Academic Affairs

What Has Happened So Far:

Mike Caulfield, Irene Herold and Jenny Darrow have been tasked with doing the first draft of an Academic Affairs Academic Technology Plan. We’ve been working on it for a few weeks and have had some very inspirational moments. We invite you to visit and contribute your thoughts to our working draft which is visible on our wiki workspace: http://atvision.pbwiki.com

By using a wiki we are modeling some of the behaviors we want the plan to foster. Please note: 1) this is a living draft with ongoing changes 2) it’s hyper (i.e. not linear) so don’t expect a traditional draft document 3) the thought process is part of the draft so be forewarned.

Some of the comments we have received about the wiki are:

“I really enjoyed reading what’s up there, and I’m very intrigued with how the vision gets realized in the rest of the plan. Very exciting.”

“I like that it is not linear. It provides opportunities to go all over the place and brainstorm with a really large number of people without leaving your desk! The world is at your finger tips. It is really creative. An opportunity to pull in ideas you could not get to in other ways.”

Another person immediately commented in an email response about a project one of their students is engaged with and how the of vision of Academic Technology as drafted would support their activity.

Next Steps:

After discussion on the wiki, the draft will move through Academic Affairs Council for comment, and then to the Academic Technology Steering Committee (ATSC) for further revision. At this point ATSC will bring forward their version for campus comment. Whether this is through a campus forum(s) for discussion or some other mechanism is up to the ATSC. After this it will move to the College Information Technology Committee (CITC) for support and then to the Principle Administrators for adoption or revision.

We invite you to participate!
http://atvision.pbwiki.com

Tags: Academic Technology Strategic Plan, Wiki by irene // 1 Comment »

In the last three years I have participated as part of a New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Inc. Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, or NEASC for short, accreditation team on site visits to two institutions. This year in November I will be going on another one, but this time under the new standards adopted in January 2006. I recently attended a standards training session and specifically met with other librarians who will be assessing institutions on their ability to express their work on Standard Seven Library and Other Information Resources and Standard Ten Public Disclosure. I do not know why NEASC always pairs those two standards and gives them to one individual to review, but they do. How understanding libraries and academic technologies equates with marketing and web presence is a logical disconnect for me. Still it is my assignment and each time I do it I learn so much about how colleges and universities work, how interconnected all of our work is, and how varied and yet similar educational institutions accomplish their tasks.

Another benefit of working with the NEASC materials is the insight I gain looking toward our own institution’s next NEASC site visit in 2010. With the revised standards we have a lot of work to do to make seamless and transparent our interconnectedness. For example, what’s not new with the new standards is that they are purposely constructed ambiguously since they are mission-centric, intended to be aspirational and to be met at least minimally, non-prescriptive (only three numbers are prescribed in all of the standards), largely qualitative, include evaluation for improvement and are intended to help the institution anticipate the future. What are new sections are heightened emphases on educational quality and student success, program review, institutional capacity, role of the governing board, public disclosure and institutional effectiveness.

Institutional effectiveness is expressed as balancing inputs, processes and outcomes. NEASC does not proscribe one way to do this assessment. They acknowledge that there are multiple valid approaches to measuring student success. They know that not every measure is appropriate for every institution. But they do require that institutions do some kind of measurement(s) and explain why they are doing that approach. Every standard now has as the last numbered paragraph references to institutional effectiveness.

Since one of my review areas is Public Disclosure, it is interesting to note that there are some new items that NEASC looks for institutions to disclose including: statements of goals for students’ education and success in achieving those goals; rates of retention and graduation and other measures of student success; passage rates for licensure exams; total cost of education; and availability of academic and other support services. There’s a new “Public Disclosure ‘checklist’” that breaks down each piece of Standard Ten and requires an institution to list the URL or print publication where that piece of information is available.

As we go through the process of creating our four-year institutional effectiveness plans, it is not too soon to look at the NEASC standards and think about how your program or unit’s assessment plan will address your particular standard’s institutional effectiveness section. There might not be a fit, since NEASC isn’t prescriptive and is constructed ambiguously to give us the latitude to do our work in the way that makes the best sense for our institution. Still it doesn’t hurt to take a look and know what will need to be addressed in the future.

Page One Public Disclosure Checklist
Page Two Public Disclosure Checklist

Tags: NEASC, assessment by irene // No Comments »

In this morning’s Chronicle of Higher Education, Max Clio (the pseudonym of a Big-Ten historian) writes about “teaching styles“. Basically, his point is that we spend a lot of time studying and understanding students’ learning styles, but shouldn’t we also be interested in the variety of teaching styles among faculty. His point of reference is that each semester he assigns a book that he hasn’t read. The result, for him, is the excitement of discovering a text along with his students.

This immediately brought be back to my days in the classroom. I used to team teach a course in minority voices with a colleague of mine in the communication department. My style was loose and fluid (and not a little clumsy at times). I’d never teach with more that a page of notes. A beginning and an end. I didn’t know the path we’d take to get there, but I had confidence we would reach the point I needed to make in the class.

My colleague charted her path with meticulous detail. Her lectures were an elegant road map that took us point by point to the conclusion she needed to make. Her lectures were always a discovery for me, and equally effective in engaging the students in the topic.

We learned very quickly that our teaching styles wouldn’t work for the other. When one of us was primary during a particular class period, we did it our own way. When we were up there together–which was most of the time–we developed an approach that blended our teaching styles. And we learned from each other.

A commitment to teaching is a commitment to lifelong learning. And it’s not just content I’m talking about here. Learning about my colleague’s approach to teaching forever influenced my own pedagogical techniques. And even though I’m less frequently in the classroom these days, I still attend to my teaching. I still love the thrill that comes from a great class, and I still love the excitement that comes from knowing where I want to get to with only a slight notion of how I’m going to get there.

Tags: teaching by enetzhammer // No Comments »

Today we introduce our first guest author on the Academic Affairs Blog. I recently had a discussion with our Distinguished Teacher Therese Seibert about the start of the semester. I enjoyed our conversation and asked her to blog about it. And now a word from Therese Seibert.

A SEASON OF CHANGE
Fall is in the air. I love it, and not just because of the beautiful array of colors that blanket the countryside. Fall means change, new beginnings and fresh starts, including the start of a new semester. Change and the opportunity to try again is one of the many aspects I love about academia. If some teaching approach did not work last semester, I can try a new one. If that paper did not get accepted by a journal, there is always the chance to improve it and try again. Most often in my case, there is the welcome change of getting it out the door in the first place.

The start of this semester ushered in two momentous changes at Keene State: the campus-wide, four-credit model and a new general education curriculum, now referred to as the Integrative Studies Program (ISP). Oh yes, there is also the rotary, but that’s for another blog. For now, I would like to talk about my own experience with the four-credit model and ISP.

A year ago I reluctantly agreed to teach a Quantitative Literacy (IQL) course for the ISP. Wait a minute. Didn’t I just celebrate change? Why the reluctance? I was concerned that additional resources would be taken out of my department that already struggles to offer majors a breadth of courses. But there was another reason, one that I am not proud of. In fact, I hesitate to confess it publicly. So let me put it this way… I am usually not the first person in my department to jump at the chance to teach first-year students. I admit it. Teaching small classes with mature, highly motivated, and well-prepared students is appealing.

Well taking into account some inevitable variation, my first-year, IQL course “Africa by the Numbers” has proven to be a relatively small class with mature, highly motivated, and well prepared students. Here is some empirical evidence to support my observation:
• Most of the students come to class early, not simply on time but early, having read the material carefully. How do I know this? They participate in class discussions, and they question me on material which is a good thing, a very good thing. Yes, this is supposed to be the norm, but I am seeing an appreciable improvement in these areas.
• Many of the students have spoken about studying Africa in a high school course. Indeed, a number of them have suggested videos and books to me, which is also a very good thing. These students demonstrate a greater awareness of global issues than previous cohorts.
• Within one class, most learned how to generate demographic data in Excel. Within one class, they generated a population pyramid using the statistical software package SPSS. This meant learning how to enter data and how to use SPSS in the first place. Some students even tell me how to make my own charts look nicer. I guess this is a good thing; I am still getting used to this one. But most tell me that they took courses in Excel and other computer applications in high school. They are by far the most technologically savvy cohort of first-year students that I have ever taught.

Sociologists always want to know why social phenomena occur; this one is no different for me. Maybe it is the smaller class sizes for IQL courses or the extra time that allows me to cover projects from start to finish in one period. Maybe we are now experiencing the effects of high schools internationalizing their curriculum and infusing more technology. Maybe our curriculum changes are increasingly attracting well-prepared students. Maybe students are getting the message about academic rigor through admissions, orientation, and so forth. Maybe it was the first-year convocation, and in particular, Provost Netzhammer’s speech on our commitment to high academic standards. Maybe it is none, some, or a confluence of all of these factors. What I do know is that I am enjoying this class and the beautiful fall season.

Tags: IQL, ITW, academic excellence, teaching by enetzhammer // No Comments »

So, The Annals of Improbable Research released the 17th Annual Ig Nobel Prizes, and the list is intriguing. If you don’t know these awards, they’re a humorous take on some of the research we academics are doing. The kind that’s easy to make fun of. This year I’m thinking, though, “I want to know more about this!”

Okay, I get a little queasy thinking about the possibility of cooking with vanilla extracted from cow dung, but I’m curious about the process that led Mayu Yamamoto to consider this research direction. I’m also curious about what led Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon, and Núria Sebastián-Gallés to explore the phenomenon that rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.

What intrigues me, though, is that a couple of the Ig Nobel Laureates are exploring things that, at another time in my life, I might have considered. Take, for example, the work of literature Laureate Glenda Browne. She studied the word “the” and the problems it causes in alphabetization. This alphabetizing thing has frustrated me for most of my adult life, and computers are only exacerbating the problem. If Dr. Browne’s research can bring some sanity to this area, then I emplore her to continue her work.

And what of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the winner of this year’s Peace Prize. The lab is working on a research into a bomb that would make enemy soldiers sexually attracted to each other. The thinking behind thisis that soldiers would be likelier to concentrate on love rather than war. This is cool. My first thought is that since this is a gay bomb, we should proceed cautiously in making the military gender neutral. My second thought, though, is that if this were research done right, we’d learn so much about the science of sexual orientation and the politics and complexities of warfare (not that I’m thrilled that these are part of the same research project) that I could be fascinated for days.

And that’s where I end this morning. Anyone can take our research and with a quick turn of phrase make it seem trivial. What makes the Ig Nobel awards fun is that we have a sense of humor about ourselves and our work. That I like. And the truth is, there’s little that is ignoble about this work–our work. I do, in fact, want to know about the results of the study by Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk, whom completed a census of all the mites, insects, spiders, pseudoscorpions, crustaceans, bacteria, algae, ferns, and fungi with whom we share our beds each night. As queasy as it might make me, this is interesting stuff.

Tags: research by enetzhammer // 1 Comment »