Saturday, January 11, 2014 Working group breakout session 10:00 to 12:00; people started arriving around 10:23am Primary discussion topics: Pedagogy Use of Technology Numbering the important topics in order to identify the primary topics of the day. Topics 1 and 2 are the critical, overarching questions 3 and 4 are easily lumped 5 and 6 are lumped due to the role of technology 7 (virtual experience) discussed yesterday Topic 1: Next generation pedagogies o Research based pedagogies Learning research – not conducted in a class setting Active research (research in practice) - applying research ideas in class and seeing how it goes Observations, student feedback, self-evals Using research that is available for use in teaching - Social psychology -> STEM->geosciences - But how do these methods influence students of different levels? – there is no research supporting different types of learning - What does the research tell us? – Ideas of using methods that are compatible within specific cultural norms ; however, there isn’t extensive research that supports the idea that some techniques are better than others - Does the benefit come from cutting the material in favor of activities and more techniques? – Are we short changing the best students? - Multiple modes of delivery at the same time and methods must be changed in order keep students engaged. o The novelty can be critical in conveying ideas More dissemination of best practices - spreading useful techniques - Characterizing the number of faculty that access teaching resources Motivation of faculty members to adapt their teaching methods to encourage student learning - Instructor professional development is important More and more adjuncts may result in reducing quality teaching – according to college goals - Many are current on the science, but not on teaching techniques - This may be the same for graduate students – training graduate students may improve future teaching techniques. o But how do you motivate graduate students to improve their teaching techniques? TAs generally go through training before getting to teaching There might be issues with lumping many different fields which limits the benefit to geosciences There are critical differences between liberal arts and sciences making it very difficult to fill classes But we can’t do that any more – the diverse classes Faculty need to spend time with TAs in order to ensure quality teaching Budget cuts make this more difficult – more pressure on resources Improve availability of workshops and training for young scientists How do you deal with advisors that do not want their students involved in the teaching development In the UK, specific training days that are required. This prevents advisors limiting student involvement Could NSF have some requirement for teacher development There needs to be leadership support –admin buy in So people don’t perceive gaining teaching skills to be detrimental to their careers. Even higher than admin, there needs to be a shift in the University goals – quality over quantity of students Encourage Regents/high level individuals to examine the quality of education Encourage classroom attendance of regents/high level admin to attend classes o What is the message that we want to send to R/HLA though classroom visits? Regent visits to gain an idea of the difficulty teaching a wide range of students o What do the best teachers do? Teaching techniques that get students out in 4 years o How are new techniques/tech make a difference Provide Pres/HLA with the information they need to convey the importance of geoscience education Encourage more geoscience faculty to collaborate with other departments to publish in education journals Let people know that scholarship, proposals and journal pubs available through this collaboration Make IRB more important Seek out faculty that can help with education techniques o This requires equal intellectual gain o Have some mechanism of evaluation This requires geoscience faculty to make an effort to reach out to education faculty o R1 institutions do not support teaching development Teaching can be used against you, but bad teaching doesn’t generally hurt you. o TAs and new faculty want to do a good job There needs to be guidance for them – providing help is necessary The main issue may actually be the lack of guidance from senior faculty o How do we encourage senior faculty members to improve teaching Topic 2: skipped Topic 3 and 4: How to we get geoscience faculty improve teaching techniques o We know how to teach better, but how to get research faculty involved We need to make this interesting to research faculty Encourage the importance of NSF broader impacts Use centers of teaching and learning o Faculty may be in denial about their skills How to we encourage faculty to improve? – Technology and methods Maybe we can’t – focus on upcoming TAs and young faculty It isn’t the method, it is the delivery Focus on people that are interested in improving teaching o Ensure that NSF broader impacts should include improved teaching This can be a powerful motivator to encourage improved teaching Ensure that teaching improvement is an important broader impact There needs to be some metric to judge the broader impacts Evaluate awardee on meeting broader impact goals Longer-term addition of education publications to NSF jackets NSF collection of teaching data in order to determine the success of implementation of new pedagogy There should be a rubric to evaluate broader impact But most review panels do not consider teaching an important broader impact o How do we make people use new teaching techniques? Require faculty to use specific techniques Use of Geoportal – allows students to look at videos, test question banks, etc Grading schemes that involve assessment of student involvement online and in class Requirement of specific goals within syllabi that are developed by the entire department - General ed, discipline specific, course level goals - Student assessment of new learning techniques – not necessarily student reviews, but focus on technique o Most important point? Most difficult to understand? Gentle leader in the department Non-threatening reaching out to other faculty members Leadership academies – some type of certification Teaching awards that require some sort of public lectures How do you deal with bad evaluations when introducing new pedagogies? Improved learning outcomes Online programs that generate word cloud from student feedbacks Evidence that new pedagogies do improve student grades Issues with evaluating the same class you teach - Find external evaluators Using control groups at larger colleges Topics 5 and 6: Technological Advances in the classroom o How do we evaluate new technologies? Immediate feedback from students – phones, clickers Phone based clickers Can be used even in small classes Online feedback programs I don’t know buttons in slide shows Word cloud generators o Flipped classrooms Lectures at night, work in class o Hybrid Course Online components remove face time o Is technology a worthwhile investment in pedagogies? Do NOT confuse technology with great teaching Any innovative teaching techniques should be evaluated Must be an early-adopter Faculty must adapt to what the students use Lack of student knowledge in widely available may limit your ability to use new ‘old’ technologies o MOOCs Could impact the bottom of line of many smaller institutions MOOCs could replace intro level courses Within geology you need the field and lab experiences Are there courses for faculty about teaching? This might be a mechanism to spread new teaching techniques - Ease of access may encourage faculty learning of new techniques Webinars for faculty No research on the effectiveness Make the case that MOOCs are not the same as direct student-teacher interactions Content – is it in place? How do we get it in place? Work to intertwine pedagogy and the content Context of the content can improve relevance