunder1.cudenver.edu//OTE/nn/vol6/6_6.htm. It has become a nationally famous program and has drawn instructors and attendants from over 100 institutions. It has been adopted in California for the past three years under the name Beach Camp for Profs, which is a shorter program focused on community college instructors. The program goes far beyond individual development and ties good practices into curriculum development and unit level (college and department level) assessment. It is highly effective, but not magic. Attendants must actually use what they learn in their practice in order to develop and reap the benefits. Over 95% do this, and many attendants have since won best-teaching awards, and some have even started faculty development offices at their own campuses.

 

(7) Requests for tangible assistance for teaching improvement are met occasionally based on available funds. This includes financial help to attend meetings and/or training sessions that have a focus on instructional enhancement, and assistance to buy software or expand office computer capabilities.

 

(8) Updating library resources We've updated holdings by purchase of all pertinent books published by Jossey-Bass, Oryx and Anker publishing - all major publishers of key literature on teaching effectiveness.

 

(9) National Teaching and Learning Forum This office provides a UCD institutional online subscription to "National Teaching and Learning Forum" that can be accessed only from on the UCD "campus at http://www.ntlf.com/restricted.

 

(10) Unit level development involves the director working with departments and colleges on assessment and curriculum development. It produces a working plan so that a curriculum can deliver educational outcomes that single courses cannot. Topics addressed are goals in terms of faculty aspirations, disciplinary content learning, pedagogical approaches, student learning experiences, levels of thinking to be achieved at various curricular stages, and student self-reflection. These have been accomplished during unit-level retreats scheduled during the school year and by unit level teams sent to "Boot Camp for Profs.