2015 University-Wide Teaching & Learning Symposium

Creativity and Innovative Teaching Strategies

Shelly Clevenger, Department of Criminal Justice Sciences

This presentation will highlight the most successful of a series of creative ‘outside the box’ strategies for reaching and engaging students in the spring and fall 2013 semesters of a Victimology course. A variety of creative techniques were included in hopes of enhancing the students’ learning and understanding of victimology and victim experiences. The assignments for this class included having students draw pictures to define terms, role playing, creation of a media item (video, children’s book, comic book, brochure, poster or art work), interacting with victims, and traveling off campus to tour facilities that serve victims. These teaching methods and activities could be modified for any course. At the conclusion of each semester, 127 students (undergraduate and graduate students, as the course is cross) were surveyed. The students were asked about the creative methods utilized to determine if their learning and understanding of a victim’s experience was achieved. There was also a qualitative component with open-ended questions. Results from the survey, as well as the qualitative comments will be presented.

Cross-Curricular Approaches to Improve Student Learning in CSD

Jennifer Friberg, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders; Heidi Harbers, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders; Jennine Harvey, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders; Lisa Vinney, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders

Often, clinical training programs lack comprehensive, cross-curricular learning opportunities for students. As a result, students compartmentalize learning and struggle to understand that what is learned in one course is often applicable in other, similar courses. This is true of graduate students in in the speech-language pathology (SLP) program in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD). They are tasked with learning to diagnose and treat communication impairments, but take disorder-specific classes which prevent them from understanding that clients can be impacted by more than one disorder simultaneously. This has the potential to limit the development of solid clinical thinking skills. This project seeks to address this shortcoming in the clinical preparation of CSD graduate students in SLP and a limitation in our current curriculum. Panelists for this session will include four course instructors from CSD who collaborated to design cross-curricular experiences for students in four graduate courses. These experiences were designed to increase transfer and synthesis of course-based learning across classes and to think critically about clinically-based topics. Panelists will discuss the design of their cross-curricular experiences, present data collected regarding the impact of each experience, and make recommendations for using similar pedagogical strategies to increase student engagement.

K.I.S.S.: Developing Program Assessment Plans You Will Actually Use

Ani Yazedjian, Department of Family and Consumer Sciences; Jan Murphy, Department of Family and Consumer Sciences; Renée Tobin, Department of Psychology

A common problem in departments relates to assessment plans that are too complicated and time-consuming. Consequently, many faculty members do not take advantage of the critical information found in those data. Simple, well-designed assessment plans can guide departments in developing and refining strategies to increase student engagement. Yet, developing assessment plans in complex departments with multiple programs and accreditations can be daunting. It is important to take stock of what faculty are already doing and incorporate those methods into simple assessment processes. In 2013, Family and Consumer Sciences embarked on two significant projects: transforming our program from a single degree with multiple sequences into five new degree programs and overhauling our cumbersome program assessment plans. Our presentation will highlight the use of a faculty retreat to prompt conversations about curriculum and assessment development, the revision of course learning objectives and assignments, and the development of new student learning outcomes for degree programs. It will also address ways to tie in accreditation standards with program level assessment and the use of focus groups and surveys with graduating seniors. The audience will have an opportunity to engage in discussions regarding the challenges and solutions for implementing assessment plans their departments will actually use.

Leavin’ on a Jet Plane: Student Engagement and Academic Rigor in the Study Abroad Classroom

Lea Cline, School of Art; Kathryn Jasper, Department of History; Judith Briggs, School of Art; Ryan Davis, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures; Lynn Kennell, Mennonite College of Nursing

So you have found your perfect study abroad destination. You have taken care of all of the logistics (budgets! recruiting! emergency contacts!), and your bags are packed. But, as you stare at your boarding pass, you suddenly realize that while taking your students abroad has changed everything about your class, your syllabus has stayed the same. Will the syllabus that you labored over and tested in your classroom in Normal work abroad? This panel discussion will identify the challenges and rewards of the study abroad classroom. How can faculty blend a student’s engaging, personal experience with academic rigor while abroad? Should we abandon our well-planned syllabi and schedules, or are there ways to marry structure and fluidity? How can you balance content delivery and skill development in the classroom with students’ openness and personal growth outside of it? As we endeavor to internationalize our campus and double the number of students studying abroad, this panel addresses these initiatives from the point of view of teaching. It features the experiences of ISU faculty who successfully take their courses and learning on the road and seeks to ease the path of faculty as they endeavor to start new, faculty-led opportunities for ISU students.

Lessons Learned from Online Teaching for Face-to-Face Classes

Andrew Beaty, School of Teaching and Learning

For many years, there have been discussions about ways to take pedagogical ideas from traditional face-to-face classes and implement them in blended and online classes. Now that we have years of experience with teaching and learning with online pedagogical approaches, we are discovering methods that have typically been utilized in online classes that can be transferred to the traditional classroom. This session will take a look at a few of these effective teaching strategies that will help instructors as they engage students both inside and outside of the classroom. These tips come from over fifteen years of teaching in a variety of traditional, blended, and online classes as well as working with coaching professors on ways to improve their engagement with students in these environments. In addition, perspectives will be shared from the viewpoint of a doctoral student who has been a student in each of these formats.

On Target with DART Online

Kathy Webster, Department of Health Sciences; Adrian Lyde, Department of Health Sciences

Research shows the most engaging learning experiences are social, but students in online courses often feel isolated, not just from the campus experience, but also from each other. This can take much of the collegial fun out of school while leaving all the hard work. Effective online teaching practices can help students bridge the gaps of distance and asynchronization. In fall 2013, 77 courses at ISU were delivered online, and 75% of all courses used ReggieNet to support student learning, which substantiates the need for faculty and students to understand effective practices in online learning. As part of the second cohort of CTLT’s Design, Align, Refine, and Teach (DART) Online in summer 2014, we learned best practices in effective online teaching. We took next steps and applied what we learned to our fall online courses (General Education and senior level major courses). We adjusted learning experiences to increase personal relevance to students and provided more opportunities for student-to-student interaction around course material. This presentation will describe our instructional adjustments and how they impacted students’ perceived relevance of course material and perceived engagement in learning.

‘The Dangers of a Secular University’: Understanding and Mitigating the ‘Threat’ of Student Engagement

John MacLean, Department of English

Additional Materials

“The dangers of a secular university”:  Understanding and mitigating the “threat” of student engagement

Perhaps the most basic requirement for student engagement is students’ willingness to engage. However, as Bowen (2005) points out, any kind of significant student engagement (beyond just getting students to pay attention) can be threatening to students because it can challenge their ideas and values and even their identities and worldviews. If students feel threatened, they may resist or refuse (genuine) engagement. Fortunately, many students will come to see the value of this aspect of (higher) education, often through their experience with teachers who they recognize care for them and want them to succeed. But what happens to student engagement when students in conservative religious traditions are warned about the dangers of a secular university where godless professors are intent on destroying their faith? Narratives similar to that of the recent ‘Christian’ movie God’s Not Dead (with the antagonistic atheist philosophy professor) are not uncommon. In this session I will explore these narratives and why they are so powerful for many religious people. Then I will explain several practical techniques I have used to work against this perceived threat..

To Deal with or Engage: Empathy as Antidote for the Resistant College Student

Christopher Gjesfjeld, School of Social Work

Many college instructors experience student resistance in their classrooms. Such resistance can take the form of off-task behaviors that detract from student learning. Inattentive and disrespectful students, in particular, can challenge college instructors (Alberts et al., 2010). In response, commentary in higher education has speculated on the origins of these resistant behaviors (e.g., the Millennial generation themselves, greater social media use), and as a consequence, has suggested various techniques to address these within the classroom. In an effort to balance this emphasis on techniques that ‘deal with’ resistant students, I present principles of ‘empathic teaching’ that imply greater engagement with resistant students. At its core, empathic teaching considers three aspects of empathy in human relationships 1) the human capacity for shared emotional responses (e.g., emotional contagion), 2) the cognitive capacity to see from another’s perspective, and 3) the ability to distinguish and regulate between the emotions of oneself and the other (Decety & Jackson, 2004). I translate these principles to the context of college teaching and suggest methods for how these principles may be utilized. Institutional structures that undermine empathy will also be considered.

Using the Neuroscience of Learning to Flip a Business English Course

Robert Rowan, Department of English

Additional Materials

Write Side Up: Using Neuroscience to Flip the Business English Classroom
Transcript

For many teachers, retention and synthesis are more important classroom goals than how much book material can be covered in a day. However, we often don’t get to see or interact with students as they perform the work that leads to greater understanding because we send them home to do it. Flipping our classrooms gives us the opportunity to introduce a variety of components that can encourage student interest and engagement. By phasing out lecture-intensive delivery and focusing instead on shared knowledge work in the classroom, we can give our students’ brains the workout and the supportive, timely feedback they crave. This session will examine four course design components (assessment methods, assignment options, learning contracts, and self-diagnostic instruments) and connect them with the recent advances in brain research that have given us an improved picture of how adults learn at a neurological level.

Experimenting with Active Learning Strategies to Engage Students

Leah Nillas, Illinois Wesleyan University

Engaging students is a challenging task for teachers. This challenge is compounded when the classroom environment lacks either student motivation or active learning opportunities because, as Barkley (2010) argues, the product of motivation and active learning characterizes student engagement. This session focuses on my experiences and challenges in experimenting active learning strategies into a writing class. I engage first year students in rethinking cultural stereotypes as they develop academic writing, research, and discourse skills. Students participate in campus-wide multicultural events for writing crawl opportunities, blog about their book reflections, serve as peer reviewers to their critical friends, and engage in critical discussions about cultural stereotypes. These activities provide students opportunities to develop their academic skills, make connections beyond classroom walls, and actively engage in their own learning.

Increasing Students’ Cultural Competency for the Global and Diverse Society

Karen Stipp, School of Social Work; Barbara Ribbens, Department of Management & Quantitative Methods; Elaine Hardy, Mennonite College of Nursing; Osaore Aideyan, Department of Politics and Government; Cyndy Ruszkowski, Department of Management & Quantitative Methods; Judi Khalilallah, Dean of Students Office

When we teach students the impact of a diverse society and global citizenship, it is important to pay attention to where students are in terms of racial identity development so that we can address their current cultural understanding/ misunderstanding and help them increase their cultural competency more effectively. Last year, the Cultural Diversity Teaching-Learning Community explored this topic, and we would like to share how this exploration impacted our teaching, our worldview, and our understanding of students. Please join us for a lively discussion and reflect on cultural understanding of your own and your students.

Making Integrative Learning a Reality in General Education and the Co-Curriculum

Jonathan Rosenthal, Office of the Provost; Danielle Miller-Schuster, Student Affairs; Erin Thomas, Department of Educational Administration & Foundations

Teaching in General Education gives us a chance to broaden our students’ horizons; to ask bigger questions; to help develop habits of mind; and to develop links between the classroom, the university community, and ‘real life’ that awaits. Engaging students beyond the classroom emerged as a key outcome in the recommendations of the General Education Task Force, so important, in fact, that several of the General Education program goals are mapped onto and will be assessed through the co-curriculum. This session, co-presented by Academic and Student Affairs, will discuss the Gen Ed goals that apply to the co-curriculum, develop the types of co-curricular experiences that might be best suited for inclusion in a Gen Ed course, and present some strategies to integrate the co-curriculum with instruction. There will also be some nuts-and-bolts suggestions about how to find easily, simply, and conveniently co-curricular experiences that will ‘work.’ Research consistently demonstrates that engaging students in the life of the university, broadly understood, is among the most important ways to increase student persistence and success. Come to learn more and to share any strategies that you’ve used to link the curriculum and the co-curriculum.

Moving Beyond the Classroom: Effects of Out-of-Class Research on Student Learning

Phyllis McCluskey-Titus, Department of Educational Administration and Foundations; Anne McDowell, Department of Educational Administration and Foundations; Skylar Guimond, Department of Educational Administration and Foundations; Erin Kuntz, Department of Educational Administration and Foundations; Sean Creedon, Educational Administration and Foundations

This panel presentation will share the process used to structure an out-of-class research opportunity for students as well as the learning outcomes that students reported through participation in the research team. The purpose of this grant-funded SoTL study was to understand what types of learning occur when students, with the assistance and guidance of a faculty member, participate in a research project that takes place outside of the structured curriculum and regularly scheduled class time within their degree program. According to McKinney, Jarvis, Creasey and Herrmann (2010), some of the most intriguing learning experiences for students are those that include student-faculty partnerships. Students who serve on a research or project team under the mentorship of a faculty member find these types of experiences highly motivating and often enhances their basic research and scholarly skills (p. 83). Program participants will first hear about and discuss the research project, research methods, and preliminary findings. Based on this introduction to the study, and subsequent group discussion, participants may be able to develop similar out-of-class research opportunities that will enhance students’ learning experiences in their own classes.

Talking SMACC About Social Media: How to Incorporate Social Media Analytics Analysis in the Classroom

Stephen Hunt, School of Communication; Nathan Carpenter, School of Communication; Megan Hopper, School of Communication; Lance Lippert, School of Communication; Maria Moore, School of Communication

Have you sought to keep students OFF social media while in the classroom? Do you feel that it is difficult to compete with social media for their attention? Since the birth of social networking sites like Facebook, educators have sought ways to deal with students’ use of and reliance upon social media in the best possible way. The School of Communication has recently opened the Social Media Analytics Command Center (SMACC) to integrate social media into the learning experience and equip students with the most up-to-date knowledge on how to leverage social media data analysis in their chosen career paths. This session will allow participants to engage with the technology powering SMACC and see firsthand how the platform can foster social media listening, engagement, and reporting for students in ALL disciplines. Specifically, we will showcase our mobile SMACC kiosk containing two 42’ touchscreens that attendees can utilize to explore our NUVI software. Examples of how instructors are currently using SMACC in their coursework and the lessons they have learned thus far will also be offered.

Teacher as Coach: Supporting Autonomous Motivation

Jim Broadbear, Department of Health Sciences

“Thank you for pushing me to get to know myself and seeing my full potential!” Is that quote universal in my teaching evaluations? Not even close. Is it the exception? Not really. Evidence over the past few years suggests it is a theme in student assessments. This is, I believe, a product of the efforts to support autonomous motivation in learners that have emerged in my teaching as I have blended in coaching approaches. Coaching and teaching are infused with opportunities to bolster a person’s autonomous or intrinsic motivation. When autonomous motivation is supported, people feel more inspired, focused, engaged, and committed. Learners feel more responsible for and in charge of their learning. They develop a greater sense of professional competence and are better able to see the relationship between their learning and their professional goals. Approaches for supporting autonomous motivation include helping learners connect class activities to their life goals, explaining the purpose of learning tasks, avoiding controlling behaviors, and providing emotional support for the ongoing development of each person. Strategies to support autonomous motivation in General Education and major courses will be discussed.

Building Bridges: Connecting Knowledge-Making Practices between ENG101 and COM110 for First Year Students

Emily Johnston, Department of English; Alexis Shpall Wolstein, Milner Library; Kody Frey, School of Communication; Caleb Malik, School of Communication; Chris Worland, Milner Library; Kristen Strom, Department of English

You know how it feels when you see students ‘get it,’ when they recognize they have learned something significant. In an ongoing cooperative effort between academic programs, the Critical Inquiry Ambassadors Program (CIA) matched instructors and instructional librarians across both ENG101 and COM110 (the first year general education writing and communication courses, respectively) for the purpose of observing each other’s classroom settings. Using information collected through those classroom observations, we will present a preliminary plan designed to encourage more effective knowledge transfer for students as they move across these courses, particularly as they move from ENG101 to COM110, or from COM110 to ENG101. Our suggestions and tentative plans for implementation in Spring 2015 will focus on ways to encourage this transfer while each course continues to teach the particular ways of knowing and the writing and communication skills that each program emphasizes. Ultimately, our goal is to help students begin to build more robust skills for identifying (on their own) the ways that their college work (including their General Education courses) can be connected intellectually through different kinds of knowledge transfer.

Comparing Student and Faculty Perceptions of Student Engagement: What Next Steps Can We Take?

Derek Herrmann, University Assessment Services; Ryan Smith, University Assessment Services

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) was administered to students at Illinois State University during the 2013 spring semester. This questionnaire contains items that were used to estimate how students spend their time in activities related to their learning and development and their perceived gains from these experiences. Then during the 2014 spring semester, the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE) was administered to faculty members who taught at least one undergraduate course during the 2013- 2014 academic year. This questionnaire contained items similar to those on the NSSE but provide faculty perceptions of student engagement. This presentation will provide a comparison of the responses to similar items on both questionnaires and examine the areas of congruence and discrepancy. For example, 80% of both faculty and students reported that their coursework emphasizes applying facts, theories, or methods to practical problems or new situation. But although 96% of faculty reported that it is important for students to have completed readings or assignments before coming to class, only 18% of students reported that they often did this. Attendees will learn more about this research and can take away information that they can use to enhance their next steps in student engagement.

Designing Learning Spaces to Engage Students with Emerging Pedagogies: A Panel Discussion

Salvatore Catanzaro, Office of the Provost; Doug Smith, Office of Academic Technologies; George Seelinger, Department of Mathematics; Aaron Paolucci, School of Theatre and Dance; Jay Percell, School of Teaching and Learning; Jennifer Sharkey, Milner Library

How should a typical classroom be physically designed and equipped to provide maximum flexibility for faculty to engage students using the various pedagogical styles and emerging technologies of the twenty-first century? Our teaching spaces are usually designed for traditional lecture-style delivery of material, sometimes with seating physically bolted to the floor, often creating an environment that is not conducive for engaging discussions or collaborative learning. Panelists will examine emerging trends in classroom design, share their experiences using flexible pedagogies in traditional and flexible spaces, and discuss their ideas of what learning spaces should look like to enhance student engagement. Attendees will be engaged in the discussion through interactive activities.

Engaging Students by Evaluating Writing through Conferences

Jean Sawyer, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders

Assigning a paper can encourage students to evaluate and synthesize course material. Instructors can spend class time up front to prepare students for writing, and include peer editing to help the students produce better products. After the paper is submitted, instructors spend time evaluating the papers and may write comments justifying the grades. The students may not even look at the comments, and thus miss an opportunity to learn about writing in the discipline. This presentation describes a revision of a writing assignment in an undergraduate course of 44 students. Some class time was spent on helping the students write effectively, and students had their papers peer edited. Twenty percent of the paper grade was based on a short conference with the instructor after the paper was submitted. Students then re-submitted their papers. Students completed a survey about writing evaluation they had had in the past, and were asked about the effectiveness of having the opportunity to revise their papers a second time after having a conference with the instructor. Their feedback and the instructor feedback will be shared.

Evaluating Flipped Classroom Efforts in the Social Sciences

Diego Mendez-Carbajo, Illinois Wesleyan University; Ellen Furlong, Department of Psychology

You have probably heard about the concept of the flipped classroom, in which traditional lecturing is shifted out of the classroom through the use of online media (e.g., videos, narrated slides) so that class time can be devoted to more engaging, active learning tasks. This session will describe the efforts of two professors in the Social Sciences, one in Economics and one in Psychology, who have flipped their classes by delivering information through YouTube videos and Camtasia-narrated slides, respectively. After a brief overview of the learning objectives of each course and of the strategies employed to deliver the flipped content, we will discuss their effectiveness. The two strategies followed to develop pedagogical resources, loosely characterized as online-scavenging and custom-making, are analyzed by examining both quantitative and qualitative course data. Session participants will gain valuable course-design insights, informing their own ongoing or aspirational efforts to follow the flipped classroom model.

Ideas for Engaging Students in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Kathleen McKinney, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning; Lydia Kyei-Blankston, Department of Educational Administration and Foundations; Phyllis McCluskey-Titus, Department of Educational Administration and Foundations; Maria Moore, School of Communication

Illinois State University (ISU) prioritizes faculty and student research productivity, as is evidenced by goals outlined in Educating Illinois, the University’s strategic plan. Within this plan, both discipline-specific research and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) are recognized as making vital contributions to a productive, diverse, and stimulating environment for faculty and students. While many faculty on campus choose to pursue research agendas which include SoTL, students can and should be viewed as potential collaborators in this type of scholarship, as well. This proposed panel will focus on the possibilities for involving students in SoTL with a specific emphasis on how SoTL-based research experiences provide students a mechanism to answer pedagogical questions (to improve teaching) while simultaneously engaging students in the research process. Panelists will describe current and past SoTL projects involving students and will discuss potential roles and experiences for student SoTL researchers to support the SoTL research agendas of ISU faculty. This panel was developed by the Office of the Cross Chair in SoTL at ISU.

Integrating Civic Engagement into Undergraduate Courses: Two Examples from the History Department

Linda Clemmons, Department of History; Monica Noraian, Department of History

Educating Illinois places a high value on integrating civic engagement into students’ curricular experiences. The American Democracy Project at Illinois State University sponsors a summer course redesign program to help instructors incorporate civic engagement activities into their classes. In this session, Drs. Monica Noraian and Linda Clemmons of the History Department will share their experiences redesigning their courses to include civic engagement. While both courses are upper division History courses, we approached civic engagement from two different directions and integrated diverse activities that reflected our course values and goals. Participants also will share and discuss their own experiences integrating civic engagement into their teaching, as well as brainstorming new ideas to help prepare students to be informed and engaged global citizens.

Alcohol Alternative Programming: A Cross-Campus Collaboration Analysis

Christy Bazan, Department of Health Sciences; Jackie Lanier, Department of Health Sciences; Amanda Papinchock, Department of Health Sciences

Up Late at State is a University-funded alcohol alternative program at Illinois State University (ISU) that focuses on reducing binge drinking at ISU’s campus. In Spring of 2014, faculty and students in the Health Sciences department partnered with staff from Student Affairs to explore student needs related to Up Late at State programming. Results, including successes and challenges of this cross-campus partnership, will be presented.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Beverly Barham, Department of Health Sciences

Can you hear me now? As the designer of several online distance education courses which are heavy in content, one of my rules is that an audio component must be included with each unit. My goal was for each student to hear examples and explanations, even when that student might be located halfway around the world. Adding an audio component to PowerPoint was an easy way to accomplish this goal. Each year the student evaluations for these online distance courses have been positive about the audio component. In the fall 2013, a distance learner commented: “I think audio should have been in our on-campus courses too. It would have helped me focus and better understand all of the information after I heard your lecture.” So why was I not including an audio component in all of my courses? As a result, audio is now a part of my on-campus course content too. Students can hear the information unlimited times if they so choose. The lesson learned is that it does not matter what type of a classroom you may be teaching in, the addition of an audio component can make a positive impact on student learning.

More than Just a School Visit: Learning Outcomes of an Intensive Field Experience for Pre-Service Secondary Teachers

Erin Mikulec, School of Teaching and Learning

This session will focus on the results of a study that examined the impact of an intensive clinical experience in a unique educational environment. Seven ISU students spent two days in a teacher-led, diverse charter school, whose mission is to provide a safe environment for all students regardless of race, religion or sexual identity. The students were assigned to a class where they taught lessons that they had designed. They also reflected on their experiences through online discussions, personal reflections and informal dialogues with one another as well as a faculty researcher. The results indicated the experience impacted the participants in terms of working with diverse student populations, having a deeper perspective on the effects of bullying, negotiating power and control in the classroom and working with middle school students. They also revealed a need for pre-service teachers to participate in scaffolded field experiences that challenge them to go beyond what they know about schools and working with diverse student populations.

Respond to Students’ Work with Recorded Audio Comments

Bob Broad, Department of English

I will select one volunteer (victim) from the audience to learn (and demonstrate) in real time how to record and edit a digital audio file. This volunteer will gain hands-on experience with free audio editing software (Audacity by SourceForge). The volunteer will create a brief recording of her/his voice and enhance that recording with a musical introduction and accompaniment. Instructors can use such audio comments to provide students with responses and evaluations of their work. We will also discuss how and why recorded audio comments are effective teaching (multi-sensory, multi-media) and discover that they are fun to create and receive.

Taking the Next Steps in your General Education Course

Monica Noraian, Department of History; Richard Hughes, Department of History; Doug Cutter, Department of History; William Reger, Department of History

General Education at Illinois State University is changing and becoming stronger with a more defined mission. There are new General Education learning goals and objectives mapped to particular courses. The four faculty panelists participated in a CTLT Summer Institute to explore and engage with the new General Education standards to better align them with courses, pedagogy, and assessment. The four professors from the History Department will share various ways they are approaching General Education courses to promote student learning, engagement, and retention. From small classes to larger, from traditional instruction to online, this panel of faculty will share some of their approaches and course changes in response to teaching general education. Session participants will have time to share and discuss from their own perspective of teaching General Education and have the opportunity to brainstorm together about teaching General Education courses across disciplines.

This is What Educating Illinois Looks Like: The Ousting of a President Becomes a Teachable Moment

Richard Sullivan, Department of Sociology/Anthropology

An unjustly fired groundskeeper, the removal of an ISU President, and a half-million dollar payout, all lead to a campus community asking hard questions. Against this backdrop, a course about social movements quickly becomes a social movement with students ‘flash mobbing,’ Easter egg hunting, Facebooking, hash-tagging, protesting, and petitioning for answers and accountability. This session recounts the results from a course redesigned with support from a 2013 CTLT-ADP Course Redesign Grant. It discusses the lessons learned by students and instructor about where boundaries between the classroom and community are drawn, the power of university mission statements, and the meaning of civic engagement in the curriculum and on campus. It concludes that in terms of transformational potential, the best lesson plans are no match for the teachable moment. Few could have predicted that redesigning a course in an effort to better promote civic engagement and inspire transformational experiences would come to this.

Voices of Discovery: Infusing Diversity Dialogue Education in Teaching and Learning

Jason Vasquez, Student Counseling Services; Yojanna Cuenca-Carlino, Department of Special Education; Yun-Ching Chung, Department of Special Education; Riley McGrath, Student Counseling Services

During the Fall 2013 semester, 419 Veterans and Military Service members were students on Illinois State University’s campus. As a group, they face many challenges and obstacles while trying to achieve their educational goals. Most of these issues are outside of the experiences of the traditional 18-year-old student and deal with the visible and invisible wounds of war. This panel will help faculty and staff establish military cultural competency, including knowledge of the demographics associated with this group of students and additional opportunities for training that are available to faculty and staff. The panel will also share information regarding the support services we at ISU offer Veteran and Military students and what our campus is doing to help this group of students succeed.

Writing Your Work: The Student Daybook as Learning Documentation

Jeff Rients, Department of English; Irene Taylor, Department of English; Thaddeus Stoklasa, Department of English

Drawing a parallel with the mathematical pedagogy of ‘showing your work,’ this panel presents models for student journaling as a tool for formative assessment and metacognition. This session will provide participants with an overview of the introduction, use and assessment of student daybooks as devices for student engagement with the class material, the instructor and each other, both inside and outside the classroom, as per Brennan et al., Thinking Out Loud on Paper: The Student Daybook as a Tool to Foster Learning. Each panelist will describe how they reimagine the student notebook as an interconnected node of learning, rather than as a repository of banked knowledge.

Are They Really Ready? Students’ Awareness of Multiculturalism and Diversity

Sandra Osorio, School of Teaching and Learning

Many students live their entire lives in places where there are individuals with similar backgrounds as themselves. Thus, many students are surprised when they enter the workforce and encounter individuals from different racial or cultural backgrounds. This is a major concern for teacher education majors because students are becoming teachers in diverse classrooms. In Illinois, over 80 percent of the teacher population is white, while over 50% of the student population is students of color (IRRC, 2014). This poster examines how a course redesigned for diversity impacts preservice teacher candidates’ knowledge of diversity and culturally responsive teaching. The study included seven diversity modules that students had to complete online through ReggieNet as well as reflective blogs and classroom experiences in a bilingual setting. The study gave rise to some best practices for infusing diversity into content courses across the ISU campus. Future avenues of inquiry include following these teacher education major into student teaching and the first year in their own classrooms to better understand how to support them once they are in the profession.

Co-Teaching a Multi-Disciplinary Course

Issam Nassar, Department of History; Elisabeth Friedman, School of Art

The poster highlights our experience teaching an interdisciplinary Special Topics course on ‘Conflicting Identities: Visual Culture in Palestine & Israel’ in the fall semester of 2014. In the course, we introduced students in art and history to the diversity of political, social and cultural perspectives found in the visual culture of the region. The design of the course combined historical texts with a broad range of visual representations and encouraged students to critically evaluate the contributions and limitations of different disciplinary perspectives.

Education Majors’ Attitudes Toward Educational Psychology

Corinne Zimmerman, Department of Psychology; Brianna Coleman, Department of Psychology

Additional Materials

Education Majors’ Attitudes Toward Educational Psychology

Future teachers need to have knowledge of educational psychology in order to better understand, for example, the development of their students, how learning works, behavior management, and the most effective teaching strategies. Still, college students who have chosen to major in education often fail to see the relevance of psychology to their future careers. This poster shares a study designed to examine the attitudes of education majors enrolled in Educational Psychology, and to examine change over the course of the semester. Seventy-seven education majors (16 special education, 61 secondary education) indicated their attitudes about Educational Psychology and rated the importance of 49 specific topics to their future teaching career. Included were various theories (e.g., Vygotsky, Bronfenbrenner) and concepts (e.g., learned helplessness, the Premack principle). Open-ended responses were also collected. At the end of the semester, only a few concepts were rated as significantly more important, but these focused on issues of diversity, ethnicity, culture, socio-economic status, and concepts related to classroom management. Although most attitude ratings did not change (although one became more negative), qualitative analyses indicate an increased appreciation for the usefulness of applying psychological constructs to teaching and learning.

Engaging Students in the Fresh FAVs Program

Julie Schumacher, Department of Family and Consumer Sciences; Nikki Brauer, Health Promotion and Wellness

The Fresh FAVs (Fruits and Vegetables) Program was created to increase the availability of produce to faculty, staff, and students at Illinois State University for the past three semesters. It was developed for a graduate student leadership project within the Dietetic Internship in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences and grew to include the campus wellness department, Health Promotion and Wellness, and Campus Dining Services. Students engaging in this project gain hands-on experience with purchasing, delivery, and promotion of food. Additionally, students have chosen to enhance their community outreach by donating excess produce to the Baby Fold, a local non-profit organization. This poster will focus on lessons learned about connecting and engaging students across campus with this service learning opportunity, developing a marketing plan to enhance student and campus engagement, and effective strategies that could be implemented by other disciplines to assist professors, program directors, and students in sustaining a successful outreach program.

Examining Attitude Toward Statistics Among Graduate Nursing Students

MyoungJin Kim, Mennonite College of Nursing; Carrie Kooistra, Mennonite College of Nursing; Jamie Kreisman, Mennonite College of Nursing

The use of statistics is integrated in graduate nursing education curriculum to increase the understanding of evidence-based practice and research concepts. However, many nursing students find statistics difficult. Nonetheless, no research exists regarding the attitude of graduate nursing students toward statistics. The purpose of this study was to examine students’ attitude toward studying statistics among graduate nursing students and to characterize attitude changes. Forty-one graduate nursing students from a four-year suburban university completed the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (SATS) at the beginning and at the end of a master’s level statistical course. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Wilcoxon signed rank tests, in SPSS 20.0. Findings indicate students felt the great difficulty of learning statistics while they highly valued statistics concepts. Importantly, students showed a significantly decreased amount of effort willing to put toward statistics between the beginning of the course and the end of the course. This study found that negative attitude toward statistics exist high among graduate nursing students and creative actions must be taken to improve attitudes of students toward statistics.

Executive Speechwriting as Civic Engagement: A Course Redesign

Peter Smudde, School of Communication

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Executive Speechwriting: COM 356 Redesigned for Civic Engagement

Speechwriting is a vital skill among professional communicators as organizational leaders increasingly lean on writers to help craft messages about issues important to both the organization and its publics. COM 356, Executive Speechwriting, has a natural fit with the American Democracy Project and the Civic Engagement and Responsibility Minor. Simply put, COM 356 concerns the principles, process, and products of ghostwriting speeches for organizational leaders. In terms of civic engagement, COM 356 was redesigned to address speechwriting along three avenues leading to sound citizenship at individual and organizational levels. First, writing speeches involves the process of the writer seeing him- or herself, the executive for whom a speech is written, and the organization as citizens participating in the larger community where a diversity of issues, ideas, and identities are engaged with one another. Second, speech counseling involves the writer in the role of counselor as he or she guides executives in their thinking about issues and their explication of those thoughts that reflect the interdependence of all stakeholders. Third, speechwriting naturally demands that writers be critical thinkers about social issues and the contribution of speeches in the democratic conversations about them, especially as those conversations focus on solutions to social problems.

How Does an In-Class Note-Taker Help Freshmen Take Better Notes in Large Enrollment Courses?

Rebekka Darner Gougis, School of Biological Sciences; Pamm Ambrose, University College; Rebecca Elliot, University College; Emma Kombrink, School of Teaching and Learning

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Does an in-class note-taker help freshmen take better notes in a general education course?

Note-taking is an essential skill for success in college and the workplace in a variety of career fields. Despite this, many faculty notice that freshmen in large enrollment General Education courses lack note-taking skills or at least do not put them to good use. Note-taking challenges thus hinder student success in courses where students are expected to refer to class notes when studying and completing assignments. This study examines the effectiveness of a note-taking scaffold aimed at helping students take better notes and perform better on exams. The scaffold that we examine is an in-class note-taker who attended lectures in two sections of a General Education biology course and took notes on an overhead projector. The projected notes appeared alongside slides containing figures supporting the lecture. During Unit 1 of the course, neither section received the note-taker. During Unit 2, both sections received the note-taker. During Unit 3, only one of the two sections received the note-taker. We will compare the two sections’ exam scores and discuss effects of the note-taker on quality of notes taken by students. These findings are relevant to any course that engages students in note-taking.

Learning through Service: The Contribution of Service-Learning to First Year Pre-Service Teachers

Miranda Lin, School of Teaching and Learning; Alan Bates, School of Teaching and Learning

Service Learning (SL) experiences provide pre-service teachers with the opportunity to better understand the real-world experiences of individuals of all walks of life in their immediate communities. In addition, linking community service with classroom experiences adds value to students’ learning experience and enhances understanding and commitment that could lead to effective citizenship participation. This project explores how SL helps pre-service teachers change their perceptions of working with diverse populations and how they link SL to social justice. Twenty-eight early childhood education pre-service teachers enrolled in a multi-cultural education course were asked to complete a SL project in which they worked with day care centers that serve low income families. In groups, students worked with the centers to conduct needs assessments and create appropriate projects. After the projects were completed, students responded to guiding questions which focused on the impact of the experience. Five center directors were also interviewed regarding their perspective on the impact students had on their centers. Results indicated that pre-service teachers valued the SL experience and gained new insight regarding teaching students of diverse backgrounds. However, students focused more on surface level learning and also had some difficulty connecting SL with social justice.

Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) Certification for Increased Support and Success of ISU Foreign Languages Education Majors

Laura Edwards, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures

One of the many important requirements for Foreign Language Teacher Education students at ISU is to meet the proficiency goal of Advanced Low on the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). Many students find it difficult to achieve this level of proficiency, resulting in retaking the OPI several times or changing their major. This poster will share information the presenter gained during an ACTFL-sponsored workshop at Brigham Young University, allowing her to give feedback and support to our foreign language majors as they prepare to take the OPI.

Promoting Political Engagement Through Immersive and Experiential Learning Opportunities

Noha Shawki, Department of Politics and Government; Carlos Parodi, Department of Politics and Government; Catherine Poffenbarger, College of Education; Annie Weaver, Dean of Students

Immersive and experiential leaning opportunities can be very helpful in fostering a sense of political engagement among students. Combined with in-depth readings, discussions, and reflection, immersive and experiential learning activities can help students develop the knowledge, civic skills, and attitudes and outlooks, and personal motivations that are essential for life-long civic and political engagement. This poster will explore the many different experiential and immersive learning activities, both curricular and co-curricular, that can help foster political engagement and active citizenship among students. Some of the questions that we will focus on include: How do immersive or experiential activities complement classroom-based activities in ways that encourage students to be politically engaged citizens? What is the ‘value-added’ of immersive/experiential learning activities? And what are some of the best practices in designing these types of activities?

Psychology Students’ Beliefs about the Nature of Science: The Role of Research Experience

Emilio Lobato, Department of Psychology; Corinne Zimmerman, Department of Psychology; Thomas Critchfield, Department of Psychology

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Psychology Majors’ Views of Science: The Role of Research Experience

It is widely assumed that being a responsible citizen in the 21st century requires an understanding of science. Promoting science understanding, therefore, is often mentioned as an important goal of contemporary education. The psychology curriculum at ISU has increasingly focused on providing students with hands-on research experience. Does this research involvement translate into a more sophisticated understanding of the nature of science in general, and about psychology as a science, in particular? Psychology majors indicated the amount of research experience they have participated in, along with a number of measures, including a myths-of-science questionnaire, attitudes about science, and a psychology as a science survey. Our preliminary analyses indicate that students with at least one hands-on research experience a) endorse fewer myths about science, b) have more positive attitudes about science, and c) are more likely to view psychology as a science, relative to those without research experience. Students across the curriculum had largely positive attitudes about scientists generally, and social scientists specifically. These results will be presented the context of the effectiveness of the psychology program at ISU with respect to preparing students to become scientifically literate citizens.

Reminiscing: Nursing Honors Project Engages Community and Fosters Learning in the Care of Older Adults

Charlene Aaron, Mennonite College of Nursing; Jessica Carroll, Mennonite College of Nursing; Emily Bollin, Mennonite College of Nursing

Undergraduate Honor students at Mennonite College of Nursing conceptualized an activity for the residents of Fairview Haven Continuing Care Retirement Center in Fairbury, IL. Students performed a fashion show while wearing ball gowns from their high school proms, while the residents participated by showing a fancy dress from ‘their day’ or sharing a picture of themselves wearing their favorite dress. The event sparked much reminiscing about dances and attire in their younger years. The students made sure the event was well publicized throughout the community, and many residents, family members, and friends attended. Nursing students collaborated with the facility’s activity department, residents, and their families to ensure every detail was covered. The event was captured on photos, so the reminiscing may continue. As a member of the Alzheimer’s Association’s Scholarly Advisory group and MCN faculty, I know this type of intergenerational investment of time and talent toward memory stimulation of older adults, benefits the individuals participating and transforms communities by promoting brain health and reducing ageism. The reminiscing activity was so successful in community engagement and student learning, that students and faculty are collaborating on a manuscript to disseminate outcomes from the event.

Student-Faculty Research Mentorships and Collaborations: Practices, Challenges, & Lesson Learned

Lydia Kyei-Blankson, Department of Educational Administration and Foundations; Parul Gupta, Department of Technology

Many graduate programs offer research training as part of the preparation process. While research is a critical educational component, students feel less prepared to perform in this area of expertise. More especially, students feel less prepared to publish, individually or collaboratively. Some academic programs have responded to this area of need by including student involvement in research publication as an option for fulfilling part of the requirements for degree completion and graduation. Student involvement in such scholarly activities most often requires that they study under the tutelage of a faculty advisor or collaborate with a faculty mentor. The faculty advisor or mentor serves as the principal investigator in the design, development, and conduct of the research study. There is limited research examining the effect of such collaborations on the development of graduate students in general and especially those who do not aspire to work in academia. How do these graduate students describe the faculty-student research mentorship and/or collaborative experience? How do they negotiate research roles, tasks, and workload, and what lessons do they learn as they work with faculty in the production of scholarly publications?

Survival of the Fittest: Professionalizing the Humanities, Internationalizing the Curriculum, and Teaching ‘French for Business and the Professions’

Erin Ponnou-Delaffon, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures; Jennifer Howell, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures

The situation facing language programs today reflects a broader crisis in the humanities. Colleagues are asking: How can we communicate the relevance of learning about languages, literatures, and cultures to university students? How can we strengthen our programs, increase enrollments, and ensure viability with limited resources? In an attempt to respond to these questions and, ultimately, revitalize our program, the French Section submitted a course proposal last spring titled ‘French for Business and the Professions.’ This poster presentation outlines how we will integrate this course into a more traditional literature/culture curriculum reflecting the liberal arts education model. We outline how this new course engages with existing learning objectives relative to Second Language Acquisition, supports the University’s internationalization efforts, and establishes connections between the classroom and the professional world. Above all, it aims to prepare students to become informed global citizens and promotes active learning via project-based assignments and real-world applications of course content.

Teaching the iGeneration: Engaging Students in Graphic Design History

Archana Shekara, School of Art

Even though graphic design is a young and growing professional field, its history dates back to early mark makings seen in cave paintings. Our students, on the other hand, live in the moment. They take pride in multitasking and desire to succeed in an instant. Many of them are threatened by process and perceive it as being arduous. Perhaps for these reasons, students perceived the Graphic Design History course as ‘memorization and boring.’ This session presents six years of case studies and pedagogical approaches that were used to transform student perceptions. It addresses learning objectives, interactions, and outcomes that truly motivate the iGeneration to become active learners and admire history.

The Body Project: Promoting Body Acceptance In and Out of the Classroom

Jenni Thome, Student Counseling Services

Students learn best when they are engaged with educational material, and this kind of interaction can happen in many ways. Given that 91% of college females will diet at some point in their college career, and 75% of ISU students report they are uncomfortable with their bodies, it is important that college students learn to combat unrealistic messages surrounding body image and related health behaviors. The area of eating disorders and disturbances prevention is ripe with opportunities to collaborate with various academic and student affairs departments, as it includes aspects of media literacy, cognitive dissonance, healthy exercise and nutrition guidelines, epigenetics, and gender studies, to name a few. This session addresses an empirically-supported eating disorder prevention program, the Body Project, which has been shown to reduce the thin-ideal internalization, body dissatisfaction, negative mood, unhealthy dieting, and eating disorder symptoms. We will share data collected from the program’s implementation at ISU, and we discuss how the program has been and can continue to be used in conjunction with various academic programs to facilitate student learning in the classroom and beyond.

Transformative Conversation in Encourage Research Involvement of Underrepresented College Students

Haiyan Xie, Department of Technology

This poster looks at a study of methods for encouraging the research involvement of underrepresented college students, particularly African-American, Latino, or female students. Specifically, it suggests that using transformative conversations with an unambiguous goal for a research project will help increase student interest in exploring new areas. Transformative conversations seek to construct self-reflective learning and encourage transformative teaching from problem-solving experiences. From these, students can gain problem-solving skills and experiences, receive support in practicing transformative conversations with mentors, and make discoveries through research. Drawing on research mentoring experiences and case studies from engineering and technology fields, the research can help mentors and underrepresented college students improve the recruitment of research involvement and better fill the gap between theories and implementations.

Works in Progress: Formative Feedback as a Stress-Busting Strategy

Jamie Smith, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders

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Works in Progress: Formative Feedback as a Stress-busting Strategy

Semester-long projects can prompt feelings of dread in students and faculty alike. This poster will describe the evolution of a semester-long project and the resulting changes for both students and instructor. Students reported a higher degree of engagement, improved feelings of self-efficacy, and lower stress levels at the end of the semester in connection with the provision of formative feedback. For the instructor, formative feedback led to lower stress levels and a reduced grading load during finals week. Strategies for providing more effective and efficient formative feedback on student writing are discussed.