Announcing Professional Learning Communities
In collaboration with the Library, ITS and the College of Education, we’ve created a new opportunity for you to exchange ideas and learn from one another. PLCs are voluntary, monthly gatherings of 8-12 members focused on course design topics the PLC defines. They’re open to all faculty, administrators and staff redesigning courses to improve student learning. See the attached invitation for details.
If you’re interested here’s what’s next:
By September 5th, reply by to this email with your general availability. It’s enough to say something like: “I’m available Mon, Wed Fri, 2-5pm; Tues and Fri 8-3pm.
Then wait. . .
- I’ll put the group(s) together based on your availability and contact you.
- At that time, you’ll also receive a very short questionnaire asking about what topics you’d like to cover. (If you wish, you may include them in the reply to this mail.)
- From there, the facilitators will schedule your first meeting, at which time you all will discuss and set your PLC topics and “agenda.”
Facilitators are Mark Laumakis, Faculty/Faculty in Residence ITS, Carolyn Baber, Library Faculty; Pam Jackson, Library Faculty; Keven Jeffery, Library Faculty; Andrea Saltzman, Faculty Consultant.
Note: While being a member of a PLC is voluntary, we ask that members commit to monthly meetings. Also, PLCs are in addition to our Friday OverLunches and CTL/ITS Luncheon series on various topics.
Please feel free to contact Suzanne at 4-2953 or pict at rohan.sdsu.edu
Download the invitation plc_invitation.pdf
How’s it going 2008 Fellows?
It’s the middle, ok more than middle of the summer and Faculty Fellows have been beavering away at their projects. I emailed them to check in and hope some will share with comments here.
Deliverables 2 and 3 for 2007 Fellows up and ready to go
We had a very successful working group session on June 13th for 2007 Fellows. One of our goals was to collectively produce a draft of the the next 2 deliverables. The impetus behind having Fellows decide what their goals will be is rooted in creating more collaborative leadership mechanisms and bringing Faculty’s organizational and governing experience into programmatic decision making. We also believe that folks are generally more enthusiastic about achieving goals when they’re involved in setting them. The document is linked here and on the Resources for Fellows page.
New Faculty and teaching and learning
Simon Marshall posted about the challenges of prioritizing teaching and learning for new faculty.
One glaring omission in our preparatory training is that no formal pedagogical training is required (remember, “recommended” and “required” yield very different behaviors from faculty too!).
With RTP, research and grant writing, it’s a wonder they can attend to teaching at all. Having a course design institute or curriculum available at the onset of a teaching career seems obviously logical, yet it happens a few institutions. At the same time, many new faculty have teaching experience and some even have training.
They don’t do faculty development per se at Claremont. Instead a course on course design is recommended to all graduate students. Ok, it’s recommended, not required, but it’s for credit. It’s intense and practical.
I’m sure there are other ways to approach it as well. Professional development is after all a part of every organization.
