SourceLink Volume 4, Issue 2
Fall 2009
2 LT&ITC 2.0................................................ 2 LT&ITC Library Online..........................
ICCTL Experience Maria A. Clayton..................................
3 NetVibes.................................................... 3 Teaching Tip Daniel Prather...................................... New Books and Media at the Center.........................................
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4 Fall Schedule of Events........................ 5 New Books at the Center..................... 5 Visualization Resources....................... 6 Outstanding Teachers........................... 6 ShareFair................................................... 7 Teachers Resources.............................. 7 Directors’ Corner.................................... 8
Connecting MTSU Faculty
Welcome!
SourceLink is news from the Learning, Teaching, and Innovative Technologies Center (LT&ITC). We want to share information on learning, innovative pedagogies and technologies, and research. We’ve included a calendar of workshops and seminars designed to support the teaching and learning goals of MTSU’s community of educators. Your input is always welcome. We appreciate receiving news and inquiries about teaching tips, innovative techniques, or other relevant topics of interest.
Introducing the Academy for Teaching Excellence at MTSU Timothy R. Graeff, Academy Director The Learning, Teaching, and Innovative Technologies Center (LT&ITC) recently launched an innovative pilot program for increasing student learning and teaching effectiveness—the Academy for Teaching Excellence (ATE). Its purpose is to allow faculty members (both new and experienced) to learn about new teaching techniques and methodologies, integrate these new techniques into the classroom, and then test their effectiveness. How Does It Work? A faculty member participates in the ATE for one calendar year starting in the spring semester. In the first semester, the faculty member works with a teaching mentor to identify new approaches and methodologies to improve student learning and teaching effectiveness. In the second semester, the faculty member integrates these new methodologies (strategies, activities) into classroom teaching and conducts a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research project to measure their impact on learning. The written SoTL research paper is then submitted to a teaching journal in the faculty member’s discipline. Active, Collaborative Approaches with Satisfying Outcomes This year, Michelle Bobbitt (Management and Marketing) and Mary Phillips (Accounting) completed their first semester in the academy. Both have identified new approaches and methodologies for improving learning and have designed SoTL research projects to measure their effectiveness.
Learning, Teaching, and Innovative Technologies Center MTSU Box 231 1301 East Main Street Murfreesboro, TN 37132 Ph (615) 494-7671 Fx (615) 494-8612 ltanditc@mtsu.edu www.mtsu.edu/ltanditc
Recognizing that business students taking their first accounting class often have only an abstract understanding of accounting concepts and procedures, Mary Phillips developed an in-class, role-playing exercise that helps students gain a more concrete understanding of what accountants do in the real world. Students are placed into groups of either buyers or sellers of candy. Students working for the “Mom & Pop Candy Shop” must buy cases of candy Introducing the Academy cont. on page 2
2 LT&ITC 2.0 This year, the center is piloting several new Web 2.0 tools to test their effectiveness in sharing information about teaching and learning in higher education. What is Web 2.0? Web 2.0 is about community, collaboration, and creativity. Tools and resources that reflect Web 2.0—wikis, blogs, podcasts, bookmarking, etc.— encourage learning from others, sharing information, and creating new things. With growth in online education, these tools have become popular instructional technologies. The ones being tested by the LT&ITC will, we hope, provide faculty with new kinds of access to the center and a useful array of information about teaching and learning in today’s learning environments.
LT&ITC Delicious Bookmarks What is Delicious? Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage, and share Web pages from a centralized source. With emphasis on the power of the community, Delicious greatly improves how people discover, remember, and share on the Internet. The LT&ITC Delicious bookmarks are an extension of those on our Web site; they flag valuable information currently of interest to college teachers. Need information on course design, recent videos relevant to U.S. history, or tips on how to lead a discussion online? Are you teaching a course for the first time and would like to see how others approach the course and the materials they use? Need a tutorial on assessment or visual literacy? We’ve discovered reputable academic sites and tagged them so you can tell at a glance whether they are relevant to your purposes. Take a look, or if you collect bookmarks, share them with the center so that everyone can benefit! Tags: web 2.0, new media, social media, folksonomy
LT&ITC Library and Resource Center Now Online ! This summer, LT&ITC followed the example of other academic teaching centers by putting our collection online for all to see at Library Thing, a cataloging service that displays information about our books, journals, newsletters, media and other materials. Want to know whether we have books about teaching portfolios or rubrics? You can check our collection at LT&ITC Library Thing from any computer at any time of the day or night and do a search by title, author, or tag.
Introducing the Academy cont. from pg. 1 (represented by gum and lollipops) from students working for their supplier (“Mega Sugar Daddy Distributors” in Calorie Park, Tenn.). Both groups must keep accurate accounting records for all transactions, including buying on discount, payments, merchandise delivery, and merchandise returns. Students are even given checkbooks to pay for the candy. Each student is assigned a role—accountant, inventory clerk, treasurer, or delivery person. For each transaction, students must adjust inventory records, note checking account balances, and record the transaction using the proper t-accounts.
Students working on the role-playing exercise.
Students have reported that this role-playing exercise increased their understanding of basic accounting principles and procedures, increased confidence in their ability to maintain correct accounting records for a retail store, and increased their understanding of an accountant’s role in the business environment. Similarly, Michelle Bobbitt has been able to integrate a semester-long simulation into her senior-level capstone marketing management course. In her simulation, students work in groups to design their product, make decisions about target markets, determine the appropriate number of salespeople to hire, and make multiple decisions about the amount of money to spend on advertising and other forms of marketing. Because the simulation is computer-based, Michelle will be able to conduct a SoTL research project examining how the amount of time students spend making marketing decisions and the nature of the group interactions that lead to these decisions directly affect students’ ability to successfully complete the simulation exercise. Both Mary and Michelle have integrated what they learned from the mentoring component of the ATE into classroom teaching. Every indication is that the new strategies and methodologies they have adopted are leading to increased student learning. For More Information If you would like to learn more about the activities and simulations that Mary and Michelle are using, they will be presenting the results of their SoTL projects at an event sponsored by the LT&ITC on November 16. (check the calendar on page 5) If you would like more information about the Academy for Teaching Excellence, contact Tim Graeff at tgraeff@mtsu.edu, or Tana McDonald at ltanditc@mtsu.edu. Tags: active learning, collaboration, mentoring, simulations, SoTL
An ICCTL Experience
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by Maria A. Clayton, English
The invaluable opportunity for me to attend the 20th International Conference on College Teaching and Learning (ICCTL) April 13–17, 2009, in Jacksonville, Florida, began months earlier when an English Department colleague, Dr. Mohammed Albakry, nominated me for MTSU’s Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable 2009 Award. Being selected from a very strong and competitive group of fellow nominees across campus was not only an honor but also very fortuitous for me since the award was accompanied by a fully funded trip to the ICCTL. (Many thanks, Dr. Cheatham and the College of Basic and Applied Sciences for funding this year’s trip and affording one of your faculty members the experience of taking part in a most informative and enlightening forum.) Now promoting its 21st conference, ICCTL emphasizes the use of innovative strategies, such as interactive and cooperative learning combined with technology, to support higher education learning. Global Commitment to Technology and Education Beyond being honored as an award recipient, even beyond being recognized by having my conference paper, “Building Bridges: Using Technology to Move Students from Old Concepts to New,” selected for publication in Selected Papers from the 21st International Conference on College Teaching and Learning, and beyond garnering a wealth of new ideas, I found the conference experience validating. I was surrounded by colleagues across the disciplines, from around the globe, who fully understand the critical nature of pedagogically sound integration of technology in higher education. They are individuals committed to research and scholarship in this area, a critical mandate not universally addressed in academia. Every presentation I attended was influenced or informed by the notion that, as educators, we face new players and new playing fields, and that a rethinking of the rules in the education game is not just an option but a necessity. They focused on encountering students where they “live”—immersed in the new technologies—to motivate, to engage, to push with rigor, to show them content relevance, to move them to the next level of understanding—in short, to educate them for the social good at local, national, and global levels. The underlying consensus cautioned that we cannot fail to meet students in the world of technology they currently inhabit lest we risk failing to reach them altogether. A Surprise Speaker The presenters and their papers were amazingly varied, whether from the U.S. or abroad, and explored such topics as hypermedia enhancement (Ithaca College), cultural diversity (Hong Kong Polytechnic University), and technology in public service education in Brazil! None other than the famous anthropologist Richard Leakey made a surprise appearance and enthralled the audience with his rendition of where we have been and where we are headed. I am now the proud owner of an autographed copy of his Origin of Humankind. I am certain that future roundtable award recipients who travel to ICCTL courtesy of one of our five colleges will join me in expressing sincere gratitude and appreciation for this annual opportunity to broaden horizons and return home full of ideas. Opportunities like these will certainly contribute to moving MTSU closer to achieving its academic objectives in technology integration and in expanding our contributions to this still very young research and publication area. Tags: SoTL, technology in postsecondary education
LT&ITC NetVibes Called a “mashup,” our NetVibes site is a mix of information modules that relate to teaching, learning, and professional growth. Topically organized (teaching tools, teaching with technology, professional development, innovation in academe), our mashup contains RSS feeds to popular scholarly sites like Inside Higher Ed and pictorial links to some of the best academic sites on the Web. We also keep a copy of the LT&ITC Events Calendar on our mashup as well as links to get you to our Web site, our iTunes page, and our newsletter, Sourcelink. Take a look and tell us what you think.
Tags: web 2.0, new media, social media
4 New Books and Media for the LT&ITC The center recently purchased a variety of materials for its lending library and resource center. To broaden our collection of professional development titles, we added several books on academic writing and publishing as well as on the tenure process. We’ve also increased our holdings in CDs and DVDs that faculty members may borrow. Fifteen Survival Strategies for New College Instructors, Creating a Personalized Learning Environment with Web 2.0 Tools, and Developing Tools and Strategies to Assess Student Learning are just a few of our new media titles from Magna Online Seminars. In addition, we purchased two videos from the Derek Bok Series: one on lecture and presentation, the other on discussion. You can peruse our collection at www.librarything.com/catalog/ LTITC.
Student Insight into What Makes a Successful Course and Professor by C. Daniel Prather, Aerospace
For junior faculty on the tenure track, student evaluations can be a great source of anxiety. Indeed, such evaluations are relied upon heavily by institutions in the promotion and tenure process to evaluate teaching effectiveness. Well aware of this fact, I began surveying students in my MTSU aerospace courses in fall 2006 (my first semester as a full-time faculty member) and continued over a three-year period to elicit student feedback regarding the aspects of a course and the qualities of a professor they considered valuable. Student responses were sought to the following four research questions: 1. What can I do to help you do your best in this course? 2. Think about a course you’ve taken in the past that worked really well for you. What made it work? 3. Now think about a course that didn’t work so well. What about the course made it not work so well? 4. What do you value in a professor?
“Courses that work best are taught by motivated and passionate faculty who incorporate hands-on activities and group discussions.”
Based on student responses, it would seem that to be most helpful, the professor should make every effort to have a fun and interesting class where material is clearly explained and reviews and study guides are provided to help students better prepare for tests. Courses that work best are taught by motivated and passionate faculty who incorporate lots of hands-on activities and group discussion. Courses that did not work well for students were those in which a boring, monotone-voiced professor lectured the entire class period and was unable to clearly explain the material. Finally, students most value teachers who are passionate and have a sincere desire to teach, show real respect and caring for students, and are knowledgeable of the subject they are teaching. To be sure, these findings should not be considered in isolation, and as such, junior faculty are encouraged to develop teaching portfolios, obtain peer evaluations from colleagues, and retain evidence of student learning via projects and other evidence to supplement student evaluations. ________ Based on the author’s research, found in his “Student Perceptions of Effective College Teachers,” scheduled to appear in the fall 2009 issue of Collegiate Aviation Review. Tags: teacher effectiveness, student evaluations, new faculty, promotion and tenure
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Fall 2009 Schedule of Events Topic
Presenter(s)
Series
When and Where
New Books and Media cont.
Adventures in Pedagogy
Michelle Bobbitt, Mgmt. and Mktg.; Mary Philips, Accounting
First Tuesday
September 15 11:40 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. PH 106
Writing and Publishing
Teaching Democracy
Susan Griffin
SHOWCASE
September 18 11:40 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Faculty Senate Chambers, JUB 100
Creating Learning Environments
Host: Al Whittenburg
Educause Webcast
September 21 Noon – 1:00 p.m. PH 106
Effective PowerPoint Presentations with New Media Tools
Ping Zheng, Elec. Media Comm.
eLearning Series (NEW!)
September 22 11:40 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. PH 106
Clickers and Peer Instruction
Host: Al Whittenberg
Educause Webinar
October 5 Noon – 1:00 p.m. PH 106
Service Learning
Jim Williams, History
First Tuesday
October 6 11:40 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. PH 106
Teaching Hybrid Courses
Barbara Ward, ITD; Karen Ward, Nursing
eLearning Series (NEW!)
October 15 11:40 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. PH 106
ShareFair
Faculty Exhibits
Showcase of Innovative Teaching
October 28 9:00 a.m. – Noon; 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. Tom H. Jackson Bldg.
Using Electronic Portfolios to Support Teaching
Host: Barbara Draude, LT&ITC
Educause Webinar
November 9 Noon – 1:00 p.m. Faculty Senate Chambers , JUB 100
Strategies for Teaching in the Brain-Compatible Classroom
Nancy Boone, Music
First Tuesday
November 10 11:40 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Faculty Senate Chambers , JUB 100
Collaborative Instructional Tools
Amy Macy, Recording Industry; Brenda Kerr, ITD
eLearning Series (NEW!)
November 11 11:40 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Faculty Senate Chambers , JUB 100
Academy for Teaching Excellence
Tim Graeff, Mary Phillips, and Michelle Bobbitt
Teaching Excellence
November 16 2:30 – 3:50 p.m. Faculty Senate Chambers , JUB 100
Professional Development
Register for workshops at 494-7671 or e-mail ltanditc@mtsu.edu. Check our Web site at www.mtsu.edu/ltanditc for updated scheduling information.
Multidisciplinary Teaching Strategies
Teaching Manuals and Handbooks
6 A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
Visual-Literacy.org has published this great Periodic Table of Visualization Methods, a handy tool for both teachers and students who use visuals to display and explore complex concepts and information, no matter the discipline. According to its authors, a “visualization method is a systematic, rule-based, external, permanent, and graphic representation that depicts information in a way that is conducive to acquiring insights, developing an elaborate understanding, or communicating experiences.” The authors’ threestep methodology for selecting the final 100 diagrams is explained in an attached paper, which includes a fascinating section on why they chose to use chemistry’s periodic table format to organize the visuals.
Outstanding Teachers 2008–09: Podcast Interviews on iTunes U This year the center plunged into podcasting and conducted a series of lively interviews with the 2008–09 Outstanding Teachers. All the interviews are available on our Web and iTunesU sites. Padgett Kelly (Biology), Chuck Higgins (Physics and Astronomy), Don Roy (Management and Marketing), and Kim Ujcich Ward (Psychology) spoke frankly to Barbara Draude about their experiences in the classroom, sharing insight into what excites them about teaching, how their teaching has changed over the years, and what new challenges face them in their disciplines. Although the interviews are only 15 to 20 minutes long, each pinpoints differences in style and approach, providing evidence of the variety of ways students can be engaged and motivated to learn.
Padgett Kelly (Biology)
Chuck Higgins (Physics and Astronomy)
Don Roy (Management and Marketing)
Kim Ujcich Ward (Psychology)
The visualization table includes around 100 diagram types with examples and a multifaceted classification by • simple to complex, • data/information/concept/ strategy/metaphor/compound, • process/structure, • detail/overview, and • divergence/convergence. You can find this table, along with other graphic tools, at www.visual-literacy.org/pages/ documents.htm Get more tools for visual literacy from Duke University at http://cit.duke.edu/ideas/how/ visualization.html See how these visuals are used in knowledge-communication for the workplace at www.knowledgecommunication.org/tools.html
Tags: podcasting information, podcasts, podcasting support at MTSU
Worthwhile Web— Interesting Resources for Teachers Build Your Scholarly Publishing Savvy
This exceptional online tutorial, a collaborative effort by the libraries of the University of Colorado, focuses on the process for scholarly journal publishing. It is a thorough, five-module, challenging tutorial; each module carefully shapes necessary skills for publishing academic materials successfully. Incredibly, it is also free. Anyone taking this tutorial is sure to have a better chance of publication, as it promises to take you through the essential steps of planning and writing a scholarly paper and developing a personal publication plan. It also describes the kinds of articles you can write and helps you distinguish among the many publishing models in use. Find out more at www.publishnotperish.org/intro/index.htm.
7 Center Welcomes New Graduate Assistant Ah, the changing of the grads! This fall, the center welcomed Andrea Garrison to its staff. Andrea has transferred here from Memphis to work on her master’s degree in industrial and organizational psychology. Andrea’s academic interests include organizational development, motivation, and educational training. Her personal interests are much more athletic: biking, dancing, and enjoying the outdoors. Andrea will be helping with the center’s workshops–registering faculty, preparing handouts by request, and supporting faculty speakers. You can reach her at ltanditc@mtsu.edu.
ShareFair— Peeking in the Class Next Door The 2009 ShareFair was held from 10:00 a.m. to noon and from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 28, in the Tom H. Jackson Building.
Leigh Ann McInnis shows Debra Wilson how she uses technology to teach nursing.
Originally, ShareFair was planned as an event to encourage faculty members to meet and learn from each other, discover new strategies and pedagogies in use, and benefit from emerging instructional technologies. Over the years, it has grown into an impressive display of upcoming and innovative teaching practices at MTSU. ShareFair showcases a multidisciplinary array of instructional technologies effectively used by teachers in history, psychology, English, engineering, aerospace, nursing, and more. Visitors browsing morning or afternoon sessions chatted with colleagues about how they are employing these techniques—engaging students online, with experiential projects, or in virtual worlds—and the results they are achieving. This year, ShareFair veered out into Web 2.0, with FITC staff Brenda Kerr, Daryll Leach, and Al Whittenberg demonstrating a few of the popular instructional technologies, such as podcasting, blogs, and wikis. Visit the LT&ITC Web site at www.mtsu.edu/ltanditc to keep up to date on ShareFair happenings.
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Directors’ Corner Welcome back! I hope everyone is having an enjoyable and productive semester. The LT&ITC has an exciting slate of events this semester and a wide array of learning opportunities and chances to share teaching ideas with your colleagues. In addition to our continuing series—First Tuesdays, Teaching Excellence, Showcase, and Educause and D2L Webinars—we are introducing an eLearning series as a forum for discussing technology-supported pedagogies that can be used in traditional and alternative delivery courses. Please review the event calendar in this newsletter and online, and plan on attending as many events as possible. In addition to our workshops and seminars, we have added more holdings to our lending library and provided more online resources throughout our Web site. As a new strategy for supporting faculty, we will be organizing two Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) this year—one on civic engagement and facilitated by Jim Williams (History) and Ron Kates (English), and a second on alternative course delivery facilitated by Tom Brinthaupt (Psychology). For more information on these FLCs, please monitor our Web site over the coming weeks or contact the FLC facilitators. We held our 8th annual ShareFair October 28 from 10:00 a.m. to noon and 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Colleagues were recognized for innovation and excellence in teaching and discussed new ideas they have implemented into their courses. As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions. If you have ideas for additional events, topics, or resources, please do not hesitate to share them. The center is here for you—to provide support and information and to challenge you to explore new methods of learning, teaching, and integrating innovative technologies. Have a great semester, and I hope to see you at as many events as possible. Barbara Draude Co-director, LT&ITC
MTSU, a Tennessee Board of Regents university, is an equal opportunity, nonracially identifiable educational institution that does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. AA062-0909
Faye Johnson Co-director, LT&ITC