Instructional Development offers faculty study seminars

Faculty Study Seminars provide a means for faculty with common interests to learn more about a teaching-related topic. This fall the Office of Instructional Development will offer two. Each group meets four times a semester, at times mutually agreed to by participants, to read and discuss a teaching-related book (books provided by OID). Your only obligation is to read and to show up for discussion.

To sign up for a group, e-mail the facilitator noted below with your contact information (e-mail and phone) and a copy of your fall semester schedule (noting the times you cannot meet). You will be contacted once an initial meeting date is set. For more information about Faculty Study Seminars, contact Anne Kelsch , 777-4233.

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa (University of Chicago, 2011)

From the buzz its publication generated, including reviews in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and The New York Times, it is clear that this is an important book for academics to understand and take into account. Aram and Roksa followed 2,300 students at 24 universities over a four-year period and analyzed their results on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) and the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)—both of which are administered to UND students by Institutional Research. In the most reductionist sense, the book argues that students don’t study very much and therefore don’t learn very much. This should not surprise faculty who have been complaining for years that students don’t spend enough time doing course work. On the other hand, the scope of the problem is surprising: for example, the authors observed “no statistically significant gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills for at least 45 percent of the students in our study” during the first two years of college and over one third of students who complete four years of college show no improvement in critical thinking skills. Aram and Roksaalso postulate that a lack of rigor and low faculty expectations are part of the problem.

If you are interested in participating in this FSS, please contact Anne Kelsch, 777-4233.

Successful Science and Engineering Teaching in Colleges and Universities, by Calvin S. Kalman (Jossey-Bass, 2006)
This book offers broad, practical strategies for teaching science and engineering courses and describes how faculty can provide a learning environment that helps students comprehend the nature of science, understand science concepts, and solve problems in science courses.
The student-centered approach focuses on two main themes: reflective writing and working in collaborative groups. When faculty incorporate methods into their courses that challenge their students to critically reflect, collaborate, and problem solve, students gain a better understanding of science as a connected structure of concepts rather than as a simple tool kit of assorted practices.

Contents include:
* Reflective writing
* Writing to learn
* Constructing student knowledge
* Selected methods for using collaborative groups
* Changing students’ epistemologies
* Training students to solve problems
* Using technology to aid your teaching

If you are interested in participating in this FSS please contact Kathleen Vacek , University Writing Program coordinator, 777-6381.

Good Mentoring: Fostering Excellent Practice in Higher Education, by Jeanne Nakamura andDavid Shernoff with Charles Hooker (Jossey-Bass, 2009)
Mentoring students is an important part of our role as faculty members. We mentor students both formally and informally through our interactions, but what messages are we passing on to the next generation of scholars? Nakamura and Shernoff studied three different successful academics that had been deemed to be “good mentors.” The authors studied not only the academics but also several generations of their students to understand what ideals and practices had been passed on and how these traits were communicated. This book presents a way of looking at mentoring more objectively, and is a good jumping off point for discussing our own mentoring practices. Although the lead academics chosen for this book are all in the natural sciences, with a focus on graduate mentoring, the ideas discussed are applicable to most disciplines and to both graduate and undergraduate mentoring. Other specific mentoring topics that could be explored include gender roles in mentoring relationships and the challenges of placing boundaries in the age of social media.

If you are interested in participating in this FSS, please contact Gretchen Mullendore, 777-4707.

— Office of Instructional Development.