Teaching Faculty Retreat Day 2015
August 17, 2015
8:30 AM – 4:00 PM
College Mennonite Church Fellowship Hall
This year’s Theme:
Bottlenecks in Teaching and Learning: Assessment Is Really About Conversations
Last year’s focus on HLC reaccreditation meant that we all took time to make plans for assessment – what targets we will shoot for and what data we will collect as evidence. But collecting data and amassing evidence is only one piece of what the assessment cycle is about. The real possibilities for improving our teaching and our student’s learning comes from the conversations we have with our colleagues – conversations in which we share successes, failures, ideas and strategies.
The reaccreditation visit gave us all an excuse to revisit and plan assessment work in our departments, but to make those plans really meaningful we’ll need to pick something to talk about with one another that comes directly out of our work together. The Decoding the Disciplines approach gives us a way to think together in departmental groups about what kind of thinking we want students to be doing, how we will model that kind of thinking, what opportunities we will provide students to practice that kind of thinking and how we will gather evidence about their thinking.
During the Teaching Faculty Retreat we will be discussing our disciplinary thinking in departmental groups and identifying “Bottlenecks” that cause problems for students in order to identify an issue departments can pay attention to this year. In addition to this, groups will begin to design an intervention for the bottleneck and develop a plan for assessing the intervention and following up with discussions in departmental groups. As the year progresses, we will use faculty meetings to share our bottlenecks, our interventions and our follow-up.
Important background reading and a bit of “homework” for our Retreat is below:
READINGS
Making Thinking Explicit (Middendorf, 2007 National Teaching and Learning Forum)
This piece provides a variety of examples of bottlenecks.
The History Learning Project (Diaz, 2008 Journal of American History)
This piece tells the story of the History Learning Project – a department-wide effort to revise teaching and learning practices through faculty interacting with students and with one another.
HOMEWORK
Homework Goshen College (Bottlenecks worksheet)
The agenda appears below. Please be there by 8:30am.
8:30 Coffee, tea, rolls
8:45 Dean’s Welcome
Ross Peterson-Veatch will offer a welcome and some framing comments to start the day
9:15-10:45 Opening and Session I
Arlene Diaz will lead an interactive presentation her research on “Switching Perspectives, Engaging the “Other”: Preparing our Students for Global Citizenship ”
10:45 Break
11:00-11:45 Session II
Arlene Diaz will lead a session on Identifying Bottlenecks
11:45-12:30 Announcements and Updates
12:30 LUNCH
1:30-3:00 Session III
Arlene Diaz will lead a session on Planning for Interventions, Data and Discussions
3:00 Break
3:15-3:45 Large Group responses – Report as a department – What are your plans so far?
3:45 Closing
Closing remarks offered by Brenda Srof, Faculty Chair 2015-2016, and Ross Peterson-Veatch
Other important dates to start the year:
- Tuesday, August 18, 8:45am (depart from GC) – 6:15pm (depart from Merry Lea)- All-Employee Retreat at Merry Lea
- Thursday, August 20, 8:30am-12:00pm – Department Chairs and Program Directors Meeting, Newcomer Center 17
- Saturday, August 22, New Student Days begins – Presidential Picnic at 5:00pm on the College Green (employees and families invited)
- Sunday, August 23, New Student Days continue, Continuing Students arrive on campus to move into dorms
- Monday, August 24, Chem 111 Lab at 6:30 (the first fall class to begin)
- Tuesday, August 25, All classes in session
- Wednesday, August 26, 10:00am – Welcome Convocation, College Mennonite Church