1999–2000 SOTL Schedule of Events
A Message from Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
and Dean of the Faculties Moya L. Andrews
Universities began as small communities of scholars gathered together
to produce and share manuscripts. Shared space was essential in order
to gain access to the most precious commodity, the written word. Today,
with access to information no longer dependent on geographic proximity,
scholars can easily communicate electronically with colleagues everywhere
in the world. Modern technology has strengthened the ties that bind scholars
together in worldwide communities.
Many things have changed in universities down through the ages, but being
part of a community of scholars is still one of the most enduring rewards
of life in a university. Our campus community is still the crucible for
much of our best work. Collectively and individually academics are still,
of course, primarily engaged in the pursuit and sharing of knowledge.
But the learning environment and class sizes have certainly changed. We
are now more aware that we must reflect upon and study what we do as teacher/scholars
in this dramatically different academic world we inhabit today. So, although
our community of scholars is nowadays much more heterogeneous by both
nature and design, there are still those common goals, values, and experiences
that bind us together.
Think about the experiences that all of us share as members of our academic
community at Indiana University:
- Within the confines of our disciplines and departments, we are all
engaged in the exhilarating and often frustrating process of reinventing
ourselves as teachers, semester by semester. Our students in our classrooms,
offices, and laboratories provide us with regular reality checks. At
each stage of our academic careers, but on different individual timetables,
we uncover aspects of our identities as teachers. Through it all, we
come to know more about how individuals learn.
- When we step outside our departments and schools, we experience ourselves
as scholars and teachers in a wider context. Our colleagues from different
parts of the campus sometimes serve as mirrors but also show us different
aspects of the intellectual landscape. The way others outside our disciplines
see and react to our work often further informs our own perceptions
of what we do.
- Dialogue within our wider campus community gives us contact with published
materials and works in progress by scholars of teaching and learning
beyond those in our own field. We may discover links and themes and
commonalities. We may sense the centrality of our personal place in
the overarching academic enterprise. We may find research partners or
mentors.
The Scholarship of Teaching movement nationally recognizes that commitment
to the ongoing study of teaching and learning is a core value of academics
across this country. Through dissemination and integration of studies
across disciplines and universities, we can strengthen the theoretical
base that informs what we do.
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Initiative on this campus is
designed to affirm the fundamental value of teaching and its scholarship
within our Bloomington community.
Our series of events for this academic year is designed to showcase
some, but by no means all, of the research and study of teaching and learning
that are underway on this campus at this point in time. The topics cover
a broad spectrum, the speakers represent various areas, and the scope
of the methodologies and presentation formats is eclectic. We hope that
the range of offerings is wide enough to accommodate everyone’s interests
and needs.
Many of the stakeholders in the teaching and learning enterprise in our
academic community are participants in this series. It is hoped that through
this type of collaboration and dialogue all members of our academic community
can have opportunities to listen to and learn from each other.
Expanding Our Vision of Indiana University’s
Research Mission: The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
George E. Walker
This presentation will focus on the relationship existing between research,
teaching, and learning in today’s research university. Vice President
George Walker will discuss the validity, need, and opportunity for engaging
in the scholarship of teaching and learning and how such scholarship will
facilitate both learning and disciplinary research.
Friday, September 24, 1999
8:30—10:00 am
Georgian Room, IMU
Continental breakfast buffet
George E. Walker is Vice President for Research and Dean of the University
Graduate School. He has been a Professor of Physics at IU since 1970.
He has published widely in refereed physics journals, delivered many invited
talks at international conferences and workshops and served on numerous
regional and national advisory boards. Current appointments include Association
of American Universities (AAU) Task Force on Graduate Education, AAU Council
on Federal Relations, Graduate Record Examinations Board, Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory Physics and Space Technology Directorate Advisory
Committee, National Association of State Universities & Land Grant
Colleges Board of Directors, National Research Council Committee on Methods
of Forecasting Demand and Supply of Doctoral Scientists and Engineers,
North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, Commission of Institutions
of Higher Education, and the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL)
Policy Council.
Reform in Undergraduate Classrooms: What are the
Researchable Issues?
Frances K. Stage
Scholars in the academy have recently turned their interests to a remarkable
research site on campus, the college classroom. In an era of change in
the way courses are taught, change in the expectations of students, and
the introduction of new techniques and technologies in the classroom,
many questions might be explored.
In her presentation, Fran Stage briefly examines theory that prompts
us to create changes in our ways of presenting material in college classrooms.
Next, she describes her research funded by the National Science Foundation
that focuses on reform in undergraduate classrooms on three diverse campuses.
She begins with a description of the context for change, details the work
of innovative faculty who reform their courses, and provides detailed
examples of classroom-based reform. Positive outcomes on these campuses
include increased student enthusiasm for courses, evidence of faculty
renewal, and increased connections between campus and local communities.
Finally, she discusses some of the ways in which we might conduct research
in college classrooms and consider our own reforms.
Friday, October 1, 1999
3:30—4:30 pm
Whittenberger Auditorium, IMU
Reception follows, University Club, IMU
Frances K. Stage is Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
at Indiana University, Bloomington. She holds a master’s degree in
mathematics and a Ph.D. in higher education. Stage teaches graduate courses
in learning theory and research design. Her research focus is on learning
in college mathematics classrooms and on students’ progress in the
math/science pipeline. She has won the Association for the Study of Higher
Education’s Promising Scholar award, Indiana University’s Outstanding
Young Researcher award, and is currently vice president of the American
Educational Research Association for Postsecondary Education Division.
Stage is spending the current year at the National Science Foundation
as a NSF/AERA Research Fellow. She has numerous books, chapters, and articles
focusing on college students and methods for studying them and is lead
author of Creating Learning Centered Classrooms:What Does Learning
Theory Have to Say?
Pet Theories and Naïve Misconceptions
Leah Savion
Until recently, the student’s mind was viewed as a blank slate,
absorbing accurately the instructed material. A large body of research
demonstrates the incredible power of pet theories and naïve misconceptions
that are a necessary byproduct of the mind’s continuous attempt to
make sense of the world. These theories, which students bring to the study
of every discipline, interfere with learning even among high achievers.
Participants in this roundtable will confront examples of naïve
misconceptions from a variety of fields, bring some from their own experiences,
gain an understanding of the inevitability of these constructs and of
the reasons they are so resistant to change, and explore a pedagogical
path to facilitate correct understanding of academic knowledge.
Friday, October 8, 1999
12 noon—1:30 pm
Ballantine Hall 330
Lunch provided from 11:30 am
To ensure active engagement, the number of participants will be limited.
Please reserve your place early.
Leah Savion is on the faculty of the Philosophy Department at IUB, and
a FACET member since 1992. She teaches a variety of analytic philosophy
courses such as logic, philosophy of language, and theories of rationality;
she also offers the campus-wide pedagogy course “Excellence in Teaching”
through the Graduate School. Her research focuses on cognitive science
areas of models of human inference and heuristics and biases in learning.
She is the recipient of several teaching awards, of an Active Learning
Grant, and regularly offers workshops on teaching-related issues such
as motivation, concept comprehension, and pseudoscientific misconceptions.
A Student’s Tower of Babel: Teaching the Culture
of Our Disciplines
David Pace
David Bartholomae has argued that every time a student begins to study
a new discipline he or she must “reinvent the university,” that
is, create a mental map of what is expected in that context. Even the
most basic activities—to read, to study, to prepare for an exam—have
radically different meanings in different fields, and students who fail
to recognize these differences are often doomed to failure, no matter
how hard they work. To maximize learning, faculty need to be able to help
students across this hurdle, but years of professional training have often
obscured the basic challenges of their disciplines.
Professor David Pace will examine ways in which faculty can define precise
operations required of students in their courses. Using as a model his
own interviews with historians about what the word “read” can
mean in the history classroom, he will explore more widely how faculty
can define for themselves what they want their students to do, how they
can model these operations to increase learning, and how the scholarship
of teaching and learning can contribute to a better understanding of both
one’s discipline and one’s teaching.
Thursday, October 21, 1999
12 noon—1:30 pm
Frangipani Room, IMU
Lunch provided from 11:30 am
David Pace, currently a Fellow of the Carnegie Academy of the Scholarship
of Teaching and Learning, is an associate professor in the IUB History
Department. He was the 1994 recipient of the Frederick Bachman Lieber
Award for Distinguished Teaching. He is a member of FACET, and last fall
was one of ten teacher-scholars from the IU system featured in a special
issue of Research and Creative Development on the scholarship
of teaching. He has been involved in a wide range of curricular reforms,
including the History Department’s Associate Instructor and Preparing
Future Faculty programs and the RUGS College Pedagogy Initiative, and
has led faculty development workshops, most recently as co-director of
the Freshman Learning Project. He is author of two books and numerous
articles on pedagogy and French cultural history.
Town Meeting: Student and Faculty Perceptions of
Large Classes
Moya L. Andrews and Richard N. McKaig
The purpose of the meeting is to share perspectives related to learning
and teaching in large classes among all members of the campus community.
Selected students and faculty will make brief invited statements at the
beginning of the meeting. Open discussion among all in attendance will
follow. Moya Andrews and Richard McKaig will moderate the event.
November 2, 1999
3—5 pm
State Room East, IMU
A collaborative initiative of the Acting Dean of the Faculties, the Dean
of Students, and the Indiana University Student Association.
Event open to all students, faculty and staff
Moya L. Andrews is professor of Speech & Hearing Sciences and Vice
Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculties. Born in Australia,
she graduated from Queensland University in Brisbane, completed a masters
degree at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a doctorate
from Columbia University. She is a Fellow of the American Speech Language
& Hearing Association and also a Fellow of the Society of Ear, Nose,
and Throat Advances in Children. Her work on voice disorders and her clinical
protocols are used worldwide. The author of four books and two manuals
of voice treatment for pediatric through geriatric patient populations,
she has also published extensively in the premier research journals. She
founded the voice clinic at Indiana University which she directed for
twenty years. She is active in national and state professional organizations
and associate editor of the Journal of Voice. In 1997 she was
honored by the Indiana Speech & Hearing Association for outstanding
clinical achievements and in 1999 received the Distinguished Scholar Award
from the Office of Women’s Affairs.
Richard N. McKaig has served since 1991 as Vice Chancellor for Student
Affairs and Dean of Students at Indiana University where he is also an
associate professor of education. He currently holds positions as regional
vice president of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators,
executive director of the Center for the Study of the College Fraternity,
and as director of the Interfraternity Institute. He is a former president
of the Indiana College Personnel Association. He is the recipient of numerous
awards and honors, most recently (1997) the National Interfraternity Conference
Silver Medal for Distinguished Service to Youth. The IU Student Government
Association created the McKaig Scholarship to recognize outstanding service
to campus student government in 1981. He also has a distinguished record
of service to the Bloomington community
‘Hands-on’ Seminar: Jump Starting Your
SOTL Research Project: Researchable Questions, Methods, and Resources
Samuel Thompson, Craig Nelson, and a Cadre of Faculty Colleagues
The goal is to lay a foundation of continuing collaboration and support
for faculty contemplating or engaged in research into problems of teaching
and learning. Seminar activities include: framing assessable research
questions, surveying quantitative and qualitative research methods, deciding
what’s publishable and what’s not, discussing standards and
examples of scholarship, and identifying internal and external sources
of support. Participants should be prepared to discuss their thoughts
and goals for research during the session. Each should emerge with new
ideas and sources for further exploration.
Friday, November 12, 1999
12 noon—4 pm
Room E174, Main Library
Lunch Provided from 11:30 am
Samuel Thompson, an instructional consultant at Franklin Hall, comes
to Indiana University from a diverse background: administrator of undergraduate
programs in Europe and Asia for the University of Maryland, chair of a
board of west European nations for NATO, associate professor of mathematical
sciences at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and physicist at the Air Force
Rocket Propulsion Laboratory. He has long advocated research into issues
of teaching and learning by faculty in their own undergraduate courses
and published such scholarship during the 1970s.
Now We Know Our ABCs: Demythologizing Grade Inflation
Brian Powell
“Grades are skyrocketing!” “Professors are easier than
ever!” “Grade inflation is an increasingly significant problem
at most colleges and universities.” “A grade of C did, and should,
indicate ‘average’ performance.” “One can buy good
teaching evaluations with good grades.” Brian Powell examines whether
these claims are supported by actual data or instead are myths. He discusses
the degree to which grades have changed, as well as the role that changes
in the composition of the student body and in school policies may play
in influencing grades. He also proposes strategies that we can use to
evaluate our own grading practices and ways to offer feedback to other
professors and associate instructors on grading.
Friday, November 19, 1999
12 noon—1:30 pm
Frangipani Room, IMU
Lunch provided from 11:30 am
Brian Powell is a Professor of Sociology as well as the Director of Graduate
Studies, co-director of the Preparing Future Faculty program, and director
of associate instructor training in the Department of Sociology. Notable
teaching honors include the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching
(university), Student Choice Award for Outstanding Faculty (Student Alumni
Council), Edwin Sutherland Teaching Award (Department of Sociology), Teaching
Excellence Recognition Award (university), and FACET. He currently has
a grant from the National Science Foundation, has been the recipient of
grants from the Spencer Foundation and National Institute of Mental Health,
and was deputy editor of the journal, Sociology of Education.
Van Gogh’s Other Ear: Teaching Creativity
Across the Curriculum
Claude Cookman
For a variety of reasons including negative myths that associate creative
genius with psychological dysfunction, creativity does not receive the
attention it deserves in higher education. Nonetheless, all students deserve
theoretical instruction and active-learning experiences in creative problem
finding and creative problem solving. Claude Cookman will engage workshop
participants in experiences that will help them reconnect with their personal
creativity. He will also review the scholarly literature on creativity
and describe a research project he is conducting on fluency and flexibility,
two measures of creativity. Participants will then extrapolate this knowledge
and their experiences toward the objective of including discipline-specific
instruction in creativity in their own courses.
Thursday, January 20, 2000
12 noon—1:30 pm
Frangipani Room, IMU
Lunch provided from 11:30 am
Before teaching, Claude Cookman worked more than 18 years as a reporter-photographer,
a copy editor, a picture editor, and a graphics editor at six news organizations,
including the Associated Press in New York City, the Courier-Journal
in Louisville and the Miami Herald. In 1990, he joined IU’s
School of Journalism, where his teaching has spanned a wide range of formats
including the large lecture course, discussion sections, traditional skills
courses, computerized classes, undergraduate and graduate research seminars,
professional workshops, and one-to-one mentoring. His teaching at IU has
been recognized with six awards. He earned an MS from the Columbia University
Graduate School of Journalism, an MFA in art history and a Ph.D. in the
history of photography, both from Princeton University. He has published
a history of the National Press Photographers Association, several articles
on the history of photography, and one article on pedagogy.
Developing A Comprehensive Departmental Plan
for Evaluating Teaching Effectiveness
Rita Naremore
Can teaching be evaluated in a way that distinguishes excellent from
average and average from poor? Can such an evaluation be quantified in
a way that makes it useful for ranking teaching performance of faculty
in an academic unit? Can these rankings then be used for promotion, tenure,
and salary decisions?
Rita Naremore will explore the experience of one academic unit with these
issues. Drawing on that experience as well as the existing literature,
she will offer a model of a process and suggest some possible components
of a comprehensive system for evaluating teaching effectiveness.
Friday, February 4, 2000
3:30—5 pm
Frangipani Room, IMU
Light refreshments provided
Rita Naremore is Professor of Speech & Hearing Sciences and coordinator
of the department’s clinical Master’s degree program. She is
a recipient of the College of Arts and Sciences—Graduate School Alumni
Award for Outstanding Teaching and the President’s Award for Distinguished
Teaching. She has served as Associate Dean in the College of Arts and
Sciences and as chair of her department, focusing on curriculum development
and reform in both of those administrative roles. She was a member of
a national task force established by the American Speech-Language-Hearing
Association to define standards for undergraduate education in her field.
She is the author of three textbooks.
Scholarship Issues in Distributed Education:
Three Case Studies
Erwin Boschmann
Not since the invention of the printing press have educators had such
a sweeping set of opportunities to help the learner, as we do today with
the advent of sophisticated and ever more readily available technologies.
The institutionalization of mass education in the past century often brought
with it the necessity for non-interactive delivery of content; however
now, with information technologies, for the first time, we can educate
the masses and do so in a pedagogically sound, interactive way. The session
will examine a few underlying principles, it will examine the admittedly
sparse research literature on teaching and learning in distributed education,
and it will focus on three case studies that capitalize on the power of
technology to promote good pedagogy.
Friday, February 11, 2000
12 noon—1:30 pm
Georgian Room, IMU
Lunch provided from 11:30 am
Erwin Boschmann, Associate Vice President for Distributed Education at
all eight campuses of Indiana University, is a Professor of Chemistry
at IUPUI where he has taught since 1968. From 1988 to 1998 he served as
Associate Dean of the Faculties charged with responsibilities for faculty
development for the 1500 full-time and 800 part-time faculty at IUPUI.
He is the author of several dozen articles and numerous books on research
and teaching. He chaired the American Chemical Society’s national
examination committee for General, Organic, Biological Chemistry, and
is a table leader for the College Board’s Educational Testing Service
Advance Placement examinations. In 1983 he received Indiana University’s
statewide H. F. Lieber Award for Distinguished Teaching, and in 1986 he
was awarded a Lilly Faculty Open Fellowship. During 1997 he served as
chair of the Indiana Section of the American Chemical Society.
Colloquium on Classroom Research
Thomas Angelo
How can I determine whether my students are learning what I want them
to learn? How can I plan and conduct systematic inquiry into teaching
and learning issues of interest to me? Numerous faculty roundtables on
Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) have been conducted at IUB in recent
years and many IU faculty members regularly use these devices in their
classes. We are very fortunate to have this noted scholar of classroom
assessment and research available to IU faculty for a colloquium that
will explore these questions in further depth. Professor Angelo will examine
classroom research as a tool for improving classroom teaching, and as
a means of systematic inquiry into the nature of teaching and learning
in your class. This interactive colloquium will present the rationale
for and models of classroom research, and allow participants to design
research plans for their own classes. Participants are asked to come with
a “focus” or “target” course in mind, and perhaps
with the syllabus for that course. More information about Thomas Angelo
is available at http://www.depaul.edu/~tangelo/assessment/
Wednesday, February 16, 2000
4—5:30 pm
Walnut Room, IMU
Light refreshments provided
Professor Angelo is the author of Classroom Assessment Techniques—one
of the most influential books on undergraduate teaching of the decade—as
well as more than 20 articles and books on teaching, assessment and classroom
research. He has been an invited speaker on issues of Higher Learning
at more than 150 colleges and universities across the US and abroad.
Expectations and Effect of Graded Writing Assignments:
Two Classroom-based Research Projects
Donetta Cothran and Patrick Sellers
Session Moderator: Assistant Vice Chancellor Ray Smith
Written assignments help students develop communication skills and provide
opportunities to analyze and apply knowledge. Unfortunately, assessing
writing is a difficult task that frequently leaves students and teachers
dissatisfied with the process and product. In addition, teaching courses
with large enrollments often prevents the use of widespread writing assignments.
Donetta Cothran and Pat Sellers discuss these questions in detail.
Donetta Cothran explores the evolution and use of one system of clarifying
student expectations and understanding of grades. Via surveys and interviews,
she examines students’ and teachers’ use of and perspectives
on the classroom innovation of rubrics to improve teaching and learning.
She describes the results as well as strategies for grade clarification
and its effect on the teacher and students.
Pat Sellers proposes a solution to the problem of teaching writing to
large numbers of students: the use of undergraduate teaching interns (UTIs)
to assist with grading of paper assignments. Do students heed the UTI
comments on their papers? For those that do, does performance improve?
His research explores these questions and others through information collected
from students about their weekly writing assignments in his large course.
More generally, the research is directed at better understanding of causes
of under-performance in undergraduate students.
Friday, March 3, 2000
3:30—5 pm
Frangipani Room, IMU
Light refreshments provided
Event sponsored jointly by the Campus Writing Program and the Scholarship
of Teaching and Learning Initiative.
Donetta Cothran is an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology.
She also holds the Child Development Professorship in the School of HPER.
A graduate of the University of Maryland, Cothran publishes her research
in the leading education journals, including Teaching and Teacher
Education and Journal of Research and Development in Education.
Her dissertation was awarded the Outstanding Dissertation Award by the
American Educational Research Association Special Interest Group for Research
on Learning and Instruction in Physical Education. Dr. Cothran is co-editor
of Physical Activity Today and serves on the editorial board of the Journal
of Teaching in Physical Education.
Patrick Sellers is an assistant professor in the Department of Political
Science. He has published in leading journals in political science. His
current research on Congress and the media is funded by the National Science
Foundation. He serves on the academic advisory board of the Center on
Congress at Indiana University. As a recipient of an American Political
Science Association Congressional Fellowship, he worked in the office
of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD).
Improving Exams to Assess Concept Learning
in Large Classes
Greg Kitzmiller
Can differences in levels of student learning be better discerned in
large survey courses through greater use of multiple choice items that
are designed to assess conceptual understanding? Can use of such items
influence learning outcomes such as concept retention? In this session,
Greg Kitzmiller reviews the process by which he has increased dispersion
in student exam scores without significantly reducing the mean score.
With David Perry in the Bureau of Evaluative Studies and Testing (BEST),
he discusses principles for construction and refinement of items designed
to test understanding of concepts. He also reports results of investigation
into the effects of such items on concept retention in his own classes.
Friday, March 24, 2000
12 noon—1:30 pm
Frangipani Room, IMU
Lunch provided from 11:30 am
Greg Kitzmiller is a Lecturer in the Marketing Department of the Kelley
School of Business where he has taught three or more sections of undergraduate
courses each term for the last four years. He is Faculty Advisor for the
Undergraduate Entrepreneur’s Club and member of the Board of Advisors
for IU’s Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship. His professional interests
are divided between teaching and professional talks on the marketing of
specific categories of food products. Recently, his focus has shifted
to include Europe and Latin America where he often gives invited talks.
Dimensions of Teaching as Represented in a Course
Portfolio
Daniel Bernstein
Faculty who have an interest in teaching may have found it difficult
to represent the intellectual component of their work in conventional
forms of teaching documentation. The student voice can capture some appropriate
aspects of a teacher’s connection with learners, but the depth and
substance of teaching work is often not represented in our professional
documentation. This workshop will engage the audience in a discussion
of what one would like to know about an individual’s teaching and
about how various forms of representation succeed in providing an indication
of the level of those important characteristics. Two frameworks for understanding
teaching accomplishments will be described and some examples of faculty
writing about teaching will be considered in the light of those frameworks.
The session will also introduce IUB faculty to opportunities for participation
in a multi-institution project to explore and circulate reflective writing
about teaching.
Monday, April 3, 2000
4—5 p.m.
Walnut Room, IMU
Daniel Bernstein is Professor of Psychology at the University of Nebraska,
where he has been on the faculty since 1973. His teaching has been centered
on student learning for all of that time. Beginning with a self-paced
introductory course that brought a large percentage of learners to high
levels of achievement, he has designed courses at all levels of higher
education that make learner understanding the primary goal. Bernstein
has worked to promote teaching within the profession through participation
in four FIPSE-funded projects at Nebraska, including currently serving
as Project Director for implementation of faculty fellowships in peer
review of teaching. He has received numerous campus awards for teaching,
he is a Charter Member of the University of Nebraska Academy of Distinguished
Teachers, and he was a Pew Scholar in the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship
of Teaching and Learning during AY 98-99. Bernstein is the author or coauthor
of more than twenty-five articles and chapters on human motivation, learning,
and drug abuse, and he has edited two books. He has served as associate
editor and editor of scholarly journals, and he co-edited a special issue
of Innovative Higher Education on peer review of teaching. He
has served on the faculty of the Division of Behavioral Biology at the
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and as a Fulbright Scholar he was a Visiting
Professor of Psychology at the University of Trier (Germany).
Closing Keynote Address of the Spring 2000 Symposium—How
We Defeat Ourselves: Dysfunctional Illusions of Rigor
Craig E. Nelson
From reading the pedagogical literature and watching my own classes,
I slowly realized that much of my pedagogy, though standard practice,
was having the opposite of its intended effect. Pedagogical practices
that are commonly assumed to demand more from students and thereby increase
their achievement actually seemed to interfere with their success. Thus
began a search for changes that would increase the number of students
whose performance earned an A grade in my courses without lowering the
expectations. Key moves have included more explicitly developmental assignments,
expanded use of discussion, taking more responsibility for having the
students prepared for discussion, and modifying conventional policies
on re-taking exams. These changes will be summarized and the audience
will be invited to explore their relevance to their own interactions with
students. Connections with Marcia Baxter Magolda’s opening keynote
and with the other main conference themes will also be explored.
Friday, April 7, 2000
3:30 pm
Whittenberger Auditorium, IMU
Reception follows, University Club, IMU
Craig E. Nelson is Professor of Biology and of Public and Environmental
Affairs at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he has been since
1966. He has received several awards for distinguished teaching from IU
as well as nationally competitive awards for distinguished teaching from
Vanderbilt and Northwestern Universities. He has presented invited workshops
and papers, mainly on fostering critical thinking and on diversity and
college teaching at numerous national meetings and at scores of colleges
and universities in more than 35 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, Ireland,
and England. He has served on the editorial boards of the Journal
for Excellence In College Teaching and Inquiry: Critical Thinking
Across The Disciplines and was a consulting editor for College
Teaching. He has been co-director on three National Science Foundation
grants (totaling $2.1 million) to conduct institutes for high school biology
teachers.
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