Volume V Number 3
February 1999
This semester the Faculty Center will host three main events. A gathering of Voices, for those on campus interested in issues affecting women, will take place on Thursday, March 18, beginning at 4:30 p.m. in the Center. The group has decided to watch a movie (yet to be selected). Helen Wilson (Language & Literature), a Voices participant, characterizes the upcoming session as follows:
A step toward celebrating ourselves -- having one heck of a good time -- and it just might provoke some earnest dialogue about women's issues that would be of interest to not only us that evening, but to our roles within the college community, perhaps most especially in the classroom.
This semester's Faculty Showcase will again celebrate Creativity in the Classroom. The date is set for Wednesday, April 21 from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. in the Faculty Center. Pat Laser (Behavioral Sciences) has taken the lead in inviting presenters. If you would like to present your creative approaches in the classroom in this or future Faculty Showcases, please contact Pat or any member of the Center's Advisory Board The showcases always offer a wonderful combination of social, gustatory, and intellectual stimuli, and they provide a welcome opportunity to learn techniques developed and applied successfully by colleagues.
The final major event scheduled for the spring semester is a Hawaiian Luau. Doug Rosentrater and Barbara Korb are the chief movers and shakers (Kahunas?) for this event, scheduled for Thursday, May 6, 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. in the Faculty Center. Naturally, attendees can expect good food and, music. The primary aims of this event will be to socialize and have fun, and to thank the many folks on campus who have supported the Faculty Center and helped accomplish the goals of the Center.
Workshop: Effective Teaching and Setting Goals
Teaching is an art; one can never fully master the form.Thursday, March 4, 2:30 - 3:30 p.m.
Tuesday, April 6, 12:30 - 1:30 p.m. or
Thursday, April 15, 4:30 - 5:30 p.m.
In the Faculty Center
Participants in this one-hour workshop will work individually and in groups as a means of reflecting upon the topic of effective teaching. Participants will be guided through an activity that can help them to construct a personal professional development plan based upon their teaching "ideals." This activity can also be adapted to a wide range of situations and purposes, both in and out of the classroom.
Voluntary, Confidential Professional Development Consultation
Dear Colleague:As the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning Professional Development Consultant, I wish to offer my services as a consultant and an observer. To that end, I would be happy to discuss your teaching strategies, instructional methods, and professional development plans with you. I would also be happy to make an in-class observation, which includes a pre- and post-observation conference.
The purpose of this activity is to afford you the opportunity to reflect upon your teaching in an objective, non-evaluative, non-threatening atmosphere. Of course, participation is voluntary and confidential. Collegially, Michael Schwartz, M.A., M.Ed.
If you are interested in either of these offerings, please contact Michael by telephone (ext. 8162) or by e-mail (schwartm@storm.bucks.edu).
As this year's Professional Development Consultant for the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning, I helped to support and advance professional development activities on campus during the 1998 Fall Semester. In addition, I laid a foundation for several activities planned for this semester and for the Fall 1999 Semester. I accomplished these goals by furthering my own knowledge of the field, meeting and working with BCCC faculty and administrators, disseminating information on conferences and workshops, and offering professional development opportunities on campus.Highlights of the Fall 1998 semester follow.
This conference, which this year drew more than five hundred participants from across the United States and from nations as far away as Australia, was excellent in all respects. One of the most successful and appealing features of the conference is the participatory nature of the individual sessions. In their proposals for conference workshops, presenters must specify how conference attendees will actively participate in their session.
I strongly recommend attending the POD conference next year, especially considering that it will be held in our back yard: the Pocono Mountains! More on this when I receive specific information.
Creativity Serie: > Doug Rosentrater, whose Resource Faculty Project for fall 1998 focused on creativity, prepared the following report of his activities.
Over a period of fifteen Mondays, I presented a series of workshops on Creativity for BCCC faculty members at the Faculty Center for Teaching & Learning.
Loosely following the best-selling book, The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron, the workshops focused on different, unusual, and challenging exercises and situations for those attending the hour-long sessions. Much of the work was intended as self-reflective in keeping creative energies and benefits flowing through one's professional and personal life. We followed Cameron's approach, based on her contention that often creativity is blocked or atrophied due to risk/esteem factors and earlier negative criticism, and we suggested her technique of writing morning pages each day. After each situation we spent time in the workshop to assess meaning and personal applications, if any.
Personal history, the impact of change, metaphor and symbolism, word associations, alternative futures, value and belief systems, preferential memories, humor, perception, paradoxes, synchronicity, and popular culture references were all used as a basis for moving each person beyond day-to-day routine responses and into the realm of creativity. Often insights were sought as to how creativity could be channeled into one's professionality and class approaches in the sense of faculty development and renewal.
Extensive handouts for use inside of the sessions, as well as reading outside, were produced. As group cohesiveness became more established, and sharing and support became group values, participants brought in some of their own approaches and worked in group activities. The participants split into a core group that was consistently present throughout, and "drop-ins" who came and went as their schedules allowed or required.
Exercises included a range of activities:
The alternative space of the Faculty Center, housed in the Cooper Homestead, with its warm interior, high ceilings, wood floor, and kitchen facilities was extremely conducive to a workshop series of this nature.
Final comments from participants were positive. A brief, ten-minute summation of the workshop was presented the BCCC Board of Trustees on December 10.
Tom O'Keefe, one of three IT Facilitators for 1998-99, conducted a survey of faculty needs and uses of information technologies. A summary of his report follows.
The focus of my project as an Instructional Technology Facilitator last semester was to survey the faculty to determine what technologies they currently use in their teaching and what technologies they would like to use in the future.From the sixty-four faculty who responded, here are some observations:
The technologies most frequently used now are:
The software applications most frequently used are:
When asked about constraints to learning new technologies, the majority response was:
The extensive use of various technologies over a range of applications and devices shows the involvement of our faculty in using technology as a tool to enhance teaching and learning.
Last spring we presented in TLC a preliminary report which addressed the first of two research questions posed in the 1998 study:
Analysis of the data relating to the ten research questions in their entirety is ongoing. A follow-up report detailing our results will be released once these analyses are complete.
A pilot study was conducted in the fall 1997 semester to investigate several of the thinking styles measures contained in Robert Sternberg's (1997) model of "mental self-government." Sternberg defines a thinking style as a preference that a person develops for applying the thinking abilities they have at their disposal. Two persons with equally strong abilities might be very different in their preferred ways of applying this skill. Sternberg's theory posits thirteen distinct types of thinking style preferences. The pilot study investigated only the first five of these thinking styles. Subsequently, an expanded study was designed to answer ten research questions.
Findings will be reported upon completion of analysis of the data. Details are available from members of the Research Team.
This year the Faculty Center launched the first mentoring program for new full- and part-time faculty. Participants were honored at a Dean's Reception on Thursday, February 18. To volunteer to serve as a mentor, contact Maureen McCreadie (ext. 8055).
Unless otherwise noted, all sessions meet in the Faculty Center.
Teleconference: Copyright and Privacy Issues Involving the Internet
Improving Library Services for Distance Learning Students and Faculty
The Follow-up Report: Requirements and Examples
INTG: Working with a Team C Selecting, Coordinating, Allocating
The Grail Quest: Healing the Inner Wasteland
Dinner & Movie
Creativity in the Classroom
Hawaiian Luau
NOTE: Copies of the proposed revisions will be available in departmental offices no later than March 8. Comments can be forwarded to Committee members in written form.
Participants in this one-hour workshop will work individually and in groups as a means of reflecting upon the topic of effective teaching. Participants will be guided through an activitiy that can help them to construct a personal professional development plan based upon their teaching ideals. Led by Michael Schwartz.
Professional Development Networking
Notices regarding calls for papers, conference notices, and other professional development information are available through the Faculty Center electronic mail discussion list. The discussion list allows all subscribers to receive posts to the list at individual e-mail addresses. Once you have subscribed, you are encouraged to initiate or participate in discussions related to teaching and learning by posting to flc@storm.bucks.edu.
To subscribe to the discussion list:send an e-mail message to: majordomo@storm.bucks.edu
message: Subscribe flc
Then, simply send the message as you usually send any other e-mail message. That is the last time you will address a message to majordomo until you want to unsubscribe.
To post a message to the list:address it to: flc@storm.bucks.edu.
The Advisory Board of the Faculty Center invites faculty members to apply for the following positions: Advisory Board, Resource Faculty, Facilitator, and Professional Development Consultant.