Teaching Academy Retreat: Engaging the Diverse Classroom

January 16th I attended the UW Teaching Academy Annual Retreat. The topic was, “What can I do in my classroom to create a welcoming teaching/learning environment for all students?” This is a very important topic on campus right now, as we’ve learned that students from underrepresented groups are not performing well in many of our large, gateway courses. This is more true at UW than at most of our peer institutions and it is true even for students with high ACT scores.

In preparation for the retreat, we read Can We Talk about Race? And other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation by Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D. I’ll add this to our office bookshelf. If you’d like to take a look it’s a quick read and we focused on Chapter 2.

At the workshop, we heard some interesting presentations and worked on some challenging case studies in small groups. We also heard from a student panel, which was so enlightening. I learned about some excellent materials developed by CIRTL, in particular their book, Reaching All Students: A Resource for Teaching in Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics, which I’ll place on our bookshelf, but is also freely available online (!!) I plan to go back to this for classes in all disciplines. This is a topic we should be thinking about for future LILI Forums and Retreats.

New Faculty & TA Orientations – Shared Values?

During Welcome Week, I spoke at a number of new faculty and TA orientations.  We all know that this is an important opportunity to introduce instructors to librarians’ role in teaching/learning on campus.  It’s also a  challenge to decide what to get across in the allotted 10-40 minutes, or maybe an opportunity to decide what you really have to say in the time allotted.  Speaking to instructor groups many times in the same week, you find yourself really modifying what you’re saying based on feedback (blank looks, enthusiasm, questions, evaluations, etc.)

So what seemed really important by the last talks?  I found myself referring back to a key sequence of topics:

• Research tells us that Information-seeking has changed, and the library is no longer the primary portal to for many information seekers.  (OCLC, 2006; Ithaka, 2008).  All users link more and reflect less (BL/JISC, 2007).
• This is problematic for our students when they come to college because they do not have the background knowledge needed to know what they’re looking for or evaluate their results to select resources that are appropriate for academic research (i.e. a Google)
• We have a shared responsibility to create learning experiences that require students to master more sophisticated information-seeking and use, and librarians can collaborate with faculty to make this happen.

Not rocket science, and many of you have said the same things all week, but that seemed to be the message that resonated.  Each group had its own needs and interests, but did seem to care about this message.  Will it be enough to move them to seek out the library’s instructional services this year?  They have a lot of other stuff on their minds, but probably it will motivate them to seek out help that’s low-threshold such as web pages or maybe library instruction sessions.  Hopefully, it will plant the seeds for a few deeper collaborations in the future.

Campus-Level Solutions to Developing Students’ Research Skills

An article in Inside Higher Ed today, Research Methods Beyond Google, highlights two initiatives that explore how we can promote information literacy at large, decentralized research institutions.  The Cornell Undergraduate Information Competency Initiative just got underway this year, and UC Berkeley’s Mellon Library/Faculty Fellowship for Undergraduate research was an initiative I worked on in my previous position.  Both models focus on working with faculty fellows to redesign assignments and courses to promote information literacy or research-based learning.   Berkeley’s program has now moved to working with departments.

The central idea behind these programs, to quote Inside Higher Ed, is that “the gap between students’ research competence and what’s required of a modern college graduate can’t easily be solved without a framework that encompasses faculty members, librarians, technicians and those who study teaching methods.”  Bringing all those players together in true collaboration to promote effective practices requires sustained effort and a willingness to work outside the usual boundaries of our responsibilities is a huge challenge that requires sustained effort and resources, as well as a campus commitment.

Our own efforts in this area are focused in two areas: getting involved in curriculum redesign processes at various levels and developing tools/models that librarians can use in these conversations.  We’re also piloting collaborative course and assignment consultations with other campus units.  The accomplishments of these programs provide some good inspiration to keep at it.

“Managing the Rogue Assignment” and research assignment design

I’ve been subscribing to ACRL RSS feeds for awhile, and the ACRLInsider blog includes tables of contents and links to full text for both College and Research Libraries (requires ACRL login for full text) and C&RL News (appears to be free).    This month’s C&RL News includes an article and accompanying author podcast about steps to dealing with “rogue” — poorly planned or constructed — research assignments.   I’m not sure all of the advice would work in every situation, but I believe that research assignment design and consultation is a key area that we need to be more deeply involved in.

I’ve been working with Brad Hughes of the Writing Center/Writing-across-the Curriculum to design and facilitate faculty workshops on library research assignment design.   Brad has agreed to collaborate with us this summer on workshops and other training tools for librarians who would like to be more engaged in and knowledgeable about assignment consultation.   Ideally, we’ll be involved not just in assuring that students are directed to the appropriate discovery tools, but also helping faculty develop learning outcomes and assessment strategies.

First Year Interest Group (FIGS) – lots to learn!

I was invited to the First Year Interest Groups (FIGS) faculty orientation to this to give our usual short presentation about how the library can support FIGS courses, and I did speak for a few minutes about how the library can work with faculty to design support the kind of inquiry-based learning experiences these faculty were hoping for. I showed examples of a Library Course Page, an Undergraduate Research Guide for a FIGS class, and talked about library instruction. Janice Rice joined me to talk about how College Library supports new students, and how she sees students using College as a place to get together to work, which faculty were interested in because community-building is such an important part of these courses. A few faculty members talked about how much working closely with the library’s instructional staff (College in one case, Steenbock in another) had helped their class and improved student success, and they were so eloquent that I may contact them to get them to share these stories in other venues.

By sitting in on the full event, I learned quite a bit that others may already know:

• FIGS students have higher GPAs over time, even though they begin with a lower “academic profile.”
• Effects seem particularly remarkable for students of color. Each year, FIGS partners with other units to promote enrollment by students of color, who are 25% of the students in these classes.
• A survey of “FIGsters as Seniors” is underway and we got a handout with some of the early responses. An analysis will be published at the end.

Sharing Good Practices among Universities

This week, I’m in Berkeley participating in a workshop about the Mellon Library/Faculty Fellowship for Undergraduate Research. I worked on this project for several years, and will be leading a session about assessing student learning and participating in the rest of the workshop. The purpose of the event is to share what we learned with a team from Cornell that’s planning a similar program, and it’s a great opportunity to learn about initiatives at other universities and to reflect on campus collaborations to promote information literacy. I guess it’s a bonus that we can include UW Madison in this conversation.

The first session of the workshop was about the campus environment — what was it about the campus culture that allowed us to collaborate to promote research-based learning, and what cultural barriers or challenges did we encounter? The speakers were Berkeley University Librarian Tom Leonard and Vice Provost Christina Maslach. They talked about the idea that there are many “creation stories” for our relatively successful initiative, but that these things develop more organically from formal and informal conversations and recognizing opportunities, rather than from a planned sequence of initiatives.

The second session was about collaboration between faculty and academic support units to support curricular innovations. The Mellon project had formal teams (faculty, educational technologist, librarian, pedagogy specialist, etc.) that met throughout a fellowship year. We tried a formal project management structure, but that was difficult to reconcile with the campus culture.

Even though this initiative was a huge (all consuming?) part of my work life for years, I’m learning a lot through hearing others talk about their experiences and from responding to the Cornell team’s thoughtful questions. This reflection stage often gets glossed over. I’m taking a lot of notes and asking questions in order to find good practices we can apply in our own programs.

Breakfast Meeting on Essential Learning Outcomes – history in the making?

This morning, I was a facilitator at a meeting on essential learning outcomes sponsored by Vice-Provost for Teaching and Learning Aaron Brower, the University General Education Committee, the Offices of the Dean of Students, the University Assessment Council, Academic Planning and Analysis, Orientation and New Student Programs, L&S, and L&S Academic Affairs. Phew! I serve on UGEC and the Assessment Council. The purpose was to invite selected faculty who teach large Gen Ed courses and courses that serve large numbers of new students to discuss the question: what do we hope our students will learn which transcends content (essential learning outcomes).  We addressed the question in a few different ways.

Aaron Brower opened the session by saying that this was the first time faculty had been asked to address this question, so history in the making. Jolanda Vanderwal Taylor talked a bit about LEAP and then we addressed the question in two table groupings: one across disciplines and a second with people in the same subject area (STEM, quantitative reasoning, communication, humanities, or social sciences).

At my first table, there was a real feeling of shared responsibility for developing the skills that help students succeed: everything from learning to take notes to how to analyze readings. There was also a sentiment that large GE courses can get students engaged, but cannot hope to equip them with the methodologies of the discipline they are taught in. Instead, they should enable students to approach a subject (science, political science) critically over the course of their lifetimes, and also understand the “limits of a discipline.” The second table I facilitated was the people who manage and teach courses that meet the Communication requirements. I have frequent conversations with this group, and we already have a framework of shared learning outcomes. The discussants felt that other faculty should understand that these courses do have their own “content,” and should not become the place to teach all baseline skills. We also talked about intentionality; how we share learning outcomes with students.    While information literacy was not discussed explicitly, most of the conversation was about “learning to learn,” so directly related to our work in this area.

It was a brilliant group of people, so facilitation was a very easy job. I agreed with Aaron Brower that it was a(n) historic moment — working together to make our goals for student learning explicit. I look forward to sharing the notes and handouts when they are posted. I asked for permission last week but it was felt that they were “not ready for prime time.” I think we can begin to examine them in meetings to inform our own planning, but it’s not a good idea to post them in this public forum until they are made available publicly.

Mellon Assessment Report

It’s up!!!! I spent several years working as the Assessment Consultant for the Mellon Library/Faculty Fellowship for Undergraduate Research The goals of the project were to redesign courses and assignments to incorporate research-based learning. My activities included facilitating sessions on assessment in a summer faculty institute, working with teams of support staff to implement redesigned courses (often very large courses), and working with faculty to develop strategies for assessing student learning. You can read more about my work on the project and what we learned in the Assessment of Student Learning Report.

Faculty Workshop on Research Assignment Design

Yesterday, I co-facilitated a workshop with Brad Hughes, Director of the Writing and Writing-across-the-Curriculum Programs, on “Designing Effective Library Research Assignments.” Here’s the description:

“Co-led by the director of the Library and Information Literacy Instruction program and the director of the L&S Program in Writing Across the Curriculum. What makes a successful and engaging library research assignment? Not sure what your expectations are, or that you’re communicating clear expectations to your students? Disappointed with the quality of the research your students produce? In this discussion-based workshop, we will learn about the ways that good assignment design can guide students to develop valued research skills, engage critically with source materials, and avoid common pitfalls such as plagiarism.”

I’ve co-facilitated a number of workshops on this topic, mostly for UC Berkeley’s GSI Teaching and Resource Center, which prepares graduate student instructors for teaching. I always learn a great deal from my co-facilitators from other parts of campus, and Brad is particularly knowledgeable about assignment design and a skilled facilitator, so this was a very rewarding collaboration for me. The downside was that we only got a few attendees, including a librarian and a few people from a language department. They were all very thoughtful about the relationship between undergraduate research in learning, as well as the role of the instructor, so I found the conversation very interesting. We’ll be repeating the workshop for the Teaching and Learning Symposium, and we’ll continue to refine the content and hope for more attendees next time.

I’m also thinking about how to share this content with more librarians, revising our existing materials on assignment design, and how to work more closely with the Writing Center when faculty consult with them about assignment design.