A total of 10 faculty and staff members from the College of Veterinary Medicine attended the University Center for the Advancement of Teaching (UCAT) Annual Conference on Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
In particular, Dr. Jerome Masty serves on the Executive Council of Ohio State’s Academy of Teaching, and Dr. Katy Proudfoot shared her experiences participating in UCAT’s Course Design Learning Community (CDLC) in a breakout session.
Dr. Sandra Diaz’s Takeaway: “What stayed with me was what Dr. Drake said … ‘We should be talking about teaching as a privilege and not as a load.”
Amanda Fark’s Takeaway: “The specific sessions I attended were applicable and practical, but beyond that, connecting with the teaching and learning community was what I found to be most valuable.”
This year’s keynote speaker was Dr. Randy Bass, Vice Provost for Education and Professor of English at Georgetown University, who has been, according to the program notes, “working at the intersections of new media technologies and the scholarship of teaching and learning for nearly thirty years.”
Dr. Bass posed the following questions to the attendees: “What would a higher education look like if we were designing it now, given what we know about learning, about the global digital ecosystem and the challenges that lay ahead? How might the scholarship of teaching and learning provide a compass for how to respond to these questions?”
He suggested if higher education could be designed anew, it would be learner-centered, networked, integrative, and adaptive. It would also focus on the concept of formation or development of a balanced person with intellectual, affective, imaginative, and reflective capacities.
Two college experiences have been identified as correlated with an individuals engagement in work 20 years after graduation, he noted, and those include an adult mentor (faculty member/staff member) and a sustained project of over a semester.
Dr. Jerome Masty’s Takeaway: “Randy Bass stated that research indicated students were more successful later in life when they had experienced a semester long project to work on in college. Perhaps presenting coursework as a semester long project instead of assignments on a weekly to do list will provide a more successful foundation for our students.”
He supported efforts to:
- Increase student engagement that empowers them to achieve.
- Build communities around excellence in teaching and learning.
- Develop activities that transform the culture of teaching and learning.
Matt Miller’s Takeaway: “The first session I attended focused on a project where ten different healthcare departments at OSU came together to craft patient cases for simulated hospital rounds. All of the students from their respective disciplines worked together to diagnose and treat the patient. The collaboration among faculty from different departments was impressive, but it was the student feedback about how much they learned from their peers during the simulation that really stood out to me.”
In “Loving the Lecture,” Anne Wilson, M.A., Psychology, offered quick tips for improving the quality of a lecture. Those include:
- Effective storytelling that highlights content students are required to memorize or apply.
- Reducing cognitive load by getting rid of extraneous images or content on slides. (Ask yourself if the image or text enhances the message. If not, eliminate it.)
- Assess students’ knowledge and make connections between new content and what they already know.
Linda Bednarsky’s Takeaway: “The conference provided insight on possibilities for us to improve our video presentations for student learning prior to labs, as well as some great ideas on establishing a clinical simulation program for large student population.”
Dr. Matthew W. Stoltzfus, Chemistry & Biochemistry, presented “Using Metacognition to Teach Students How to Learn.” His main message was to support students to “stay in learning mode, not study mode.” He recommended the following:
- A metacognition session and study skills workshop that explain to students how they learn.
- Peer mentoring led by students who understand metacognition.
- Reframing “office hours” as group-led study sessions during which students practice skills and concepts on which they will be tested.
Katie O’Keefe’s Takeaway: “Teaching students about metacognition, which is the act of thinking about one’s own thinking processes, is not only the key to helping students here and now, but more importantly is the key to life-long learning.”
For more about the conference, please visit the event website.
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