Winthrop Conference on Teaching and Learning

Disability Rights are Civil Rights. In 2016, the Americans With Disabilities Act celebrates its 26^th year. Faculty and staff need to be aware of regulations, the potential for personal liability, and understand why accommodations are approved and how to implement them. Attendees will review the accommodation process, note federal clarifications, and discuss what to do if an accommodation may result in a fundamental alteration. A Q&A session will be included to address common concerns related to specific accommodations, such as attendance and assignment due date modifications.

Assistance Animals On Campus : Opportunities to Support Student Success

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Fair Housing Act (FHA) are important legislation that keep Housing and Disability Services professionals across the country on their toes when it comes to accessible on-campus living and learning. Participants will learn about the particular requirements of these laws, in relation to Service and Emotional Support Animals on campus. We will explain how Winthrop University has worked to accommodate students, both in the residence halls and in the classroom, and what faculty and staff need to know to make this a positive experience for our students and to keep litigation at bay. (Includes discussion of the recent University of Nebraska at Kearney case, and the $144k resolution.)

Many educators are experimenting with the flipped classroom experience today. At The University of Tennessee at Martin, with the help of the EdX Corporation and a University of Tennessee grant, I participated in a flipped classroom experience involving English 250 (British Literary Tradition I) during fall semesters 2014 and 2015. I also taught the same course in a traditional setting during the same semesters. Comparisons can be made between my preparation before and during the course, students’ in-class performance, students’ formal assessment results, and a survey of their experience. Traditionally, researchers write about the experience resulting in improved performance and retention of materials, and the results for this experience show those aspects.

In addition, I will focus on the environmental changes that I had to make in teaching in both settings. In the flipped classroom experience, students watched one to two 8 to 12 minute lectures and completed quizzes on that experience before coming to class. The in-class activities involved more in-depth examination of texts that were often facilitated by deeper questions from students—questions they were asked to bring from listening to the online lectures. I will share not only my experience, challenges, and rewards as well as their responses.

Having now finished the two-year pilot project, I believe I have a sense of the challenges, rewards, introspection, and future planning that this project has provided.

STEM courses, in particular, challenge educators and learners to learn complex processes, much of which is not intuitive or outside their realm of experience. Blended learning and flipped classrooms allow educators to tackle the rigors of STEM education head-on (Bishop & Verleger, 2013).

Defining blended and flipped: “Course that integrates online elements into face-to-face delivery. Content and materials are available online and typically keeps all or most face-to-face meetings. The inverted, active learning classroom “flips” the in-class and homework activities, often by moving content lectures before class, in that students watch online lectures at home, while class time is spent on working more intensively with individuals and groups on homework and hands-on activities. The learner is freed from struggling with the problems alone at home.

Presentation Goals: 1. Compare flipped STEM classes to online STEM courses 2. Explore the opportunities presented by software and educational technologies in STEM courses. 3. Explore the challenges of the flipped STEM class

4. Share experience and resources for designing blended and flipped STEM courses

This presentation is for every college-level STEM educator who wants to discuss how to design outcomes and mastery learning activities for each week, integrate software and tutorials into blended courses, and select or prepare video content for their courses. I also want to discuss how to avoid common mistakes in both flipped and blended courses, especially how to get students to view the content before coming to class.

We all recognize the value and importance of class discussion for student learning and engagement, but we have probably had uneven results when we try to hold discussions in class. Sometimes it goes great, but sometimes it fails, miserably. In this workshop, we will examine some of the problems with class discussion: students who won’t talk, students who talk too much, students who go off topic, silent classes, and so on. Then we will explore and practice some techniques that can solve those problems, including more effective question design, effective questioning techniques, the use of writing as discussion starters, and more. This workshop should make you feel more confident and better equipped to incorporate class discussion in your teaching.

Capstone courses are generally considered high-impact and transformative for students. In the process of redesigning the officially-designated capstone course for the environmental sciences and studies program at Winthrop University, the author discovered that there is no clear definition of what this senior culminating experience should be. Formats at Winthrop range from community field placements to individual research papers; course goals range from integrative discipline-based learning to career preparation to program assessment. Using course syllabi, catalog descriptions, and a questionnaire for department or program chairs, an analysis will be presented of the variety of experiences, formats, and goals for all undergraduate capstone courses at Winthrop University

In recent years, there has been a surge in the number of adult students who have expressed interest in returning back to school to complete their undergraduate degrees. Research, however, shows that many adult students who start degree completion programs do not complete them.

An oft-cited roadblock to degree completion by adult students is lack of recognition of prior learning obtained on the job or through other means. As a result, prior learning assessment (PLA) has now become an important tool used by colleges and universities to facilitate access to higher education by adult students.

The Council for Adult & Experiential Learning (CAEL) has developed a set of PLA standards to award course credit for significant life or career experiences. Based on those standards, an individual with extensive experience in accounting might well have already mastered the knowledge required to satisfy learning outcomes for an elementary accounting course; or again, an experienced journalist might have experience that satisfies learning outcomes in an elementary writing course.

Colleges and universities across the US are using a wide variety of PLA approaches to validate mastery of college-level material. More recently, the PLA portfolio model, which is a process that allow students to document college-level learning experiences for course credit, has received widespread acceptance. Through the use of the PLA portfolio, many colleges and universities now provide a new degree completion pathway, allowing adult learners to complete their programs within a reasonable amount of time.

In this session, we describe some recent PLA practices and consider how they might be implemented here at Winthrop. We will discuss and review some PLA standards that might correlate to certain standard courses here at Winthrop. And we will consider the primary model for PLA, the PLA-portfolio constructed by students seeking PLA course-credit.

Co-teaching is a common practice across schools. While research may be present regarding the effects of co-teaching, there is little literature that simply offers the perspective a co-teacher. As a former co-teacher of six years, I experienced various encounters and relationships that helped shape my current career as a professor of education. From these experiences, I have developed a list of “wisha wouldas” as a reflection. These “wisha wouldas” are basic things I wish I had done or experienced that I feel would have made me a stronger co-teacher. Included in my list of “wisha wouldas” are co-teaching contracts to outline teacher responsibilities, varied methods of communication with my co-teacher such as Google Docs, conflict resolution strategies in co-teaching relationships, and reflection practices for more effective co-teaching. I hope my list of “wisha wouldas” will impact school leaders in supporting co-teaching practices and co-teachers in optimizing their own co-teaching experiences.

The skill of speaking clearly and concisely with short preparation is important. Yet, most of our efforts to improve college students’ oral communication skills fall short of helping them to prepare for the type of daily communications they will have as community and corporate leaders. Instead of assuming that individual or group PowerPoint presentations will contribute to this kind of impromptu speaking skills, we suggest assigning impromptu speeches.

Impromptu speeches have been used in a variety of educational contexts to improve students' oral communication skills. They are typically designed to allow students 2-3 minutes to prepare for a 3-6 minute speech on a topic that is personally relevant or familiar (e.g.. "What I did last summer"). Positive outcomes include improved confidence and lower state-related communication anxiety.

In this presentation, we will demonstrate how we use impromptu speeches, over the course of a semester, to improve unrehearsed communications by students, while simultaneously increasing students’ engagement with the weekly course material. In short, students must prepare to be called on for an impromptu speech on any day of class and the instructor’s prompt will ask them to relate the course content for the day to something of relevance in the recent news, popular media, or their own life. We will provide instructions regarding how to prepare students for impromptu speeches, what to expect from student performance across the semester, sample prompts, the use of video recording for reflection, examples of both good and bad speeches, and feedback from students about the experience.

A hybrid course format, with reduced face-to-face time, presents a number of teaching challenges. This session will describe the evolution of a successful teaching approach to hybrid courses.

A recent analysis showed how the studio teaching approach underlies many active pedagogies. Studio teaching generally consists of combining lecture, group problem-solving, and application activities all in one session. Transferring this approach to hybrid classes requires adaptations.

The author will highlight his recent hybrid MBA class which used a studio teaching approach. This format is not unique to MBA classes and can be transferred to a variety of courses. This session will share the building blocks of this successful format for hybrid courses.

With the rise and wide acceptance of Online Education, higher education institutions now have a major tool that they can use to reach the goal of broadening their course offerings during the summer sessions. However, some challenges to increasing online course offerings remain. A major issue involves institutional commitment to helping faculty with course development. Likewise learner support is often cited as a barrier to greater online course delivery.

Winthrop University’s Exemplary Summer Online Program (WU-ESOP) is a new initiative that has been developed to help increase enrollment at the University during the summer. Grounded in andragogical principles and Blackboard’s Quality in Online Education, WU-ESOP also aims to strengthen faculty participation in the development of online courses and catalyze the creation of more engaging online learning experiences for students.

In this session, we will discuss the following:

1. Summer teaching and learning innovations and the role that online education stands to play in improving summer enrollment at master comprehensive colleges and universities.
2. How colleges and universities can provide tailored assistance and support to faculty to achieve the goal of increased summer enrollment.
3. The ways in which the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program framework is being used as part of the WU-ESOP to foster course, program, teaching and learning innovations

We believe that the Exemplary Summer Online Program is consistent with the University’s goals and policies for summer and online program offerings. Consequently, WU-ESOP will build upon existing teaching and learning efforts at Winthrop aimed at strengthening students’ achievement, retention and persistence during their undergraduate years at the University.

The Center for Teaching and Learning at UNC Charlotte collaborated with teams of faculty members teaching large-enrollment courses to redesign courses into technology-enhanced, active formats. Through the Large Course Redesign program, nine different departments or programs modernized course formats, and eight of the nine moved to blended formats. (CTL, 2017) This session will introduce a variety of blended formats fully implemented in diverse disciplines.

Blended course formats typically reduce class seat-time (deNoyelles, Cobb, & Lowe, 2012) and instead provide online learning to substitute the reduced class time. If done right, blended format can facilitate meaningful learning and be more effective than classroom format by benefiting from the affordances of two different learning environments. (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004) Along with benefits, however, blended formats come with some common concerns. This session will also discuss common benefits and concerns uncovered through the Large Course Redesign program.

A number of instructional design activities are involved in the process of transforming course format into blended formats. One of important activities is figuring out what learning should go online and what learning, stay in the classroom. In addition, the adoption of online learning generally impacts classroom learning to change as well. Considering examples, benefits, and concerns of blended course format, participants will engage in a hands-on activity of sorting out student learning activities for their own course and anticipate how classroom learning will be impacted and change.

Service learning opportunities link classroom learning with service to the community. In this session we will describe a service learning project designed to enhance the goals of an undergraduate literacy course and provide a needed service to local schools and organizations. We will (1) share the benefits of this experience for undergraduate students, faculty, and the community partners; (2) discuss the services provided by the Center for Career and Civic Engagement; and (3) provide guidance for faculty interested in adding service learning to their coursework.

In 2016, the University of North Carolina in Charlotte (UNC-C) established the Advisor Institute to provide onboarding (orientation), consistency in training, and professional development and leadership opportunities to both full-time and faculty academic advisors. The Advisor Institute emerged from a UNC General Administration grant called “Optimizing Advising for Student Success.” This grant was awarded to five institutions in the UNC system, which is made up of 17 campuses and serves over 220,000 students.

While UNC-C had experienced improvements in student enrollment and retention from 2004-2014, the four and six year graduation rates, key metrics for the University, have remained steady over the same period. University leaders identified enhanced expectations and opportunities for orientation, training and professional development for academic advisors as a key element to improving student success (and retention and graduation rates) at UNC Charlotte.

As part of the grant, the grant implementation team of the Advisor Institute decided to create a Virtual Advising Toolkit to assist faculty members and full-time advisors across the University to gain greater facility with academic advising processes, policies and resources. The modules for the online tool are being developed with the assistance of the Center of Teaching and Learning. Canvas, the University Learning Management System is used to deliver the online modules.

In this session, I will present the key reasons for the establishment of the Advising Institute at UNC-C. I will also share how the tasks and activities taken place through the Institute are aiming to increase the quality of academic advising at the University. I will also delineate the work that I have been doing, as a Graduate Assistant at the Advisor Institute since fall 2016, to build the online modules for the Virtual Advising Toolkit.

We will talk briefly about traditional assessment methods then we will define the formative assessment by giving some examples of formative assessment, we will discuss how to use it in the classroom to engage students more. Based on my teaching experiences in regular classroom, I will introduce a couple of digital apps used as formative assessment techniques. These apps are designed to help you know what your students know and make you aware of which concepts need more explanations before exam day. Some of the free assessment tools that use technology are EDPuzzle, Kahoot, and others. In this workshop, participants will have an opportunity to create their own assessments using some of these apps.

Participants should bring a personal device or laptop. (Unless we can schedule the session at a lab!)

College students across the nation are experiencing more mental illness than in previous generations. Why is this? Is Depression or Anxiety a legitimate reason for a student to have an academic problem? What does an at-risk student look like, and how has this picture shifted over time? Participants will gain an understanding of the impact of Mental Illness on academic performance and overall university retention, as well as the positive impact of Counseling and other Mental Health treatment in these areas. Participants will learn strategies to identify and address an at-risk student in their role as faculty or staff.