Engaging Faculty in Scholarship of
Teaching and Learning:
A View from BRIDGE
Bridging Research, Instruction, and
Discipline-Grounded Epistemologies
College Teaching and Learning Conference
January 2004
Arlene Wilner
Professor of English
Director, RiderBRIDGE
wilner@rider.edu
Recursive BRIDGE Activities





Reflect upon and articulate disciplinary
epistemologies
Design and implement teaching strategy
Assess effectiveness of the strategy, using
CATs (Classroom Assessment Techniques)
Document inquiry in case-study format
Share findings (“go public”) in one or more
venues, including BRIDGE website:
http://www.rider.edu/~bridge
What BRIDGE Is Not

Not non-disciplinary
No template or set of generic skills

Not inter-disciplinary
Purpose: To help faculty do more
effectively what they already do
Why Discipline-Grounded?
“. . .information-processing problems are
goal oriented, and epistemic problems
are oriented toward the incongruity that
generates the problem.”
Michael Carter, “Problem-Solving Reconsidered: A Pluralistic theory
of Problems.” College English 50.5 (Spring 1988), 551-65
Example from Biology
Dr. Julie Drawbridge
Pilot Experiment SP/02
Developmental Biology
• Craig Nelson - 5 point, take-home
– students complete in blue ink
– in class revision in groups (red ink)
– class discussion of answers
Example from Biology, cont’d.
Example
• On 5 point sheet
– Explain how Hox genes specify the location of
limb buds along the anterior-posterior axis.
– If Hox genes specify limb bud location, why can
you get extra limbs if you implant FGF beads into
the flank?
• On Exam
– Would a limb form if you implanted an FGF bead
in the flank of a snake embryo? Why, why not?
Would it be a forelimb or hindlimb? Why?
Example from Biology, Cont’d.
Sample Answers:
If Hox genes specify where limb buds form, why can you
get extra limbs if you implant FGF bead into the flank.
 " FGF is a paracrine factor secreted by the lateral plate mesoderm
and induces the AER. Hox genes code for FGF proteins, so the FGF
would induce the AER as if the Hox gene was there and had turned
on FGF. Hox gene  FGF  AER Limb. FGF is downstream of
Hox genes "
"because the FGF paracrine factor is capable of limb forming
interactions between the ectoderm and mesoderm. If the beads are
placed ectopically beneath the flank ectoderm, extra limbs emerge.
FGF bead bypasses HOX genes"
Example from Biology, cont’d.
Sample Answers (exam):
Would a limb form if you implanted an FGF bead in the flank
of a snake embryo? Why, why not? Would it be a forelimb or
hindlimb? why?
 " Yes, a limb bud would form...downstream of Hox genes is FGF. This doesn't
happen in a normal snake because it doesn't express the proper Hox genes in the
proper location. It would form a forelimb because snakes have mostly thoracic
vertebrae and the forelimb is made at the junction of the cervical and thoracic
vertebrae. Hindlimbs are made at the lumbar-sacral junction which snakes don't
have, so they wouldn't make hindlimbs "
"...FGF bead would form a limb. Since a snake is nearly all thoracic vertebrae,
and FGF bead would create small forelimbs by expressing the Tbx5 transcription
factor"
Example from Biology, cont’d.
•
•
•
•
•
•
SUMMARY
5 point sheets must count
misconceptions MUST be addressed
thought questions
follow up questions on exam
BIO300 Exam average FA/99 - 60.5
BIO300 Exam average SP/02 - 73.4
Example from Biopsychology
Dr. Jonathan Karp



[I gave] In-class writing assignments such as
impromptu review paragraphs and quizzes.
I changed aspects of the laboratory portion of the
class to accommodate the fact almost all the material
and vocabulary covered is new to the students. This
is especially important because the students have not
learned to approach/view the world in a
critical/scientific manner.
I significantly slowed down pace of lectures. One of
the most difficult things for me was to get over the
feeling that I was being too ‘remedial’ in what I
covered. A part of this involved intentional repetition
during my lectures.
Example from
Communication Law
Dr. Pam Brown

Having listened to my colleagues in BRIDGE and
reading the many variations on CATs [Classroom
Assessment Techniques] developed by others, I
devised the following approach. First, I had to accept
that as tight as time is in a course like this, I needed
to give class-time to ‘walking students through’ the
use of the course materials. I also decided to attach
credit to the completion and submission of the Study
Guides. . . My overall conclusion is that it is
appropriate to spend as much as a full hour walking
through the students’ handling of the questions on
the Guide to Understanding Cases. Though class time
is at a premium, this is clearly time well spent.
Example from Literary Theory and
Critical Methods/ Dr. Ryan Netzley

You will write five response papers. All of
them must be to essays in the packet (not
chapters from The Theory Toolbox or the
literary works). You may choose the texts to
which you respond. Responses are due on
the day that we begin discussion of a given
text.
Response papers ask you to critically engage
a text and produce some analytical
commentary on it.
Example from Literary Theory
and Critical Methods
English 240 – Methods of Literary Analysis
Instructor: Ryan Netzley
Exam One
1)
2)
3)
In
For this exam, you will produce two dialogues between critics,
theorists, authors, or characters. You may choose from the following
three options:
David Foster Wallace, Foucault, and Nietzsche on the subject of
meaning and its proliferation.
Hamlet (the character, not the play or “Shakespeare”), Freud, and
Foucault on the subject of subjectivity, individuality, and personhood.
Nealon (co-author of The Theory Toolbox and primarily responsible for
the sections on popular culture and ideology), Adorno (you may ignore
Horkheimer for our purposes), and Benjamin on either Kenneth
Branagh’s Hamlet or Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet (do not attempt to
address both films!).
short, you should produce a discussion between three figures that
addresses one of the major concepts that we’ve discussed in class.
Example from Literary Theory
and Critical Methods
Having begun this project with the conviction that one of the
chief problems that haunts this course (and others like it, regardless
of title) is student resistance and the entire reductive pragmatic
discourse that attends such resistance ("Derrida is too hard"; "why
do we have to read this stuff?"; "isn't it all just up to the
individual?"), my main intervention -- at the level of assignments -was a dialogue exam that required students to inhabit various
critical, theoretical, and literary figures. This alternative exam
structure proved moderately successful, as student responses
improved dramatically after the exam [emphasis added]. The
downside, of course, is that this progress did not occur until midway
through the semester. In the future, I would experiment with more
and more directive response papers, asking students to mime
theoretical texts earlier in the semester.
Why Multidisciplinary?
1) Emergence of common themes:
 Expert vs. novice learning
 Tension between coverage and critical
thinking
 Challenge of helping students read
purposefully
 Need to acknowledge cognitive and affective
level of students
 Difficulty of matching teaching with testing
Why Multidisciplinary?
2) Opportunities for analogic thinking
Example: “I have decided to change my
project for the spring 2002 semester. Inspired
by Anne Osborne [History], I have revised
two of my [Business Law] courses. Like Anne,
I want my students to read primary sources
and critically evaluate varying solutions to a
variety of ethical and legal dilemmas.”
Dr. Susan Denbo
Why Multidisciplinary?
3) Greater faculty awareness of role
within larger community:
Increased respect for the challenges
faced by colleagues in other disciplines
Increased understanding of
challenges for students, who must
contend (as “novices”) simultaneously
with four or five of us!
The Value of Qualitative Data
Importance of contexts and “thick description”:
“If teaching is going to be community property
it must be made visible, through artifacts that
capture its richness and complexity. In the
absence of such artifacts, teaching is a bit like
dry ice; it disappears at room temperature.”
Lee Shulman, President, Carnegie Academy for
the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
The Value of Qualitative Data
Insights yielded by longitudinal studies:
Performance at next level, success rate at obtaining
interviews and securing jobs, success in graduate
school (ideas from a chemistry professor)
Interviews with students who took the course a year
ago: “I’m wondering if the opportunity to engage in
problem-solving has had any impact on how they see
themselves as learners—and how they remember the
course (ideas from a psychology professor)
The Value of Qualitative Data
Compelling nature of “latitudinal”
studies—
analogous effects from similar
experiments conducted independently
of each other (enhanced by multidisciplinary faculty development
structure)
The Value of Qualitative Data

Insights yielded by problem-posing and
inquiry regardless of “replicability” of
outcomes:
“Ultimately, the measure of success for the
scholarship of teaching movement will not be the
degree to which it can—by focusing on the ‘many
layers of practice’ at the heart of teaching —discover
solutions worth implementing, but the extent to
which it is successful in discovering problems worth
pursuing.” Randy Bass
The Value of Qualitative Data
Impossibility of “controlled” experiments:
Classroom Assessment-Classroom
Research =“any systematic inquiry
designed and conducted for the
purpose of increasing insight and
understanding of the relationships
between teaching and learning.” K.
Patricia Cross
Expect Resistance

“What if. . .?”
“I just don’t know how good I will be at
either self-examination or willingness to
change the way I teach dramatically. I
will give it a try, but don’t be too
disappointed or surprised if I fall short
of your expectations.”
Expect Resistance
“Don’t blame me.”
“Why don’t we have better
students?”
“How much can we lower the bar?”
“How much can we be expected to
spoonfeed?”

The Value of “Going Public”



“I thought the program was very helpful in comparison
[with others] because there was an actual focus and
seeming purpose to the presentations.” (English
professor)
“The format was valuable for semi-structured exchange
of ideas—without this structure it is clear that the
audience would have spent the full time in a gripe
session about students” (biology professor)
“I find it helpful to get concrete examples of different
ways to improve instruction and hear about
problems/issues in their implementation. . . .These ‘live
cases’ are really great.” (finance professor)
The Value of “Going Public”


“I appreciated that [the program] discussed
SPECIFIC efforts on the part of individual
faculty to enhance teaching effectiveness.”
(biology professor)
“I particularly liked the focus of the session,. .
.which assumed that students were to be
addressed at the level at which they come to
us and that it is the responsibility of the
teacher to figure out how best to teach them.
This is a point that cannot be made often
enough.” (English professor)
The Value of “Going Public”

“It is always enlightening to have a glimpse
into how colleagues deal with problems and
issues I also face. . .I worry about how to
balance course content with learning that will
have staying power with students. . . .I liked
the [Communication Law professor’s]
experiment with shifting some of the burden
for the course onto students, and getting
them to evaluate how they learn, not just
what they are learning.” (French professor)
Better to Light a Candle. . .

BRIDGE was a very valuable experience for
me. You know the old cliche about it being
better to light a candle than to curse the
darkness. I think cursing the darkness of
dealing with students' poor preparation, lack
of motivation, and odd (for lack of a better
term) learning styles can be all too prevalent.
It felt good to be a part of trying to light a
candle. . . .