Academic Exchange Quarterly Winter 2011 ISSN
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AUTHOR & ACADEMIC EXCHANGE QUARTERLY |
Collaboration
for College Teaching Improvement
Marilyn Lockhart, Montana State University
Lockhart, Ed.D., is an associate professor in the Adult
and Higher Education Program at Montana State University in Bozeman, MT.
Abstract
The
majority of faculty working in higher education has extensive knowledge in
their disciplines and little education in how to teach. This paper presents collaborative
methods used by a university in its faculty education program to improve
college teaching. For these activities, faculty read material on teaching and participated
in an interdisciplinary discussion.
Introduction
Workshops
and lectures designed to encourage college faculty to improve their teaching
are common components of college and university faculty educational development
programs. During these sessions, faculty are given information and materials in
support of specific teaching strategies (Beach, Henderson, & Famiano, 2008; Sorcinelli,
Austin, Eddy, & Beach, 2006). However, many authors writing in the faculty
development literature believe that for instructors to change and improve their
instruction, they must simultaneously transform their personal views about
teaching and student learning as well as apply changes to their own unique
situation. They believe that transformation of teaching occurs through reflection
and subsequent discussion, and such fundamental change requires more support
than these typical faculty development approaches provide (Cox, 2004; Rice, Sorcinelli, & Austin, 2000).
Learning
and collaboration communities where faculty engage in in-depth conversations
about teaching with other instructors provide opportunities to share
experiences as well as explore new approaches (Gillespie, Hilsen,
& Wadsworth, 2002; Rice, Sorcinelli, &
Austin, 2000; Young & Wilcox, 2010).
Such collaboration communities, even if of short duration, can result in
improvements in teaching (Gillespie, Robertson, & Berquist,
2010). Interdisciplinary collaborations may add additional perspectives and
depth to discussions as well as remove the intimidation of departmental peer
review in the college culture of promotion and tenure (Katz & Martin, 1997;
Lockhart, 2004; Young & Wilcox, 2010).
This
paper will share the experiences and results of the endeavor of a northwest higher
education institution with an enrollment of 13,000 students to create two ways of
building faculty learning and collaboration communities. Participants evaluated
the techniques very positively, and it is hoped that others may find the
results helpful as they improve their own faculty development programs. We
labeled our practices “Reading and Discussion Circles” and “Faculty Book Discussion
Group” since these names conveyed what faculty could expect during the sessions.
Faculty development at the institution is carried out by a Teaching and
Learning Committee with representatives from each college and a representative
from the Provost’s office. Primary offerings before these new practices
followed the standard format of workshops and lectures on improving teaching. The
university’s budget is limited, like that of many other institutions, and these
two new methods allowed an economic expansion of activities. Both methods were
based upon the assertions of Akerlind (2004) and
Kane, Sandretto, and Heath (2002) that in order to
make improvements, faculty need to have forums to discuss their teaching
practices as well as how the methods would be incorporated into their classes.
Initially,
all faculty at the university received an e-mail asking if they would be
interested in participating in discussion groups whose members read material about
teaching and then talk about it with others.
New faculty have been added to the list each year. Faculty working in a
variety of disciplines—such as math, English, plant sciences, education, and
engineering—and with varying years of experience have been members of these discussion
groups.
Reading and Discussion Circles
Beginning
Fall 2007, announcements of four to six lunchtime discussion sessions per year
have been distributed to the list of interested
instructors. For each 1-hour session, individuals read and discussed an article
about teaching. Volunteers from the Teaching and Learning Committee selected
the articles, e-mailed each article to individuals on the list, and constructed
questions to guide the discussion. A different article ranging in length from two
to four pages was selected for each session and came from journals devoted to
pedagogy. The Teaching Professor, an online journal, was found to have especially
valuable readings. Articles selected could be described as “quick and easy”
reads that highlighted teaching strategies that could be used by faculty in any
discipline. Examples of topics chosen include alternatives to grading,
incorporating writing into teaching, midterm formative assessments, and
posttest analysis. Discussion questions were fashioned to provide opportunities
for faculty to share and learn from each other.
Individuals
could attend one or all of the sessions. Attendance averaged from 8 to 20
individuals, and conversations were informal and relaxed. With larger numbers, facilitators often
divided the group into smaller groups of six to eight to allow opportunities
for all people to contribute.
Participants
eagerly shared techniques relating to the discussed approach that they had
successfully, and sometimes not so successfully, used in their own classes. In
some instances, participants asked others in the session how they thought an
idea might work. In subsequent sessions,
some individuals reported meeting with past participants informally over lunch
for further conversations about teaching.
Faculty Book Discussion Group
The
Book Discussion Groups were similar to the Reading and Discussion Circles except
that individuals read a book about teaching, rather than a short article, and then
met three times over lunch to discuss the book. In contrast to the Reading and
Discussion Circles, individuals were expected to attend all the sessions. The
purpose of the book groups was to give individuals the opportunity to read more
lengthy material on improving teaching, to critique the concepts of the book, and
to discuss it more thoroughly than the shorter term Reading Circles. Deeper self-analysis
and reflection could occur with the longer sessions. Book Discussion Groups began
2 years after the shorter-term Discussion Circles were initiated and have been held
spring semester for the past 2 years. The first year, 27 faculty joined the Book
Group, and 15 joined the second year. Both
years, subgroups were formed in order to give all participants the opportunity
to talk.
For the
first year, the group read Stephen Brookfield’s book Becoming a Reflective Teacher, and in the second year it read Richard Light’s Making the Most of College. Members of the Teaching and Learning
Committee selected the books and volunteered to be facilitators. Faculty signed up for the Book Group 2
months in advance of the first meeting, and the university furnished the books.
A questionnaire
sent to registrants before the discussions began revealed that they wanted to
learn more about topics in teaching, improve their own teaching, and meet and
talk with faculty outside their department. The statement “I want to expand my horizons on
campus both academically and socially” from one member expressed a typical
response from the pre-discussion questionnaire. Other statements included “I
signed up to talk with professors in other disciplines” and “I wanted to see
the teaching perspectives of other faculty to enhance my own.” Their experiences ranged from first-year
teachers to those with over 20 years of teaching. For both years of the program,
95 percent of the members were pre-tenure and tenured faculty, with the
remaining being adjunct.
Fortuitously,
for this method, one facilitator had extensive experience in conducting book
discussions in the community and provided guidelines for effective book
discussions. As a result, the sessions
were organized and formatted according to principles and guidelines used by
book clubs outside of an academic setting.
Since the purpose of the group was to discuss and reflect upon the book
rather than teach it, some of the strategies differed from those used in a
typical “teach the textbook” approach found in a classroom setting. The major components of Zauha’s
(2010) guidelines for facilitation as well as comments about the effects of
using them follow.
The first guideline states that a book
discussion goes well if both the leader and the group understand that there is
a mutual obligation to read the book, be willing to express thoughts about the
book, and be open to others’ ideas, insights, and opinions about the content. In an academic class of students, this expectation
is built in. However, extensive reading as a homework assignment for faculty professional
development sessions was a new concept! After reading about this expectation in
the announcement, members came to the discussions fully prepared.
Guideline 2 states that the facilitator should
assume various roles during the discussion. He or she should be a leader when
beginning the discussion and when keeping the group on track. The facilitator should
be more of a moderator when encouraging participants to express their own
reactions and ideas. The group organizer role helps participants engage with
each other on the topic (Zauha, 2010, p. 1). Facilitators of our discussion groups worked
diligently to incorporate all of these responsibilities and had positive
results as confirmed by feedback from members at the end of all sessions.
Guideline 3 deals with preparing to lead the discussion
and advised facilitators to come to the first session with some brief and interesting
information about the author and his or her work that is not written in the
forward or on the book cover to establish the context. An Internet search of the author’s name both
years of the Book Group yielded sufficient context information and personalized
the author.
Guideline 4 advises facilitators to prepare 5
to 10 thought-provoking questions about the material in advance. The facilitators collaborated on questions
and found that the group effort was productive and generated a variety of
questions from general to specific. Once the sessions began, questions were not
limited to the list; however, they served as way to ensure that the discussion began
thoughtfully and continued on-track. Questions that worked best followed
general discussion guidelines and were open ended, non-emotion focused, and did
not have specific answers but were instead “thinking” questions. Facilitators
did strive to ask more specific questions than “What did you think of the
book?” Examples of some questions include the following:
· What was your
reaction to the author’s two main points about this topic? Surprised? Agreed?
Disagreed?
· What particular
concepts in this reading really struck a chord with you?
· How might this work
positively in your class?
· What things might work
against using this?
· What concepts in
these readings would you especially like your colleagues or administrators to
note?
Zauha’s Guideline 5 provides
tips for overseeing a good discussion. These include recommending that
facilitators not answer their own questions, that they pause to give
individuals time to reflect, recognize that they do not have all the “answers,”
read brief passages and ask for reactions, and be up-front about any of their
own lack of understanding. Facilitators
recognized the importance of keeping the discussion on track; however, they
gave participants opportunities to make wide-ranging connections to their
discipline and work. Since everyone in the group had experience teaching,
participants had much to share with each other and were genuinely interested in
the experiences and perspectives of others. In many instances, the facilitator
took a “back seat” while group members asked each other opinions on the topic.
Often, faculty became interested in how people in other disciplines handled
similar situations. No one appeared reluctant to share experiences and even
challenges they may have faced in the classroom.
At the end
of all the meetings on the book, participants completed an assessment survey that
contained all open-ended questions to provide more depth and detail than a numbered
evaluation format. The survey asked how
the sessions turned out for them—as they had expected or differently?—as well
as what had the most value to them, and whether anything was puzzling or
surprising.
All
participants expressed very positive reactions to the sessions and reported
learning new approaches to teaching that they had either already incorporated
or intended to try in their classes. Ninety-eight percent of the participants both
years reported the interdisciplinary interactions and social nature of the
discussions as the most positive elements.
Specific examples of responses include “I loved the discussions—they
were quite thought provoking,” and “I liked the opportunity to converse and
think together with individuals outside my discipline about teaching. Half of
the participants commented that they were surprised at the format—that the
facilitators were not “teaching the book.” “We ended up talking a lot about
individual experiences and ideas in addition to the book; I found that
especially valuable.” One discussant wrote, “I didn’t love the book but I
really liked the group. Let’s do another!”
Recommendations for Creating Faculty Learning
and Collaboration Communities
The following recommendations are based upon
our experiences with Reading Discussion Circles and Book Groups and are
intended to create an environment that is collaborative, supportive, and
informative. Learning and collaboration
communities may be of varying lengths from a 1-hour session to multiple-hour
sessions.
1.
Identify
either an article or a book that has the potential to generate thoughtful
discussion about college teaching. Consult with faculty at your institution for
ideas. Since faculty are busy with their
teaching schedules, the material should be easy to locate. If it is a short
article, it can be e-mailed. If it is a book, consider having the
college/university purchase it for interested people.
2.
Invite
faculty from a variety of disciplines to participate in the discussion. Faculty
learn from sharing experiences and talking with those teaching other subjects.
3.
Advertise
the discussion group to faculty well ahead of the start date so that people
will have sufficient time to read the material. Make it clear that they are
expected to be prepared to talk about the reading during sessions.
4.
Distribute
a short questionnaire prior to beginning sessions to determine participants’
reasons for enrolling, length of time teaching, and discipline. Since it is
beneficial to have individuals with a variety of disciplines and experience in
discussions, the results can be helpful when creating subgroups.
5.
Identify
at least two facilitators to lead the discussions. Collaboration between the
facilitators before the discussion begins can be a learning experience itself
and may result in improved questions posed to the group.
6.
If
the registrant group is larger than 8 to10 people, consider dividing
individuals into subgroups to give everyone more of an opportunity to voice reactions
and opinions. Each subgroup should have its own facilitator.
7.
Use
Zauha’s guidelines to create a list of discussion
questions. We found that asking questions
following her format yielded critical analysis and application of the readings.
8.
Schedule
the location for discussion. The area should be appropriate to the number of
people expected. Too large a room can echo and lack warmth; too small a room may
be uncomfortable.
9.
Make
arrangements for lunch or refreshments. This simple effort shows that the
college values teaching at the institution enough to invest additional money in
it. In addition, food creates an informal environment that is more conducive
for discussion.
10.
Create
a welcoming environment when people arrive. Stand by the door and greet people
by name when they enter the room. Introduce people to each other as they
arrive. Make name tags in advance for faculty that include their name and department.
11.
Begin
sessions with individuals sharing what classes they teach and why they are interested
in participating in the group. This helps
to create an informal and relaxed environment that encourages dialogue among
members.
12.
Give
background information about the author, ask the first prepared question, and begin
the discussion. Recognize that it may take a few minutes for the members to
warm-up to the experience.
13.
Provide
ample time for faculty to reflect upon their practices, share experiences, ask
questions of each other, and explore new ways of teaching. The purpose of the
discussions is not to teach the material but rather to give faculty the
opportunity to explore and critique written teaching strategies and to learn
from each other.
14.
Have
fun! These sessions can be lively, informative, and wonderful opportunities to
meet new people.
References
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