by driftword

Is there a hidden agenda behind all of this extra work we’re doing with Student Learning Outcomes?

Writing Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) has recently appeared front and center on my radar screen, and the deadline is closing fast. After digging through the resources found on UC’s Semester Conversion home page, I have to say that there seems to be a hidden agenda behind all of this extra work. Crafting “approved” student learning outcomes becomes an exercise in teaching effectiveness (or lack thereof) as much as meeting the semester-conversion deadlines.

Because of Semester Conversion, now is the perfect time to rethink the way we teach our courses—which means we probably have to rebuild them from the ground up. Not only do we have to write learning outcomes for our individual courses, but these individual outcomes must carefully align with our program outcomes…which means we as a faculty must come together to review the classes we teach as a group. Ouch! Who needs all this extra work?

by Elissa Sonnenberg, MSEd

Fall has always been my favorite time of year—crisp breezes offer hints of rebirth after a long, hot, Cincinnati summer. This year, as I look forward to meeting a fresh new crop of UC students, the pre-birth contractions have already begun as talk of semester conversion and an exciting office move pull me back toward campus, anticipating new routines and pedagogical discoveries.

But as July matured, it was the whiff of independence that quickened my pulse—the independence to create new spaces for learning and growing alongside students. The independence to find ways to glimpse how the process of learning can part the curtain between the teacher and the taught, revealing extraordinary, and often unexpected, truths.

Thanks to our terrific contributors and a lot of readers, ProfPost (University of Cincinnati’s ground-breaking, written-by-professors-for-professors blog) has had over 12,000 hits since its January 2009 launch. We think we’re really on to something here, and we’re starting to take some risks to make things lively.

That’s why we’re looking for a few professors with fresh takes on teaching and learning—and we’re running a couple of competitions to shake those professors from the bunch.

“Points of View” Columns (Deadline: August 15, 2009):
We’ll choose two professors to write at least three posts each over three quarters, and we pay $250 per quarter in faculty-development funds for doing it! The focus of these submissions is completely up to each writer but should relate broadly to teaching and learning in higher education. We believe the best rule of thumb is to write about whatever is lately on your mind…if it’s nagging at you, it will probably interest other professors, too.

“Points of View” submissions should be posts of 500-1000 words and should be emailed to liz.tilton@uc.edu by August 15, 2009.

“Raised Hand” Column (Deadline: August 15, 2009):
This column is sort of the hip professor’s “Dear Abby.” If you’ve got a quirky way of seeing the classroom, college students, or your fellow professors, this competition may have your name (written in chalk dust) all over it. We’d like someone to field some tough/funny/insightful questions having to do with 21^st Century teaching—if you can do it with a twist, we want you. And, to sweeten the deal, we pay $250 per quarter in professional-development funds for each of the three quarters you write a column or more for us.

We tried to formulate a catchy question to which you could showcase your wonderful responses, but we couldn’t come up with a question we all agreed was a good one. So, we’ve decided to let you pose your own question and then answer it yourself. Don’t think we can’t roll with the punches.

Please write a 500–1000-word response to your question, and then email both the question and your answer to it to liz.tilton@uc.edu by August 15, 2009.

Notes regarding both “Points of View” and the “Raised Hand” competitions:

—Submissions should be approximately 500 to 1000 words.

—Our panel of judges will determine winning submissions by August 30, 2009.

—Winners earn the right to publish their columns anonymously.

—There’s a good chance that submissions not winning the competitions will eventually be published in ProfPost

Now, pick up your pen and write something for us.

by Greg Metz, PhD

My underlying motives for working in higher education have always been modest…just to change the world, save the planet, cultivate human self-actualization…that sort of thing. Yes, I am inevitably somewhat disappointed when the revolution doesn’t emerge quite as planned.  But I am a believer (and, by the way, a Monkees fan).

I am a sociologist by training and have an extremely fascinating, applied-sociology role here at UC: I coordinate the Peer Leaders for First Year Learning Communities. So…what’s on my mind? Only the future of the USA.

by Wayne Hall, PhD

IT’S NOT A GAME! It’s an immersive world. Or maybe an interactive learning environment. Would you accept “multi-user simulation”? What about “contextualized role playing”?

Okay, so maybe it is a game. But this is serious stuff. Check out The Serious Games Initiative at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, “focused on uses for games in exploring management and leadership challenges facing the public sector.” And the MacArthur Foundation sponsored a project for the Pew Research Center, a national survey of over 1100 youth ages 12 to 17. Although one purpose of the survey was to consider if gaming led teens to be more socially isolated, the results indicated that “gaming can be tied to civic and political engagement. Indeed, youth have many experiences playing games that mirror aspects of civic and political life, such as thinking about moral and ethical issues and making decisions about city and/or community affairs.” 

“A Vision of Students Today” was the collaborative creation of Professor Michael Wesch and 200 of his students from his 2007 “ANTH 200: Introduction to Anthropology” course at Kansas State University.

You can follow Wesch at his “Digital Ethnography” blog or via his Twitter feed.

by John E. (Ned) Donnelly

Academic advising is (or should be) considered central to the mission of higher education just as teaching always has been. And I think we need to move away from considering advising as a marginal service and toward recognizing its importance in accomplishing the college or university mission—we need to consider advising as important as we consider the roles and outcomes of teaching and learning.

But equating (or even comparing) advising to teaching raises a lot of questions—both for professors who perform the teaching role and for professional staff who perform the academic-advising role.  For instance, are all good teachers by default also good advisors? Is advising something all professors are prepared to do (like teaching), or is it only for those who are professionally prepared in the advising specialty? Are all advisors prepared to be teachers?  Should advising-as-teaching be required for tenure, promotion, or annual staff review?