Banner: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Program at Indiana University Bloomington

 

2004–2005 SOTL Schedule of Events


Program Notes

The faculty and graduate students of Indiana University are warmly invited and encouraged to participate in all events. Faculty are encouraged to forward invitations to SOTL events to colleagues and graduate students who may be interested in participating. To minimize cost and waste of food, handouts, and other materials and because seating capacity is limited at some events, advance reservations for all events are kindly requested.

Videotapes of events will be loaned to faculty on any IU campus via campus mail. Please make your request to Sharon Smith, 812-855-9023 or smiths@indiana.edu.

Please direct comments, suggestions, or queries regarding this schedule or any aspect of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Program to:

Jennifer Meta Robinson
Franklin Hall 004
Indiana University
601 E. Kirkwood Ave.
Bloomington, IN 47405
E-mail: jenmetar@indiana.edu
Tel: 812-855-9023
Fax: 812-855-8404

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SOTL Steering Committee

Simon Brassell – Professor, Geological Sciences

Brian Powell – Professor, Sociology

Jennifer Meta Robinson – SOTL Coordinator, Office of Academic Affairs

Howard Rosenbaum – Associate Professor, Library & Information Science; MIS Program Advisor

Whitney Schlegel – Assistant Professor, Physiology and Biophysics, Director, Undergraduate Curriculum, Medical Sciences Program

Ray Smith – Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Student Retention

 

SOTL Advisory Council

William Becker – Professor, Economics; Editor, Journal of Economic Education

David Boeyink – Associate Professor, Journalism

Ben Brabson – Professor, Physics

Catherine Brown – Associate Dean for Research and Development; Professor, School of Education

Carolyn Calloway-Thomas – Associate Professor, Communication and Culture

Sandra Dolby – Professor, Folklore and Ethnomusicology

Kevin Glowacki – Assistant Professor, Classical Studies

Harriette Hemmasi – Executive Associate Dean, University Libraries

Eugene Kintgen – Associate Dean, RUGS; Professor, English

Shanker Krishnan – Associate Professor, Marketing, Kelley School of Business

Patricia McDougall – Associate Dean of Academics and Professor of Strategic Management, Kelley School of Business

Craig Nelson – Professor Emeritus, Biology and SPEA

David Pace – Associate Professor, History

David Parkhurst – Professor, Environmental Science, SPEA

Bernice Pescosolido – Chancellors’ Professor, Sociology

Dennis Rome – Associate Professor, Criminal Justice

Craig Ross – Associate Dean and Associate Professor, HPER

Anya Peterson Royce – Chancellors’ Professor, Anthropology, Comparative Literature

Barry Rubin – Professor, SPEA

Leah Savion – Assistant Professor, part-time, and Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies, Philosophy

John Slattery – Dean of the Graduate School

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2004–2005 SOTL Events Schedule

Toolbox: Course Portfolios as a Design Tool for Teaching in Fall

Doug Karpa-Wilson, Jennifer Meta Robinson, Kim Geeslin, Valerie O’Loughlin

Faculty members have found course portfolios to be excellent tools not only for reporting on courses already finished but also for planning those to come. This three-day course design series builds on the approach developed by IU authors as part of the Pew Peer Review of Teaching Course Portfolio Initiative. These special sessions will employ, prospectively, the structured approach used for preparing a course portfolio. The result should be a sound and rigorous course plan for the fall.

During this three-day workshop, participants will work cooperatively to develop the learning goals, major assignments, and activities for their fall courses. In discussion with colleagues, participants will explore how they would like students to be different by the end of the semester. Participant will also develop the key assignments in which students can show they have moved toward those goals. Finally, we will collaborate on the teaching activities and structures that will help students be successful with these key assignments. This cumulative process should yield both a solid plan for this fall’s teaching and, through daily writings, a preliminary draft of a course portfolio that documents the intellectual work of teaching and the corresponding student achievements. All participants will be invited to join a working group that continues the conversation into the fall.

As a member of a Pew Charitable Trust research university consortium, Indiana University has taken a lead in piloting a system for peer review of teaching using course portfolios. These portfolios provide rich documentation of teaching and learning that includes the instructor’s voice and evidence of student performance. Experiences at the campuses involved in the Peer Review of Teaching Course Portfolio Initiative have shown that these portfolios can be used for course development, grants, awards, job applications, scholarship of teaching publications, dossiers, and other dissemination of teaching. Participation in the course portfolio initiative brings participants into a larger movement toward peer reviewing teaching.

Tuesday, August 17, Thursday, August 19, Monday, August 23, 2004
9:00 – 11:00 am
Maple Room, Indiana Memorial Union
Light refreshments will be provided
Register online

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Taking the Excitement of Discovery to the Classroom and Beyond

Roger Hangarter, Associate Professor, Biology

Plants typically move and change on timescales that are too slow to be easily observed by most people. This temporal disconnect contributes to the phenomenon of “plant blindness,” in which students fail to see plants as alive and tend to regard them as boring and unchanging. As a result, students who might otherwise make good plant biologists fail to develop the skill of detailed observation that is so fundamental to science. They often enter other areas of specialization that look exciting by comparison. To address this fundamental misconception and cultivate in students the skills that would dispel it, Professor Roger Hangarter drew on the same time-lapse methods that he uses in his research to give students a fresh look at plants. Specifically, he has made available to students the time-lapse movies he uses to analyze how plants respond to environmental stimuli, such as light and gravity. As they do for scientists, the movies reveal to students important details that are often missed by relatively simple before-and-after comparisons.

The rich connection that Professor Hangarter made between his research and his teaching has set in motion an innovative teaching agenda that continues to expand. While the quality and character of the questions that his own students ask have clearly improved after the introduction of the videos, a more surprising outcome has been their enthusiastic reception by a much broader audience. An award winning public educational web site, several artistic collaborations and creations, exhibits at the United State Botanical Garden and the Chicago Botanical Garden, citations in scientific and popular journals, and significant interest from the National Science Foundation suggest that this work is addressing a widely-recognized problem. In this presentation, Professor Hangarter will discuss his realization of a serious misconception among biology students, how that developed into a teaching innovation that draws on actual basic research methods, and his further extension of this work into a powerful demonstration of the dynamic nature of plant growth and development to the public at large.

Friday, September 24, 2004
Noon – 1:30 pm
Frangipani Room, Indiana Memorial Union
Lunch will be provided from 11:30
Register online

photograph of David Orr

Roger Hangarter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at Indiana University, Bloomington. He earned a B.A. in biology at State University College at Geneseo, New York, and an M.S. in Horticulture and a Ph.D. in Plant Physiology from Michigan State University. He did postdoctoral work on photosynthesis with Norman Good from 1981–1983 at Michigan State University and with Don Ort from 1983–1986 at the University of Illinois, Urbana. He was assistant and associate professor in the Department of Plant Biology, Ohio State University in Columbus, OH from 1986 to 1995. He then moved to his current position at Indiana University. He spent 1998 serving as the Program Officer for NSF Integrative Plant Biology Program in Arlington, VA.

Professor Hangarter’s research focuses on physiological and molecular mechanisms controlling plant growth and development, including mechanisms by which plants perceive and respond to environmental stimuli. He has had a long-term interest in photobiology and development and has conducted research on auxin physiology, photosynthesis, and plant photosensory systems. His recent work is investigating how light and gravity response systems interact to control plant architecture and how light regulates chloroplast motility and development.

At IU, Professor Hangarter teaches an undergraduate plant physiology course, a graduate course on plant development, and special topics courses on photobiology and plant development. He has also been an invited lecturer in the DOE–NSF Plant Biochemistry Summer Course and the Arabidopsis Molecular Genetics Course at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He has served on a number of competitive grant panels, including the USDA–NRI Plant Growth and Development Program, the DOE Biosciences Grant Program, and the NSF Integrative Plant Biology Program, and as the Panel Manager of the USDA Plant Growth and Development Panel. He has also organized several national and international conferences. Hangarter is currently on the editorial board for Plant, Cell & Environment, the advisory board for Trends in Plant Science, and he served on the editorial board for Plant Physiology from 1993-2000. He is president elect of the American Society of Plant Biologists and will assume the role as President in October.

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Toolbox: Design Workshop for Poster Presentations

Michael Nelson, Director, ISS Graphics and Publications

Poster presentations are growing in popularity as a communication medium for academic work, both in disciplinary contexts and in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Posters usually combine pictures and text in an aesthetic manner for easy viewing and rapid absorption of information. Their special appeal lies providing an interactive forum. Readers learn about new and innovative work-in progress, and presenters can preview interesting preliminary results of on-going research projects. The resulting conversations can be rewarding and generative for both sides.

This hands-on toolbox event will help IU faculty members, graduate students and staff prepare conference poster presentations that are clear in content and visual composition. Led by Michael Nelson, Director of IU Bloomington’s Graphics and Publications, participants will hone the main messages of their posters and design effective visual presentations for them. By the end of the workshop, participants will have a clearer sense of the main focus of their work and a preliminary plan for constructing their posters.

Participants are encouraged to bring abstracts they have submitted or plan to submit, as well as laptop computers, if possible. Consultants will be on hand for further design planning after the session ends.

Friday, October 1, 2004
3:00 – 4:30 pm
Teaching and Learning Technologies Center
(Main Library, Undergraduate Side, 3rd Floor)
Light refreshments provided
Register online

photograph of Mary Howard-Hamilton

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The Research University and Innovation in Undergraduate Education

George D. Kuh, Chancellor’s Professor of Higher Education

Research universities get their fair share of criticism in terms of the quality of undergraduate education they provide their students. At the same time, many innovations in undergraduate education, such as learning communities and first-year student seminars currently being used in all types of institutions were developed by and first implemented at research universities. Most widely used assessment tools also were developed by scholars at research universities. Are research university undergraduates more or less engaged in effective educational practices? Compared with their counterparts elsewhere do they study and interact with faculty members more or less? Moreover, how do they fare in terms of what they gained from attending the university relative to other students? Do faculty members at research universities who teach undergraduates emphasize different pedagogical practices and learning outcomes for their students compared with instructors at other types of institutions?

In this session George Kuh will draw on his chapter in The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, edited by William Becker and Moya Andrews, to review some of the more important contributions made by research universities to improving student learning and institutional effectiveness. A faculty member at IUB since 1976, George directs the Center for Postsecondary Research which houses several national projects including the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement. To date about 600,000 first-year and senior students from more than 850 different colleges and universities have completed the NSSE and IUB has annually participated in the project since its inception in 2000. In addition, George and a research team of two dozen scholars from around the country recently completed a two-year study of 20 colleges and universities with better-than-predicted student engagement and graduation rates. He will draw on this combination of data to frame his observations and offer suggestions for individual faculty members can establish some of the key conditions that promote student engagement and contribute to challenging but supportive learning environments, drawing on research about first-year seminars, learning communities, student-faculty collaboration on research, and capstone seminars.

Friday, October 8, 2004
Noon–1:30 pm
Georgian Room, Indiana Memorial Union
Lunch will be provided from 11:30
Register online

photograph of Christopher Uhl

George Kuh is Chancellor’s Professor of Higher Education at Indiana University Bloomington. He directs the Center for Postsecondary Research, the National Survey of Student Engagement, and the College Student Experiences Questionnaire Research Program. George received the B.A. from Luther College (1968), the M.S. from the St. Cloud State University (1971), and the Ph.D. from the University of Iowa (1975). At Indiana University, he served as chairperson of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies (1982–84), Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Education (1985–88), and Associate Dean of the Faculties for the Bloomington campus (1997–2000). Previously he was an admissions officer at Luther College and taught at Kirkwood Community College and the University of Iowa Colleges of Education and Dentistry.

Professor Kuh has published more than 250 items and made several hundred presentations on topics related to college student development, assessment strategies, and campus cultures. In addition, he has been a consultant to about 150 institutions of higher education and educational agencies in the United States and abroad. George has received awards for his research contributions from the American College Personnel Association, Association for Institutional Research, the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), the Council of Independent Colleges, and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. He is past-president of ASHE and serves on the editorial boards of About Campus, Change, Higher Education Abstracts, Liberal Education, and the Vanderbilt Higher Education Series. In addition, he received the Educational Leadership Award for Teaching from St. Cloud State University, several Teaching Excellence Recognition Awards from Indiana University, the Dean’s Award for outstanding contributions by a faculty member to the quality of undergraduate life at IUB, and the prestigious Tracy Sonneborn Award from Indiana University for a distinguished record of scholarship and teaching.

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International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning Inaugural Meeting

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Perspectives, Intersections, and Directions

The International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning will hold its inaugural meeting on the Indiana University Bloomington campus this fall. Launched from the Bloomington campus by a core group from IU’s Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Program in 2003, IS-SOTL was founded by scholars representing 6 countries, 43 institutions of higher education, and 3 IU campuses. This will be the first time this distinguished group of faculty members, scholars of both their disciplinary studies and teaching, will gather together anywhere.

Internationally, good teaching is increasingly recognized as resting on both professors’ knowledge of their disciplines and their knowledge of how to teach specific disciplinary content. The scholarship of teaching and learning invites faculty to use the literature on learning and teaching that already exists and to undertake study of learning questions from their own disciplinary perspectives. This conference will examine a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, intersections, and future directions in response to the central question: “How can we best use the disciplinary expertise of faculty members to educate the higher education students of today?”

Keynotes will be presented by Keith Trigwell (Oxford University), Lee Shulman (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching), Randy Bass (Georgetown University), and Dan Bernstein (University of Kansas). Other outstanding presenters include Michael Prosser (University of Sydney), Nick Hammond (Higher Education Academy, UK), Janet Gail McDonald (McGill University), and Barbara Cambridge (AAHE). The developing program of events, the full roster of the founding committee, and other information about the International Society are available on the conference web site: www.is-sotl.indiana.edu.

Conference sponsors include Indiana University and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Thursday, October 21 through Sunday, October 24, 2004
Indiana Memorial Union
Registration required: www.is-sotl.indiana.edu

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The Future of Teaching the Middle Ages in Higher Education: Challenges, Paradoxes, Reconceptions, and Optimism

Vicky Gunn, Lecturer, Teaching and Learning ServiceUniversity of Glasgow, UK

Sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Studies, with support from the Medieval Studies Institute

This roundtable will examine some of the key challenges facing the teaching of Middle Ages in Western Higher Education with particular reference to the UK. The workshop facilitator will set out what she sees are the problems facing her University (University of Glasgow, one of the ‘ancient’ Universities) and invite participants to compare this experience with the current situation in the USA. The focus of the workshop will be the tradition of teaching the English and European Middle Ages to Undergraduates and will raise questions about curriculum development, changes in teaching and learning, diversity, and relevance of approaches traditionally associated with the discipline of Medieval History. On October 26, at the Lilly Library, Dr. Gunn will present “A Case of Generic Discomfort: Bede’s Historia Abbatum.”

Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Noon–1:30 pm
State Room West, Indiana Memorial Union
Lunch will be provided
Register online

Dr. Vicky Gunn is a lecturer at the University of Glasgow in the field of teaching and learning service. Her special areas of interest include professional development of Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) and new academic staff and the emotional processes of academic research. Her expertise in medieval history includes interdisciplinary approaches and the study of early medieval text construction and composition, particularly in Bede’s work. She is currently a fellow at IU’s Institute for Advanced Studies.

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Toolbox: Turning SOTL Conference Papers into Publications

The SOTL Team

Designed as a follow-up to the International Scholarship of Teaching and Learning conference, this workshop is open to anyone who has a SOTL presentation that they would like to turn into a manuscript suitable for publication. Over lunch we will discuss library resources and general publication guidelines. Participants will receive a list of disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals that accept scholarship of teaching and some examples of published guidelines and articles. Participants will have the opportunity to organize themselves into writing groups and to find partners for future collaborations.

Friday, November 5, 2004
Noon–1:30 pm
Coronation Room, Indiana Memorial Union
Lunch will be provided from 11:30
Register online

photograph of Lisa Kurz

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Linking Professional and Classroom Practice: A Survey of Professionals on Hands-on Instruction

Frederika Kaestle, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
April K. Sievert, Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Anthropology

“Active” learning and “hands-on” experience seem to be logical goals for higher education. Certainly they reverberate through discussions about college teaching. But how do we construct day-to-day classroom activities that convey the kinds of experiences and skills valued by professionals in the field?

In this presentation, Frederika Kaestle and April Sievert will discuss preliminary results of a study that surveys professional anthropologists and archaeologists nationwide about hands-on learning. Combined with results of interviews with anthropologists at Indiana University, this study provides recommendations for revising courses here on campus. A further phase of the study applies these recommendations to four, quite different courses in the Anthropology Department. The success of these pedagogical changes will be discussed in terms of student achievement and satisfaction, as well as instructor experience, using both quantitative and qualitative assessments. Funded by a 2003 Dean of Faculties award for Leadership in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, this project will provide the basis for a rich discussion about definitions, problems, and solutions for hands-on learning.

Friday, January 28, 2005
Noon–1:30 pm
Georgian Room, Indiana Memorial Union
Lunch will be provided from 11:30
Register online

photograph of Lisa Kurz

Frederika Kaestle is an assistant professor of Anthropology at Indiana University. She specializes in molecular genetic techniques that can be utilized to address anthropological questions. Over the past decade, she has concentrated on the new techniques and protocols that make ancient DNA available for study and has used these data to test hypotheses based on archaeological, linguistic, and ethnographic studies. Her research concentrates on several instances of hypothesized prehistoric population movement and replacement, such as the Numic Expansion in the Great Basin, the initial peopling of the New World, and the settlement of the Pacific, in an effort to determine which archaeological signals are the most reliable indicators of prehistoric migrations and relationships and to refine current hypotheses regarding these specific instances of possible population movement. Her previous projects have included much more fine-grained analyses of kinship and residence and burial patterns using ancient DNA.

photograph of David Perry

April Sievert is Director of Undergraduate Studies and a lecturer in the Anthropology Department at Indiana University. She studies the interface between ceremonial behavior and craft industries, researching how people in different cultural situations use lithic tools to manufacture other tools and objects. She has worked especially with archaeological collections from the Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma and from various Maya sites. Her technical specialty is in the examination of wear traces using light microscopy and high-power magnification to reconstruct artifact function. Her newest research interests concern centers for the production of ceramic and glass tableware in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in North America, especially in the Ohio Valley. Dr. Sievert also studies the ways in which we teach anthropology, create course materials, and write textbooks. She is committed to improving the accessibility, readability of anthropology for students and the public as well.

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Getting Our Money’s Worth: Consumerist Attitudes among Indiana University Students

Bernice Pescosolido, Chancellor’s Professor, Sociology
Suzanna M. Crage, Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology
Emily Fairchild, Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology

In recent years, there has been a good deal of interchange among academics about the presumably rising “consumerist attitude” toward higher education among college students. Instructors complain that students are not academically engaged and that they are instead concerned with “getting their money’s worth,” at times making demands that instructors believe interfere with learning. Although these discussions are common in university hallways and academic newsletters, research that defines the attitudes that compose the consumerist perspective is nonexistent. Furthermore, the frequency of such attitudes among students is also unknown; existing sources rely on anecdotal evidence or assumption.

This research team addresses both the content of the consumerist perspective and the prevalence of it through an online survey of randomly selected Indiana University Bloomington undergraduates. Their presentation will address the variety of attitudes measured in the survey that tap various components of consumerist perspectives. With a diversity of measures, they are able to identify multiple types of consumerism and describe their defining elements. They also provide a description of the prevalence of these attitudes among IU’s undergraduate students, identifying demographic characteristics of those adhering to the perspectives as well as how the attitudinal responses link with responses to a critical thinking scale. Beginning with reliable data of consumerist attitudes as a context, this presentation will launch an informed discussion of how, with this knowledge, faculty members can better advance students’ learning in individual courses.

Friday, February 11, 2005
Noon–1:30 pm
Frangipani Room, Indiana Memorial Union
Lunch will be provided from 11:30
Register online

photograph of Lisa Kurz

Professor Bernice Pescosolido focuses her research and teaching on social issues in health, illness, and healing. Her research agenda addresses how social networks connect individuals to their communities and to institutional structures, providing the “wires” through which society’s energies (social interaction) influences people’s attitudes and actions. She has received numerous grants from federal and private sources including the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. From 1989 to 1995, she held a Research Scientist Development Award and from 1997 through 2002 holds an Independent Scientist Award, both from the NIMH. She is the founder and director of the NIMH-funded Indiana Consortium for Mental Health Services Research as well as the IU-Strategic Directions Initiative’s CONCEPT I Program in Health and Medicine. Both are designed to enhance the research and training of IU’s faculty and students to contribute to the national agenda on health and health care. In 1985, she received the Edwin H. Sutherland Award from Excellence in and Commitment to teaching and in 1992, the Herman F. Lieber Award from Distinguished Teaching. She has published widely in sociology, social science, public health and medical journals; served on the editorial board of a dozen national and international journals; been elected to a variety of leadership positions in professional associations.

photograph of Lisa Kurz

Emily Fairchild is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at Indiana University, Bloomington. She has participated in the Preparing Future Faculty program, has been a Faculty Fellow at DePauw University, and is currently serving as the Preparing Future Faculty Fellow in the Indiana University Bloomington Department of Sociology. Her research interests center on sociology of culture and gender. Recent projects include an interview-based study of engaged women’s views of marital love, a content analysis of gender in children’s books, and an analysis of General Social Survey data regarding the effects of maternal employment on gender-related attitudes. Her dissertation research includes observation of weddings and analysis of the role of gender and ritual in these events.

photograph of Lisa Kurz

Suzanna M. Crage is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Sociology Department at Indiana University. She conducts research primarily in areas relating to the sociology of culture. During 2004–2005, she is conducting field research for her dissertation, which compares how two cities in Germany are set up to provide social services for refugees, focusing on the roles and relationships of non-governmental agencies. Related topics include how refugee migrants in Europe use local cultural resources, and how refugee coping strategies are influenced by the nature of their attachments to places. She is also working with Elizabeth Armstrong on a study of the influence of the Stonewall riots on the development of the gay liberation movement in America. In addition to this project, with Emily Fairchild, about student attitudes toward higher education, she is working with Evelyn Perry on a study of attitudes among sociologists about the increasingly discussed idea of “public sociology.”

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Sexual Assault on Campus: Insights from Research on College Student Social Life

Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Brian Sweeney, Associate Instructor, Sociology

Often the scholarship of teaching and learning on college campuses is confined to the study of teaching and learning within the classroom environment. However, if it is defined more broadly, as encompassing the whole college environment in which students reside and in which they are taught and generate learning, then myriad questions for study emerge. In fact, few people would deny that valuable learning occurs outside of the classroom or that events outside the classroom influence students’ engagement with academic work. An accumulating body of literature on college life documents that learning in college does not stop at the classroom door and that classroom instructors are not always the most influential teachers.

Professor Elizabeth Armstrong uses a sociological perspective to better our understandings of how college students learn from each other and act as informal mentors and teachers in a variety of settings. Her report, at an early stage of a multi-year project, will add to what we know about how teaching and learning proceed outside of the classroom and how that can be used to improve the more formally academic parts of the college experience. Data from surveys and interviews will reveal an erotic curriculum that includes the reinforcement of gender inequality. Dr. Armstrong will suggest concrete implications for teaching and learning both inside and outside of the classroom and lead participants in a discussion along these lines.

Friday, March 4, 2005
Noon–1:30 pm
Georgian Room, Indiana Memorial Union
Lunch will be provided from 11:30
Register online

Elizabeth A. Armstrong has been an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at Indiana University since 2000. Her interests in cultural sociology, social movements, institutional theory, and sexuality are reflected in her book Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco, 1950-1994, which was published by the University of Chicago Press (2002). As part of a multi-year project exploring how individuals change in college, she is tracking students at several universities through the college experience. This research on “the erotic curricula” of American universities was funded by a $50,000 National Academy of Education Spencer Doctoral Fellowship. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley.

Brian Sweeney

Brian Sweeney came to IU the summer of 2000 after graduating from Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, OH. His academic interests mostly deal with gender, sex, and culture. Currently he’s finishing an interview project that looks at the subjectivity of manhood as it relates to college culture and the objectification of women and commodification of sex. He’s also a researcher on a project on college culture with Prof. Elizabeth Armstrong for which they and other researchers will be doing dorm ethnography--living and interacting with students in two residence halls here at IU. Brian’s taught sociology classes on gender and sexuality at IU, and this spring he’ll also teach at DePauw University in Greencastle, IN.

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Creating Social Presence in Online Learning

Carol Hostetter, Assistant Professor, Social Work

The disembodied messages we send and receive through the computer lines often convey only a shadow of the meaning that a face-to-face encounter would provide. If meaning is made, in part, through social context, then online education presents faculty members with a heightened challenge in facilitating a sense of community without the accustomed face-to-face classroom culture. As online components become more prevalent and more important in residential and distance courses, how can we understand and improve communication between an instructor and her students and among students themselves. In this presentation, Professor Carol Hostetter will share findings from a study that compares two entirely online courses with one face-to-face course, in order to understand students’ perceptions of social presence in electronic courses. Her presentation will discuss “social presence” and how fostering it can aid instructors’ efforts “to instigate, sustain, and support critical thinking in a community of learners” (Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, and Archer, 1999).

This exploratory, qualitative project examines students’ perceptions of social presence through surveys and interviews for both online and face-to-face courses, particularly comparing classes in which students are familiar with the faculty and those in which they are not. Professor Hostetter also examines social presence, as expressed through content analysis of discussion groups in online classes and explores the relationship between students’ learning outcomes and their perceptions of social presence. Her recommendations for increasing a sense of social presence will help to guide other instructors as they design online interactions for their students and could serve as the foundation for others’ scholarship of teaching and learning projects.

Friday, April 1, 2005
Georgian Room, IMU
Noon–1:30 pm
Lunch will be provided from 11:30
Register online

Dr. Carol Hostetter is Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Indiana University, having joined the faculty in 2001. As an assistant faculty member, she has won the Trustees Teaching Award and was inducted into the Faculty Colloquium on Excellence in Teaching (FACET) in the Spring of 2003. Her grant awards include a PA Mack Fellowship (through FACET), a Grant-in-Aid of Research (through the Office of Professional Development), an Indiana Partnership for Statewide Education (IPSE) grant (through the Indiana Higher Education Telecommunications System), and a NETwork for Excellence in Teaching Grant (through the Office of Professional Development). Dr. Hostetter’s research interests are in education and technology, and empowerment beliefs of social work students. Dr. Hostetter worked since 1977 as a social work practitioner and since 1979 as a part-time lecturer at Indiana University. She earned her bachelor’s in psychology from IU, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. She earned an MSW and then her Ph.D., in sociology in 1998, both from IU.

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SOTL Spring Celebration

Please join Jeanne Sept, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculties, and your colleagues for an informal celebration of the year’s SOTL successes. Vice Chancellor Sept will spotlight some of the new and renewed directions and initiatives at IU Bloomington. We will feature poster presentations, preprints, reprints, and other materials that represent recent work by local scholars of teaching and learning. We will also talk strategically about future directions by collaboratively drawing a concept map that represents the work of local scholars. If you have new work or other achievements you would like to share, please contact Sharon Smith at smiths@indiana.edu or 855-9023.

This closing session of the SOTL season has become a traditional opportunity to touch base with SOTL colleagues before the summer. Please drop by for refreshments, browsing, and conversation beginning at 3:30.

Thursday, April 14, 2005
4:00–5:30 pm
University Club, IMU
Refreshments will be provided from 3:30
Register online

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SOTL Writing Retreat

Cosponsored by the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Program and the Campus Writing Program

Even while working on one research project, we often have questions, data, even drafts of other projects simmering until the right time to work on them emerges. This two-day SOTL Writing Retreat is designed to create time, place, and critical feedback for a teaching and learning project you would like to publish. Consultants will be on hand to answer questions, provide feedback, and otherwise help you make the most of two full days devoted to writing.

The retreat will run May 12 and 13 in the Devault Alumni Center at Indiana University. It will be facilitated by SOTL Program Director Jennifer Robinson and Campus Writing Program Director Laura Plummer. Any member of the IU Bloomington faculty, staff, and graduate student body who is at any phase of a scholarship of teaching and learning article, grant application, or proposal—from brainstorming, reflecting, designing, outlining, revising, to polishing—is eligible to submit a proposal. Collaborative teams are also welcome to apply.

The Retreat’s Goals

  • to help scholars dedicate time for writing and provide them with a sense of a supportive community
  • to provide scholars with constructive feedback from peers on ideas, research design, data analysis, and paper drafts
  • to help scholars formalize and organize their thinking about teaching and learning in writing so that it can be shared with their peers
  • to make available to participating scholars the latest theory and research in the field by means of a research assistant available to do custom web searches
  • to encourage and support writing aimed at scholarly publication

The Schedule

The SOTL Writing Retreat is scheduled for two full days, 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Participants will be expected to attend the entire retreat and one reunion meeting during the 2005-06 academic year (date TBA). Each participant will receive a complete set of successful proposals prior to the retreat.

Most of each day during the retreat will be devoted to self-directed writing. Optional peer writing feedback groups and one-on-one project consultations will also be available throughout the day. Lisa Kurz, an assessment specialist with Instructional Support Services, will be on hand for those working on quantitative projects. Participants must bring their own laptops or other writing instruments. Breakfast and lunch will be provided.

Participants who successfully place their retreat manuscript in a refereed journal by April 1, 2006, will be entered into competition for a $500 award.

Guidelines for Proposals

Please include a cover-sheet that gives your name, department, office address, telephone number, email address, and the title of the scholarship of teaching and learning project you want to work on during the retreat. Include this cover sheet with the materials in your proposal, described below.

In no more than two, single-spaced pages, please include:

  • a brief description of your scholarship of teaching and learning project
  • the type of project you will be working on (e.g., research, grant, essay)
  • the phase of writing you expect to be in during the retreat (e.g., brainstorming, reflecting, outlining, designing, literature reviewing, analyzing, revising, polishing)
  • what you plan to accomplish during the retreat
  • how the retreat will help you to move your project toward publication
  • any special needs you have

You may also attach any other documentation you think may be helpful in describing your project.

Please send the complete proposal package as an email attachment to smiths@indiana.edu or on paper to:
Sharon Smith
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Program
Franklin Hall 004

If you have any questions about the retreat, please contact Jennifer Robinson at 855-9023 or jenmetar@indiana.edu.

May 12 and May 13, 2005
8:30 am–4:00 pm
Devault Alumni Center, 1000 East 17th Street
Application deadline: March 22, 2005
Candidates will be notified by April 1, 2005
Register online

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Last updated: 15 February 2005

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