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Carnegie Scholars
Sharon Hamilton, Director of Campus Writing, IUPUI
Sharon J. Hamilton is Chancellor’s Professor of English, Associate Dean of the Faculties for Integrating Learning, and Director of Campus Writing at IUPUI. She also holds an appointment in University College and an adjunct appointment in the School of Education. Her twenty-eight years of teaching experience began in the early sixties, in a one-room eight-grade school on the windswept Canadian prairies. After seventeen years as a public school teacher, culminating in a position as Chair of an English Department in a suburban high school in Canada, Professor Hamilton traveled to England to earn her Ph.D. in Language and Literature at London University. She joined IUPUI in 1987, bringing to the campus an international perspective on collaborative learning and interactive teaching. With several teaching awards and publications about teaching and learning over the ensuing ten years, she has established an international reputation for her understanding of how to create effective learning environments, particularly in the area of collaborative learning. Three publications that chronicle her achievements as a scholar, a teacher, and a human being include Teaching, Technology and Collaborative Learning: Developing a Model for Instructional Teams, (Video: Integrated Technologies/IUPUI); Collaborative Learning: Teaching and Learning in the Arts, Sciences, and Professional Schools (2nd ed. Indianapolis: Indiana University, 1997); and My Name's Not Susie: A Life Transformed by Literacy (Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1995).
Whitney May Schlegel, Director of Undergraduate Curriculum in the School of Medicine, Medical Sciences Program
My work as a Carnegie Scholar aims to initiate discovery of the connections between undergraduate liberal learning, professional school learning, and professionalism, helping to understand how the learning past influences the learning future. My project specifically focuses on small group learning and the transferability of learned skills and content beyond the immediate learning environment. My central question is, how are undergraduate students in a senior level physiology course learning in teams? Collaboration is the cornerstone of science, health care, and life within our global society. Instructional methodologies and means of assessing undergraduate student learning that are consistent with what is valued beyond the classroom in social and intellectual communities seems essential for the adoption of life-long learning models and the development of life skills. These skills must be transferable beyond the immediate learning environment. Does the group-learning model, consistently applied throughout my course, and the evaluation process, provide for the development of teaching and learning models that students will employ in professional school, throughout their professional and personal lives and when they transition from student to teacher?
Project DescriptionBarry Rubin, School of Public and Environmental Affairs
Barry’s Carnegie Foundation Project addresses the problem that college-level required courses in introductory statistical analysis are generally unsuccessful in conveying the necessary concepts for students to apply or understand statistics. The project will utilize digital video case studies of former IU students who have taken K300-Statistical Techniques and who have applied statistical tools in their workplace to solve significant problems. Each video will address how the workplace problem originated and its characteristics, how statistical analysis was used to solve the problem, what the outcome was on the organization or environment, and the impact on the IU graduate’s job or career. The problem definition component of the video will be placed on a Web site and streamed to small groups of students outside of class, who will analyze the issue and propose statistical methods for addressing the issue. Each group’s proposed solution will be shared in class to stimulate discussion. The remainder of the video will then be viewed in-class followed by discussion of the actual methods and outcome. Thus, each case study becomes the focus for active and collaborative learning that should improve the degree of engagement, understanding, and professional practice achieved by undergraduate students in introductory statistical analysis courses. A major component of the project is the development and application of assessment tools to determine if the digital video case studies are successful in meeting these goals. Another project element is the dissemination of the results of this SOTL research to the large community of scholars who teach such courses.
“I’ve got the Word in me and I can Sing it, You Know:” Using Representative Illustrations as Modes of Enhancing Student LearningCarolyn Calloway-Thomas, Communication and Culture
From our pedagogical beginnings, teachers have used representative illustrations – stories, proverbs, poems, and the like, as ways of fostering student learning. Today, however, as a result of new technologies, the rise of popular culture, and intergenerational differences, teachers have had to revise their understanding of how to reach students. I found that professors-wittingly or unwittingly-use metaphoric clusters as organizing principles. These principles, in turn, structure the nature and types of representative illustrations that they use in the classroom. Students’ written and oral comments reveal:
Together, these findings suggest that students are moving from an ear (oral) culture to an eye (visual) culture. In the light of these findings, several important questions emerge: Are classroom lectures in our pedagogical future? What is the “end game” in terms of sustaining student attention? And can a generation of teachers schooled in one medium (oral) keep pace with students who are schooled in another medium (visual)?
Fostering Critical Thinking: Evolution as an ExampleCraig Nelson, Biology
I have two underlying theses. Teaching evolution effectively requires a simultaneous fostering of critical thinking, both within biology and, at even higher levels of critical thinking, about science in society. And, evolution is one of the (few?) topics in biology interesting and important enough to students that they will do the cognitive rebuilding needed for higher order critical thinking. Critical thinking and its correlate, mature valuing, are at the core of liberal and professional education, but most students graduate without mastering them. Evolution is the core of biology, and is central to public understanding and acceptance of basic science, but is rejected by a plurality of a public that accepts much pseudoscience. I asked whether student’s initial acceptance of evolution affected their grades. In prior studies, initial rejection has been associated with lower grades. I have developed several techniques to reduce the conflict for such students without sacrificing the core science. Initial acceptance now has no relation to grades in my course. I am currently analyzing data on the association of initial levels of critical thinking with grades and on the extent to which the course increased general critical thinking skills.
Exploring the Process of Reading HistoryDavid Pace, History
As college students move through a typical day they frequently experience a bewildering variety of different academic mini-cultures, each with its own norms, expectations, and procedures. A simple word such as “read” can mean radically different things in different courses, and the strategies that function well in one course may fail in another. Yet, students are rarely even told that they may have to readjust the way that they read, and they are almost never given guidelines for making this transition. Thus, many students do poorly, despite hard work, because they do not understand the particular “rules” of the subject they are studying. This is particularly important in history courses, where students can be overwhelmed when they attempt to use strategies that work in a ten-page chemistry assignment when faced with ? hundred pages of historical description. Therefore, I am seeking to describe some of reading strategies that are required in introductory history courses and to develop ways of modeling these for students in introductory history courses. Since much of this is so automatic to professional historians that it is almost unconscious, I am interviewing professors at a variety of institutions and asking them to explore with me precisely what students must do to successfully read specific passages that are used in their courses. At the same time I am experimenting in my own classes with methods of explicitly modeling each of these forms of reading and of assessing the effectiveness of each. I expect to publish a series of articles that will help historians understand more clearly what they are asking students to do when they as them to “read” and provide them new ways to quickly provide students with the “rules” of historical reading.
Student Talents as Pedagogical Resources: New Strategies to Promote Effective UnderstandingDennis Rome, Criminal Justice
Because brilliant students in the seminar room may have difficulty in the lab or art studio and students who are rich in hands-on experience may not understand theory; students need the opportunity to show their talents and learn in ways that work for them. Hence, my Carnegie project investigated ways in which students from diverse backgrounds could be challenged to learn in ways that are more conducive in allowing them to demonstrate their various talents. Some specific overall arching questions include: 1) what are the barriers to success for under-represented students on predominately white campuses? 2) What are the pedagogical and curricular strategies that break down those barriers? Which strategies can be used in which types of courses? Institutions? With which groups of students? And, what are the larger departmental, institutional, and discipline-wide actions needed to promote the success of students of color? |
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