Engaging Faculty in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning:

A View from BRIDGE

Bridging Research, Instruction, and Discipline-Grounded Epistemologies

College Teaching and Learning ConferenceJanuary 2004

Arlene WilnerProfessor of English

Director, RiderBRIDGEwilner@rider.edu

Recursive BRIDGE Activities Reflect upon and articulate disciplinary

epistemologies Design and implement teaching

strategy Assess effectiveness of the strategy,

using CATs (Classroom Assessment Techniques)

Document inquiry in case-study format Share findings (“go public”) in one or

more venues, including BRIDGE website:

http://www.rider.edu/~bridge

What BRIDGE Is Not

Not non-disciplinaryNo template or set of generic

skills Not inter-disciplinary

Purpose: To help faculty do more effectively what they already do

Why Discipline-Grounded?

“. . .information-processing problems are goal oriented, and epistemic problems are oriented toward the incongruity that generates the problem.”

Michael Carter, “Problem-Solving Reconsidered: A Pluralistic theory of Problems.” College English 50.5

(Spring 1988), 551-65

Example from BiologyDr. Julie Drawbridge

Pilot Experiment SP/02Developmental Biology

• Craig Nelson - 5 point, take-home– students complete in blue ink

– in class revision in groups (red ink)

– class discussion of answers

Example from Biology, cont’d.

Example

• On 5 point sheet– Explain how Hox genes specify the location of

limb buds along the anterior-posterior axis.

– If Hox genes specify limb bud location, why can you get extra limbs if you implant FGF beads into the flank?

• On Exam– Would a limb form if you implanted an FGF bead

in the flank of a snake embryo? Why, why not? Would it be a forelimb or hindlimb? Why?

Example from Biology, Cont’d.

Sample Answers:

If Hox genes specify where limb buds form, why can you If Hox genes specify where limb buds form, why can you get extra limbs if you implant FGF bead into the flank.get extra limbs if you implant FGF bead into the flank.

" FGF is a paracrine factor secreted by the lateral plate mesoderm and induces the AER. Hox genes code for FGF proteins, so the FGF would induce the AER as if the Hox gene was there and had turnedon FGF. Hox gene FGF AER Limb. FGF is downstream of Hox genes "

"because the FGF paracrine factor is capable of limb forming interactions between the ectoderm and mesoderm. If the beads are placed ectopically beneath the flank ectoderm, extra limbs emerge. FGF bead bypasses HOX genes"

Example from Biology, cont’d.

Sample Answers (exam):

Would a limb form if you implanted an FGF bead in the flank Would a limb form if you implanted an FGF bead in the flank of a snake embryo? Why, why not? Would it be a forelimb or of a snake embryo? Why, why not? Would it be a forelimb or hindlimb? why?hindlimb? why?

" Yes, a limb bud would form...downstream of Hox genes is FGF. This doesn't happen in a normal snake because it doesn't express the proper Hox genes in the proper location. It would form a forelimb because snakes have mostly thoracic vertebrae and the forelimb is made at the junction of the cervical and thoracic vertebrae. Hindlimbs are made at the lumbar-sacral junction which snakes don't have, so they wouldn't make hindlimbs "

"...FGF bead would form a limb. Since a snake is nearly all thoracic vertebrae, and FGF bead would create small forelimbs by expressing the Tbx5 transcription factor"

Example from Biology, cont’d.

SUMMARY• 5 point sheets must count• misconceptions MUST be addressed• thought questions• follow up questions on exam• BIO300 Exam average FA/99 - 60.5• BIO300 Exam average SP/02 - 73.4

Example from BiopsychologyDr. Jonathan Karp

[I gave] In-class writing assignments such as impromptu review paragraphs and quizzes.

I changed aspects of the laboratory portion of the class to accommodate the fact almost all the material and vocabulary covered is new to the students. This is especially important because the students have not learned to approach/view the world in a critical/scientific manner.

I significantly slowed down pace of lectures. One of the most difficult things for me was to get over the feeling that I was being too ‘remedial’ in what I covered. A part of this involved intentional repetition during my lectures.

Example from Communication Law

Dr. Pam Brown

Having listened to my colleagues in BRIDGE and reading the many variations on CATs [Classroom Assessment Techniques] developed by others, I devised the following approach. First, I had to accept that as tight as time is in a course like this, I needed to give class-time to ‘walking students through’ the use of the course materials. I also decided to attach credit to the completion and submission of the Study Guides. . . My overall conclusion is that it is appropriate to spend as much as a full hour walking through the students’ handling of the questions on the Guide to Understanding Cases. Though class time is at a premium, this is clearly time well spent.

Example from Literary Theory and Critical Methods/ Dr. Ryan Netzley

You will write five response papers. All of them must be to essays in the packet (not chapters from The Theory Toolbox or the literary works). You may choose the texts to which you respond. Responses are due on the day that we begin discussion of a given text.Response papers ask you to critically engage a text and produce some analytical commentary on it.

Example from Literary Theory and Critical MethodsEnglish 240 – Methods of Literary AnalysisInstructor: Ryan NetzleyExam One

For this exam, you will produce two dialogues between critics, theorists, authors, or characters. You may choose from the following three options:

1) David Foster Wallace, Foucault, and Nietzsche on the subject of meaning and its proliferation.

2) Hamlet (the character, not the play or “Shakespeare”), Freud, and Foucault on the subject of subjectivity, individuality, and personhood.

3) Nealon (co-author of The Theory Toolbox and primarily responsible for the sections on popular culture and ideology), Adorno (you may ignore Horkheimer for our purposes), and Benjamin on either Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet or Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet (do not attempt to address both films!).

In short, you should produce a discussion between three figures that addresses one of the major concepts that we’ve discussed in class.

Example from Literary Theory and Critical Methods

Having begun this project with the conviction that one of the chief problems that haunts this course (and others like it, regardless of title) is student resistance and the entire reductive pragmatic discourse that attends such resistance ("Derrida is too hard"; "why do we have to read this stuff?"; "isn't it all just up to the individual?"), my main intervention -- at the level of assignments -- was a dialogue exam that required students to inhabit various critical, theoretical, and literary figures. This alternative exam structure proved moderately successful, as student responses improved dramatically after the exam [emphasis added]. The downside, of course, is that this progress did not occur until midway through the semester. In the future, I would experiment with more and more directive response papers, asking students to mime theoretical texts earlier in the semester.

Why Multidisciplinary?

1) Emergence of common themes: Expert vs. novice learning Tension between coverage and critical

thinking Challenge of helping students read

purposefully Need to acknowledge cognitive and

affective level of students Difficulty of matching teaching with

testing

Why Multidisciplinary?

2) Opportunities for analogic thinking

Example: “I have decided to change my project for the spring 2002 semester. Inspired by Anne Osborne [History], I have revised two of my [Business Law] courses. Like Anne, I want my students to read primary sources and critically evaluate varying solutions to a variety of ethical and legal dilemmas.”

Dr. Susan Denbo

Why Multidisciplinary?

3) Greater faculty awareness of role within larger community:

Increased respect for the challenges faced by colleagues in other disciplines

Increased understanding of challenges for students, who must contend (as “novices”) simultaneously with four or five of us!

The Value of Qualitative Data

Importance of contexts and “thick description”:

“If teaching is going to be community property it must be made visible, through artifacts that capture its richness and complexity. In the absence of such artifacts, teaching is a bit like dry ice; it disappears at room temperature.”

Lee Shulman, President, Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

The Value of Qualitative Data

Insights yielded by longitudinal studies:Performance at next level, success rate at

obtaining interviews and securing jobs, success in graduate school (ideas from a chemistry professor)

Interviews with students who took the course a year ago: “I’m wondering if the opportunity to engage in problem-solving has had any impact on how they see themselves as learners—and how they remember the course (ideas from a psychology professor)

The Value of Qualitative Data

Compelling nature of “latitudinal” studies—

analogous effects from similar experiments conducted independently of each other (enhanced by multi-disciplinary faculty development structure)

The Value of Qualitative Data Insights yielded by problem-posing and

inquiry regardless of “replicability” of outcomes: “Ultimately, the measure of success for the scholarship of teaching movement will not be the degree to which it can—by focusing on the ‘many layers of practice’ at the heart of teaching —discover solutions worth implementing, but the extent to which it is successful in discovering problems worth pursuing.” Randy Bass

The Value of Qualitative Data

Impossibility of “controlled” experiments:Classroom Assessment-Classroom Research =“any systematic inquiry designed and conducted for the purpose of increasing insight and understanding of the relationships between teaching and learning.” K. Patricia Cross

Expect Resistance

“What if. . .?”“I just don’t know how good I will be

at either self-examination or willingness to change the way I teach dramatically. I will give it a try, but don’t be too disappointed or surprised if I fall short of your expectations.”

Expect Resistance

“Don’t blame me.”“Why don’t we have better

students?”“How much can we lower the

bar?”“How much can we be expected

to spoonfeed?”

The Value of “Going Public” “I thought the program was very helpful in

comparison [with others] because there was an actual focus and seeming purpose to the presentations.” (English professor)

“The format was valuable for semi-structured exchange of ideas—without this structure it is clear that the audience would have spent the full time in a gripe session about students” (biology professor)

“I find it helpful to get concrete examples of different ways to improve instruction and hear about problems/issues in their implementation. . . .These ‘live cases’ are really great.” (finance professor)

The Value of “Going Public” “I appreciated that [the program]

discussed SPECIFIC efforts on the part of individual faculty to enhance teaching effectiveness.” (biology professor)

“I particularly liked the focus of the session,. . .which assumed that students were to be addressed at the level at which they come to us and that it is the responsibility of the teacher to figure out how best to teach them. This is a point that cannot be made often enough.” (English professor)

The Value of “Going Public” “It is always enlightening to have a

glimpse into how colleagues deal with problems and issues I also face. . .I worry about how to balance course content with learning that will have staying power with students. . . .I liked the [Communication Law professor’s] experiment with shifting some of the burden for the course onto students, and getting them to evaluate how they learn, not just what they are learning.” (French professor)

Better to Light a Candle. . . BRIDGE was a very valuable experience

for me. You know the old cliche about it being better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. I think cursing the darkness of dealing with students' poor preparation, lack of motivation, and odd (for lack of a better term) learning styles can be all too prevalent. It felt good to be a part of trying to light a candle. . . .