Community Partnerships to Enhance Learning and Reflection in the Classroom

Yojanna Cuenca-Carlino, Department of Special Education; Sara Jozwik, Department of Special Education

Partnerships between the University and community organizations can enhance learning and reflection in the classroom, while supporting the needs of community partners. Per a partnership formed with the Western Avenue Community Center (WACC), special education undergraduate students in an assessment course had the opportunity to interact with K-6 students through the WACC after school program. The WACC offers an after school program to target reading skills for approximately 40- English Learners and low-income students. Undergraduate students were trained in administering formative reading assessments, and they assessed students’ reading levels to assist in developing individualized tutoring plans. In addition, some students also volunteered to tutor students at the center once a week for ten weeks. Our students were able to translate learning into action beyond the borders of the classroom, reflect on how personal beliefs and biases intersect with the assessment and learning process, administer and interpret results from a formative literacy assessment, and gain understanding of community history and culture. We will discuss tools that we used to help our students reflect on the experience, the learning outcomes, and how the partnership between ISU’s Special Education Department and the WACC strengthen both programs and enhanced learning for all stakeholders involved.

Discourse across Difference: The Skills Necessary for Civic Engagement

Art Munin, Dean of Students

Civic engagement endeavors are inherently laden with complex issues of diversity and social justice ripe for healthy discussion. However, many college students lack the skills required for discourse across difference. The events of 2014 and 2015 including, but not limited to those in Ferguson, MO, brought this need center stage. Responses to these events on college campuses ranged from nonexistent to significant protest. The former is a shame. The latter can be an effective civic engagement opportunity. However, there is a third option that all college campuses should seek to cultivate. That third option involves higher education administrators opening opportunities for students to gather and discuss current events (i.e. the Ferguson indictment decision), cultivate skill sets to foster deeper reflection, and explore the avenues for effective civic engagement in response. This session begins with reflection on the adage “Service without reflection is just work.” We will discuss how our civic engagement efforts need to include developing students’ ability to reflect and discuss complex, multi-layered issues and examine the tools educators can employ for such endeavors.

eFeedback Using iPad Apps

Nancy Latham, School of Teaching and Learning

Additional Materials

Portfolio Making: Truly Reflecting Your Teaching

This presentation will provide participants with examples and uses of iPad applications such as “Notability” and “NoteScribe” to provide detailed, substantive feedback to students. Both formative and summative feedback examples using both notation functions and voice recording functions will be provided. Electronic documentation and record keeping will also be highlighted, including how these electronic tools provide searchable feedback that can be used in formative feedback practices to positively impact student performance.

Expanding Students’ Learning Edges (Invited Session)

Ama Oforiwaa Aduonum, School of Music; Dana Karraker, Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology

Change, growth, and learning happen when a person is taken out of his/her comfort zone and experiences something totally new. This space, the edge of our comfort zone, is often called the learning edge. Being on the learning edge can cause one to feel anxious, confused, self-conscious, and sometimes angry. The college classroom is a safe space to take students to their learning edges. However, taking students to their learning means taking risks, having confidence in ourselves, and trusting that our students will take that leap of faith with us. In this session, Dr. Ama Oforiwaa Aduonum and Dana Karraker will lead participants in a lesson demonstration and discussion that will show how they can take their students to the learning edge.

Improving Formative Assessment Feedback with the Pen Tablet

Mark Laingen, Department of Technology

Providing timely formative assessment feedback of student work enhances the learning process by providing students with the guidance they need to progress through their assignments without delay. The pen tablet enhances this process by allowing graders to mark drawings, papers, and CAD models in the same manner they would respond to hard copies without the delay of returning hard copies. Digitally marked assignments provide a more efficient and effective feedback tool which can be accessed immediately after being uploaded. This provides students access to the feedback without the time delay waiting for the next class session. This is especially helpful over long gaps in classes (3-4 days), and in distance learning applications.

Open Discussion on Writing in the Disciplines

Claire Lamonica, Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology

This session will offer a minimal introduction to the proposed graduation requirement in Writing in the Disciplines before inviting session participants to weigh in on the proposal in an open forum.

Redesigning for Civic Engagement

Tami Dean, School of Teaching and Learning; Sue Dustin, Department of Management and Quantitative Methods; Jodi Hallsten-Lyczak, School of Communication

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. Faculty will share their experiences redesigning their courses to include civic engagement activities into their classes. The facilitators will share their experiences redesigning their courses to include civic engagement. One of the benefits of this panel presentation is how we all approached civic engagement from different directions and integrated diverse activities that reflected our course values and goals. Participants will share and discuss their own experiences integrating civic engagement into their teaching, as well as brainstorm new ideas to help prepare students to be informed and engaged global citizens.

Reflective and Collaborative Practice in Course Design

Jeff Rients, Department of English; Jessica Lucas-Nihei, Department of Psychology; Cassandra Dodge, Criminal Justice Sciences

In this panel graduate students from three different academic units will discuss their experiences as members of the summer 2015 cohort of the CTLT Instructional Design for Future Faculty program. In particular, we will focus on our shift in approach from content-based course design (starting with the reading list or “the materials” we felt obligated to “cover”) to a design ethos based upon a step-by-step approach that puts instructor reflection at the heart of each design decision. We will examine how reflection on our past, current, and future experiences both as teachers and students can help us imagine our students’ future learning, allowing us to craft a classroom that serves as a bridging present. Finally, we will look at how open discussions with colleagues outside our own disciplinary silo provided a fresh perspective on our course design decisions.

Classroom Scenario Role Play

Paul Ronczkowski, Department of Health Sciences

In HSC 272, Accident/Incident Investigation, real life scenarios are developed to allow the students to engage with and apply investigation skills. The development involves the use of equipment from facilities maintenance, as well as cooperation from University police personnel, theater majors, and even student news reporters from ISU TV. This session will look at the design, coordination, and benefits of this instructional approach.

Continuing the Conversation with Todd Zakrajsek

Todd Zakrajsek, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

 

Critical Storytelling: EAF Doctoral Students Share Their Stories

Nicholas Hartlep, Department of Educational Administration and Foundations; Brandon Hensley, Department of Educational Administration and Foundations; Amanda Rohan, Department of Educational Administration and Foundations; James Neville, University Housing Services; Christopher Downing, Department of Educational Administration and Foundations

The idea for writing a book as a class was born in a doctoral-level course I taught during the summer of 2014. Initially, uncertainty permeated the course, especially during the first day when I informed the class that we would collaboratively write the syllabus for the course. The class was composed of doctoral students with a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, and professional interests. Second-year students shared the space with those who were nearing their comprehensive examinations. We had various disciplines represented as well, such as School Psychology, Communication Studies, and Higher Education. Some students had previously published book chapters and/or articles, while others had not yet published anything. These dynamics caused students to be pulled outside of their comfort zones. However, over time, our uncertainty and anxiety dissipated and transformed individuals into a community of learners. One of the course’s many strengths was the collaborative spirit that stitched it, and the book we wrote, together. This presentation shares how we can teach to transform.

Engaging Language Learners in Community Service

Susan Hildebrandt, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures; Julie Lynd, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures

Additional Materials

Engaging Language Learners in Community Service

This session will present curricular modifications made to courses in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Those changes sought to more actively engage language learners and teacher candidates in their communities, as part of American Democracy Project course re-designs. Susan Hildebrandt will describe changes made to LAN 320.11 World Language Teaching in the K-12 Setting, in which teacher candidates teach seven weeks of beginning Spanish and French to K-5th graders for 45 minutes at Unity Community Center in Normal. Teacher candidates’ explorations and discussions of Unity learners’ diverse backgrounds, social and economic standing, family makeup, or other issues related to power and privilege will be presented. Julie Lynd will describe changes made to her section of LAN 214.15 Conversation and Culture in Spanish to incorporate civic engagement with local Spanish-speaking populations, in order to abandon the model of learning Spanish in the classroom first and then later taking it to the real world (following a trend supported by research in second language acquisition). Benefits that support the community engagement efforts and barriers to participation will be presented. Both presenters will situate their curricular changes within larger analyses of language proficiency development among ISU language students.

Reflecting on Students’ Past and Future Expectations Using Engagement Survey Results

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

Additional Materials

Reflecting on Students’ Past & Expectations for the Future

We all spend a lot of time designing and implementing ideas that help students learn. Many of us, however, may feel less equipped to reflect on how our students organize their time and develop learning strategies. Similarly, and as noted in the book Promoting Reasonable Expectations, students receive a lot of information detailing institutional expectations and requirements, but we know comparatively less about what students expect of us. These are crucial elements of the learning process, as the narratives students employ about their past high school experiences can have a significant impact on future expectations and actual experiences at ISU. This session will present the results of the Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement (BCSSE) that was administered to entering first-year students in summer 2015. The session will focus on how students allocated their time in high school towards academic and co-curricular activities, how prepared they feel for academic work, and their expectations for their first year at ISU, including interactions with faculty and staff, time spent reading and preparing assignments, and making friends. Participants will have the opportunity to share and reflect on what they currently do to engage students and learn ideas they can use in their classroom or service.

Supersize Your Course: What to Do When Enrollment Skyrockets (Invited Session)

Maria Schmeeckle, Department of Sociology/Anthropology; Tracy Mainieri, School of Kinesiology and Recreation

Additional Materials

My ‘Supersize Your Course’ Story

Have you experienced a sudden shift in the number of students enrolled in one of your courses? In the first part of this session, Maria Schmeekle, from Sociology and Anthropology, and Tracy Mainieri, from Kinesiology and Recreation, will share how they made adjustments to their courses when they were faced with enrollment increases. The second part of the session they, along with Julie-Ann McFann, from CTLT, will facilitate a brainstorming conversation that will enable participants to leave with some strategies they can incorporate during the spring semester.

The Impact of Student Reflections on Active Learning

Thomas Lamonica, School of Communication

Additional Materials

Reflection in Active Learning

Dee Fink defines active learning as the interaction of new ideas and information, experiences, and reflection. The last element is often overlooked, but reflection effectively ties experiences to new ideas and information, producing learning that sticks. I try to be an activist for active learning in a variety of teaching and learning settings. In a large lecture introductory course, the “Get Involved” project challenges students to reflect on the connections between what they are learning in the class and the work of RSOs they select. Specific questions draw their attention to how they might use course content to benefit the organization. Similarly, in our school’s internship program, professional practice students put Dee Fink’s definition into practice by writing reflective essays which explore how they apply their classroom learning in the “real world.” Student reflections help them see how their classroom experiences provide a foundation for experiential learning in a professional environment, with the frequent bonus of students sharing their experiential learning with students and faculty in their classrooms. An added benefit is the way in which the school’s faculty utilizes the insights gained through student and supervisor reflections to assess and update academic programs.

The Painful but Positive Journey to the Middle of the Large Classroom, Maybe to My Students’ Hearts

Liesel Mitchell, Department of Accounting

Additional Materials

Accounting 131: Financial Accounting
Accounting 131 Student Survey
Bio and Teaching Philosophy
Journey to the Middle of the Large Classroom

How do I connect with my students? Convince them I’m here to help and I care? Get to know my students as individuals? Have them engage with me in the classroom? Especially when there are 130 or more of them in each of the sections I teach? I made the shift from accounting professional to accounting professor because I love working with students. When I taught classes of 30 students, I could get to know my students, and they could get to know me. By connecting with them, I could get them to engage. When I moved to classes of 90, some of the same techniques worked, some didn’t. Then I started teaching classes of 130 or more, and it became even more challenging. I’ve tried name tents, student surveys, seating charts, profile pictures, and providing my bio. I’ve talked to other teachers and tried to copy their style. I’ve attended so many CTLT workshops that I’ve lost count. Each semester I reflect on worked and what didn’t. I search for new ideas and imagine how to apply them to my classes. Through these efforts, teaching has become enjoyable, exciting, and energizing again. I even do my “happy, happy, joy, joy” dance some days.

Utilizing Current Events to Critically Teach Students about the World

Rachel Kowalski, School of Teaching and Learning; May Jadallah, School of Teaching and Learning

George Santayana said that, “A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.” Teaching events that are happening outside the school, the community, and the country can encourage critical thinking, challenge stereotypes, inspire activism, and empower students. Students need to be provided opportunities to make informed decisions and take part in positive change. Bringing current events into the classroom gives educators the opportunity to teach across the curriculum, providing students with deeper levels of learning. In these endeavors, as Freire reminds us, educators are co-investigators, learning from our students as they learn from us. In this session, ISU student panelists will describe engaging their own students in current events by reading, discussing, asking questions, making connections, and constructing meaning. The session will provide specific lessons taught using current events across various subjects, all while upholding the common core standards, inspiring students to take part in positive change, and creating more informed and better educated citizens.

Connecting the Dots: 3 Years on Teaching an Online Film Course & Textbook

William McBride, Department of English; Eric Wesselmann, Department of Psychology; Rick Valentin, School of Music

“Connecting the Dots for Effective Online Instruction.” In his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address, Steve Jobs said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” In this session, the first panelist will examine some of the successes and pitfalls of designing and delivering a 100% asynchronous online film course over the past three years, assessing pedagogical expectations and revisions, the advantages of teaching one’s own textbook, and plotting a course for future course offerings. A second panelist will share experiences and recommendations gained from having taught four online courses (both small and large sections). Working with CTLT he received evaluations using the Quality Matters rubric and revised his courses accordingly. The third panelist will chronicle his experiences creating, teaching and revising the same course as a traditional lecture, a 100% online experience and a “flipped” course.

Create an Inclusive Learning Environment (Invited Session)

Angell Davis, University College

In this session we will discuss how students’ world views influence their attitudes and behaviors. We will also discuss how increase cultural competencies and mindfulness of students’ perspectives in order to understand the social injustices, such as prejudice and discrimination, they may experience.

Engaging Your Students in Meaningful Dialogue: Chewing on Life’s Big Questions

Zuri Thurman, Dean Of Students; Amanda Gilpin, University Housing Services; Susan Ryder; Anne McDowell, Department of Special Education; Jim Almeda, Health Promotion & Wellness

Struggling to get your class to talk about important concepts? Want to create a caring community within your classroom? Chewing on Life’s Big Questions is an interactive classroom session designed by Health Promotion and Wellness. This pre-packaged program, presented by faculty and/or staff, is intended to assist students in identifying meaningful connections between themselves and their classmates while also allowing students to reflect on how their values align with their actions and behaviors while attending Illinois State University. The presentation includes brief demonstrations of engaging activities from Ask Big Questions, videos from Soul Pancake, and classroom polling techniques that spark interesting discussion and create a more participatory, engaged classroom. Participants will learn how to offer Chewing on Life’s Big Questions as an alternative to cancelling class when they have to be away at a conference.

The Publications Unit Partners Program: Fostering College and Career Readiness in Secondary Students

Steve Halle, Department of English; Cassie Graham, University High School; Tessy Ward, Department of English

Contemporary English and language arts teachers are often asked to take on curricular or co-curricular instruction or faculty advisor roles for classes or clubs that produce literary magazines, newspapers, yearbooks, and other published materials, but they often have little or no professional or pedagogical training in these areas. This presentation will give an overview of the Publications Unit Partners Program, which teaches hands-on, professional editing, graphic design, marketing, writing, and professional development skills to teachers and students in a variety of contexts, regardless of their previous experience in these areas, and the development of a partnership with the Creative Writing and Publishing Club at University High School. The panel will feature insights and reflections from the perspectives of three stakeholders in the Partners Program-Publications Unit Director Steve Halle, U-High teacher and Creative Writing and Publishing Club faculty sponsor Cassie Graham, and Publications Unit graduate assistant and club mentor Tessy Ward. The panelists hope their reflections on building the partnership and discussions of future plans will show other interested teachers how skills learned through the shared activity and workshops promote college and career readiness for secondary students.

Using The SoTL Advocate as a Resource to Apply and Engage in SoTL

Jennifer Friberg, Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders; Kathleen McKinney, Cross Chair Scholarship of Teaching & Learning; Brandon Hensley, Department of Educational Administration and Foundations; Phyllis McCluskey-Titus, Department of Educational Administration and Foundations

Additional Materials

Using The SoTL Advocate as Resource to Apply and Engage in SoTL

In the last year, the Office of the Cross Chair in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) has developed a valuable resource to support those interested in SoTL: a blog titled The SoTL Advocate. This blog features weekly posts in several categories, including SoTL News, Reports of SoTL Research, SoTL to Inform Scholarly Teaching, and Resource Sharing. Though intended as a resource for ISU personnel, readers and contributors for the blog are representative of colleges and universities across the U.S. and beyond. This session will introduce attendees to the newly developed The SoTL Advocate blog and highlight exemplar posts that are valuable supports for faculty focused on application of existing SoTL research or the design/execution of new SoTL inquiry. Presenters will review five blog posts/topics with attendees, and expand on each by providing suggestions for implementation of blog ideas in varied contexts across disciplines in an effort to increase understanding/engagement with SoTL. Additional resources will be discussed, as well (e.g., funding sources to support SoTL work, continuing education opportunities, other online resources). Finally, participants will be informed/encouraged to contribute a blog post. This session is proposed and sponsored by the Office of the Cross Chair in SoTL at ISU.

What’s New in ReggieNet? (Invited Session)

Mayuko Nakamura, Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology

Additional Materials

What’s New in ReggieNet?

In December 2015, ReggieNet will moved to a vendor-hosted environment and will be upgraded to the newest version, Sakai 2.10. Although there are no major changes with this transition, some new features and changes will be integrated into the system. Learn how these changes could impact your teaching.

Bridging the Divide between Content and Pedagogy: Reflective History Teaching

Richard Hughes, Department of History; Sarah Drake Brown, Department of History

Universities often play the dual role of both addressing disciplinary content and, either directly or indirectly, preparing students to teach the discipline. This presentation, a product of a research project entitled, “Historians and History Teachers: Collaborative Conversations,” explores our effort to address the persistent divide between content and pedagogy among undergraduate history education students. Reflecting the symposium’s theme of Imagining the Future, Reflecting the Past, we challenged the view centered on the number of required history courses in relation to education courses by creating a course, “United States in the Twentieth Century,” that purposefully blended both historical content, the burgeoning scholarship in history education, and reflective practice. We drew upon SoTL work in history and scholarship in history education as the basis for a course designed to build teaching candidates’ pedagogical content knowledge and prepare them for content methods courses. We explored the following question: “How do students’ disciplinary understandings affect their emerging conceptualization of discipline-specific teaching?” Our findings suggest the value of revising curricula across campus to provide future teachers, regardless of subject, with a better understanding of what occurs when individuals engage their discipline.

Faculty Reflections on Teaching in Universities Abroad: Bringing Lessons Home

Gina Hunter, Department of Sociology/Anthropology; Winfred Avogo, Department of Sociology/Anthropology; Miranda Lin, School of Teaching and Learning

Additional Materials

The Ethnography of the University in Brazil
Teaching in Universities Abroad: Bringing Lessons Home
My Teaching Experience at National Taitung University

Panelists in this session reflect on their recent experiences teaching in universities abroad. In the same way that learning a second language leads to greater knowledge of one’s native tongue, so too does teaching in a new context reveal taken-for-granted aspects of our own professional, institutional, and didactic cultures. Panelists consider how local political, economic, or institutional contexts impacted our teaching experiences in unexpected ways. We discuss the ways that students and faculty in contexts abroad envision the role of higher education in national development in ways that often revealed our own biases and perspectives. We explain how our “active” and “significant” teaching and learning techniques were received by students/other faculty in institutions where lecture-based courses are the norm and where shortages in teaching, mentoring, and supervision inhibit the training of young scholars. We also discuss how our expectations regarding student behavior and study patterns were challenged or upheld. Moving beyond the retrospective exercise, panelists show how they will apply the lessons learned abroad in designing global, cross-cultural courses at Illinois State University and offer suggestions for “provocative” study abroad immersion for ISU students that highlights and supports local initiatives.

Reflecting and Imagining Collaboratively: Improving Student Learning at the Program Level

Derek Herrmann, University Assessment Services; Michael Byrns, Department of Health Sciences; Guang Jin, Department of Health Sciences; Carolina Posada, Mennonite College of Nursing; Nancy Novotny, Mennonite College of Nursing

Additional Materials

Assessment Initiative for Environmental Health Program

Last year, two faculty teams reflected on student learning within their programs and implemented projects beyond the typical assessment activities in which they are involved. Faculty in the B.S. in Environmental Health program developed a systematic approach to assessing the program’s effectiveness in preparing students for the profession. Specifically, the team wanted to focus on students’ technical/professional communication skills by evaluating assignments using rubrics, professional knowledge preparation by incorporating feedback from stakeholders and professional practice experiences, and critical thinking dispositions and skills by implementing a standardized measure. Faculty associated with the Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program developed portfolios through which students would reflect on their progress in meeting the program outcomes while faculty and staff would use this information to supplement their assessment activities. Specifically, the team wanted to evaluate the acceptability, feasibility, student preparedness, and value of the portfolios for their distinctive contribution to assessment. Both projects have provided valuable insight to the teams’ programs and will guide future curricular and instructional improvements. Members of both teams will share what led them to develop these projects, the methods used to collect and analyze data, and the lessons they have learned while completing these assessment projects.

Structure and Dynamics of Students’ Interactions on Online Discussions: A Network Perspective

Elahe Javadi, School of Information Technology; Nancy Novotny, Mennonite College of Nursing

Additional Materials

Structure and Dynamics of Students’ Interaction on Online Discussions: A Network Perspective

This session will report on a study designed to examine patterns of student-to-student interaction in online discussions. Discussion data were collected during weeks two through four in a fully online, graduate-level nursing course. Students participated in discussion teams and were required to submit one initial and at least two responsive posts. Students were prompted to discuss course content covered during each week based on questions posed by course instructors. Students’ interactions during each discussion were modeled as a network in which nodes represent students and links between two nodes represent a conversation between two students. We performed social network analysis to examine structure of each of the three networks. Evolutions of students’ interactions were tracked using centrality and power measures to examine changes in status of each node in the network. We also examined clustering coefficients to uncover possible interaction fault-lines that emerged over three weeks. Uncovering fault-lines and examining the structure and evolution of students’ interactions will provide insight on design and implementation of facilitation mechanisms and also optimal grouping of students in order to avoid individual students’ dominance throughout the course discussions. It will also provide insight on crafting fine-grained instructions for and evaluations of students’ participation in online discussions.

The Narrative Structure of Understanding

Daniel Breyer, Department of Philosophy

As teachers, we encourage students to reflect on what they’ve learned and what they’ve experienced because we think that reflection is valuable in a variety of ways. This session explores, specifically, the role reflection can play in fostering understanding. To support this claim, the session briefly explores the nature and value of understanding itself, emphasizing its narrative structure.

The World Is So Big: Pre-service Teachers Reflect on a Short-Term Study Abroad Program in England

Erin Mikulec, School of Teaching and Learning

Additional Materials

“The World Is So Big”: Pre-service Teachers Reflect on a Short-Term Study Abroad Program in England

Research has shown a number of benefits that result from a study abroad experience, including the development of intercultural sensitivity and communication skills, increased knowledge of the host country, and an increase in self-awareness (Parsons, 2010). Research further indicates that even a short term study abroad program, lasting between several weeks to one month, can be beneficial (Bell & Anscombe, 2013). Such programs can be tailored to students’ academic program, for instance management (Carley, Stuart, & Dailey, 2011), nursing (Shannon, 2013) and teacher education (Vatalaro, Szente, & Levon, 2015), which can lead to the development of professional identity. This presentation reports on the learning outcomes of pre-service teachers who participated in a three-week study abroad program in Brighton, England, where they used drama techniques in the classroom and visited local schools. The findings indicate that students identified a number of similarities and differences in various aspects of education in the United States and England. The participants also reported out-of-class learning outcomes such as increased self-confidence, flexibility, and an emerging sense of adventure. The presentation will describe the learning activities associated with the program and offer recommendations for developing activities that lead to student self-reflection and growth.

Using SoTL to Support Departmental, Institutional, and Disciplinary Priorities

Jennifer Friberg, Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders; Kathleen McKinney, Cross Chair Scholarship of Teaching & Learning; Ann Beck, Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders

In the last several years, the number of faculty involved with the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) has increased across campus. Workshops to introduce faculty to SoTL and those designed to lead to more advanced understanding of SoTL are routinely full with waiting lists. With this increase in interest in SoTL, the Office of the Cross Chair serves to support and advocate for SoTL to be used in a manner that benefits not only individual faculty, but academic departments, universities and disciplines external to ISU, as well. This presentation will focus on aspects of advocacy for SoTL at both the institutional and disciplinary levels to highlight initiatives for the advancement of SoTL at ISU and beyond. Specific examples of each highlighted initiative will be provided and used as a springboard for an interactive discussion among attendees to suggest and share “next steps” for SoTL advocacy. While this presentation is appropriate for any attendee, we plan to provide chairs/directors and other university administrators with a special invitation to participate in this discussion. This presentation is submitted and sponsored by the Office of the Cross Endowed Chair in SoTL at ISU.

What Can Be Done to Enhance Students’ Writing Abilities? A Panel Discussion

Tom Gerschick, Department of Sociology/Anthropology

Among the faculty, there is a strong perception that students do not write well. We often lament that they have trouble with the basics of sentence and paragraph construction, and formulating sound arguments appears beyond their present capabilities. This situation is not unique to ISU. Research reports indicate that the percentages of high school students prepared for the rigors of college coursework are dropping, and employers report that college graduates do not write well enough to fulfill their job responsibilities. This session is dedicated to initiating a conversation about what can be done at all levels of our university to enhance our students’ writing. Can the ISU Foundation, for instance, secure a large gift that would allow for the creation of a Developmental Writing Lab akin to our Math Lab? Should we create a peer writing mentoring program? Should and can Departments require a course in writing in their discipline? This session is expressly NOT about criticizing ISU’s present writing program and related endeavors. Rather it is focused on what we can do to enhance our current efforts. The goal at the end of the session is to identify a list of interested people and to brainstorm ideas for actions.

A Pilot Study of Child Protection Mediation in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court

Kathryn Sheridan, School of Social Work

This poster presents findings from an NFIG-funded pilot study of the Child Protection Mediation Program (CPM) in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court. CPM is a facilitation and mediation program for families involved in the child protection system which aims to expedite permanency for children through the resolution of conflict. The evaluation examines the process of implementation and outcomes of CPM from the perspective of biological parents, foster parents, attorneys, child protection workers, mediators, and other involved parties. Findings will be utilized to improve CPM program design and procedures.

Allowing Anything to Happen: A Transdisciplinary Investigation of Students' Experiences with Fitzm

Jamie Smith, Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders; Lisa Vinney, Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders; Kevin Rich, School of Theatre and Dance

Performers and speech-language pathologists are keenly interested in the voice -- its potential and its pathologies -- but they look at this topic through very different lenses. This poster will describe a collaboration between theatre and communication sciences and disorders designed to broaden students’ perspectives about vocal use. We will share qualitative data obtained from graduate students in the School of Theatre and Dance as they advance in the study of a vocal technique designed to protect and enhance the performer’s voice.

Art and Music Educators and Urban Education: A Reflection

Judith Briggs, School of Art; Kimberly McCord, School of Music

This poster will describe a mixed methods study that investigated the role that the Illinois State University teacher urban redesigned training programs in music and in art played in the decisions of 2010 to 2014 art and music education graduates to teach in urban environments. The study discerned that 50% of art education alumni and 26% of music education alumni taught in urban schools. Of those alumni who didn’t teach in urban environments, 58% of the art educators and 55% of the music educators would change their minds if they had a chance to teach in urban areas. Eighty percent of the art educators and 80% of the music educators overall felt prepared to teach in urban areas. Urban bus trips, volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club Friday Arts Experience, urban teaching clinicals in local and Chicago public schools, and discussing issues of race, class, and gender in the classroom contributed to student decisions to teach in urban areas. Opportunities provided by both programs and by the university’s Chicago Teacher Education Pipeline enabled these mostly white alumni to critically reflect upon teaching practices and their impact on the students whom they teach.

Building Community in a PBIS World: Voices of ECE Candidates as They Transition into 1st Year Teachers

Kira Hamann, School of Teaching and Learning

For both beginning and veteran teachers, classroom management (CM) ranks as one of their primary areas of concern (Hoy & Woolfolk, 1990; Martin, Yin, & Mayall, 2006), and teachers in the early childhood years are often the first service providers to interact with children exhibiting challenging behaviors (Tillery, Varjas, Meyers, & Collins, 2010). Mixed messages in early childhood teacher preparation regarding the role of democracy and community in the classroom and the more behavioristic settings of actual clinical and first-year settings can contribute to this concern. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions and actions of early childhood teachers regarding their classroom management as they graduated from a teacher preparation program and became first year teachers. Findings from this year and a half study include a lack of preparation, feelings of being pushed and pulled in regards to classroom management, and a lack of concrete plans as they began their first year. Findings also include yearlong impacts of school wide attitudes and practices, administrative support, mentorship and teacher self-efficacy. This study creates insights for teacher preparation, new teacher mentorship, and schools as communities.

Can Grammar Graphics Impact Grammar Knowledge and Collegiate Writing?

Mark Zablocki, Department of Special Education; Christina Borders, Department of Special Education; Carrie Anna Courtad, Department of Special Education; Stacey Jones Bock, Department of Special Education

Grammar Graphics is a visual system for teaching English syntax. It has the potential to influence ways in which teacher candidates may teach grammar to their K-12 students in the future as well impact their own syntactic knowledge. This system teaches visual symbols for each part of speech with rationale for the symbol itself. We investigated the impact of explicit instruction in grammar with Grammar Graphics on teacher candidate knowledge of syntax as well as their confidence to instruct their future K-12 students in grammar. We further assessed the impact of explicit instruction in grammar with Grammar Graphics on collegiate writing.

Exploration of the use of Simulation for Leadership Development in Graduate Nursing Education

O. Ed. Reitz, Mennonite College of Nursing

While other industries have benefited from the use of simulation, healthcare has not adopted the widespread use of simulation for leadership development. This poster will disseminate the findings from a study that explored the integration of simulation for leadership development into graduate level nursing programs. Telephone interviews of nursing instructors teaching graduate leadership or administration programs were conducted. The results indicated that there is currently no agreement regarding the meaning of simulation. Barriers to simulation include the high cost of simulation, the online nature of the nursing programs, and work conflicts for students working as nurse managers while continuing their studies. Simulation was suggested to have the potential to improve graduate nursing education in new areas such as leadership development, acquisition of financial skills, inter-disciplinary communication, conflict resolution and the move toward population based health. However, before simulation can be used on a wide spread basis, consensus as to the definition of simulation should be refined in order to re-conceptualize simulation within nursing education.

How Do Science Graduate Students Benefit from Qualitative Educational Research?

Rebekka Gougis, School of Biological Sciences; Janet Stomberg, School of Biological Sciences; Alicia O’Hare, Department of Geography/Geology

This project engaged two science graduate students as members of an educational research team to examine the progression of their experiences as student-researchers and their ideas about qualitative research. This allows documentation of the progression of science graduate students’ ideas about the nature of qualitative educational research and its value to their future careers. Given these students’ future careers as science faculty and/or industry scientists who could implement informal science programs, they are well positioned to gain substantial benefit from participation in educational research. Their participation provides a unique context in which we can examine how future science educators come to understand the process and value of educational research, particularly qualitative research. This study can inform future studies that examine how to prepare educators in applying educational research to their practice and ultimately strengthen the quality of post-secondary science education.

iPads with Individuals with Disabilities in Rock Bands

Kimberly McCord, School of Music

A grant from CTLT allowed me to use iPad minis with adults and high school students with disabilities in a rock band context. This poster will explore how the iPads make participation more meaningful and accessible to, for example, people with one arm who want badly to play the guitar or drum set, as well as for improvisation and experimentation with ways to play rock band instruments in a rock band context.

Math Anxiety in CSD Graduate Students

Jamie Smith, Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders

Speech-language pathologists use basic math skills for a variety of tasks in their classes and in the field. Math anxiety can interfere with completion of these tasks; no published reports describe the prevalence or intensity of math anxiety in this population. Two cohorts of first-year graduate students in CSD (n = 73) used the modified Fennema-Sherman Mathematics Attitude Survey to evaluate their own math ability and math anxiety. A clearly bimodal response pattern was observed. Across both cohorts, one group of students felt confident and competent with regard to math-related tasks, while another group reported anxiety and doubt. The presence of strongly divergent attitudes toward course material may present challenges for instructors and students alike. Potential responses are discussed.

Reader-Centered Strategies and Teaching Literature in Spanish

James J. Pancrazio, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures

Although most programs in Hispanic Studies successfully address language acquisition in the freshmen and sophomore level courses, students are rarely considered as language learners once they advance to the upper-division courses in Spanish and Latin American literature and culture. Not only are students expected to read and analyze literary texts, but they also have to do so in a language that is not their own. On more than one occasion, colleagues have lamented how little students enjoy these tasks. In this sense, in an age that favors practicality and skills, and at a time in which social media, video and photograph, music, and texting are among the primary modes of communication among students, this poster invites symposium participants to consider what role the study of literature can and should play in undergraduate programs in Spanish and how professors, most of us trained in literary history and theory, can present reading as a skill and be sensitive to the needs of language learners in their upper-division courses.

Service Learning and Civic Engagement through Landscapes for Love

Daniella Barroqueiro, School of Art

Just as everyone should have a decent roof over their head, I believe people should have a healthy, physically safe outdoor environment that brings them a sense of dignity and pride. This poster will introduce Landscapes for Love, a not-for-profit organization/RSO that helps people create clean, healthy, beautiful outdoor living environments at home through creativity, hard work, cooperation, and volunteerism. For whatever reason, some people struggle with caring for their lawns and gardens, and many feel overwhelmed with the enormous task. Our student volunteers come together to help families create outdoor living spaces that they can enjoy and be proud of, at little or no cost to them. We also teach the families how to care for their property after we leave. Organizations like Landscapes for Love are intended to prepare students to actively engage in their citizenship. Illinois State University’s values are at the core of this organization, as students contribute to their local community, and develop an individual awareness of social responsibility.

Service Learning to Support Undergraduate Social Work Research

Karen Stipp, School of Social Work; Kathryn Sheridan, School of Social Work

Research methods hold keys for identifying need and developing effective interventions. Often, however, social work students do not connect the methods they learned in their research courses to answering questions agencies are asking. Students are motivated to “do good” in the world, but have limited skills for identifying when “good” is accomplished. Assigning an agency-based research proposal provides real-life applications for social work research. Social work juniors work with an area agency to create a research proposal, which the agency can use to answer a local question. One year after developing agency-based research proposals, after 600-hour senior field placements, we asked students about ways the assignment supported their field placement work. Students reported the assignment helped them understand the value of local research, helped them answer local questions with needs assessments and logic models, helped them understand the populations they served with information from peer-reviewed journals, and helped them understand real and potential agency uses for data. Connecting the study of research to what a local social service agency needs to know, enhanced the value of research to social work students, and promised to support the profession’s need for practitioner-researchers.

Student Engagement in Spatial-Graphical Recognition: Linking Experience and Visualization

Sally Xie, Department of Technology

This poster describes a study designed to determine whether prior spatial experiences and specific activities related to design and construction can result variations in spatial graphical recognition. The identification of spatial objects and their relationships are important to the success of students in architectural, engineering, and construction disciplines, yet real-world experiential relationships with spatial-graphical recognition are rarely studied on a quantitative measure. The benefits of using such knowledge and experience include: improved situation awareness, more accurate design consideration, more balanced mental workload, increased user acceptance, and improved overall competence. We review several techniques for creating architectural and construction-related drawings. We discuss with students the sketching techniques, drafting principles, geometric construction, and spatial visualization as applied to architectural ideas. We design assignments for students to use computer 3D software to create basic models that represent architectural design ideas and projects. We revise the concept of a “level of integration” as a pattern of spatial-graphical recognition and argue that pattern recognition requires a coordinated model between the understanding of objects in daily surrounding and professional representations. On the basis of the analyses, we propose methods for supporting spatial-graphical recognition and implementation with a systematical approach.

Teaching Musical Understanding Through Competitive Gaming

Roy Magnuson, School of Music

In the music discipline, it is critical to listen to all types of music in order to gain context and deepen your understanding. However, students are often disinterested in some genres or styles and find it difficult to engage in the act of simply hearing and thinking about the music at hand. This poster will focus on the use of gaming to not only teach new and exciting music, but also to build a more complete sense of structure, timing, and purpose in music, and to deepen students’ sense of the ISU learning community through competitive study challenges.

Thinking Critically about Statistics in Media

CJ Zobell, Department of Psychology; Eric Wesselmann, Department of Psychology

People are surrounded by advertisements over digital media; they are constantly consuming statistics-based information focused on persuading them to change their attitudes, voting, or consumer behavior. While numbers and survey results don’t “lie,” the people who use these statistics can manipulate them to construct a persuasive message showing their viewpoint in a favorable light. This suggests that educators of statistics and research methods should provide students the opportunity to become savvy consumers of research. Students should be able to recognize bias, faulty statistics, and outright subterfuge. To this end, we created an assignment that helps students become statistically literate using real-world examples. The assignment concluded by asking students to give examples of negative outcomes from their own lives as a result of mistaking false or misleading information as true. Upon completion of the course, we contacted students to gain feedback regarding how this assignment has been of practical help in their own lives. Our poster presentation will include this feedback as well as examples of assignment answers.

Using Student Reflections In Place of Exams to Measure Content Knowledge and Higher Order Thinking

Cynthia Moore, School of Biological Sciences

Students in my teacher education courses have always written reflections as a major component of their assessment. I am now applying this approach to my upper level biology elective, BSC 329, Human Genetics. This course is presented in a blended class format with flipped instruction. The course material comprises six content units, with a strong emphasis on overarching concepts and future directions of research. To emphasize student-centered learning, I have replaced traditional classroom exams with individual reflections as the main basis for student assessment. Instead of regurgitating the formidable course content, at the end of each unit students are asked to write an essay describing the concepts they have learned in the unit and what questions have arisen from that knowledge. While some students require coaching to increase their comfort with an open-ended discussion of their own learning, almost all prefer this format by mid-semester, realizing that they are spending their time thinking rather than memorizing. While it is time-consuming to read and comment on these reflections, it is also satisfying to encounter concrete proof that students really have grasped the big ideas. These reflections allow students to “show what they know” by tying together concepts from across the course.