Schedule
8:00am to 8:30am
8:30am to 8:50am
9:00am to 9:50am
Specifications Grading is an assessment strategy based on mastery learning, clear learning objectives, and frequent evaluations and feedback. Seventeen instructors at a southeastern four-year college implemented this methodology across 16 discrete courses in four STEM areas. Regardless of subject area, content, and teaching style, Specifications Grading allows students control their grades through multiple attempts (with limitations) on assessments of course objectives. Three major implementation strategies will be contrasted and compared as they relate to the course subject area in which they are used. Other practitioners can gain insight into the Specifications Grading as applicable to their classes.
The exuberance of The City University of New York’s community colleges expresses the high aspirations of uniquely diverse “new majority” learners. Yet despite creative faculty and receptive students, retention rates remain low. Attrition is not entirely attributable to social inequity, competing obligations to family traditions, or employment demands. Student well-being is equally vulnerable to Institutional ills: fragmentation, curricular incoherence, and disciplinary isolation. This session describes LaGuardia’s evolving shift from individual classroom pedagogy to inter-relational campus educational design. Participants will reflect upon holistic learning possibilities on their campuses and the conditions necessary for such environments, and discuss the benefits of holistic outcomes.
This session will explore how storytelling as a craft can be taught to college students, particularly first-year students seminar-style class. Typically, students in their transition to college face numerous obstacles that either confirm or reinforce negative stereotypes about the learning process, education, or one’s own identity (Yeager & Walton). Simple interventions can seed the process of reinventing oneself as resilient in the face of these obstacles. In this session, participants will learn how these interventions can be implemented and then enhanced by more involved storytelling projects that allow students to develop not only a personal voice, but a public one.
10:00am to 10:50am
As part of Complete College Georgia we have been participating in a Gateways to Completion Initiative to improve pass rates in low-level, high enrollment accounting courses. We attended courses within CETL, working closely with other accounting professors and instructors from other disciplines, to redesign our courses in an attempt to improve learning and the D/F/W/I rates. We implemented changes for all sections of ACCT 2100 and ACCT 2200. We will share what we have learned throughout our experiences and the outcomes we have seen in the classroom with an emphasis on strategies for improving student success and learning while maintaining academic rigor.
The presentation will highlight the salient features of a pilot teaching and research model on civic courage; more specifically first-year students research. An essential element of this undergraduate research presentation is student ownership from inception to completion. The project’s main learning objectives include encouraging civic participation, encouraging peer relationships, conducting research, and presenting research outcomes in innovative formats.
Self-directed learning (SDL) is a pedagogical tool that allows learners to have increased autonomy over their own learning. But how do you let students choose and adhere to the learning outcomes for a specific course? This presentation focuses on one professor’s (Susanna’s) first attempt to implement an SDL project in a math content course with set learning outcomes. She will share how she found out about SDL from a colleague (Kevin) and other factors that led her to incorporate SDL. Presenters will review the planning process used to adapt Kevin’s implementation of SDL to the specifics of Susanna’s content course. The outcomes of that planning and the benefits and challenges of using SDL in such a course will be discussed.
11:00am to 12:00pm
Teaching is more than presenting content clearly and coherently. Teaching is about demonstrating the value of that knowledge, explaining how to remember it and use it appropriately, and laying the foundation for continued learning. Little of that will happen if students don’t trust the teacher. I define student trust as the student’s belief that the teacher is competent, will act with integrity, and will act in ways that are beneficial to the student’s success and development. All three components have to be present. In this talk, I will explain how trust is different from other aspects of student mindset, I will describe research on the impact of student trust on student learning behaviors, and I will describe the importance of developing trust, especially for our most vulnerable students.
12:00pm to 1:00pm
1:00pm to 1:50pm
Tired of giving the same old paper assignment or exam? Want to see students engaged in deeper learning while actually enjoying the process? This session offers faculty ideas and strategies for tapping students’ creativity while spurring higher-level thinking through group projects, course activities, and assessment of student learning. Faculty who use community engagement, reflective writing, or group projects and those who address rhetorical strategies or diversity topics in their classes may find this session useful. Examples of student learning in the form of original songs, poetry, artwork, creative writing, and videos are provided along with course assignments and evaluation rubrics.
I redesigned my course, Theories of Personality, to provide students frequent opportunities to develop skills in critical reading of primary sources via specifications grading (Nilson, 2015). I will provide strategies for incorporating specifications grading and discuss its main benefit: No student can earn a grade of C without meeting minimum specifications for the course’s student learning outcomes. I will discuss student reactions to this grading system, which are mostly favorable. I will also share ancillary materials that I provide students to help improve their critical reading skills.
Self-directed learning (SDL) is a pedagogical tool that allows learners to take increased responsibility (and liberty) for their own learning. It can be implemented in different ways and to different degrees. The panelists for this session (using a variety of methodologies) will share their experiences and various perspectives with SDL as teachers who use it, researchers who study it, and students who have encountered it, all in different contexts. Panelists will briefly present their connections and experiences with SDL. Afterward, panelists and audience will engage in discussion.
This interactive session will engage the audience in the utilization of minute papers as a formative assessment tool. We will also share research about how we used minute papers in the College Algebra classroom to stimulate metacognition and content knowledge. We will share results from the minute papers and two epistemological surveys to investigate the similarities between them. We will finish with sharing methods for utilizing minute papers in a variety of subject areas. Participants will be asked to share their experiences with minute paper types of formative assessment and their benefits and drawbacks.
The purpose of this presentation is to (1) discuss what online proctering is and how it works, (2) discuss the the benefits for using online proctored exams, (3) to discuss the disadvantages and/or issues with online proctored exams, (4) provide practical tips and suggestions when setting up and using online proctored exams, and (5) to facilitate a discussion of best practices from audience for using online proctored exams. Overall, this presentation seeks to provide faculty members with practice advice and suggestions for using online proctored exams.
2:00pm to 2:50pm
Undergraduate research is one of the high-impact practices identified by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. It is associated with several of characteristics of engaged learning, including faculty-student interaction and student-student interaction; deep learning; and increased levels of student persistence. Frequently, however, undergraduate research experiences are only available as independent studies or intensive summer experiences resulting in such experiences being available to relatively few students. One approach to making this high-impact learning opportunity available to more students is to integrate undergraduate research projects into individual courses. This session will present examples of how substantive undergraduate research projects can be integrated into individual courses through well-structured, team-based research projects. Participants will have the opportunity to develop an undergraduate research project for incorporation into one or more of their own courses. We encourage you to bring a syllabus for a course in which you would like to embed undergraduate research.
In this interactive presentation, participants will learn about various service-learning offerings and opportunities from the perspective of faculty who have implemented service-learning to various degrees in their courses. Participants will be split into one of five groups based on their interests or level of experience: 1. Early stage set-up; 2. Connecting with the community; 3. Offering multiple service-learning opportunities; 4. Service-learning as a course module; and 5. A dedicated service-learning course. Presenters will provide best practices and challenges for each group. This presentation is an outgrowth of a USG Faculty Learning Community on service-learning.
This presentation engages participants in a critical dialogue on the importance of integrating formative assessments throughout online learning, as well as the implications for learner and instructor. Instructors can check for understanding in several ways, including the use of oral language, collaborative assignments, questioning, writing, projects, performances, and tests (Fisher & Frey, 2007). Participants will see a variety of innovative examples that they can easily integrate into their online courses that build on learners’ prior knowledge and experiences. Discussions should yield bridges and barriers, along with future considerations to enhance online learning and how they can use this data to design instruction that will meet their student’s needs.
A multidisciplinary faculty learning community (FLC) on flipped classrooms devised a SoTL study to assess the extent to which reflective writing enhances students’ self-regulated learning. Students who use metacognition to reflect on their learning process through learner logs likely become more accountable for their learning experience, which is important in flipped learning. Quantitative data will be presented from diverse courses regarding changes in self-regulated learning after a semester of completing learner logs, with comparison to control classrooms when possible. In an interactive discussion, faculty members will share their reflections on the experience of implementing learner logs and accompanying unexpected challenges.
3:00pm to 3:50pm
Mastery grading is an approach to assessing student learning that provides students with specific learning objectives and has grades directly tethered to students’ ability to demonstrate “mastery” of the learning objectives. Expectations for earning mastery on learning objectives are high and are clearly communicated to students beforehand. Rather than accumulating partial credit on assessments, students are given multiple attempts to achieve mastery throughout the semester. We give an overview of mastery grading, its challenges and potential advantages (e.g., reducing test anxiety, tracking student progression, motivating students to succeed, simplifying grading), and discuss past and on-going implementation in calculus courses.
Posters have been established as an effective and innovative tool in students’ active engagement, academic success, and retention. They can introduce critical thinking (especially metacognitive practices) and create learning communities in our classes. Above all, posters can be a most rewarding alternative to mundane students’ end-of-term presentations. This 50-minute session offers informative, interactive, entertaining, and applicable uses for posters in freshman and sophomore college courses. Although Humanities is my discipline, I will demonstrate the way undergraduate posters can easily be adapted to other disciplines. I will share my first poster-experience: the challenges, pitfalls, compromises, and, above all, rewards.
To help science majors learn IMRaD writing as early as possible, a learning community was created linking one section of First-Year Biology with one section of First-Year Composition. Students designed their own biology experiment and learned how to write it up in both a formal lab report and a formal conference poster. Improvement in scientific writing was measured by comparing the learning community's writing to that of other Biology sections. This session describes the community, presents the results of the experiment, and invites participants to consider ways of improving disciplinary writing using learning communities.
We present results from a series of studies investigating the use of mixed reality simulation in teacher preparation. Preservice general and special education teachers engaged in simulated environments to learn High Leverage Practices. There were significant differences in preservice teacher beliefs, knowledge, and skills as a result of the simulated environment.
4:00pm to 5:30pm
Experiential learning refers to a process of reflection that centers on hands-on learning. Through this process, students develop metacognition and can engage with threshold concepts in a discipline. This research examines twenty-one personal narratives written by students who participated in experiential learning in an interdisciplinary, upper-level course. Students reflected on how it shaped the way they saw themselves as learners and professionals, and integrated the learning experience with their course material and identified transformative concepts that emerged during this experience. The findings consider the effectiveness of experiential learning as a pedagogical tool for engaging threshold concepts across disciplines.
This poster describes Collaborative Learning techniques developed as part of a course redesign in a general survey United States History course. It focuses on strategies developed that help create a sense of the co-construction of knowledge in the classroom. Starting with the cultures, concerns and hopes of the students’ ownership of learning, a sense of community and responsibility toward the learning of others is built up. The poster is interspersed with the voices of students’ reflections, samples of work produced and evaluations.
This poster reports on the findings of a campus wide survey of KSU faculty about their attitudes, behaviors, and knowledge of environmental sustainability at the university, in their professional work, and in their personal choices outside of work. Presented by members of a KSU faculty learning community focused on advancing sustainability culture, the survey provides a baseline of information that will enable planning of curricular and pedagogical innovations promoting sustainability as relevant to all students’ lives and careers.
A Problem-based Learning approach was piloted with three student cohorts in a graduate-level public mental health course. Biweekly, teams were presented with a behavioral health case and asked to develop and present on evidence-based solutions through a process grounded in knowledge acquisition and faculty guidance. Students completed surveys and participated in focus groups. Survey results identified effective course components, including case analysis and team discussions. Focus groups further clarified perceived course benefits, such as real-world simulations and interdisciplinary teams, and offered recommendations for future improvements. Recommendations can inform future efforts to implement this approach for other courses and settings.
As information technology develops in teaching environments, more professors tend to assign computer-based projects. The purpose of this study is to improve the quality of computer-based homework assignments. Three groups of students in financial accounting classes are assigned several sets of assignments. The first group has identical assignments among students. The second group has assignments at a same format but with randomized numbers, such that each student has different numbers. The third group has randomized numbers with self-grading function. A pilot test shows students in the third group reveals the highest achievement in the assignment and the highest satisfaction.
Anyone who has ever taught a Liberal Arts Math or “Quantitative Literacy” Course understands that no matter how practical, relevant, or even necessary the subject matter, a fair number of our students still manage to feel oppressed by the reality of being required to take a math course of any description. Can some of these negative emotions be reduced by giving students a few choices without altering the course learning objectives or lowering standards? Two instructors at UNC Asheville have been engaged in an experiment that involves letting students make a few decisions. The results are in. We have been surprised both by the choices our students made and how pleased they were to be given options in the first place.
This poster session reveals some concrete strategies and activities that can be used in the classroom in order to better promote higher-level thinking that results in real-world connections and comparisons. Instructors are becoming more and more intrigued by the positivity and exploratory mindset of students. Teaching adults at the university level stimulates innovative and critical thinking. How do instructors encourage students to think in such a way that will help them make personal connections? They create fun and interactive activities that stimulate the mind and contribute to students’ future success in interacting and working with multicultural members of society.
The purpose of this poster is (1) to discuss and define what student engagement is, (2) to discuss different types of student engagement, (3) to discuss the benefits for engaging students, (4) to discuss ways to increase student engagement.
Common perceived barriers to professional development exist across institutions, preventing meaningful growth for faculty in the scholarship of teaching that could significantly impact student outcomes. Budgetary constraints, time, faculty buy-in and workload easily hinder impactful shared experiences and collaboration across divisions--opportunities that can reinvigorate professors’ passion for teaching and encourage reflective practice. More importantly, better equipping professors’ instructional toolbelts leads to students’ increased engagement, retention, and mastery. Our poster presentation acknowledges obstacles to professional development and solutions for overcoming hurdles through creativity, buy-in, and planning--all encouraging faculty to exit departmental silos, collaborate, and move students from remembering to creating.
Businesses as well as accrediting bodies are calling for colleges and universities to produce graduates who are able to manage in a “diverse global context” (AACSB, 2017). Study abroad programs have been one means of accomplishing this goal, with short-term programs of one to three weeks prevalent at institutions where students may not be able to be away for traditional semester-long programs. This study examines the perceived benefits of the components of a short-term study abroad program by means of a survey to which 73% of one school’s Studies Abroad participants, from 2008 through 2017, responded.
Both the literature and qualitative research at KSU provide evidence of the need to develop a social support network for Black male students. Our team is meeting that need by bringing together Black professional men with Black KSU male students in socially catalytic spaces to encourage role modelling, mentoring and support. Led by a student researcher initiative, we have formed a community of young men who have committed to modeling and leading change by emphasizing positive and minimizing self-defeating behaviors. Black professionals will help establish goals in key areas and community members will hold each other accountable.
Community Engaged Learning (CEL) Courses are structured learning experiences that enhance student learning through the application of classroom content in real-world settings. The purpose of this evaluation was to understand the perceived impact of CEL courses, as reported by Master of Public Health students who graduated between 2012-2016. Data from 11 key informant interviews and 149 survey respondents resulted in five primary recommendations to sustain and improve CEL courses. Recommendations include establishing clear expectations with community partners (CPs), engaging CPs who serve more culturally-diverse populations, and providing greater instruction on transferring skills from CEL projects to students’ professional growth.
I would like to present knowledge and insights I have gathered from research and writing I have done about support group wisdom. I have shared these ideas with college students to help them cope with the stresses and aspirations of earning a degree. One example is the slogan "Progress, Not Perfection." Another is HALT, which stands for [try not to get too] Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. One of the benefits of being an instructor is that, as I share these ideas, I also am reminded to practice them. This has helped me be more empathic and supportive of student growth.
Students achieve multiple goals in college, including developing skills employers want (e.g., communication, critical thinking) while engaging in a wide range of activities. Graduating seniors (n = 31) identified experiences that developed employable skills and completed a measure of employable skills self-efficacy. Students reported non-academic activities as most helpful for employment skills. Activities were not correlated to employable skills self-efficacy for any skill except for critical thinking. Students appear to place academic activities in the background when considering the development of employable skills. Instructors may benefit students by intentionally connecting academic efforts to a wide range of essential employable skills.
I will present some details about my effort to redesign my flipped Calculus 1 class to use Standards Based Grading. My course changes are derived from participation in the G2C FLC (Gateways To Completion Course Redesign Faculty Learning Community) hosted by KSU's CETL (Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning).
With an increasingly diverse student body, three research questions have arisen: 1) how much do learning styles differ among business students? 2) What factors predict student learning styles? And 3) do certain learning styles correlate with business student’s academic success? This study proposes and test an integrated framework delineating how three categories of factors (external cultural, family environmental, and individual personality traits factors) can predict business students’ learning styles preferences, which in turn affect academic success. How these proposed theoretical grounds and approaches could better help to learn, teach, and communicate, is discussed.
This poster displays my study (in-progress) examining the impact of tiered due dates and adaptive assignments on student learning. I compare student performance on a final summative assessment covering essential content between two distinct student groups within the same course, Introduction to Financial Accounting. Groups consist of students enrolled during fall 2017 and spring 2018. After modifying the course design for spring 2018, I expect staggered assignment due dates and required adaptive assignments to improve student learning. These variables are not discipline specific; thus, the strategy can be implemented in designing virtually any course to enhance student learning.
Performance is always the key interest of educators as well as organizations of various types. Our research questions addressed in this study are: How do personality and work engagement variables impact an individual’s job performance? Using a sample of MBA students, we empirically examined the relationship between the Big Five personality factors, worker engagement and job performance, task and conceptual. Results from a hierarchical regression analysis show that agreeableness can predict contextual performance while conscientiousness, dedication, and absorption can predict task performance. Implications for teaching in higher education are discussed.
The goal of this research was to identify the platforms used to get news, as well as the amount of time individuals spend in this endeavor. Given the variety of platforms available for the dissemination of information, identifying those most commonly used should prove useful to academicians, media, ad agencies, and others. The results of the study indicated that younger individuals appeared to be less interested in getting news than their older counterparts, spending less time doing so. Interestingly, no significant differences were found in platform preference based on age.
A successful study abroad program requires a considerable amount of foresight, planning, and preparation. It also benefits from experiences and lessons learned through previous efforts. This presentation provides faculty with teaching strategies that were developed over the course of multiple study abroad experiences. This includes developing the topic and researching the location; submitting a strong proposal; promoting the opportunity; considering pedagogical methods to support academic and cultural learning; encouraging group identity among students; and addressing practical matters related to international travel.
Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) occurs in type I diabetes due to inadequate amount of insulin levels. Human body systems work together with specific functions to keep us healthy. Anatomy and Physiology II Students at Gordon State College learned each four organ systems separately, namely endocrine, cardiovascular, respiratory and urinary. Components of DKA comprise of hyperglycemia, ketoacidosis, ketonuria, hypokalemia and osmotic diuresis. Students dissected four of each organ systems to understand the components of DKA and presented their posters. Students were evaluated on their understanding of pathophysiology of DKA by linking four organ systems. We are currently developing a new pedagogy of the modules for the students to put these four organ systems together, resulting in body functions of alleviating the symptoms of DKA, such as nausea, vomiting, dehydration, volume depletion, blood pressure depression and Kussmaul respiration etc. Students have to develop their critical thinking skills to connect the four organ systems for the overall cause of DKA. This new pedagogy will provide the students for deeper understanding of human physiology from the simple memory of information into the systems approach. The design of the pedagogy will be discussed.
While contemporary business curriculum calls for students to “team” extensively on the development and presentation of projects and initiatives, this practice can be challenging to effectively integrate into courses. This presentation will describe a design study --that emerged when a group of business faculty began an inquiry around a simple-yet-important question: How do we integrate teamwork into our courses? The faculty engaged in two design-based research cycles to test and improve upon a teamwork invention in multiple sections of one undergraduate business course. The poster presentation illustrates the process and the outcomes, drawing potential applications for other teaching/learning contexts.
This project applies concepts from McGuire’s Teach Students How to Learn (Stylus, 2017). The focus is on metacognition, i.e. encouraging students to discover the study habits that work most effectively for them as individuals. The presenter gave three pre-test questionnaires and three post-test questionnaires to an upper division college class of 24 students. Findings showed that students increased their study times significantly throughout the semester whereas exam averages grew slightly. Students preferred traditional study methods (relying on the text and notes). The presenter will provide qualitative and quantitative student responses. Students expressed appreciation of the exercise through positive instructor evaluations.
There are multiple ways to implement specifications (specs) grading (Linda Nilson.) This poster will show two approaches to using specs grading in Calculus 1 and the benefits and challenges of each.