Welcome to the proceedings blog of the UMass Boston University Teaching, Learning & Technology Conference of May 15, 2014 “Teaching both What and How for Deep Learning at Every level”
Awards Ceremony
http://youtu.be/watch?v=4bkO7M4hBk8
Presentations Sessions
Technology for Intensifying Immersion in Online and Face to Face Courses
Breaking the Isolation without Breaking Your Back: Flipped Synchs Groping toward a New Pedagogy
This presentation explores theory, tools, trials and tears in the search for a new pedagogy that combines the power of distance technologies with the intimacy of in person. It considers taking advantage of a new kind of learning and teaching in a system that still pays for a once a week class is an exciting challenge.
Presenter: Steven Schatz (Instructional Design)
http://youtu.be/watch?v=Kt_43Us_tCs
Gamify Your Teaching
Presenter: Janna Kellinger (Curriculum & Instruction)
Gamification is the use of game mechanics, tools, and thinking to solve problems. Participants will be asked to think about how they can employ features of video games to gamify their teaching, and then explore how to use Blackboard Learn and free software tools to do so.
http://youtu.be/watch?v=ov8rGlz7G78
Global Learning and Communication—An Experience Providing Professional Development to Faculty in India
Presenters: Tara Devi S. Ashok (Biology and Anthropology), Apurva Mehta (IT), Denise Patmon (Curriculum & Instruction), Nishikant Sonwalkar ( Physics), Irene Yukhananov (IT Ed Tech & Learning Commons), and S. Lakshmi Devi (Sociology)
Six Institute members will discuss the experience of conducting a six day faculty development Institute on Global Learning and Communications at Shaheed Rajguru College of Applied Sciences for Women, Delhi, India. The goal of the Institute was to enable faculty to engage students through the use of new digital technologies. Institute sessions included: Exploring New Frontiers, Emerging Technologies, Writing and Reading in 21st Century Platforms, Instructional Design Models, Social Learning Theories and Applications, Adaptive Learning Design, and Assessment.
http://youtu.be/watch?v=U0BA9AYz4TQ
Break on through to the Other Side: Developing Teaching Pedagogy through Tutor & Student
Presenters: Krysten Hill, Kathleen Raddatz, Ian Drinkwater, and Kurt Klopmeier (Academic Support Systems), Peter Picetti, Jillian Tessier, and Alyssa Mazzarella (English)
This panel will discuss how tutoring experiences can inform teaching pedagogy. Panelists will share their unique perspectives as both teachers and tutors and propose approaches to encouraging student progress through the integration of tutoring and teaching strategies. Panelists will discuss techniques for decoding and commenting on student work in productive ways that empower and encourage student learning. They will also examine how their experiences decoding professor feedback and prompts have helped them create productive techniques in their own classes. Through an active dialogue, participants and panelists will explore ways to combine tutoring and teaching pedagogy in ways that ultimately promote student empowerment and success.
Best Practices for Teaching and Responding to Writing Across the Curriculum
Going Back to Move Forward: Supporting Student Writers by Exploring and Exploiting Recursive, Decision-making Models and Strategies of Academic Writing
Presenter: Erin O’Brien (Academic Support Programs)
Instructors possess both the experiential and epistemic credibility needed to help student writers by making processes transparent and discourse expectations explicit. This workshop presents models of, and strategies for, “excavating” both discourse expectations across the curriculum and recursive writing processes that directly support student achievement by demystifying relationships between processes and products.
The Academic and Cultural Adaptation of Chinese International Students at UMass Boston: The Struggles and Progress from the Perspectives of Students and Professors
Presenters: Pingping Chen (IVSA, OITA ), Teddy Chocos, and Lorena Fuentes (English)
This panel will articulate the struggles and progress of Chinese international students in their learning processes at UMass Boston as well as the challenges some professors have faced in teaching Chinese international students based on yearlong observations of ESL classes and interviews with students and professors. The pedagogical practices faculty have used to engage these learners in their courses will be highlighted.
http://youtu.be/watch?v=HjzLR2C88tw
Cooperative Learning and Teaching of Controversial Issues
Let’s Learn Together: The Importance of Cooperative Learning Activities in the College Classroom
Presenter: Gamze Yilmaz (Department of Communication)
This presentation will discuss the importance of implementing cooperative learning as a pedagogical tool in today’s college classroom to assist student learning of abstract and theoretical concepts. This implementation will particularly benefit students with differential levels of learning and prior knowledge of the course concepts. This presentation will elaborate on two main purposes cooperative learning activities serve. First, these pedagogical tools stimulate a real-life context and motivate students to engage in in-depth discussion, creating a game-based and interactive learning environment. Second, the hands-on aspects of cooperative activities help students better recall the course material, and make associations between the abstract concepts and tangible examples. The presentation will illustrate a cooperative learning activity and discuss how it serves the preceding functions.
The Wound that Never Heals? Treating Controversial Racial Issues in the Composition
Presenter: John Hess (English)
Using the experience in his Honors Composition classes last semester, the presenter looks at student responses to reading sets on the 50th anniversary of the I Have a Dream speech and the Trayvon Martin case. He will also describe the “eidetic reduction” and ground rules that were insisted upon as a basis for the discussion.
Critical Talking About Critical Thinking to Engage Our Students
Presenters: Catherine Corman (American Studies), and Evangeline Harris Stefanakis (Educational Leadership)
This presentation will model how dialogs between experts in education and experts in a subject area can help to engage students as active learners and critical thinkers. Dialogs focused on learner centered activities can be used to narrow the gap between abstract content and students’ learning styles. Dialogs include: changes to syllabus formatting, use of short pre- reading questions, introduction to note-taking forms to help students gather evidence for analytical essays, and creation of in-class activities for students to practice moving between concrete details and abstract concepts. The presentation demonstrates how the dialog model offers bridge-building between theories of education and academic professors.
http://youtu.be/watch?v=5UgdJbxaenM
Online Exam Proctoring for the 21st Century: A UMass Boston Pilot Program Spring 2014
Presenters: Melanie Maxham, Irene Yukhananov (IT Ed Tech & Learning Commons), and Steve Ackerman (Biology)
Twenty-first century education requires innovative technological solutions to support student academic integrity. This session introduces participants to the Monitor feature recently added to the Respondus LockDown application. It examines how to integrate with Blackboard Learn and outlines setup, deployment, technical assistance and system requirements as well as the most effective settings for tests and common pitfalls. The presentation will conclude with a case study conducted at UMass Boston.
Playing the Role, Befriending the Troll: Enchantment and Critique in the Classroom
Presenters: Alex Mueller (English), Jerimiah Bergstrom, John Burns, and Samantha Regan (English), Pamela Worth (Communications)
Enchantment and critique have often been deemed irreconcilable, the former representing escapist pleasure and the latter “suspicious” reading. This panel suggests that enchantment and critique can be hybridized through the use of role play, in which students are asked to assume specific points of view from their course texts.
Innovative Approaches to Undergraduate Research in Education and Management
Promoting Authentic Inquiry through Field-Based Experiences: A Case in Pre-Service Teacher Education
Presenter: Lianna Pizzo (Curriculum & Instruction)
This presentation will discuss moving beyond preparing students to be “technically competent practitioners” to being “engaged professionals” through the use of authentic inquiry experiences. The presenter will illustrate how to develop inquiry through field-based experiences by highlighting a case in teacher education.
Generation “Why”: Teaching both the What and How of Information Literacy and Research Skills
Presenter: Kate Archard (Management)
Information literacy is a pre-requisite for successful student-centered learning in undergraduate and graduate courses. This presentation explains and demonstrates examples from the College of Management’s BC 290 class work assignments that orient students toward the process of scholarly and marketplace research, as well as, the use of information in both academic and professional contexts.
Graduate Work 101 v 2.0: An Online Tutorial to Meet the Informational Needs of Graduate Students at UMass Boston
Presenters: Mary Moser, and Christina Gattone (Healey Library)
As our graduate student enrollment grows, so do the ways in which we need to teach and support them. Healey Library invites your participation, reflection, and feedback in this hands- on workshop and discussion about the development of a standalone online tutorial in research and information literacy skills for graduate students at UMass Boston.
MOOCs- Beyond the Buzzword: Opening Online Courses for Community Engagement and Educational Program Promotion
Presenters: Rrezarta Hyseni, Alan Girelli, Luis Poza Garcia, Jessica Downa (IT Ed Tech & Learning Commons), Anamarija Frankic (EEOS), Deniz Bertuna, and Kevin O’Rourke (CAPS – Dean’s Office)
Offering online courses for free and with open enrollment is an opportunity to reach out beyond the confines of university walls, to strengthen ties locally and connect globally by establishing learning communities around common interests and needs. Members of the team that designed and produced one of the first two open online courses—Coasts and Communities, an environmental science course from the newly formed School for the Environment—will share their experience with the process: challenges encountered, lessons learned and their work on a new and expanded offering of the course as a 1-credit-bearing lab. The presenters will introduce participants to massive open online courses as a new development in education; how they are designed, produced and delivered, and explore their advantage as a tool for reaching out to prospective students and engage community members.
http://youtu.be/watch?v=0UYmaZMd7xo
Student Collaboration and Textual/Digital Collaboration for Gains in Learning
Presenter 1: James Soldner (GISD – Dean’s Office)
Presenter 2: Veronique Helenon (Africana Studies)
Interteaching, referred to as a “mutually probing, mutually informing conversation between two people” has been introduced as an evidence-based, user-friendly alternative to teaching practices, such as lecture. Empirical support has found interteaching to positively impact student learning and satisfaction. This data-based presentation will provide an overview of interteaching and detail innovative interteaching research and practice in higher education.
http://youtu.be/watch?v=P1f8OxQ_ND0
To Flip or Not to Flip?
Presenters: Irene Yukhananov, Mish McIntyre, and Luis Poza Garcia (IT/Ed Tech), Janice Goldman (Marketing & Management), Michael Keating (CAPS)
Flipping the classroom was a top trend for 2013 and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. What does flipping a classroom really entail? What technologies are available to support the process of developing and maintaining flipped curriculum? If students watch a lecture before class, what do instructors do during class time? This workshop untangles the confusing popular culture surrounding the flipped classroom and provides clear steps and important pedagogy that will help faculty explore the possibilities for increasing student interactivity and engagement. The panel will introduce the ideas behind a flipped online course including student-centered learning activities, advantages of chunking videos, using quizzes for formative assessment, integrating top levels of Bloom’s taxonomy of learning, the importance of time and preparation, and the shifting role of the instructor.
Tutor = Portal to Digital Campus: Synchronous and Asynchronous Online Tutoring as a Link between Student and Classroom
Presenters: Kurt Klopmeier, Meesh McCarthy, Cynthia Jahn, Kathleen Raddatz, Khaitan Allen, Ian Drinkwater (Academic Support Programs)
One-to-one online tutoring is a useful and effective tool for students’ development in the online classroom, as well as a crucial connection to the university in an environment where human interaction can be sorely lacking. This panel will discuss best practices and helpful methods in online tutoring while also addressing issues of efficacy and assessment.
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