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AAHE Summer Academy 2002

Final Assignment:
"Enhancing Student Learning and Intellectual Community by Promoting SoTL"  

Introduction and Application

In the spring of 2002, we applied to attend the American Association of Higher Education's Summer Academy. In addition, we applied to be a Leadership Site. We were accepted for both and received a $6,000 grant to help cover the costs of the Summer Academy. Below is our proposal for the academy and Leadership Site.

Organizing for Learning

AAHE 2002 Summer Academy
Mount Snow, Vermont –July 17-21, 2002

Guidelines and Application
2002 Summer Academy Participation Guidelines

Based on our experience the past five years, more institutions will apply to the Summer Academy than we can accommodate. Since the Academy is limited in size to 300 participants (30-35 teams), our selection process employs the following criteria.

Participating institutions or academic units in the Summer Academy should be:

  • committed to becoming more learning-centered;
  • committed to a systemic reexamination of undergraduate education;
  • committed to assessing student outcomes and measuring program and organizational effectiveness;
  • interested in sharing ideas and plans with other teams;
  • willing to have multiple stakeholder groups represented on their team; and
  • committed to the continuous improvement of student, program, and organizational performance

2002 Summer Academy Application and Leadership Site Application

  1. Name of College or University: Illinois State University
  2. Contact person: Kathleen McKinney
  3. Mailing Address for contact person:
    Center for the Advancement of Teaching
    Box 3990
    Illinois State University
    Normal, Il 61790-3990
  4. Phone: 309-438-5943
  5. Fax: 309-438-8788
  6. email: kmckinne@ilstu.edu

Briefly describe your institution's present initiatives and results relative to the improvement of undergraduate education (50-100 words):

Several years ago we instituted a new general education program. The program is innovative for a large public institution (e.g., required inner core, shared co-curricular experience before school begins, recommended summer reading list, a required freshman critical thinking class, movement away from large classes to small classes, heavy involvement of fulltime faculty, explicit incorporation of library and computer skills, emphasis on written and oral communication, etc.). Other initiatives, and we are making progress on all of them, include improved physical learning spaces, a student referral center, out-of-class learning opportunities, increased emphasis on assessment and the scholarship of teaching and learning with impact on student outcomes, research opportunities for undergraduates, required capstone experiences, a new interdisciplinary leadership minor and institute, and more! Early assessment results indicate, for example, a higher quality of students applying to our institution and increased retention of both majority and minority students. Assessment will be an on-going and public effort.

Briefly describe your institution's future goals relating to improvement of undergraduate education (50-100 words):

These goals and many specific action items are best understood by reading our strategic plan, Excellence by Design which can be viewed at StrategicPlan.illinoisstate.edu. The goals promote a learning-centered culture and can be summarized as follows:

  • Recruiting according to our values (see below under "strategic importance" for our institutional values)
  • Helping students make successful transitions
  • A commitment to general education
  • Enhancing the junior-senior experience
  • Increasing student-faculty connections
  • Creating a supportive environment
  • Providing integrated services to students
  • Offering best practices in advising

Proposed Summer Academy Project (200 words or less):

Our proposed project is "Enhancing Student Learning and Intellectual Community by Promoting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning." We view ourselves as a leader in this area and, yet, with work still left to do in this critical area. As a leader in this area, we have a long history of involvement in SoTL. From our origins as a Normal School in 1857, we can trace isolated efforts to do SoTL in the disciplines leading to our strong involvement in CASTL and other SoTL work today. Many past and current editors of disciplinary SoTL journals have been housed at our institution. Currently we are searching for the first professor to occupy a newly established Cross Endowed Chair for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. We support SoTL in a variety of ways including having an SoTL web site, SoTL small research grant program, new faculty institute on classroom assessment and research, SoTL teaching-learning communities, grants to present SoTL work at conferences, and so on. SoTL work fits within our university definition of scholarship and research. Yet, there is still work to be done in this area as we strive to create a culture that reads, understands, conducts, and applies SoTL work. More specifically, we wish to increase the depth and breadth of involvement in SoTL on campus, involve more students in SoTL work, improve the quality and dissemination of such work, increase the application of SoTL findings and implications, and improve the reward structure for faculty engaging in SoTL efforts.

The project would involve both a scholarly-research side as well as a practical-applied side. We are interested in studying the status of SoTL on our campus now and five years from now at the end of the first term of the Endowed Chair. We would be looking at the nature of SoTL work (quantity, quality, disciplinary differences, support, rewards, uses, etc.). The symbolic and monetary commitment to this Chair is great and we view this as a major initiative for social change. This work will also provide, then, information that can be used to further enhance SoTL and to apply what we learn to improve student development and learning. (As the largest producer of future teachers in Illinois, and one of the largest nationally, the implications of this project on improving teaching and learning in the primary and secondary schools are also significant.)

Briefly discuss the strategic importance of this project. Does the project relate to a specific strategic goal for your institution?

Involving our faculty, staff, and students in SoTL work, studying the nature of this work, and applying what we learn is one of the critical ways we will be able to move toward success on all of the goals in our strategic plan (mentioned above). In addition, SoTL can support all five of our institutional values:

  • Individualized Attention
  • Public Opportunity
  • Active Pursuit of Learning
  • Diversity
  • Creative Response to Change

Finally, SoTL (as one relationship between teaching and research) is an explicit part of our new mission statement.

How will you know if this project has succeeded?

We will have a great deal of data from the study portion of the project as we look at SoTL and its status and impact now and five years from now. In addition, we will look for evidence that what we are learning is being fed back continually in to the decision making process at all levels of the institution. One role of the Endowed Chair will be to help maintain this focus on continuous study, application, assessment, and improvement. (also, see below under "measures")

What are potential measures that will indicate the project was a success?

  • Increases in quantity and quality of SoTL work on campus.
  • Changes in the reward structure to more adequately recognize such work.
  • More faculty and students in the disciplines doing such work.
  • Regional and national recognition for such work.
  • Increase in the number of SoTL grant applications.
  • Increase in SoTL work that is done collaboratively.
  • Creation of a publication outlet for such work.
  • Development of new initiatives on campus to enhance student learning that come from our SoTL work.
  • Departments making greater and more explicit use of SoTL data for program improvement.
  • Increase in requests for development and support for SoTL work.
  • Greater discussion at informal and formal levels of SoTL.
  • Visible connections between SoTL work on campus and SoTL work in disciplinary associations.

Summer Academy Project Team:

Please describe how the team composition was determined:

In creating the team, we wanted strong leaders and expertise (defined in a variety of ways) in SoTL. In addition, we wanted diversity in terms of position/role in the university, academic college, discipline, rank, and type of SoTL experience/expertise. Finally, we selected people with a strong commitment and interest in SoTL and the project.

Proposed team members (recommended team size is 6-8):

Name, Title

  1. Kathleen McKinney, Professor of Sociology, Center for the Advancement of Teaching Director, and Cross Endowed Chair for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
  2. Deb Gentry, Professor, Family and Consumer Sciences and College Research Coordinator for the College of Applied Science and Technology
  3. Sharon Naylor, Associate Professor, Milner Library
  4. Trish Klass, Professor and Chair, Educational Administration and Foundations
  5. James Broadbear, Assistant Professor, Health
  6. Nicky Virgil, CAT Intern and Graduate Student, Psychology

Please indicate two areas of expertise or initiatives from your campus that team members could share with others at the Summer Academy in order to contribute to the collective learning at Mount Snow (for example, outcomes assessment, teaching portfolios, performance measures, strategic planning, change management):

  1. General Education Reform
  2. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Initiatives
  3. Strategic Planning

Please indicate topics that your team would like to have formal presentations/interactive discussions about at the Summer Academy.

  1. General Education Assessment
  2. Greater integration of faculty development services
  3. Improving the reward structure for teaching, scholarly teaching, and SoTL
  4. Student Engagement
  5. Capstone experiences
  6. Promoting uses of technology that enhance student learning

Please select your top three choices, where 1 = most important and 3 = third most important .

Rank

10

Strategic planning

11

Responsibility - centered budgeting

1

Outcomes assessment

5

Technology-based instruction

8

Teaching portfolios

9

Case method and discussion-based teaching

3

Learning communities

12

Performance measures

6

Problem- based learning

7

Change management

4

Service learning

2

Faculty reward systems

 

Other (please specify): see above
2024-08-20T12:25:18.314733405-07:00 2024