Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning

Annual Report 2018-19

Mission

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning partners with instructors to promote a culture of continuous improvement in teaching by investigating and engaging with evidence-based best practices, professional development opportunities, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), and the cultivation of reflective learning communities. Our ultimate goal is to engender lifelong learning in instructors to enhance the student experience.

Staff and support

The Center is staffed by a Director (Caroline Boswell, 4-course reassignment appointment and summer stipend), a Lead Instructional Designer (Todd Dresser, full-time academic staff), and three learning technologists (Kate Farley, Luke Konkol and Nathan Kraftcheck, full-time academic staff). We receive limited support (10%) from a University Services Associate in the Office of the Provost (Pang Yang, full-time university staff).

Major initiatives in 2018-19

• UWGB Teaching Scholars and OPID Initiatives

• Workshops and reading groups

Fellows programs/learning communities

Learning Outcomes:

1. Examine research-based transparency techniques that promote equity and student success.

• 100% of the participating instructors redesigned at least one assignment based on transparency research and frameworks

• 100% of responding instructors felt the application of a transparency framework enhanced student learning.

Online Teaching Fellows

First-Year Experience Community of Practice

Participants in the CoP were asked to:

1. Read McGuire, Saundra Yancy, and Stephanie McGuire. Teach Students How to Learn: Strategies You Can Incorporate into Any Course to Improve Student Metacognition, Study Skills, and Motivation, 2016.

Those who completed all required work were awarded a “First-Year Experience” Badge:

Grants and Awards

Online and Hybrid Program Design Grant

Teaching Enhancement Grants

In 2018-2019 academic year, CATL ran two award cycles (Fall and Spring) for the TEG. Across the entire academic year there were 19 TEG applications requesting $17,025.06 in funding. The Instructional Development Council awarded 18 applicants funding totaling $14,769.59.

Projects include (but are not limited to):

• Project Title: National Council of Techers of Mathematics Annual Meeting and Exposition

  • Attended conference and presented to enhance pedagogical practices and improve instructional practices to meet prospective teacher’s needs. Attendance of conference to learn to support prospective teachers in their understanding of how to elicit and use students’ mathematical thinking.

• Project Title: Jazz Piano Study

  • Completing 30, thirty-minute lessons to build consistency to gain basic skill with the piano. Proactively seeking to gain basic skills as they may be the only dedicated jazz professor on campus soon. Lessons will allow for ability to convey concepts to students with keyboard and piano.

• Project Title: Chemdraw software

  • Purchase of Chemdraw software for Chemistry professor’s ability to build creative assignments and exams for students. This will allow professors to teach with updated software and build organic chemistry into FYE course that focuses on pseudoscience and information literacy.

Student Nominated Teaching Awards

• Franklin Chen – Natural and Applied Sciences

• Heather Clarke – Business Administration

• Patrick Forsythe – Natural and Applied Sciences

• Georjeanna Wilson-Doenges – Human Development

• Uwe Pott – Human Biology

Events, workshops & reading groups

Instructional Development Institute

The annual January Instructional Development Institute set a tone for collaboration with the other branch campuses of Project Costal, and due to funding from the Tommy Thompson Center on Public Leadership, we were able to bring in a keynote speaker. The theme for this year’s Institute – Making High-Impact Educational Experiences for All – could not be more timely. The workshops and presentations inspired attendees to make equitable high-impact experiences, but also provided concrete examples that participants could work into their own teaching practice. In addition, Peter Levine – author of We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Promise of Civic Renewal in America – gave an inspiring keynote talk and lunchtime workshop on civic engagement in a higher education context.

NASH HIPster Winter Camp

NASH HIPster Summer Camp

This four-hour event brought six of the seven NASH pilot programs together to consider how to build culturally responsive courses and assignments as part of their project. Christin DePouw, Associate Professor of Education, ran a workshop titled, “Power, responsibility, and reciprocity: From culturally responsive theory to practice,” which engaged the teams in a series of discussions about how to enact culturally responsive teaching in their courses. During the second half of the event, teams worked together to finalize plans for work necessary to pilot their project in the fall.

Workshops and Reading Groups

• Sept 21; HIPs @ 10 Reading Series: Intro to HIPs

• Oct. 8; What Makes an Educational Experience High Impact? With Carleen Vande Zande and Fay Akindes

Facilitated by UW System Presenters: Carleen Vande Zande, Associate Vice President, Academic Programs & Educational Innovation and Fay Y. Akindes, Director, Systemwide Professional & Instructional Development

For this session, we read We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, by Peter Levine which considers both the values that we need to re-invigorate our society as well as strategies to strengthen participatory democracy through greater civic engagement. In his book, Levine argues that the answer to the fractiousness of our society and the breakdown of civil society lies with greater civic engagement. Those who registered received Levine’s book, who was also our keynote speaker at the Instructional Development Institute in January.

• Nov. 16; First-year Instructor Reading Group: Small Teaching

To continue this series, Ryan Martin lead a discussion on two chapters from Nancy H. Hensel edited collection, Course-Based Undergraduate Research: Educational Equity and High-Impact Practice. The discussion questions surrounding the selected chapters (“Chapter 1: Crazy Observations, Audacious Questions”; “Chapter 18: Course-based Research Mentoring”) have been re-formatted into a resource for the Center. It is now a part of a “guide” for how to infuse undergraduate research and scholarly and creative activity into a curriculum.

• Mar. 6; Tough Talk: Teaching to the Transition from High School to College with Vince Lowery

CATL and Client IT services ran a morning workshop on teaching via synchronous distance education technology for the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Using bridge technology, we were able to engage participants in an authentic session using distance education rooms at each of Green Bay’s four campuses. We also explored web technology, and, discussed what technologies may work best for different pedagogical styles or to advance specific learning objectives. The event was well attended with by chairs and faculty in CAHSS, as well as several guests from CSET, AECSB, and CHESW.

• Mar. 29; Building a Mentor Network: Slow Professor Reading Group

This workshop highlighted and walked participants through the recent research on equitable team dynamics. The facilitators demonstrated how instructors may use equity-based methods to support the creation of group procedures and dynamics that work to minimize stereotyping and bias.

• Apr. 15; Transparent Assignment Design Webinar with Mary Ann Winkelmes

CATL sponsored an instructor appreciation event on the Student Services Rooftop Plaza between the Union and Theatre Hall.

• May 16; Canvas Mentors Day

UWGB Teaching Scholars and OPID Initiatives

UWGB Teaching Scholars Program

UW Teaching Fellows and Scholars

Faculty College

Each May the UW System’s Office for Professional and Instructional Development hosts Faculty College at UW-Richland in Richland Center. In 2018-19, we sent eight instructors representing our four institutions to this three-day immersion in intensive, interdisciplinary seminars that delve into research-based practices in teaching and learning as well as engagement in SoTL research (Marinette, Manitowoc and Green Bay campuses sent folks). This unique experience brings instructors from across the System together to engage in critical discussions related to teaching and learning issues such as learning science, high-impact practices, conflict resolution, and writing instruction. Keynote speakers included Bill Cerbin and Nancy Chick.

Canvas Transition and Trainings

In addition to their regular duties, the CATL team continued guiding instructors through the transition from D2L to Canvas. In addition to weekly “drop-in” sessions, the team conducted many 1-on-1 consultations and made multiple trips to each branch campus. Behind the scenes work on the transition was just as busy as members of the CATL team worked on many different subgroups with their colleagues at UW-System to ensure that Canvas works well. In this way, we hope that Canvas will not only replace D2L but offer features that will enhance teaching and learning so that the transition will prove to be worth the effort instructors and students put into it.

Other Initiatives

E-Portfolios

Fall 2018

Spring 2019

• 57 students across disciplines (Arts Management, Computer Science, English, History, Humanities, Photography, and First Nations Studies) also created e-Portfolios to suit their own professional and academic needs.

This academic year, the Gateway to Phoenix Success Program piloted e-Portfolios as a program-level High-Impact Practice. Of the 236 students enrolled in the program, 215 successfully uploaded four artifacts from their courses: a resume, their skills chart informed by the National Association of Colleges and Employers that was uploaded in two parts (one from Fall, one from Spring), a Spring semester reflection about their Service Learning project.

NASH Taking Student Success to Scale Lumina-funded Grant Project

High-Impact Practices have empirically shown “usually positive benefits that accrue to students who participate...including enhanced engagement in a variety of educationally purposeful tasks gains in deep, integrative learning; salutary effects for students from historically underserved populations... and higher persistence and graduation rates” (Kuh and Kinzie). However, they must be carefully designed and implemented for these benefits to accrue, particularly for equity and at scale (ibid).  

On December 1^st, 2017, the UW System was awarded a grant “to advance... work on making HIPs available to underrepresented minority, low-income, and first-generation students” (UW System). Five campuses—Milwaukee, Parkside, Whitewater, Eau Claire and Green Bay—were chosen to work towards this goal as well as “design system-wide data collection processes for reporting student learning and student participation in HIPs” thanks to an application written by then Director of Student Success and Engagement, Denise Bartell (UW Green Bay).   

The two problem-focused HIPs we have selected to focus on are Community-Based Learning (CBL), including, but not limited to Service-Learning, and Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity (URSCA.)  

To move towards our goal, we have two tasks. 

For an overview of the 11 recognized HIPs, see www.aacu.org/leap/hips. For an argument for a 12^th HIP, see A Good Job: Campus Employment as a High-Impact Practice.  

Works Cited 

Behavioral Health Training Partnership

The CATL team created three self-paced courses for the Behavioral Health Training Partnership. These courses serve as professional development and training for workers across the state of Wisconsin and have enrolled over 500 learners since they were launched in February 2019.

Research

Works-in-progress

Currently the team is engaged in a series of educational research related to its programming and campus initiatives. Work continues to proceed in the development of a quality assurance replacement for Quality Matters. Todd Dresser and Nathan Kraftcheck joined the UWGB Teaching Scholars program to refine their research and development process for the course quality initiative. The first phase of the research process will begin in the summer of 2019.

Forthcoming publications

Bartell, D. and Boswell, C. (forthcoming). “Developing the Whole Teacher: Collaborative Engagement as Faculty Development within a First-Year Experience Program,” accepted for inclusion in Journal of Faculty Development 33:3 (Fall 2019).

Conference presentations:

1. Caroline Boswell and Jonathan Hagel (University of Kansas) Teaching Undergraduates with Archives Symposium, University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library, November 6-9, 2018

3. Kate Farley, Nathan Kraftcheck, and Mike Schmitt, Jan. 24; Instructional Development Institute

Scaffolded Audio/Video Projects

5. Caroline Boswell with Carleen Vande Zande (UW System) AAC&U, Atlanta, GA, January 24-26

System Approaches to Taking Student Success to Scale: High-Impact Practices and Faculty Development

7. Caroline Boswell and Kate Farley, Apr. 1&2; UW System’s LTDC Virtual Showcase

Center advertised this annual virtual showcase that facilitated by the Learning Technology Development Council. It was free and available to anyone with an internet connection with a timely theme: “Building the New: Innovate, Integrate, Motivate.” On Apr. 1, Caroline Boswell and Kate Farley lead a presentation called “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure: Individual or Collaborative Twine Stories."