In this Innovation Exchange, Dr. Samra Nasser discussed the concept of Service Learning in an Online environment. The goal of this experience is to create an innovative and involved aspect of learning through active involvement with the global community, particularly as students in an online course may feel isolated and uninspired. With the current pandemic and massive shift to online learning platforms, the online service learning experience can be a useful tool in providing students with hands-on learning opportunities through community service.
In this discussion, we explored our ideal organizational culture and how to best build that culture. We covered strategies on working smarter not harder, valuing others, and increasing positivity. Those who attended were engaged in active learning strategies to reinforce their learning.
The Faculty Center for Innovation (FCI) invites you view to the March Innovation Exchange to explore the new "Keep Teaching @ Park" website and the “FCI Instructor Hub” in Canvas.. "Keep Teaching @ Park" was created to support faculty during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the "FCI Instructor Hub" space was created as an open environment for all faculty across the disciplines to collectively exchange innovative teaching and learning and find administrative policies and procedures.
This Innovation Exchange explored VR and AR and how universities are utilizing the technology. We provided tools that traditional (brick and mortar) and online instructors can incorporate into their classrooms to enhance learning, and also research emerging trends in AR/VR.
Rethink, Restructure, and Recreate- In this Innovation Exchange, Dr. Umstattd briefly discusses ways to bring simplicity to the complexity of course design using Creating Wicked Students by Paul Handstedt as a spring broad for discussion. The goal of teaching is to move beyond students learning “stuff” to including “high impact practices” that help to facilitate critical thinking so students learn how to learn, not just memorize facts.
Are you ready to take your teaching skills up a notch? Are you interested in reclaiming time invested in grading and assessing student assignments? Learn from Dr. Matthew's Innovation Exchange as he discusses information on "There's an app for that!"
Putting diversity, equity, inclusion into measurable action is critical to long term success. So this session created a space for conversations about how race, gender, class, and other factors affect student learning, and provided strategies for how to address those factors in the classroom.
Want to improve your in-class discussions? This session will introduce you to ‘Community of Inquiry’—a flipped-classroom approach to discussion that helps students learn how to have meaningful, respectful, rational discussion. Since we learn by doing, each session will consist, in part, of a Community of Inquiry session.
Cross disciplinary collaboration provides instructors with opportunities to expose students to real world scenarios they will encounter upon graduation. Simulation, an innovative active learning strategy, will be explored as a way to facilitate collaboration, demonstrate knowledge and apply new skills in a controlled classroom environment. Using video clips from an inter-professional simulation between social work and nursing students at Park University, Dr. Radohl will offer step-by-step instructions on how to facilitate a simulation and provide resources to learn more about the practice.
More and more, we're experiencing a need to host meetings virtually with our students and faculty. How can we ensure those meetings feel as engaging, productive, and seamless as those we hold face-to-face? Participants joined as we explored best practices for hosting dynamic and effective Zoom meetings!
As the rigor and demands grow in upper-level courses, some students drop out and shop around for another major. Participants learned about a strategy implemented in the accounting curriculum to enhance student retention. These are not unique to accounting; rather, could be implemented across the university.
Fellow faculty exchanged ideas from the effective sciences on pedagogies to impact their first impression to students, mobilize student efforts, prolong student persistence, and when all else fails, master their emotions when challenges occur. Ideas were shared from Sara Rose Cavanagh’s book, The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion.
Participants learned the value to earning a digital badge. In addition, they had the opportunity to create an account in the badging system, Credly, and begin to apply for a digital badge of their choice.
What do the first couple of classes of each semester look like for you? Do you jump right into the content and course syllabus or do you build relationships with students? This innovation exchange showed you how resilience equals relationships and provided you practical tools to help you strengthen and nurture the relationships you have with your students, colleagues, and family!
Technology has the potential to impact student learning and faculty teaching in individual classrooms and across our university, through system-wide and broad ecosystem applications of collaborative solutions to the core challenges of access, affordability, and completion.
What can an old, experienced teacher learn about better engaging students in classroom discussions and general class participation? Impromptu small group discussions, pick-a-card method of selecting students to question in class, posting questions for each class session in the course syllabus, reaction papers at the end of a class session, and allowing students to select assignments are just a few of the methods used. This presentation was based on an Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) course - Effective Teaching Practices, in which the presenter participated in AY2017-18.
We assume learning transfer, but do we teach it? This exchange explored one professor’s attempt to re-design general education courses using teaching for transfer principles.
Getting students involved and engaged can be a challenge for any instructor. This exchange offered practical ways to increase student engagement in the online classroom from the beginning of a course to the end.
This discussion focused on information literacy; what it is, and what it means for our students. We explored the current direction of library instruction efforts at Park University, along with the work done by Project Information Literacy.
Revisit that first radical piece of active learning: the question. Dr. Potthast started with the premise that the quality of discussion you get in your courses was directly proportional to the quality of questions you asked. This session spotlights Socratic questioning in the classroom.
This innovation broadly focused on applying the three principles of Universal Design of Instruction to course curriculum. The goal of this exchange is to provide an easy to use framework that will increase inclusivity and accessibility of your course content. Participants left the session with concrete and actionable ideas to support the diverse learning styles and needs of Park students.
Starting fall 2017, Park online courses will be able to use ProctorU to proctor their final exams. In this exchange, Guillermo Tonsmann and John Dean presented an overview of Park's online proctoring policy, the online proctoring experience from a student's perspective, and the setup experience from a teacher's perspective.
In July 2016, President Gunderson signed the Campus Compact 30th Anniversary Action Statement to show Park’s support of offering service-learning and community engagement opportunities to faculty, staff, and students. Dr. Shannon Cuff will share the progress the committee has made developing the plan thus far and welcomes input from members of the Park community before the plan is finalized.
This presentation described a component of the interior design senior studio that pairs each student with a mentor who is a professional designer for a real-world experience. The student and mentor meet regularly while the student designs her senior thesis project, reviewing project progress and developing a relationship over time.
The library's development of an online information literacy module, created with the intention of increasing student engagement with the library while providing a better understanding of the resources available.
The technological and pedagogical aspects of this project were discussed, with some video demonstrations of the project.
The eMINTS Instructional Model was presented to show faculty how incorporating the four areas - high quality lesson design, community of learners, authentic learning, and powered by technology - transform students' learning.
How to design, or redesign, course assignments in a deliberate way that takes into consideration the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL).
Reliance of real-world, ill-structured problems to drive the curriculum.