integrate implementation programs professional development webinar expanding the impact of integrate...
TRANSCRIPT
InTeGrate Implementation ProgramsProfessional Development Webinar
Expanding the Impact of InTeGrate ProjectsPresenter: Judith Ramaley, President Emerita and Distinguished
Professor of Public Service, Portland State University
February, 10, 20159 AM PST | 10 AM MST | 11 AM CST | 12 PM EST | 5 PM GMT
This work is supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) collaboration between the Directorates for Education and Human Resources (EHR) and Geosciences (GEO) under grant DUE - 1125331
Expanding the Impact of InTeGrate Projects
A conversation among the teams
Overall Goals of InTeGrate“To Teach for a Sustainable Future”
• By increasing “student engagement by establishing relevance, bridging course content to current topics in the news and connecting course material to other disciplines ”
• By incorporating expert ways of thinking about Earth (“earth literacy”) using Geoscience as a lens for adopting systems thinking as a sophisticated way of thinking about the Earth system,
http://serc.carleton.edu/integrate/teaching_materials/index.html on November 18, 2014
Overall Goals of InTeGrateTo Teach for a Sustainable Future
• By utilizing a variety of pedagogical approaches that help “students make connections between what they learn in the classroom and the real world, get involved in the community and prepare students for the workplace with hands-on experience,”
• By using interdisciplinary approaches to complex socio-scientific issues that “give students practice integrating their scientific knowledge with societal constraints,
• By connecting issues of social justice to the challenge of sustainability so that students acquire “an ethical perspective on Earth and Society” through a consideration of environmental justice, risk and resilience and GeoEthics.
What will it take to make this happen?
• A shift from individual modules and classes and a concept of “my work” to “our work” of creating a pathway concept that gradually builds intellectual and solution-finding skills and the capacity to deal with complexity, uncertainty, paradox and ambiguity.
• A move from teaching and learning as a solitary process to co-creation of knowledge as a collaboratory process.
• A goal of engaging students in ways that promote “continuous self-reflection in the light of new experiences, including the witnessed experience of others.” (Andrew Delbanco, 2012, College)
Who else is thinking about this?
• Liberal Education and America’s Promise• The LEAP Challenge• The Degree Qualifications Profile
These related nationwide efforts create frameworks beginning in K-12 that map out a pathway through increasingly higher levels of learning that prepare graduates for both responsible citizenship and the ability to thrive in a complex, “unscripted” world.
What does this kind of education entail?
1. Specialized Knowledge. Beyond the vocabularies, theories, and skills of fields of study, this category addresses what students in any specialization should demonstrate with respect to the specialization.
2. Broad and Integrative Knowledge. This category asks students at all degree levels to consolidate learning from different broad fields of study — the humanities, arts, sciences, and social sciences — and to discover and explore concepts and questions that bridge these essential areas of learning.
What does this kind of education entail?
3. Intellectual Skills. Both traditional and non-traditional cognitive operations are included in these skills: analytic inquiry, use of information resources, engaging diverse perspectives, ethical reasoning, quantitative fluency, and communicative fluency. There appears throughout an emphasis on the capacity to make, engage, and interpret ideas and arguments from different points of reference (cultural, technological, political, etc.).
4. Applied and Collaborative Learning. This element of the pathway emphasizes what students can do with what they know, demonstrated by innovation and fluency in addressing unscripted problems in scholarly inquiry, at work and in other settings outside the classroom. This category includes research and creative activities involving both individual and group effort.
5. Civic and Global Learning. Recognizing higher education’s responsibilities both to democracy and to the global community, this fifth area of learning addresses the integration of knowledge and skills in applications that facilitate student engagement with and response to civic, social, environmental and economic challenges at local, national and global levels.
Q.1 What else is going on that may be creating momentum and avenues for
collaboration?
• What institutional priorities might your InTeGrate project inform or address?
• Is your campus involved in a process to review and update your undergraduate curriculum or some component of that curriculum (e.g. General Education or the major)?
• Are you currently contributing to any campus-wide efforts to enhance the student experience or improve retention/graduation rates, etc?
Q.2 Are you working in a conducive environment?
• Is your institution involved in any sustainability projects either internally or in partnership with the broader community or both?
• Looking at your local environmental setting, what challenges or concerns are there (extreme weather events, flooding, sinkholes, etc) that you are using as a laboratory for your students and as a focus for scholarship and collaboration?
Q. 3 How ready is your campus to engage in significant change?
• Policies and practices• Experience with successful change efforts• Distribution of resources• Appropriate infrastructure to support faculty
leadership and clear governance• Capacity to engage in evidence-based change• Leadership support• Existing examples of collaboration internally or with
the broader community surrounding your institution that offers lessons and opportunities
• Other?
Getting Ready to Expand Your Efforts (1)
• How does this effort support institutional priorities? Clearly state the core value/mission that you want to sustain and the connection to the larger mission at your institution and to students’ educational success.
• What assets already exist that can support this work? Describe the assets that you have identified and how you can gain or maintain access to them.
Getting Ready to Expand Your Efforts (2)
• Who needs to know about your work? Prioritize the gatekeepers or stakeholders who influence or control the distribution of resources and the setting of institutional priorities. Within your campus governing and decision-making structure, where can you generate the most interest and potential support both for your own project and for the larger changes that will be needed for the InTeGrate vision to be embraced and incorporated into your campus culture, the curriculum more broadly and your shared expectations for your graduates?
Getting Ready to Expand Your Efforts (3)
• How will you get their attention? What are the venues for raising awareness? Prioritize these venues and conversations.
• What is your message to these stakeholders? How will you talk about your InTeGrate project and the value of this work? What lessons can you derive from your experience so far that might be applicable to other parts of the curriculum?
Getting Ready to Expand Your Efforts (4)
Now, outline your message starting with the point that is most likely to gain traction in your environment with particular audiences.
• What are people concerned about on campus?• Why might they be interested in your work, assuming
they haven’t heard about it or don’t know much about it yet?
• How will you work with your team and others to craft your message and back it up with stories, examples, lessons learned, etc.
• How will you make your case if you get a few more minutes to talk about your work?
Next Steps
Follow up with individual teams.Learn from the effort to communicate and
open up channels for broader participation. Become mentors for the next cohort of
InTeGrate teams. What should the newcomers know as they begin their work about how to communicate, how to build collaboration and how to create a supportive environment for the kind of learning that InTeGrate is promoting?
