2015 Conference: Teaching as Exploration: Students, Teachers, and Staff as Co-learners

UMass Boston Conference on Teaching Learning & Technology
Teaching as Exploration: Students, Teachers, and Staff as Co-learners

Schedule:
8 a.m.
Registration: Healey Library, 2nd floor, Lobby

8:30 – 9:30 a.m.
1.1 Adventures in the Archives: Confusion, Collaboration, Connection, and Reflection
Room: Healey Library, LL, P1

When teachers and students enter rare book libraries and historical record repositories, they embark on adventures marked by occasions for confusion, collaboration, connection, and reflection. Panelists will share their perspectives on teaching and learning through local course and study abroad experiences in two archives, the Boston Public Library and the Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna in Italy.

Presenters: Alex Mueller (English), Renata M. Tutko, Samantha J. Baffoni, Alexandra G. Borkowski, and Brian Campbell (students)

1.2 Using Case Studies and Objective Structured Exams to Enhance Learning
Room: Healey Library, LL, P2

Using Video-Augmented Case Studies to Teach Students’ Clinical Reasoning and Communication Skills
Video-augmented case studies are used to facilitate nursing students’ clinical reasoning and communication skills that are essential to promote patient safety. These case studies generate classroom discussions about professionalism and effective communication skills to meet patients’ needs.

Presenter: Janice Foust (Nursing)

Objective Structured Clinical Examination [OSCE] in Advanced Practice Nursing [APN] Education
The presenter shows how by using simulation, the APN student can be evaluated within the expanded practice role in a safe, controlled environment. This practice enables students to increase the complexity of their understanding as well as their autonomy, the hallmarks that differentiate advanced practice nursing from basic nursing practice.

Presenter: Teri Aronowitz (Nursing)

1.3 CIT Spring Seminar for Non Tenure Track Faculty: An In-Depth Look into Teachers as Co-Learners
Room: Healey Library, LL, CLI (Center for Library Instruction)

This panel will enumerate the special experience of attending the CIT Spring NTT Seminar where participants shared and incorporated teaching methods and practices. Tara Ashok, NTT seminar facilitator will highlight the planning process and implementation of the experience for the 2014 and 2015 NTT seminars. Faculty participants will each share one aspect or change that emphasizes their experience as co-learners in the seminar and/or classroom.

Presenters: Tara Devi Ashok (Biology and Anthropology), John Hess (English), Judith Griffin (Gerontology, CPCS), Victoria Kingsley (English), Valentina M. Urbanek, Jerrilyn Quinlan (Gerontology Institute), Carol Sharicz (CAPS, Dean’s Office), Margaret Vaughan (Psychology)

1.4 Pedagogical Innovations with VoiceThread
Room: Healey Library, LL, ITC

VoiceThread: Co-Learning in the Cloud!
VoiceThread, a dynamic, and interactive tool accessed from within Blackboard provides faculty with multimedia solutions to common pedagogical problems including, but not limited to: how do I create audio/visual interaction in an online course, how do I guide my students to create dynamic group projects, and how to elicit student reactions to a slide I display.

Presenters: Ellen Foust (Instructional Designer on the e-Learning and Instructional Support Team), Jaclyn DeChiro and Luis Poza-Garcia (IT Ed Tech & Learning)

Amplify Co-Learning and Student Engagement in Asynchronous Online Classes Using VoiceThread
The presenter provides three applications of VoiceThread to create engaging co-learning in courses including a) Autobiographical Introductions; b) Work-in-Progress Updates with student feedback; and c) Dialogue as a supplement to a MOOC. Participants will have ample time for Q&A as well as discussion on the challenges of asynchronous learning environments, human presence and student engagement in a learning community.

Presenter: Felicia Sullivan (Tisch College, Tufts University)

9:45 – 10:45 a.m.
Room: Ryan Lounge (McCormack, 3rd floor)
Chancellor’s Welcome
Welcoming Remarks by Chancellor J. Keith Motley

Keynote
Presenter: Wendy Shapiro (PhD, Associate Dean of Learning, Design and Technology for the College of Advancing and Professional Studies)

11:00 – 12:00 p.m.
2.1 Acquiring Academic Discourse: Creating Space for Deeper Critical Thinking and Analysis
Room: Healey Library, LL, P1

This presentation explores the advantages of allowing ELL in lower levels to use their native language, in limited amounts, within their English classroom activities in order to acquire academic discourse as they deepen their understanding and critical thinking. Discussion will follow in light of experts’ theories and student responses.

Presenters: Teddy Chocos, and Brittanie Greco (English)

2.2 Learning from Our Students through Learning Assessments
Room: Healey Library, LL, P2

The presenters will provide a preliminary analysis of a pretest-posttest learning assessment, and then engage participants in a discussion of the assumptions instructors make about the knowledge and skills that students bring to higher level courses. Time will be spent allowing participants the opportunity to brainstorm assessment plans for the fall semester, and discuss the implications that these assessments have for evolving course designs.

Presenters: Megan Klein Hattori (Sociology), Mary Moser (Librarian, Healey Library)

2.3 Perspectives on Interactive Learning
Room: Healey Library, 4th floor, CLI (Center for Library Instruction)

Students Collaborate to Explore the Global Economy
After a brief outline of the structure of the course as a whole, students in each of the groups will discuss how they approached the research they conducted on their industry. We will invite the audience to share their insights and concerns and will use the discussion to reflect on ways to improve the course from a pedagogical perspective. The final minutes of the sessions will provide space for a discussion on how education is moving towards a more “hands-on” and collaborative format and will brainstorm how to offer educational scenarios that involve students and teachers as co-learners.

Presenters: Beatrice Nelson (Management), and students

Fold, Flip, Repeat: A Virtual Communication Challenge
This presentation explains a team-based interactive activity simulating a virtual team interaction. The activity is used to explain how computer-mediated communication theories can inform real-life applications.

Presenter: Gamze Yilmaz (Communication)

2.4 “Messy” Methods: Exploring Diverse Pathways Towards Co-Learning
Room: Healey Library, LL, ITC

This group of presentations from five pre-tenure UMass Boston faculty (from the College of Education and Human Development and the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development) focuses on particular process-oriented tools and methods we have used in our classrooms to highlight our students’ multiple, diverse pathways towards ways of knowing. The methods may be characterized as exploratory, and the results as unpredictable, but we note that they can open up learning that is collaborative and deliberately draws on multiple resources in the classroom. Each presenter will concretely discuss how his/her particular tool or method contributes to co-learning for both students and teachers.

Presenters: Ping-Ann Addo (CIT), Angel Fettig, Ray Franke, Mike Gilbert, Zeena Zakharia (CEHD), and James Soldner (SGISD)

12:15 – 1:45 p.m.
Room: Ryan Lounge (McCormack, 3rd floor)
Provost’s Welcome
Welcoming Remarks by Provost Winston Langley

Lunch and Innovative Teaching Awards

2 – 3 p.m.
3.1 Exploring Public Engagement and Accessibility
Room: Healey Library, LL, P1

Practicing Public Humanities: An Imagining America Session on Publicly Engaged Teaching and Scholarship
The first presentation will provide examples of public engagement in the humanities with examples from public history and publicly engaged graduate education, and will include an introduction to a national network of campuses and scholars, Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life.

Presenter: John Saltmarsh (Leadership in Education), Monica Pelayo (History)

The Section 508 Refresh: Keeping Your Content Accessible and Compliant
The Section 508, the federal regulations regarding accessibility for persons with disabilities, is getting updated. Learn about the new regulations and some easy ways to test your content for compliance.

Presenter: Jeff Coburn (SGISD)

3.2 Co-Learning Spaces
Room: Healey Library, LL, P2

From Board Work to Blog: “After Class” Student Reading
The presenter shows how a co-teaching and co-learning model developed organically when a group of students began meeting after and outside of class. A multi-person, multi-faceted, and multi-perspectival “reading” of a novel was created and “published” and “copyrighted.” The presenter shows how letting students lead the faculty member, rather than the other way around, is a crucial move for professors to become, in turn, better teacher-scholars.

Presenter: Avak Hasratian (English)

The “Problem Space:” A Co-Learning Tool for Student Research and Deep Learning
This session examines the design and use of the ‘problem space’ (applicable in multiple disciplines), a twist on the case study method, as a tool to promote critical thinking and deep, subject-matter understanding where students are given an open-ended, real-world challenge to pursue and gather evidence in order to answer THEIR OWN questions. Faculty and students engage in a collaborative teaching-learning experience.

Presenter: Linda Grisham (eLearning, Massachusetts Bay Community College)

3.3 Learner Centered and Collaborative Learning
Room: Healey Library, 4th floor, CLI (Center for Library Instruction)

Empowering and Supporting Faculty in Learner-Centered Teaching
This interactive session will facilitate participants’ learning and sharing about current practices related to supporting learner-centered teaching among faculty at their institution. Faculty will be encouraged to reflect on their own teaching and discuss what has (or has not) influenced them to move towards a learner-centered model in their practice.

Presenter: Emilie Clucas (Nursing)

Promoting Student Collaboration Online
This presentation will demonstrate various methodologies for promoting student collaboration online. Participants will learn how to take any assignment and convert it into a collaborative one.

Presenter: Bob Schoenberg (Critical Thinking Program)

3.4 Co-Learning’s Role in Constructing Student Success
Room: Healey Library, LL, ITC
The opportunity to collaboratively construct academic benchmarks allows educators—teachers and students—to actively recognize student success. Although this practice is already embedded in the longitudinal-writing process, this interactive workshop encourages participants to think about how to employ techniques and achieve greater results.

Presenters: Katie Raddatz, Meesh McCarthy, Ian Drinkwater (Graduate Writing Center and Critical Thinking, Academic Support Programs)

3:15 – 4:15 p.m.
4.1 #FutureHistory: Using Technology Creatively to Build Collaborations in the Classroom and Beyond
Room: Healey Library, LL, P1

This panel will discuss the integrated use of digital technologies, including mobile apps and social media, in history classes. Panelists will share their individual experiences working collaboratively as students, teachers, researchers, and archivists, using tools like Evernote, WordPress, Omeka, social media, and other digital tools to preserve, interpret, and promote history and create a collective digital archive documenting controversial local history.

Presenters: Marilyn Morgan (History), Marta Crilly (Archivist, Boston City Archives), Claudia Heske, Ashley Kennedy-MacDougall, Laura Kintz, and Daniel Morast (students)

4.2 Teaching and Learning about Racism and Empathy
Room: Healey Library, LL, P2

Teaching and Learning in the Time of Ferguson
The death of Michael Brown and the events that followed, and continue to follow, in Ferguson, Missouri make it clear that any talk of a “post-racial America” is, to put it politely, premature. How, then, might Ferguson and its unfolding effects affect our pedagogy, affect what we teach in the composition classroom and how we teach it? How might it affect learning, since this situation provides teachers with an extraordinary opportunity to learn from students? Using their experiences in the classroom, the panelists will explore these and related questions, hopefully provoking those who attend to share their thoughts and experiences with each other.

Presenters: John Hess (English), Joseph Ramsey (American Studies), Alyssa Mazzarella (Academic Support Programs) Mitch Manning, Hallima Ibrahim, Janice DaSilva, and Marissa Fragoso (students)

Surmounting the “White Looming Mountain of Hate:” Teaching Empathy Through Intersectional Pedagogy
The presenter investigates the potential of postsecondary literary instruction to encourage and cultivate empathy in college students; informed by the works of Paulo Freire, Gloria Anzaldua, and Richard Wright.

Presenter: Sarah Kinne (English)

4.3 What About Cricket? Using Mobile Technology to Engage Students as Researchers, Writers, and Co-Learners
Room: Healey Library, 4th floor, CLI (Center for Library Instruction)

The presenters will share their experiences designing and implementing a series of mobile research workshops for the English Composition Classroom highlighting the co-learning taking place among teacher, librarian, and students as they explore metaliteracy together.

Presenters: Teresa Maceira (Librarian, Healey Library), Victoria Kingsley (English)

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