NITLE Summit Planner Michael Spalti, Willamette University

Michael Spalti shares his thoughts on the NITLE Summit’s theme, “Advancing towards Liberal Arts 3.0.” Spalti, a member of the Summit planning group and associate university librarian for systems at Willamette University, draws on his experience to provide this perspective:

In “Why Liberal Arts 3.0?,” Chip German suggests that we need a definition of the liberal arts that accounts for the epochal shift in communications technology that we see around us.  Chip thinks that this new reality has caught many faculty and campus leaders unaware, and that our conversation needs to account for larger, historic trends.

In my own experience, which may be different from Chip’s, faculty and campus leaders understand that some redefinition is required, perhaps a great deal. To quote Chip, however, we all seem to lack a “sense of where we’re headed with some fundamental concepts of our enterprise for the next 20 years or so–that kind of discussion will help me sort through … tactical alternatives and pick the ones that line up with that future.” Read the rest of this post »

We conclude our blog conversation series on the future of liberal education, elicited by the recent AAC&U conference, with an appropriate nod to the future.

One panel* addressed an intriguing topic: how do we prepare students for a future that doesn’t yet exist?

Discussion hit on a series of topics, which we can abstract and summarize here:

There are two ways to prepare for events, reactive and creative (shaping new things).  What learning attributes do we associate with both of these?

• Adaptability of beliefs, behaviors, assumptions
• Imagination
• Innovation (implementing new ideas)

What pedagogies can support preparing students for unknown futures?  One presenter, a cognitive psychologist, emphasized hypothesis testing and synthesis.  A second, a cultural anthropologist, offered two others: exploring encountering other cultures, and applying holistic perspectives to understand multiple, integrated perspectives.

The panel’s third presenter started from a different stance, where faculty members can challenge the panel’s basic question with a “so what? we already do this!”  The presenter went on to provide an answer, describing one campus using futures as a framework for general education reform.  This involved a series of professorial conversations, the involvement of other staff, and a faculty retreat (ongoing during the conference!).

* The panel consisted of David Burrows, Provost and Dean of the Faculty, Lawrence University; Lawrence Breitborde, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College, Knox College; Marc Roy, Provost, Goucher College.  The panel was consponsored by the American Conference of Academic Deans (ACAD).

Previous posts in this series:

opening the conversation, questioning the future of liberal education, assessing the effectiveness of technology use for student learning, STEM education at AAC&U

(image credit: Kevin Dooley)

The Sciences

Consider that  liberal arts colleges generate roughly twice as many eventual science Ph.D.’s per graduate as do most baccalaureate institutions. According to Dr. Thomas Cech, this trend owes, in part, to those defining features of a liberal arts education: collaborative class environments, student centered teaching, interdisciplinary training, and opportunities for hands-on research. All of these align with high-impact teaching practices and  curricular reforms advocated by  AAC&U as well as private and public agencies that provide funding to higher education. Equally important are the professional communities and organizations that promote educational innovation in the sciences.

A partner agreement recently announced by AAC&U and Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) underscores the benefits of collaboration to strengthen science instruction in undergraduate institutions. For those unfamiliar, PKAL advocates for and promotes  innovation in the fields of undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) through published studies, professional development, and community-building. In this context, PKAL played a prominent role in addressing  STEM education during the AAC&U conference. Read the rest of this post »

Lego People - by Joe Shlabotnik

This post continues our conversation about the AAC&U 2010 conference. In Bryan Alexander’s initial comments on the vision of education that AAC&U advocates, he includes a list of the unique values of liberal education, prominently featuring engaged and active learning. Those who participate in AAC&U see learning like that, in part at least, as a product of engaged, active, and collaborative faculty effort. In their session “Knowledge Creators, Knowledge Designers: Building a New Paradigm for Faculty Work at Small Liberal Arts College,” Joseph Favazza and Katie Conboy (respectively associate VPAA and VPAA) of Stonehill College joined with Roger Brooks and Julie Rivkin (respectively dean and associate dean of the faculty) of Connecticut College to share their strategies for supporting and rewarding faculty throughout their careers for continuing to learn and evolve. Introducing the session with his thoughts on why faculty work is so critical to the accomplishment of institutional mission, Brooks asked his fellow deans simply, “Why do we pay faculty?” (Answer:  as experts in their disciplines and as designers of learning experiences.)

Brooks ticked off “passion and enthusiasm” on the part of the professor as one of the five top answers students at Connecticut College give to “What makes a great course?” I thought of the way that NITLE’s events, especially those in our online series which faculty innovators share their technology-supported pedagogy with peers elsewhere, provide both an outlet for that kind of faculty enthusiasm and a way to make it contagious inter-institutionally. Both campuses emphasized the importance of faculty members continuing as active learners, not only as researchers but also as teachers, and the specific ways in which the two campuses are supporting this: through teaching and learning center programs, through opportunities to lead students in undergraduate research, through mentoring, and even through hiring practices. Add NITLE programming to the list, and faculty have opportunities to hear from their peers at other institutions about the ways in which technology tools are enabling them to engage students in compelling ways. (A fall 2009 program in which Gabriela Torres of Wheaton College explained how and why she teaches with the online annotation program diigo is a great example of this.)

The continual renewal that faculty undertake, if their institutions are truly to meet the needs of today’s students, was equally clear in the roundtable discussion “Mobilizing Faculty for Change:  Taking Learning Outcome Seriously in Every Corner of Campus,” led by Linda Dobkins, director of core curriculum and associate professor of economics at Emory & Henry College. After a quarter century under the 1977 model, the campus has just put in place a new general education curriculum. Using Lego blocks to represent the people and the process, Dobkins told an absorbing story about the institutional politics underlying the change – and about the discomfort some faculty experienced when asked to make significant shifts in what they do: develop new courses, co-teach outside their discipline, and distill from the many ideas floated a curriculum that would embody five major proficiencies, including quantitative literacy (related proficiencies also encompassed technology and information literacy). It was clear once again, as Dobkins spoke of what she herself was learning about Newtonian physics in preparing to teach with colleagues the new course “Becoming Modern,” that change at the institutional level offers risk, reward, and an opportunity for renewal to the campus’ faculty – if they are willing, and are provided by their campuses with the right kinds of tools, to accept the challenge.

Helping faculty members incorporate the rapid transformations being brought about in part by the possibilities of digital technology and get ready for the Liberal Arts 3.0 world is a key component of NITLE’s mission. Beyond what’s happening today, how can we contribute to this work at your campus? We’d welcome your thoughts.

Previous blog posts in this series: opening the conversation, questioning the future of liberal education, themes of liberal education futures, assessing the effectiveness of technology use for student learning

Graphic from the Educator's Network

This post continues our conversation about the AAC&U 2010 conference.  The theme that jumped out at me most strongly was that of assessment. Now, with AAC&U that is no accident, as we mentioned in an earlier post, one of AAC&U’s key strategies for articulating the value of liberal education is the establishment of assessment tools that demonstrate that value.  This is important because calls by government agencies for assessment and accountability aren’t going away.  The latest example is in an international experiment–in which the United States will participate–aimed at developing a global assessment of student learning, announced Wednesday by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

I’ve also been struggling with a particular assessment need in the past few weeks: How do we assess the effectiveness of technology for student learning?  I’m working with a planning group for the teaching and learning sessions at the NITLE Summit March 25-26 in New Orleans.  In trying to put together a panel on this topic, we could find plenty of examples that assess student and faculty feelings about or attitudes to the technology, e.g. the MISO survey (another session at the Summit) and even technologies to facilitate assessment, like e-portfolios, but we are having trouble finding concrete examples at institutions in the NITLE network of assessing the student learning from technology use. Let me know if you have any.  Please!

Over the years, I’ve found that assessment is one of those difficult topics.  Everyone agrees it is important, but no one wants to step up and take responsibility for it.  I can understand that.  I don’t mind giving feedback, but I hate putting a grade on something.  So, it was refreshing at AAC&U to attend so many sessions that were talking about assessing student learning.  These included sessions organized around the Bologna Process, which seeks to establish standardized educational outcomes across Europe; a session on assessment of learning outcomes through e-journaling in business courses by Professors Bryon Chew of Birmingham-Southern College and Cecilia McInnis-Bowers of Rollins College; assessment of experimental pedagogies to improve writing and critical thinking skills at Duke, the University of Kansas, and Indiana University; developing rubrics for the assessment of global citizenship by the Consortium for Innovative Environments in Learning (CIEL), moderated by Parl Burkhardt of Prescott College; and how to use writing results from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE).  That’s only the sessions I attended.  I most appreciated the sessions that actually gave me instructions and examples of how to assess student learning.

So, how do we fill the gap for assessing the value of student learning for technology?  Following AAC&U’s lead, we need to start establishing a process and trying it out.  One of the top proposed topics for NITLE Camp 2010 is “Assessing instructional technology affect on teaching & learning.”  You can still vote for and propose topics in our Users Voice Forum.  So it’s highly likely that we’ll be putting together a workshop at Camp on how to do this kind of assessment.  Since we are concerned with how technology is used for liberal education we need to articulate and prove that value.  If you’re interested in working on this project or have some ideas or examples we should consider, let me know.

Previous blog posts in this series: opening the conversation, questioning the future of liberal education, themes of liberal education futures.

Continuing our blog conversation about the future of liberal education:

NITLE’s full name is “National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education”, but perhaps we think most often about the “technology” part.   The AAC&U conference last week gave NITLE staff the opportunity to focus even more intensively, specifically, on liberal education.

The AAC&U organization advocates for the value of liberal education [defined here] in at least two ways:

1. Articulating what is valuable about this type of education and encouraging those practices (“high impact practices“)
2. Establishing assessment tools to demonstrate that value (see AAC&U page)

Within that context, and with several days of distance, we can identify some key conference themes.  These point the way towards some directions for liberal education in the future.

Some thematic discussions from the conference focused on the unique value of liberal education.  That is sometimes articulated as what is most valuable about liberal education, and connects to encouraging a series of (high impact) practices:

• citizenship, community service, service learning
• global outreach and global awareness global perspective
• STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math)
• intentional learning / reflection
• engaged learning / active learning
• experiential learning–from practice to theory (internships, for example)
• collaboration across domains; interdisciplinarity; breaking down walls
• integrative learning
• critical thinking
• diversity and student retention

Some conversations assumed some or all of these points, but emphasized demonstrating those values through  assessment.

Further themes:

• Faculty as drivers for teaching and learning – i.e., sessions on faculty development, engaged pedagogy, faculty cultures.
• Financial stresses: impacts of budgets, money, multiple financial challenges during the Great Recession.
• Technology’s presence: the conference focused on institutional and cultural issues, rather than technological ones.  Exceptions: eportfolios, information literacy; Ed Ayers treating technology as “experience”.  When “technology” is mentioned, those at AAC&U think first of “course management system”

Which of these is most salient, in your view?  What themes are missing here, and require emphasis?

Previous blog posts in this series: opening the conversation, questioning the future of liberal education.

Continuing our theme of exploring the future of liberal education: one session at last week’s AAC&U conference opened up this topic for a wide-ranging discussion.

A group of panelists drawn from across academia launched conversations by asking conference participants to consider a series of questions, then delve into one (presentation slides here).  Some participants contributed thoughts on note cards.  Then Peter Felten (Elon University) summarized the prompts:

Ten tables carried energetic conversation forward, most facilitated by individual panelists, then reported out.

We can summarize some of the discussions by creating a word cloud from the note card suggestions, thusly:

(full transcription below)

Participants were then asked to continue these conversations, along several lines:

• Immediate questions and synthesis
• This NITLE blog
• A forthcoming Academic Commons volume (later 2010)

From the note cards, organized gently by apparent topics:

PUBLIC ARENA

How can we better engage the public in a more meaningful discussion about the crisis in liberal education?

How can liberal education by democratized?

Should we surrender the word “liberal”?

With the political process (re: 50%+ of the population doesn’t believe in evolution) eventually (re: soon) take away any support for liberal education (i.e., critical thinking)??? [copied]

Will institutions of higher education develop an acceptable (to funding authorities) assessment practice before one is imposed? [copied]

LEARNING

How…

-mechanisms

-who will do it reward structures

…will the findings in neuroscience and cognition about how people learn be implemented in the curriculum?

MONEY

The (usually) four year residency by young adults on college and university campuses has been an important element in the social and emotional maturation process as has been the liberal education they receive there. Is this model no longer fiscally sustainable? Can we do without it? What will replace it?

Will liberal education in its 4-year, residential, general ed and major form continue to be a viable form? / Will it become even more than it presently is the exclusive province of an elite set of extremely well-endowed and prestigious colleagues and universities?

With the political process (re: 50%+ of the population doesn’t believe in evolution) eventually (re: soon) take away any support for liberal education (i.e., critical thinking)??? [copied]

What is the “competitive advantage” for schools offering an effective liberal education in the higher education marketplace and how can we best exploit this advantage?

Obvious question/ Is liberal education as offered in the small liberal arts college affordable and sustainable?

Will students and families continue to be able to afford a 4year college learning experience? (Will they be able to afford not to get this sort of broad-based learning?)

Will institutions of higher education develop an acceptable (to funding authorities) assessment practice before one is imposed?

At what point do you think people will refuse to pay the price?

Will institutions of higher education develop an acceptable (to funding authorities) assessment practice before one is imposed? [copied]

TECHNOLOGY AND CHANGE

How will 21^st c. technology change liberal education? Can it survive?

What will textbooks look like in the future? (I’m a scientist)

Individual items

• How best might we integrate reasoning and performing, that is, the liberal arts and professions education? (education in the professions)

• Will bright young people still want to join the faculty 25 years from now?

• How might colleges and universities more effectively communicate their liberal education goals to public school systems to that they might better prepare young people for a humanizing life of learning, rather than the dumb[ed]-down, test-driven processes they are expanding?

• To what extent do the values of liberal education necessitate students playing a genuine role in institutional decision making?

• PACE OF CHANGE Your list of questions is great, but we’ve been having these conversations for 20+ years now. I’m more and more discouraged about the possibility of real change. Do you have any reason to expect these changes to materialize?

We will blog further notes and reflections here. Comments are, as ever, deeply appreciated.

More posts are forthcoming, in this blog conversation series about the future of liberal education.

From the session’s description:

What significant questions are not being asked (let alone answered) in higher education today? This session invites participants to discuss overlooked but essential questions about purposes, priorities and possibilities. The session emerges from an August gathering of creative people from diverse institutions who occupy an array of roles in academic affairs, information technology, and student life. Together we aim to question and imagine the future of high-impact, sustainable liberal education in a dramatically changing world.
This post is a second take on our first conference blogging.

The Hobart campus. From http://tinyurl.com/yeju8fa.

“Promoting Visual Literacy Across the Curriculum” was the theme and title of Hobart and William Smith College’s (HWS) January 14th 2010 Faculty Institute. Co-sponsored by the HWS Center for Teaching and Learning, Instructional and Research Technology, and Warren Hunting Smith Library, this 1-day program provided HWS faculty an opportunity to share their instructional methods and practices for undergraduate teaching with visual media.

With plans to lead a NITLE workshop on Visual Literacy to many of the same participants the following day, I arrived on campus in time to take part in this intramural event. Read the rest of this post »

Mobile phones present a familiar challenge as an instructional technology: everyone has them, which means we should figure out how to use them for teaching and learning.  Being mobile, they beg the question, “Where are you?” – a question to be answered by a map.  And, of course, there’s an app for that.

Tweet 360 uses augmented reality to direct you to your tweeps.

Recently, I checked out Tweet 360, an iPhone app that let’s you find your twitter friends via augmented reality using your iPhone’s camera.  Unfortunately, most of those I follow on twitter are over a thousand miles away (that’s why I follow them on twitter instead of talking to them over coffee) or they haven’t enabled geolocation in twitter.  Still, I can imagine the possibilities.  Next time I’m at a conference, I could follow the big blue arrow to that next interesting conversation.

I have the same feeling about mobile devices for teaching and learning.  Their use isn’t universal yet, but there are more and more innovative projects being done that will point the way for the rest of us.  On January 27 at 4 PM EST, Prof. Lloyd Benson and Mike Winiski of Furman University will discuss one such project when they lead “Teaching with Mobile Devices: Mapwalks” as part of NITLE’s Special Topics in Digital Teaching series of online discussions.

Prof. Lloyd Benson

Their project was featured in “2008 Campus Technology Innovators: Interactive, Remote Learning“, but has continued to evolve.  The mapwalks in fact do not use the iPhone 3Gs, but rather a combination of the HP iPAQ hw6940 Mobile Messenger with built-in GPS and a cell phone, but they do point to the possibilities for using smart phones for virtual field trips.  It’s nice to know that Prof. Benson has already done the legwork on this one.