Inquiry Communities
Inquiry Commons
Indiana University Inquiry Commons fosters small communities of Bloomington faculty members and graduate students that will generate, critique, and disseminate in-depth and comparative scholarship that examines relationships between learning and teaching, within and across disciplines.These collaborative inquiry communities will contribute to what Huber and Hutchings call a teaching commons, a conceptual space in which inquiry and innovation about teaching and learning can be exchanged. There, as they say, the private work of the classroom can be"made visible, talked about, studied, built upon, and valued."
- Freshman Learning Project
- Food for Thought: HUBI-ELSI Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Project
- Building a Network for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning History
- Cross-Disciplinary Research on Collaborative Learning
- Diversity Course Exploratory Study
- Just in Time Teaching for the History of Photography
- Chemistry Taking Action to Research and Enhance Student Achievement
- Brief Student Goal Orientation Intervention to Improve Success in Entry Level Courses in the Natural Sciences
Freshman Learning Project
Each year since 1998, the Freshman Learning Project (FLP), the flagship faculty learning community on Indiana University's Bloomington campus, has led small cohorts of faculty members through an intensive learning process about teaching first-year students and gateway courses.The FLP experience culminates in a two-week seminar that is designed to help faculty understand the obstacles faced by students in their introductory classes and to develop new ways to help students overcome these obstacles.
Food for Thought: HUBI-ELSI Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Project
Vicki Getty(HPER , Diane Henshel (SPEA), James Reidhaar (Fine Arts Studio), Heather Reynolds (Biology), and Whitney Schlegel (Human Biology), and George Rehrey
Two interdisciplinary initiatives at Indiana University, Human Biology and the Environmental Literacy and Sustainability Initiative, seek to advance knowledge that transcends disciplinary boundaries and to provide transformative learning experiences that nurture students in their cognitive, social, ethical, cultural and global identities. This project will develop and test a novel model of cross-disciplinary service learning as one approach to achieving our goals of fostering student interdisciplinary understanding, intellectual and personal development, and civic engagement.
Building a Network for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning History
Arlene Diaz, David Pace, Leah Shopkow, Joan Middendorf
At the core of the notion of a scholarship of teaching and learning is the belief that learning at the college level is always rooted in disciplinary ways of knowing. But these practices are often so ingrained in the practice of experts in the field that they are invisible and not explicitly taught. The IU History Department believes it can make a major contribution to SOTL by systematically identifying some of the more important forms of historical practice expected in the upper-level classes of large Research-1 history departments.
Cross-Disciplinary Research on Collaborative Learning
Theresa A. Ochoa (Education) & Howard Rosenbaum (Library & Information Science)
This project will empirically determine the critical success factors in approaches to collaborative learning in the classroom and to determine which factors cut across disciplines and which are only appropriate within specific disciplines. The broad implication of this work is to be able to provide an evidence-based argument for the importance of collaborative learning approaches across the disciplines along with a typology of successful strategies that is firmly grounded in data from studies of collaborative learning implemented in five different disciplines.
Diversity Course Exploratory Study
Katharine V. Byers (Social Work), Carolyn Calloway-Thomas (Communication and Culture) and Thomas Nelson Laird (Education)
This research will identify effective teaching strategies and learning experiences that move students toward greater acceptance of diversity and increased skills in interacting with a more diverse population. It will document and quantify the degree to which different aspects of the diversity courses affect student attitudes, behaviors, and their understanding of themselves and determine which components, including classroom activities, projects, and readings, used in diversity classes effectively contribute to the students' learning.
Just in Time Teaching for the History of Photography
Claude Cookman (Journalism), Sara Mandel (Fine Arts-History) and Michael Lyons
The Just in Time Teaching method asks students to respond – online and shortly before class – to questions on assigned readings. In analyzing the data collected through questionnaires, student self-evaluation essays and focus groups, students have reported that the JiTT method positively affected their motivation. This research team is currently exploring the affective dimension of this type of learning.
Chemistry Taking Action to Research and Enhance Student Achievement
Michael Edwards (Chemistry) and Bob Vantine (Office of Strategic Mentoring)
Currently, black students make up only 6% of the IU chemistry department undergraduate majors with the number of black students graduating from the department decreasing over the past several years. This research will identify and define the variables impacting student achievement in introductory level chemistry courses in order to increase student learning and achievement while creating a caring and welcoming environment for all students in chemistry.
Brief Student Goal Orientation Intervention to Improve Success in Entry Level Courses in the Natural Sciences
Bernice Pescosolido ( Sociology) and Carol Hostetter (Social Work)
Traditional concerns for student retention, success, and learning often focus on entry-level and low success rate courses. A successfully-piloted brief intervention that focuses on student goal orientation offers a promising and feasible alternative. Based on Goal Orientation Theory, the early research indicates that students will succeed if they are much more interested in learning the material. Data from individual and class performances will be collected and analyzed to determine overall efficacy of the GoFar intervention and to understand if the intervention works for particular students, courses, or learning environments.
