Life in Academe

Strategizing Faculty Engagement in Curricular Reform

A Tale of Two Universities: Faculty members and administrators at Boise State University and Miami Dade College joined forces in this session to share their two stories. Their hope was that the similarities between reform processes at two dissimilar institutions could suggest a few best practices for faculty engagement.

Here are four overarching strategies with specific ideas for investing in each:

Build and Leverage Conditions and Structures to support faculty engagement
Conditions and structures might include:

• Faculty Open Forums
• Drafting faculty beyond “the committee”
• Connecting curriculum to other activities
• Developing ideas based on the university’s mission and values
• Utilizing existing structures (discipline, CETL, IT infrastructure) and new structures (that might add to the university)

Engage Faculty through Intentional Professional Development
Intentional Professional Development might include:

• Faculty work sessions on outcomes-based learning
• Summer course design institutes
• Faculty learning communities for course development
• Campus workshops
• Peer Facilitation Series
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Seminars
• Symposia
• Analysis of Teaching
• Adjunct Faculty Workshop Series
• Known Course Development Standards: Know the outcomes, ensure they are on the syllabus, intentionally integrate them into the course, and create rubrics to assess each
• Authentic Assessment

Foster Community Dialogue around Curriculum
Examples of community dialogue opportunities:

• Task Force Open Sessions
• Faculty Information Sessions (Online and Face-to-Face)
• Student Information Sessions, presented by students
• Annual Executive Briefings for Senior Leadership
• Campus-wide Updates as Launch Parties for Assessment Results

Student-based Collaborations that inspire faculty engagement

• Make collaborations written and tangible
• Use a common language across campus
• Employ iterative change
• Identify a champion
• Mapping with Student Services
• Utilize centers and special programs

Thanks to Sharon McGuire and Susan Shadle from Boise State University and Jose Donis, John Frederick, and Marina Rodriguez from Miami Dade College for these specific and tangible ideas.

Threats to Curricular Innovation and Faculty Engagement

We have to face the fact that we have designed curricula that no longer resonate with our students and do not promote the learning the need to succeed in today’s society, says Susan Gano-Phillips, Professor of Psychology at University of Michigan-Flint. Faculty should be able to engage with general education in a way that causes our curriculum alongside societal needs.

I thought this set of talks might give strategic and specific examples of ways that universities might “build cultures of faculty engagement” (which incidentally was the title of the session). Instead, I left with a list of current trends and controversies that threaten and impede innovation and engagement:

1. Productivity: “A narrow conception of productivity threatens to trump student learning and innovation in the curriculum,” Gano-Phillips continues. “Students hate this, Faculty hate this. Yet, we continue to do it.” This threat can be diminished through a learning-outcome-based model of education.
2. Contingent Faculty: Faculty employment also threatens curricular reform. Universities cannot rely on contingent faculty as pinch-hitters or liabilities. Rather, we need to view them as allies in reform processes and innovation.
3. Changes in Technology: Both a threat and a rallying force, technology is daunting for some and an experimental laboratory for others.
4. Disparity in Faculty and Student Identity: Minority faculty appear more in contingent ranks than full-time positions. Yet, student profiles are increasingly diverse.
5. Disciplinary Silos: Faculty departments, libraries, and student affairs leaders tend to silo themselves and divide themselves into like parties. All need to be included in the conversation through integrated general education programs.
6. Surrounding Communities: Major events and crises in a college’s surrounding community can hinder innovation, but if successfully harnessed, can create opportunities for faculty to collaborate, innovate, and engage the community.

These trends were compiled from the collected presentations on this panel, which included Robert Collins, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Dillard University; Michele Cuomo, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at CUNY Queensborough Community College; Cynthia Gomez, Instructor at Portland State University; and Norman Jones, Professor of History at Utah State University, in addition to Gano-Phillips.

Creative Inquiry: engaging students in real-world problems

The creative inquiry project at Clemson University has the goal of “a research project for every student,” says Barbara Speziale, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs at Clemson. It supports a intensive, discovery-oriented approach to learning for all students.

At Clemson, creative inquiry is for all students at all levels. Faculty and staff mentors work with small teams of students over multiple semesters. Creative Inquiry projects are either faculty-developed projects or department-embedded projects. The team-orientation of this program is one of its key characteristics.

Clemson’s creative inquiry projects are available on the program’s website.

Connection to the institution became a core component of Ohio Wesleyan University’s attempt at creative inquiry, says the university’s Dean of Academic Affairs Charles Stinemetz. According to Barbara Andereck, Associate Dean of Accreditation and Assessment, the OWU Connection Program includes a first-year seminar, course connection networks, travel learning courses, student individualized projects, and theory-to-practice grants.

Course connection networks combine faculty members toward discussion and collaboration on shared learning outcomes. Theory-to-practice grants include travel (both abroad and in the US), supplies, and resources to support individual students in the programs who want to continue the work initiated in the program’s experiences.

Core issues for developing institutional creative inquiry programs:

• Funding for or endowing these programs
• Examining budget models for faculty load time
• Maintaining both team-based and individualized approaches for students
• Embedding requirements for inquiry across general education and/or within individual majors

A Rich Archive Creates Better Reflections of Learning

E-portfolios are bodies of work that rely on collection, selection, and reflection, says Kathleen Blake Yancey, Professor at Florida State University. The e-portfolio has the ability to bring together multiple types of learning in a single place. It can showcase a deliver curriculum, an experienced curriculum, and a lived curriculum (which may or may not be the same thing).

Every institutional model for an e-portfolio should be deeply tied to the mission of the institution. But, portfolios should not be tied to classes, but rather tied to competencies. They might ask students to recognize parallels between and among disciplines and apply knowledge, skills, etc to student experience.

Learning is not bound by our set of courses, but is rather bound by the experiences afforded to our students. A new learning model based on outcomes can be reflected in a reframed e-portfolio model. Directions must be explicit, specific, and intentional. And reflections must include specific examples from any point in the student’s experience.

If we focus on student learning, do we really need courses?

Barbara Wright, Vice President of Western Association of Schools and Colleges suggests that our biggest threats build on these demographics, but also our changing perceptions of technology, assessment, learning-outcomes, and alternative higher education.

At colleges, the old business model relied on of knowledge, instruction, learning, degrees, social networking, cultural opportunities, and personal development. All of these things are available outside of college except validation of learning and conferring of degrees.

So, if we want to value and validate learning, do we really need courses? If we no longer sell course and credit hours, how do we measure learning? Assessment. Assessment becomes the vehicle for substantive conversation about quality, proficiency, and learning.

Student work changes. Responsibility and directed learning become the hallmarks of student experience.

Faculty work changes. Courses have a place, but they may also be the box we need to climb out of as we consider student learning. Courses might be replaced by advising, tutorials, and guided study.

Administrative work changes. Planning, budget, and revenue are dramatically affected. A robust assessment structure would be required.

Policy work changes. High quality learning would replace retention at the center of accreditation.

Is this all just a fantasy? Is it plausible? Could it ever work?

Institutions that prioritize outcomes will be the decision makers.

The future of higher education relies on the future of our current minorities

“It’s no surprise to anybody that the landscape of higher education is changing, ” says Steve H. Murdock, Professor of Sociology at Rice University, on the demography of classrooms. The American population is changing, growing, becoming more diverse, and indicative of an aging, and shrinking majority population.

The largest population growth in the nation is occurring in the South and West. In 2010, 60% of the population was in the South and West, not the Northeast and Midwest. The real change in population is not growth, but diversity.

“Our population does not look like the people in this room. We are entirely too non-Hispanic white as a group.”

Hispanic growth in Texas was the leading trend, especially in the 18 and under demographic. The rest of the nation has seen even greater diversification, with 2700 counties in the US (almost all of them) demonstrating growth in this population. In metropolitan centers, 54% of growth has been attributed to Hispanic populations. This growth drives not only metropolitan area growth but also suburban growth and growth in rural areas.

By 2050, non-whites are projected to outnumber whites in every age group but our oldest two demographics, according to Murdock.

George Bernard Shaw famously noted, “The mark of a truly educated man is to be moved deeply by statistics.” and as academics, these statistics should move us because they are dramatically related to socioeconomic status.

The divide in socioeconomic status between non-white populations and other populations is deep and pervasive. This is not good news. College matriculation does not reflect these growth patterns. The future of American education is tied to the success of our now minorities who, by 2050, will be the new majorities. Our role in academe must include a focus on the breadth and diversity of students that enter our classrooms.

The Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) annual conference on General Education and Assessment was held at the New Orleans Marriott in New Orleans, Louisiana, February 23-25, 2012. I attended on behalf of Queens University of Charlotte with four faculty colleagues.

General Education Conference Kicks Off in New Orleans

Ethan Zuckerman at Knight Media Learning Seminar

“It’s a challenge for us to connect people’s stories to their communities,” says Ethan Zuckerman, Director of the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab, a leading thinker in civic media.

“The problem isn’t the web, the problem is us,” says Zuckerman. “We have to find a way to become media producers.” his point: The Internet is the most powerful tool to connect people to diverse types of information. However, that is the potential of the tool, not its promise.

We all filter the world down to the places we want to be, Zuckerman notes. We practice homophily – we gravitate toward people like ourselves.

The web is no different. People are finding ways to participate in online conversations with people like themselves.

As tourists in a city, if we want to various parts of the city, we find a guide. How do we create guides for the Internet that can show us not only what we want to see, but what we need to see?

We need to find ways to capture and sort information, and then distribute the information to amplify it. Guides must be able to:
Curate: comb through the information to pull out the most interesting or relevant pieces.
Translate: make the information understandable.
Contextualize: explain why the information matters.

I’m struck as I listen by the relationship between these functions to Nathan Shedroff’s model of information design: moving data through information to knowledge (more on that later).

At Media Lab, developments like Media Cloud and Voces Moviles help people understand their information on the platforms they are already using. The hard work is figuring out the tools that can best connect specific people to their specific communities. Using that thinking, people can annotate their own spaces with the technology best suited for that work.

Then, communities can, and must, become curators for their own conversation.

Communities and Collaboration: Lessons Learned about Partnership Creation

“I’ve struggled with this partnership creation thing,” says Dennis Scholl, Vice President for Arts at Knight Foundation. Seventy community foundations across the nation have leveraged Knight grants to develop partnerships with over 450 community partners ranging from libraries to legacy media, social media and universities. A full report of this effort is available for download here, via Knight Foundation’s website: Collaboration and Connection: How Foundations Partner Effectively to Address Their Communities’ Information Needs.

From a broad perspective, Joaquin Alvarado, Senior Vice President for Digital Innovation at American Public Media, has developed a partner network with 70 media organizations around the nation. The partnerships allow the sharing of reporting on issues that matter to communities, and develop opportunities for even the most diminished voices to be heard by major media outlets.

In a more local example, Mary Lou Fulton, Senior Program Manager at The California Endowment, asks us to consider the lower income areas in our cities and the last time they appeared in the media. She says these communities suffer from the “murders and festivals syndrome.” News coverage in these areas are often reactive. The endowment funds multiple health-related projects including a substantial investment in youth media. Partnerships, she notes, are essential in under-funded communities. some examples of youth media efforts in California funded by The California Endowment and Knight Foundation:

Richmond Pulse
Coachella Unincorporated
TheKnowFresno

Lamenting the trajectory of our society, Sandy Close, Executive Director of New America Media, says journalism may be seen as a trade of old, but “working with journalism gives young people the sense of anticipating the future.” New America Media is an on-the-ground partner of the California Endowment, focusing on ethnic media. “Something is stirring in these sites,” she says, “our oldest notions of community are in shared space.”

Community Information Toolkit, version 1.1

Knight Foundation’s Community Information Toolkit creates a framework for assessing a community’s information ecosystem. Mayur Patel, Knight’s Vice President for Strategic Assessment, is leading the conversation on information ecosystem mapping.

Mapping a community’s information ecosystem is not as daunting as the words might suggest. The components of a community’s information system include the community’s technology infrastructure, supply of public information, and skills of community members to access that information.

After piloting the toolkit in three communities – Macon, GA, San Jose, CA, and Philadelphia, PA – the foundation created two affordable and simple ways for a community to take stock: a checklist that assesses access and a scavenger hun that provides a window into the way community members navigate their community’s information. Version 1.1 of the Community Information Toolkit was released at the 2012 Media Learning Seminar in Miami.

Three examples of the use of the toolkit for different purposes:

Public access television is a perfect partner for the information toolkit, says Kathy Bisbee at the Community Media Access Partnership in the Bay Area of California. At CMAPTV, Bisbee and her team organized a community conversation in Gilroy, California, surrounding the toolkit’s core issue of access to information.

The toolkit can be used as a neighborhood resource for engaging people at the hyperlocal level to increase community-based conversation in Greater Atlanta, says Alicia Philipp, President of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. “In our case, it’s not about media, the toolkit is about community engagement.” Patel notes that this type of work need not create new access points, but rather should use the access points already created within communities.

Kelly Lucas, CEO of Incourage Community Foundation in Central Wisconsin, asked a journalist to condense the Knight Commission Report and make it relevant to the people of central Wisconsin. For that community, the answer was jobs. Information mapping in the community brought the community together and taught it how to innovate. The foundation, as a hub for the conversation, has launched a program in workforce solutions with CEOs and funders to empower agents of community change in the region.

“Access to information is really a social justice issue for all of us,” says Lucas. She continues: Agents of change in a community have a unique value in the quest for access: “the knowledge of and sense of place.”