IPLA 2012

Oxford College's Institute for Pedagogy in the Liberal Arts 2012
features the following pedagogies and scholarly facilitators:

(Select ONE workshop for Tues/Wed and ONE for Thurs/Friday)

Tuesday/Wednesday, May 15-16

The Power of Inquiry as a Way of Learning in Undergraduate Education:   Designing Courses and Curricula through Inquiry-guided Learning

Easing into Inquiry-guided Learning. For instructors accustomed to traditional models of teaching, inquiry-guided learning requires a significant and exciting shift in perspective about the teaching and learning process. The learning outcomes it advances are more complex. And promoting learning 

through inquiry also suggests a broader repertoire of teaching and learning strategies and assessment methods. In this module, participants learn how to "ease into" inquiry-guided learning gradually over several semesters.  (http://www.virginiaslee.com/IGL.html) 

Virginia S. Lee, Senior Consultant, Virginia S. Lee & Associates, and Former President, the Professional and Development (POD) Network in Higher Education (2007-2010), presents, publishes, and consults widely on inquiry-guided learning. She is the editor of Teaching and Learning through Inquiry: A Guidebook for Institutions and Instructors (Stylus) and the New Directions volume, The Power of Inquiry as a Way of Learning in Undergraduate Education (Spring 2012; Jossey-Bass). 

 


Beyond Designing an Inquiry-Based Course:  Enhancing and Assessing

 

Targeted towards those who already include inquiry guided learning (IGL) into their classes, this session focuses on further development of these initiatives as well as development of assessment options.  Assessment is presented as both an ends to evaluate the impact of IGL and a means to guide further development of IGL approaches.  The leaders will present an overview of the IGL program and assessments employed at Miami University, offer practical tools for the initiatives being launched by the participants, and provide individual consultation during small group sessions.

Dr. Beverley Taylor, Professor of Physics and faculty associate in the Center for Enhancement of Learning, Teaching and University Assessment at Miami University, has led a major curriculum reform project focused on student engagement and inquiry-based learning and has significant experience providing faculty development on assessment, particularly critical thinking assessment.  She has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in recognition of her contributions to the field of physics education and has received a Distinguished Service Citation from the American Association of Physics Teachers.

Dr. Marjorie Keeshan Nadler, Professor in the Department of Communication at Miami University and current Director of the MU IGL project.  She was a team leader for the Public Expression and Critical Inquiry class during the first round of the project, and over the last three years has provided expertise to the other IGL teams and conducted assessments for them.

Dr. Beth Dietz-Uhler, Professor of Psychology at Miami University, has conducted numerous faculty workshops on assessment, online learning, and the uses of technology to enhance teaching and learning.  She has a strong interest in the Scholarship of Teaching Learning (SoTL) and has co-led several faculty learning communities on SoTL.  She is the recipient of several teaching awards, including Psi Chi Professor of the Year and the Excellence of Teaching Award at Miami University.  

 

Leadership and the Academic Experience

As a central value for Emory University, leadership permeates the Emory culture from student organizations through faculty leadership in academics.  This leadership and academics session addresses the many opportunities and contexts for faculty and students to develop leadership.  The session will give faculty (and staff) without knowledge of leadership studies a familiarity with central concepts and vocabulary.  Central questions will be the focus of discussion:  How can knowledge of leadership studies play some good role in the academic classroom?  In what ways, can leadership across the academic campus enrich the campus? The classroom?  How can a knowledge of leadership join faculty and staff on the college campus?  In what ways can faculty and staff work as campus leaders?

Dr. Sharon Lewis, Professor of Psychology, directs the Leadership Oxford Program, and serves in a number of leadership roles both at Oxford College and across the university.  She has been instrumental in developing the teaching and learning program at Oxford College. 

 

Teaching and Learning With Technology

Jim Brown, Oxford's Director of Academic Technologies leads an invaluable session on the exploration of the interfaces between powerful new technologies and our pedagogies.   Guest speakers are frequently included, and this session often turns out to be the most popular.  

 

Thursday/Friday, May 17-18

Mind-Based Teaching: Learning Theory in the Classroom

Recent research in cognitive and learning theory encourages the creation and implementation of new teaching strategies, new pedagogies.  In this session, participants receive the results of much recent research, discuss implications for teaching, and then develop multiple strategies implementing these implications into their own teaching and courses.  

Dr. James M. Lang is an Associate Professor of English and the Director of the Honors Program at Assumption College.  The author of On Course: A Week-by-Week Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching (Harvard UP), and a monthly column on teaching and learning for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Lang is currently researching course designs and teaching strategies that are grounded in current research in cognitive and learning theory.  

Addressing Challenging and Ethical Issues in Class Through Key Pedagogies

A specialist in issues related to professional and applied ethics, Dr. Queen will lead participants through the discussion and application of pedagogies like case-based, problem-based, and service learning as ways to engage both challenging issues and ethical problems in a pluralistic classroom.

Dr. Edward Queen is the director of the D. Abbot Turner Program in Ethics and Servant Leadership and Coordinator of Undergraduate Studies at Emory University's Center for Ethics.   

Reacting to the Past: America's Founding: The Constitutional Convention of 1787

This pedagogy is useful for historians, political scientists, anthropologists, literary scholars, among others.  The session will offer participants an opportunity to play a much abbreviated version of the "Constitutional Convention" game of the Reacting to the Past series.  Participants will take on roles of the Convention delegates and attempt to write a constitution, or portions thereof, in a setting which replicates the same factional divisions and historical contingencies as confronted the delegates in Philadelphia. 

Dr. Patrick Coby is Professor of Government at Smith College where he teaches courses in political theory, including:  Introduction to Political Thinking, Ancient and Medieval Political Theory, Early Modern Political Theory, American Political Thought, and various departmental and interdepartmental seminars, most recently an innovative, historical role-playing seminar called "Reacting to the Past."  He studied at the University of Dallas and the University of North Carolina and has taught at Kenyon College and Idaho State University.  He is the author of four books:  Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment: A Commentary on Plato's Protagoras; Machiavelli's Romans: Liberty and Greatness in the Discourses on Livy; Henry VIII and the Reformation Parliament (Reacting to the Past Series); and Thomas Cromwell: Machiavellian Statecraft and the English Reformation—and of numerous scholarly articles and reviews.  He has just finished a new book titled America's Founding:  The Constitutional Convention of 1787 (Reacting to the Past Series) as well as several articles on the Convention.  He currently is researching a book on the political thought of James Wilson. 

Digital Humanities and Liberal Education

Digital technologies and the Internet have changed the context for inquiry and pedagogy, forcing the production and exchange of knowledge into an increasingly public, global, collaborative, and networked space, and increasing capacity to tackle complex questions across disciplines.  How can we prepare our students to live and work in this changed context?  How can and should liberal education change to meet that need?  The digital humanities offer undergraduates opportunities to engage in authentic, applied research in the humanities and prepares leaders for the twenty-first century world of webs and networks.  

Dr. Rebecca Davis, Program Director for the National Institute for Technology in the Liberal Arts (NITLE), develops programs and conducts research about the digital humanities, digital scholarship, and the integration of inquiry, pedagogy, and technology for teaching and learning across the humanities. She also writes and consults in these areas, drawing on a deep background in helping faculty and staff at liberal arts colleges explore these areas via a variety of workshops and seminars. She has particular expertise in intercampus teaching and virtual collaboration. She holds a Ph. D. and M.A. in classical studies from  the University of Pennsylvania , and a B.A. (summa cum laude) in classical studies and Russian from Vanderbilt University.