Jump to main content

2011-12 Faculty Learning Communities

Go to FLC main page.

Learning from Experience: Developing Portraits of Practice

Topics

Washington Human Services Educators Faculty Learning Community

Building a statewide network for Human Services educators; curriculum and pedagogy exchange. This is a multi-campus learning community. Contact Kathleen if you are interested in participating.

Meeting together as a Faculty Learning Community will assist us in pursuing an exchange of pedagogy, promote cultural competency and increase our use of instructional technology within our programs across the state. Our other focus will be on the use of current technology to set up an exchange that can be accessed by all Human Services educators in our state.

Two key questions

How can we build an electronic exchange using existing technology that all instructors teaching human services in our two year state system can access? -What pedagogy and assessment will we use that are culturally competent and reflect today’s current Human Services issues?

Sharing what we learn

We will produce an electronic exchange that all Human Services educators in the state can access. It will be filled with pedagogical techniques, assignments, and assessments.

Primary contact

Kathleen Hathaway, kathleen.hathaway@cptc.edu

Top of page

 

F2F: Face-to-Face and Faculty-to-Faculty; Learning from Each Other

Faculty peer mentoring model; pairing new faculty with experienced faculty.

Sharing best practices and making teaching visible

This community will match newer faculty across campus who have worked here five years or less with more experienced teachers to talk about teaching challenges and ways to effectively work with our students. We will coordinate class observations and film some classes in order to glean best practice ideas, improve our teaching, and share feedback with each other. Filming gives the teacher a chance to see themselves from the perspective of a student, and allows viewers a chance to easily see various teaching styles and class formats in action.

Sharing what we learn

We will share our ideas at the Assessment, Teaching and Learning Conference and at our campus Fall Faculty in-service meeting. Films will be shared online for the benefit of other faculty. Additionally, the group plans to share its learning and resources with other instructors through presentation and online resources, which will benefit students beyond the scope of this FLC.

Primary contact

Elizabeth Falconer, efalconer@rtc.edu

Top of page

 

Transitions: Creating Clear Pathways

Transitioning students - especially Basic Skills students - to college-level coursework.

This community will be based on and inspired by Clark Community College’s model, which was presented at the 2011 Assessment, Teaching and Learning Conference. We will be looking at ways to increase and ease transitioning students from Basic Studies to credited campus courses and helping the general student population to navigate between programs, as well as to build better communication in general between the various departments involved. The community will consist of staff from across campus, including the library and student services, as well as faculty.

Building upon the work of colleagues

We will make a day trip to Clark Community College in the fall to discuss what they have done on their campus with their transitions members. Following in the footsteps of Clark Community College's excellent example, we will look to 1) clarify pathways, 2) Discover student needs/wants 3)See what has been done 4) Discuss what could be done, and 5) build foundations. Lessons learned will be made available, online.

Primary contact

Elizabeth Falconer, efalconer@rtc.edu

Top of page

 

Creating Authentic Outcomes-Based Assessments in the Chemistry Laboratory

Evaluating lab assessment practices; identifying best practices; disseminating  across the state. This is a multi-campus learning community. Contact Marie if you are interested in participating.

Two key questions

  1. What are the student learning outcomes for labs, and how do they differ across the levels of chemistry courses?
  2. How can the labs be more meaningful for students and faculty?

To answer the first question, we will survey faculty at our respective colleges and through the Washington College Chemistry Teachers' Association (WCCTA) listserv to evaluate and articulate the current outcomes being assessed in chemistry labs.

Next, we will prioritize the outcomes and focus on the most important knowledge and skills for students to develop in labs.

Finally, we will delineate the expectations for student learning outcomes in lab for the different levels of courses (Introductory, General, and Organic Chemistry). To address the second question, we will research the best practices in assessing labs by communicating with colleagues on our own campuses and state-wide. The FLC will create lab assessments that are more targeted to the outcomes and study their effectiveness. We will also create lab assessments that reduce plagiarism and increase student learning by making the lab experience more meaningful (e.g., using online tutorials with videos and quizzes that prepare students for a particular experiment).

Working as a team

The members of this FLC have worked together on a previous project, the Open Course Library (OCL) Project, and perhaps the best part of the OCL project was the opportunity for faculty to share ideas, best practices, and experiences (both positive and negative) with one another.

Improving lab experiences for students

The goal of this FLC project is to improve the lab experiences for students at each level of chemistry.

Primary contact

Marie Villarba, mvillarba@seattlecolleges.edu

Top of page

 

What's Integration Got to Do With It? Implementing a Living Model

Creating integrative assignments relevant to students' life experiences and interests.

Integrative learning is an approach to education that highlights the importance of addressing real-world issues relevant to students’ life experiences and interests. Integrative assignments focus on:

  • the utilization of multiple modes of inquiry and multiple venues of knowledge,
  • the application of theory to practice employing interdisciplinary diverse perspectives, and
  • the contextualization of students’ personal experiences in larger societal and global patterns.

Continuing the work

At Seattle Central we have a group of faculty who have worked on integrative assignments and assessment for the last year. These faculty would continue their work using the newly developed living model in actual assessment of assignments and in helping students to better understand integration in their school work.

Student success

Having students assess their own learning will be part of the learning community activities. We plan to use and further create interactive assessment tools for capturing what “kinds” of learning are taking place within integrative assignments that might not be happening with regular course assignments. The learning students gain from integrative assignments will lead to their success in courses and programs.

Primary contact

Gregory Hinckley, ghinck@sccd.ctc.edu

Top of page

 

Community College Multicultural and Diversity Courses: Effective Instruction, Meaningful Assessment and Reciprocity

Comparing a variety of approaches to multicultural instruction; examining application of AAC&U national standards for diversity and student learning. This is a multi-campus learning community. Contact Tanya if you are interested in participating.

In Washington community colleges, multicultural courses have increased, as have diversity requirements for graduation. Ideally, education that is multicultural across all disciplines is the goal. In the meantime, for the purpose of encouraging equitable reciprocity and enhanced faculty development for instructors who teach multicultural and diversity courses, we ask the following:

  • How do we currently define multicultural understanding throughout our college system, as a learning outcome?
  • How do we teach and practice multicultural understanding in the classroom? What do we consider best practices?  
  • How do we assess our work and student learning outcomes?

We will examine examples the application of essential multicultural understanding goals based on the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ national standards for diversity and student learning.  In addition, our Faculty Learning Community will compare a variety of approaches for multicultural instruction including Sleeter and Grant’s five typologies, a comprehensive assessment tool (see attachment).

Finally, our Faculty Learning would like to continue to provide collegial support and professional development via on-line technology and a statewide retreat for teams of faculty who wish to work on enhancing their own institution’s multicultural curriculum initiatives. Our faculty learning community aims to increase economic efficiencies by using creative technology to distribute materials and include as many participants as possible, even from remote locations. Additionally, we will coordinate an overnight retreat to provide an extended amount of time for teams of faculty to work on multicultural curriculum initiatives for their own campus using the AACU National standards and a variety of assessment tools for critical multiculturalism.

Primary contact

Tanya Velasquez, tvelasquez@spscc.edu

Top of page

 

Integrative Learning: Opportunities, Assessment, and Retention

Increasing integrative learning opportunities for all students; working with institutional researcher to develop tools for assessing results of integration.

As a result of the 2010-2011 FLC, we developed a shared understanding of integrative learning through cross-discipline conversations, "integrative learning" is more widely and clearly understood by faculty and by administration, and was included in our Strategic Enrollment Management Plan as a strategy for improving student success and retention.  Our 2011-2012 FLC will focus on three specific areas of integrative learning:

  • For opportunity, we want to investigate ways to make integrative learning an option for all students, in particular students who tend to be under-represented in learning community courses.
  • For assessment, we will focus on the question: What does successful integration look like? From these conversations, we will develop a shared language of assessment and work with our Institutional researcher to develop tools for assessing results of integration that may not be evident in discipline-specific assessments.
  • For retention, we will examine ways that integrative learning can improve retention for students in courses that have high drop-out and failure rates.

Key questions

What does successful integration look like? 2) How can integrative learning help all students succeed? We will also use this opportunity to compare institutional data to national research on the impacts of learning communities. which include: Higher grades and rates of retention, greater ability to make connections between disciplines, with peers, and “between the knowledge and values they brought to college and their classroom experiences”, perceptions of “better” classroom experiences, deeper engagement with learning, stronger relationships with faculty.

Price, Derek V. (2005). Learning communities and student success in post-secondary education: A background paper. Retrieved from MDRC website.

Primary contact

Kathleen Byrd, kbyrd@spscc.ctc.edu

Top of page

 

Enhancing Learning with Mobile Devices

Researching, implementing and educating faculty about mobile applications in learning and education.

The FLC will conduct research on several themes that emerged from the previous work. These will be:

  1. Researching backchannel communication to increase active learning and interactivity in the classroom,
  2. Implementing apps that reinforce and activate basic skills learning in ABE/ESL classes,
  3. Developing an Android and iOS app to support student learning,
  4. Exploring the role of mobile tools in Universal Design for Learning,
  5. Continuing to expand awareness of mobile applications and possibilities across campus.

Primary contact

Marc Lentini, mlentini@highline.edu

Top of page

 

Studio Learning: Building Capacity for Collaborative, Inquiry-Based Innovation and Practice on the Community College Campus

Community will examine how openness and a consciously supportive culture can allow faculty members to collaborate and keep pace with creating new models of learning.

This learning community is a community of practice built around two key questions raised and carried through in the 2010 and 2011 Horizon Reports:

  1. What can we do to work collaboratively and strategically to creatively address challenges and support innovation?
  2. How can we continue to build upon ideas and projects to offer faculty development activities that keep pace with the need for more user created content and more new models of learning to serve student learning?

This FLC builds on our work in the social media and participatory learning community to explore ways to support the openness to collegial review that is required in a new culture of learning. It will be a space to try out new tools, concepts and techniques while being fully supported to develop teaching confidence in approaching hands-on technology tasks.

Primary contact

Joanne Munroe, jmunroe@tacomacc.edu

Top of page

 

Integration of Information Literacy and Technology into Course Curriculum

Group will collaborate on creating or gathering assignments that foster digital literacy among students.

Participants will spend ample time collaborating on how to develop and /or use existing assignments to create integrative information literacy assignments. The goal is to develop the ability of students to define, access, evaluate, organize, and use information ethically and legally from a variety of sources.  This project requires a commitment to collaborate with peers and incorporates best practice in curriculum design, including the use of grading rubrics.

Primary contact

Barbara Oldham, boldham@wvc.edu

Top of page

 

Teaching, Technology, Resources, and Inspiration for Faculty Immersed in a New Educational Paradigm

Faculty members teaching each other about technology, bookended in fall and spring with presentations by a visiting educational technology expert. This is a multi-campus learning community. Contact Polly if you are interested in participating.

How in the world do we learn about all the incredible educational technology resources that are available to us?  How in the world do we find time to practice all this material we learn?  How do we remain inspired when we feel so muddled and need clarity?  We would like to have consultation by Sue Franz, Highline Faculty member and award winning educational technology expert, share her expertise with us in the beginning of our year and also in the spring term.

Primary contact

Polly McMahon, polly.mcmahon@spokanefalls.edu

Top of page

 

Opportunities and Challenges for Teaching Responsibly with Technology in the STEM Disciplines: An Inquiry Into Our Own Practice

eLearning technology in teaching science, technology, engineering, and math.

The participants in this community will be using an intra-disciplinary, science and engineering grounded learning community structure to develop and sustain embedded professional development for the science area as they study their own teaching practices in an inquiry-based learning collaborative that will critically examine eLearning in the broader ecology of teaching and learning practices in their disciplines with the goal of forwarding student achievement, learning and success in the STEM disciplines.

While exploring technology enhanced laboratory activities and/ or new and innovative techniques ( for example: Google- Maps, Earth, Sky- GIS and new iPad application for anatomy and physiology courses) the participants will study the approaches (design and delivery) and outcomes of learning practices in face to face and hybrid/ fully online instruction within their disciplines and compare, contrast, analyze and evaluate them to determine what it might take to develop the most promising and effective class/lab experiences in the online and hybrid modes. The community will investigate social presence, telepresence and student engagement and will work cooperatively and interdependently to address questions of rigor and academic integrity while developing and testing promising practices that might allow them to leverage new (and constantly changing) technologies and innovative approaches in the service of improved and integrated student learning in the sciences.

Primary contact

Joanne Munroe, jmunroe@tacomacc.edu

Top of page

 

Efficient Teaching, Effective Learning, Part Two: Modularizing the Quality Matters Approach for Face-to-Face and Online Courses

Building on past success, a summer cohort of faculty will learn about assessment from a local expert, well versed in Quality Matters philosophy and practice.

At Highline, distance learning faculty have been the primary adoptees of Quality Matters (QM), while faculty teaching face-to-face had not identified QM's benefits for all course delivery formats. In 2010, after a Highline-funded Summer Institute, 15 faculty who teach face-to-face and online applied QM to their courses. Then, 11 of those faculty participated in "Year 1" of this FLC grant, continuing their QM work through the year, culminating in a weekend-long retreat.

Highline will support a 2011 summer institute cohort, again facilitated by a) an expert in assessment who served as Highline’s Consulting Faculty for Assessment for many years; and b) an expert in online instruction who is also a QM Master Reviewer.

Primary contact

Ellen Bremen, ebremen@highline.edu

Top of page

 

New Media Trends: Learning Analytics, Mobile Learning, and eBooks

Community will focus on a different Horizon report topic each quarter, previously identified as being of interest to the participants.  This is a multi-campus learning community. Contact Sara if you are interested in participating.

This learning community will focus on three of the emerging technologies for teaching and learning as outlined by the Horizon report (http://www.nmc.org/publications/2011-horizonreport): Learning Analytics, Mobile Learning, and eBooks.

We decided upon these topic areas after surveying faculty in the 5 Star Consortium (Cascadia Community College, Edmonds Community College, Everett Community College, Lake Washington Technical College, Shoreline Community College) on their interests. Each quarter, the FLC will devote its time to exploring one of these trends. We will explore what these technologies are, their strengths and challenges, and how they might impact teaching and learning at our colleges.

Primary contact

Sara Frizelle, sfrizelle@everettcc.edu

Top of page

 

The Hybrid Model: Transitions to Lifelong Learning

This community will investigate effective outcomes and quality in the design of blended learning and address creating a sense of presence in the blended learning environment.

This FLC will be using Garrison and Vaughan's (2009) work, Blended Learning in Higher Education: Framework, Principles, and Guidelines; Beetham, Sharpe and De Freitas' (2010) Rethinking Learning for a Digital Age: How Learners Are Shaping Their Own Experiences; and Lehman and Conceicao's( 2010) Creating a Sense of Presence in Online Teaching: How to Be There for Distance Learners", in our investigation of how to design and deliver blended courses that "enhance both the quality of the teaching and learning transaction and the cost effectiveness of designing blended learning courses " (Garrison and Vaughan, 2009).

Our two key questions are:

  1. How can we use planning, intention and design to ensure effective learning outcomes and meet quality standards in blended courses?
  2. What can we do to design our blended courses to address feelings of isolation with a sense of "being there" with our students? ( designing for social, cognitive and teaching presences).

Primary contact

Joanne Munroe, jmunroe@tacomacc.edu

Top of page

 

Integrating QM Across the Curriculum: How Standards 1 and 8 Frame the Student Experience of Learning

The community will examine course design with the goal to engage students in intentional and strategic learning and to create online learning content and environments that are accessible to all.

Framing questions:

  1. What if everyone designed courses so that every student had an idea of how and why the learning process is structured the way that it is?
  2. What changes do we need to make so that face-to- face and online components are accessible to all students?

These are the questions that arose in our social media and participatory learning FLCs on the evenings that we explored QM and designing learning experiences using universal design principles. In frustration and elation one participant exclaimed : "If only I could get everyone to "do" Standard One, I would be happy. . ." and the community agreed. If we could understand and address students' understandings of what is to be learned in our courses and how they should go about learning it we could design so that learning was strategic and intentional ( Ellis and Goodyear, 2010).

This relationally based FLC will use the QM process and the QM rubric to begin to think about , reflect upon, engage with and design for elearning with the student experience in mind. It will reach across silos to focus on how the student views learning and learning opportunities and how we can do a better job at making this transparent and explicit through putting the QM rubric in their hands and ours.

Primary contact

Joanne Munroe, jmunroe@tacomacc.edu

Top of page

 

Building 21st Century Academic Library Services

This learning community will re-examine how they provide information resources and instruction in light of rapidly evolving needs and the advent and acquisition of many new digital collections and resources.

Student and faculty information needs are swiftly changing, as are the resources that supply those information needs. In order to meet learning needs and take full advantage of today’s varied information resources libraries must reshape how they provide services and instruction.  At Centralia College, we have expanded our digital holdings and began offering virtual reference assistance. However, we have not had the ability to learn how other academic librarians across the nation have been creative in melding today’s physical and digital information environments in a context that works best for our users. These digital resources include not only subscription services but a growing body of open access repositories and learning objects.

Primary contact

Sue Gallaway, sgallaway@centralia.edu

Top of page

 

Discipline Specific Quality Matters Based Faculty Mentoring

This community will explore whether discipline specific faculty mentoring can foster an enhanced sense of community between new and experienced eLearning faculty, while improving the content and curriculum design skills of both mentor and mentee.

The idea for this FLC project came out of our successful 2010-2011 FLC group. This project combines our interests in individual faculty mentoring, discipline specific eLearning course content design, Quality Matters implementation, and faculty professional development.  From existing research and our own experience, we believe a discipline specific mentoring program using the Quality Matters rubric will have the greatest efficacy. The key question we are working from is: can discipline specific faculty mentoring foster an enhanced sense of community between new and experienced eLearning faculty while improving the content and curriculum design skills of both mentor and mentee?

Training mentors as QM Peer Reviewers and working with mentees to align their courses with this rubric is an important part of how we achieve our goal. In addition to implementing the QM rubric, FLC members will review relevant research on faculty mentoring and work with the eLearning Office to lay the groundwork for a regional consortium capable of sharing QM course review responsibilities.

Primary contact

Michael Shepard, mshepard@whatcom.ctc.edu

Top of page

 

Building an Open Educational Content Community

Building on previous exploration, this group will examine how to support and reach a broader adoption of open educational resources. This is a multi-campus learning community. Contact Sara if you are interested in participating.

Beginning to identify quality open content through a Faculty Learning Community environment supports faculty in locating material that is academically sound, offers more choices for faculty and students in meeting learning outcomes, and hopefully lowers textbook costs for students. We wish to continue the strong momentum started in 2010-11 where our FLC grant established a strong foundation in our understanding of OER and helped us explore available alternatives and strategies for incorporating OER in on-ground, hybrid, and online courses. We relied on others with a variety of experience using OER to share their perspectives and the rewards and challenges of doing so.

This new grant seeks to answer: How do we expand our outreach to a broader faculty audience on all 3 campuses and collegially support faculty as they begin OER investigations in their own disciplines? We will offer professional development to introduce new faculty to OER, using both local staff and outside OER experts. Campus librarians and eLearning staff will serve as ‘consultants/coaches’ encouraging and assisting faculty in locating and incorporating open textbooks and other digital materials.

Primary contact

Marie Rustemeyer, mrustemeyer@scc.spokane.edu

Top of page

 

Learn, Explore & Apply: Technology Resources for Science Instruction

A community of faculty members from science disciplines will explore and share about how to use technology to create authentic and engaging learning experiences for students.

Our goal is to offer diversified science courses that are relevant and provide students the knowledge and experience to pursue further studies in the sciences or simply participate in a modern society dominated by science and technology. Our emphasis is on an understanding of modern scientific methodologies, including current methods of scientific experimentation, as well as up-to-date laboratory techniques and equipment. Faculty are asking for information and help using technology to enhance instruction, to support learning and to promote student achievement. However, one thing science staff unanimously feel short of is time for training and access to appropriate instructional technologies to support the practice of effective teaching and learning.

This grant seeks to answer: How do we discover what technology tools are available and appropriate for enhancing student learning and meeting identified learning outcomes? How can we use instructional technology to create effective and engaging learner-centered activities and resources for science instruction?

Science faculty members want the opportunity to learn, explore, and integrate (apply) a variety of technology resources into the practice of teaching. The group is interested in exploring technologies already available, such as ANGEL, Elluminate, and Tegrity, but also in adding tools like Camtasia, webcams, digital recorders and cameras. Individually, faculty members are interested in increasing the use of technology in their courses but they also want time to share with others what they are doing and to collaborate. Scientists tend to be more hesitant about putting courses online since “hands-on” is so important. This group wants to explore options for developing relevant, experiential and appropriate material for online, hybrid and web enhanced courses. They will also explore open educational resources for science instruction.

Primary contact

Marie Rustemeyer, mrustemeyer@scc.spokane.edu

Top of page

 

Tool Up: QM and Pedagogical Use of Technology in eLearning Courses To Engage Students and Increase Learning

A small group of faculty from around the state will convene in the summer and then meet regularly at a distance throughout the year to explore the incorporation of engaging learning experiences for online learners.

We will kick-off the FLC with a 2-4 day summer institute, which is the most critical component of the project. We will select 10 to 11 community college faculty from across Washington to participate in the project. The FLC members will be provided with the tools, pedagogical background/principles, and strategies to incorporate interactive and engaging learning experiences within their eLearning courses as outlined by Quality Matters Standards 6 (course technology) and 8 (accessibility and ADA compliance). Hardware provided through the grant to the participants will include a web cam, wireless headset/mic, and wide-screen monitor for expanding the computer screen, and possibly a Wacom tablet and pen.

Software will include freeware and the Camtasia Studio bundle, should funds permit. The institute will teach how to connect all hardware and install all software on the faculty member’s own laptop, technological strategies including (but not limited to) recording and publishing with Audacity for podcasting, facilitating and moderating Elluminate sessions with use of tablet in whiteboard, recording and publishing Jing videos (with an introduction to editing and captioning with Camtasia), uploading and using YouTube videos (including captioning).

Following the institute, the FLC will convene monthly via Elluminate as well as through a course-site in Angel and/or Moodle (depending upon the participants’ preference) to share examples, experiences, best practices, troubleshooting, new ideas, etc.

Primary contact

Kathy Chatfield, kchatfield@clark.edu

Top of page

 

Science eLearning Community (SeLC): Assessment in Online Science and Mathematics Courses

Group will examine how faculty members at other colleges assess students in fully online math and science lab courses and create a best practices guide for faculty.

This year, 2010-11, our faculty group has conducted an initial investigation of fully online lab courses. We have also discussed issues relating to online testing in science and mathematics courses. Our plan for 2011-2012 is to investigate how instructors at other colleges assess students in fully online laboratory courses and fully online mathematics courses. We plan to investigate techniques and platforms for content delivery and for assessment. Assessment will include laboratory learning outcomes, as well as academic integrity during examinations. We would like to develop "best practices" guidelines for anyone in our division who will teach these fully online courses.

Primary contact

Ann Garnsey-Harter, garnsey@shoreline.edu

Top of page

The Content box should not go past this line >>

WA State Board for Community and Technical Colleges  |  Open 8 AM - 5 PM, Mon-Fri  |  Phone: 360-704-4400  |  Fax: 360-704-4415

PO Box 42495  1300 Quince Street SE  Olympia, WA 98504-2495  |  Get Directions  |  Contact Web Master