Methodist University
Title III Times
From the Director
Colleagues,
Volume 6, Issue 6
February 15, 2013
We are now in Year III of the Title III project. As you know, Methodist University (MU) received funding for
a Title III grant in October 2010. Title III funds are to be used to upgrade our technology, both in terms of
installing a campus-wide integrated database and installing instructional technology in our academic facilities.
Here is a review of activities that have occurred in the last month.
•
We have finished data analysis for the Title III Annual Report for Year 2 and have submitted that report to
the federal Department of Education. Some key findings and items in that report are:
• 56% of our faculty have completed the development of a Technology Integration Plan (TIP) with Bruce
Morgan, our Director of Instructional Technology
• 56% of our faculty have integrated instructional technology into their courses
• 44% of our faculty have participated in technology/curriculum innovation professional development
• The Jenzabar EX system is in operation across these areas of the University: all Admissions offices;
Registrar; Academic Advising; the Business Office areas of Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable,
Purchasing, Fixed Assets, Budgeting, and General Ledger; and Student Development and Services.
• The Jenzabar JICS web portals for students, faculty, and staff are active.
•
Update on the Jenzabar campus-wide student database software project:
•
A “post-launch” consulting visit by a Jenzabar staff member occurred January 29 through February 1.
•
OIC Programming staff continue to work on helping staff develop customized reports from the main
system (Jenzabar EX), as well as adding functionality to the JICS web portals.
Instructional technology:
•
Dr. Morgan continues to hold training sessions on the use of Smartboards, iPads, and other instructional technology. Please contact him to reserve a seat in one of his sessions.
•
We continue our diligence in reminding faculty to give us their assessment reports regarding use of
instructional technology in their classrooms. These reports are being prepared by faculty members
who had a TIP funded in Year 2.
•
We have also been receiving from faculty their plans for sharing what they have learned while attending instructional technology conferences where their travel was funded by Title III funds.
•
Please keep in mind we have faculty development money to sponsor faculty attendance to instructional technology/teaching and learning conferences. Please contact Bruce Morgan or a member of
the Title III Technology Integration Committee (Carl Dyke, J.D. Knode, Mark Bowman, Gary
Hinson) for details on how to make a proposal for such funding.
•
We keep receiving Technology Integration Proposals (TIPs) for integrating instructional technology
into teaching and learning. A number of these TIPs have been funded for Year 3, while others are
being tweaked and resubmitted. There is still time to submit TIP proposals for funding.
(continued on page 2)
Inside this issue:
From the Director
1
Calendar
2
Morgan’s Minutes
3
Teaching Tips
4
Page 2
Title III Times
(continued from page 1)
Inside this issue:
We are pleased by the enthusiasm shown by faculty for using instructional technology in the classroom.
• A Title III faculty development event is scheduled for the morning of Reading Day (May 1, 2013). This event will
From the Director
feature three speakers: Steve Anderson from University of South Carolina-Sumter, who is currently conducting
research on “flipping the classroom”; Janet Hurn from Miami University of Ohio whose current focus is using Calendar
iPads in the classroom; and our own Mark Bowman from the Justice Studies program, who wants to share his
knowledge and use of Google Apps. Also, we plan to provide a boxed lunch for attendees to “grab and go” at the Morgan’s Minutes
end of the event so they can get to their Reading Day afternoon tasks. Details about this Reading Day event will
Teaching Tips
follow.
We are very excited about the direction our Title III project is taking our institution. All members of the MU community,
particularly students, will benefit from this major transition. I will keep you posted on developments, and please keep
monitoring your Methodist email account for important information regarding Jenzabar and instructional technology
training opportunities.
Best regards,
Don Lassiter
Title III Director
Calendar of Events
February 2013
March 2013
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March 11-15—Spring Break
March 29—Good Friday Holiday (University closed)
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Page 3
Title III Times
Morgan’s Minutes
Food for thought:
Promoting Deep Learning
Barbara J. Millis • The University of Texas at San Antonio
As Laird, Shoup, Kuh, and Schwarz (2008, p. 471) point out, “faculty members, as the designers and facilitators of learning activities and tasks, play a key role in shaping students’ approaches to learning.” Bain and Zimmerman (2009, p. 10),
for example, define “great teachers as those people with considerable success in fostering deep approaches and results
among their students.” This paper provides research-based answers to these key questions:
•
What is deep learning?
•
Why should faculty adopt deep-learning approaches?
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What does deep learning look like? (examples and applications)
What is Deep Learning?
Looking at students’ reading strategies, Marton and Saljo (1976) identified deep and surface approaches to learning. They
discovered that students preparing for a test take two different approaches: Deep learners read for overall understanding
and meaning; surface learners focus on stand-alone, disconnected facts and rote memorization. Bacon and Stewart (2006)
postulate that “the issue of retention of deep or surface learning may have more to do with the amount of elaboration
involved.” They give as examples of elaboration “finding additional examples, reworking homework exercises, and finding personal meanings” (p. 184). Leamnson (2002) notes: “What is often called ‘deep learning,’ the kind that demands
both understanding and remembering of relationships, causes, effects and implications for new or different situations
simply cannot be made easy. Such learning depends on students actually restructuring their brains and that demands effort” (p. 7).
Deep learning leads to a genuine understanding that promotes long-term retention of the learned material and, just as
important, the ability to retrieve it and apply it to new problems in unfamiliar concepts (the idea of “transfer,” which is
aptly explored in chapter three of Bransford, Brown, and Cocking, 2000). Surface learning, on the other hand, focuses on
the uncritical acceptance of knowledge with an emphasis on memorization of unquestioned, unrelated facts. Retention is
fleeting and there is little long-term retention.
For further reading the article is available at:
http://www.theideacenter.org/sites/default/files/IDEA_Paper_47.pdf
Inside this issue:
From the Director
1
Calendar
2
Morgan’s Minutes
3
Teaching Tips
4
Page 4
Title III Times
Teaching Tips
The “Change–up” in Lectures
Joan Middendorf & Alan Kalish.
“Given
that students have an attention span of around 15 to 20 minutes and that university classes are
scheduled for around 50 or 75 minutes, instructors must do something to control their students’ attention. We recommend building a “change–up” into your class to restart the attention clock. If your
main mode of instruction is lecture, clearly the primary activity for most of your students is listening
to one person talk; even in whole class discussion, only the student actually speaking at any given
time is doing anything other than listening. Combining what we know about attention span and how
the mind works, we suggest that lectures should be punctuated with periodic activities. Johnstone and
Percival (1976) report that lecturers who “adopted a varied approach…and deliberately and consistently interspersed their lectures with illustrative models or experiments…short problem solving sessions, or some other form of deliberate break…usually commanded a better attention span from the
class, and these deliberate variations had the effect of postponing or even eliminating the occurrence
of an attention break” (p. 50). Many of our colleagues also report that when they intersperse mini–
lectures with active engagement for students for as brief a time as two to five minutes, students seem
re–energized for the next 15 to 20 minute mini–lecture. By planning exactly when to insert an activity……”
The full article is available at:
The National Teaching and Learning Forum Vol. 5, No. 2 1996
Inside this issue:
From the Director
1
Calendar
2
Morgan’s Minutes
3
Teaching Tips
4