Faculty Institute—Second Year Seminars 2013

Jan 14-16, Feb 22, March 15
Pre-Workshop Dec 4, 2012
Sponsored by the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost

• Overview
• Participants
• Institute Curriculum
• Institute Facilitator
• Institute Evaluation
• Links

Overview

The Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost approved funding for a faculty institute on the design of Second Year Seminars to continue the implementation of general education. The Institute was held Jan 14-16 with follow-up half-day sessions on February 22 and March 15. Faculty and course coordinators interested in developing second year seminars were invited to a preparatory session held on December 4, 2012 to communicate procedural information about approval and implementation of these new courses.

The University Libraries partnered with several academic and administrative units to deliver this institute as there is no single entity on campus in a position to provide the needed faculty support and development:

• Academic Assessment
• Advising
• General Education, Director
• Information Technology
• Student Affairs, Civic Engagement and Diversity
• Online Education
• Writing Center
• Composition Program, English Department

Twenty-one academic faculty were partnered with eight library faculty in six course design teams. Colleges sending teams were Academic Success Center, Allied Health Sciences, Community Health Sciences, Education, Fine Arts, Liberal Arts, Sciences, and Urban Affairs.

Hallmarks established for the Second Year Seminar by the Faculty Senate include:

1. Address explicitly all General Education - University Undergraduate Learning Outcomes, but topics and readings for each section are selected by the faculty proposing the section. Topics will address content-specific Learning Outcomes (Global Awareness and Civic Engagement/ Ethics). Assignments will address competency-based Learning Objectives (Critical Thinking skills and Communication Skills).
2. Sections will be of 25 students or fewer.
3. SYS will be taught by full-time academic faculty members (these may include emeritus faculty, Faculty-in-Residence, Artist-in-Residence, or Scholar-in-Residence having achieved advanced candidacy status towards a terminal degree).
4. SYS sections must be reading and writing intensive: reading assignments must average at least 40 pages of primary source material (ie excluding textbook) per week) and writing assignments must be at least 20 pages per semester. (These amounts are intended to be minima and are based upon the research of Arum and Roska.)
5. Assign students work that intentionally enhances critical thinking performance (i.e., analysis of argument, evidence vs. opinion)

6. Small group interaction (sense of intellectual community)
7. Faculty/student direct contact (exposure to expertise and passion of faculty )
8. Improved communication and critical thinking skills
9. Improved critical thinking skills (intensive engagement with analysis of texts, use of evidence to construct argument)
10. Exposure of students to breadth of cultures across geographic space and time
11. Greater presence, over time, full-time academic faculty in lower-division general education classrooms.
12. Appeal to highest-achieving High School students considering UNLV
13. Longer-term gains in UNLV's national reputation for academic rigor
14. Distinguish UNLV general education curriculum from competitors in NSHE and in region, enhancing "value-added" of UNLV degree for graduates

Participants

Institute Facilitator

• Steven Hoover, Instruction Designer UNLV Libraries

Institute Curriculum

During the three-day institute faculty worked through a local adaptation of the L. Dee Fink model of Integrated Course Design. Faculty-Librarian teams developed course syllabi by completing activities organized by the eight steps of the model:

• Step 1.  Identify important situational factors (student / instructor characteristics, learning environment, course requirements, etc.)
• Step 2.  Identify important learning outcomes (using the UULOs)
• Step 3.  Formulate appropriate feedback and assessment procedures (in this model the term assessment is defined as, ‘what will students do to demonstrate the learning outcome.” The feedback at this phase is primarily developmental.)
• Step 4.  Select effective teaching/learning activities (how will I/we prepare students to do well on the assessment/demonstration of learning outcomes)
• Step 5.  Make sure the primary components are integrated (do the assessment and learning activities address all of the learning outcomes identified for the course?)
• Step 6.  Course Structure (sequence and rough timing for course content and activities)
• Step 7.  Instruction Strategy (is there a progression of activities, feedback, and increasing challenge for the student; planning in- and out-of-class activities)
• Step 8.  Creating the Overall Scheme of Learning Activities (add details to the course sequence sketched earlier with integration of activities, instructional partners, ensure that course activities and opportunities to provide student feedback are balanced across the entire semester, etc.)

In addition, to ensure that courses address the reading and writing intensive goal for these courses, Julie Staggers, Director of Composition and Ed Nagelhout, Associate Professor English Department, led a two-hour workshop on the second day of the Institute focused on how to incorporate writing developmentally into a lower-division seminar course.

Also during lunch on the first day Randy McCrillis and Nathan Hanke of Student Affairs shared information about campus programming in development to address identified needs of second year students, e.g. increased faculty and peer interaction and improving students’ connection with campus.

Institute Curriculum – Follow-up Workshops

During the February 22 follow-up workshop Lori Temple and members of the OIT staff presented and demonstrated a variety of classroom technologies to address the faculty’s specific needs and interests. The final follow-up workshop on March 15 provided faculty an opportunity to share syllabi developed during the Institute.

Institute Evaluation

The evaluation of the SYS Faculty Institute experience consists of several elements. During the three-day Institute, feedback was gathered each day on participants’ understanding of the material and what concepts were/were not useful or needed further reinforcement. Teaching faculty were asked to complete a survey after the three-day Institute and to complete evaluations for each of the follow up workshop sessions on February 22 and March 15. Finally, a content analysis of the faculty members’ course syllabi will be conducted to examine which concepts from the Institute were integrated.

Links

• Participant Videos