Implementing the Seven Principles:
Frugal Innovations, Feedback for Guidance, and Strategies for Peer-to-Peer Sharing
Tuesdays, September 15, 22, 29, 2009
2:00 - 3:00 pm Eastern
Steve Ehrmann, The TLT Group
Barbara Millis, University of Texas, San Antonio
Tom Carey, Higher Education Quality Council, Ontario, Canada and San Diego State University
and others...
Chickering and Gamson's famous seven principles of good practice in higher education were originally formulated in 1986. They distilled decades of educational research and the common sense of experienced faculty into seven suggestions for how to improve what students learn. A decade letter, Chickering and Ehrmann wrote a well-known article outlining ways in which computers could be useful in implementing each of those seven families of teaching/learning activity. [Here are the seven principles; each one leads to 50-100 ideas for using technology to implement that practice.]
We say "famous" and "well-known". Yet probably at least 90% of faculty have never heard of the 'seven principles.' This workshop, designed for both faculty and the staff who support them, will explore strategies for helping large numbers of faculty use these ideas to improve teaching and learning in their courses and their degree programs. We will talk about the tradeoffs between a 'small step' approach to change versus course redesign strategies that emphasize coherent redesign of entire courses. We'll discuss how faculty can use evaluation to guide their efforts to improve their courses in these seven dimensions. And we'll discuss strategies to accelerate the spread of both these teaching ideas and these evaluation strategies.
This workshop will have three sessions:
A. Implementing the seven principles with small scale improvements. What are the seven principles? How such small, safe steps can be defined?
B. Using feedback to guide both the small steps (How can I make this little change in collaborative learning work even better) and the larger-scale changes in practice (e.g., is collaborative learning improving across our department? Where are we seeing good practices? Where is change lagging and why?)
C. Mechanisms for facilitating and rewarding peer to peer sharing of teaching improvements ("knowledge exchange").
All of the TLT Group’s online offerings include
use of “low threshold” tools,
examination of controversial issues,
options for participants with a range of experience, and
suggestions for assessment as you integrate what you’ve learned into your repertoire.
Participants for this workshop should sign-in 15 minutes early for tech instructions and to meet others in the group; they also have the option of remaining online for a half-hour follow-up discussion immediately after the workshop.
