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Faculty Learning Communities
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Introduction to FLCs |
Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) build on the experience of student
learning communities, first proposed over seventy years ago by John
Dewey and others to address increasing specialization, isolation, and
absence of active, student-centered learning in the university. Over the
past twenty-five years such communities have been widely instituted, and
their personal, social, and academic benefits generally recognized. FLCs
offer the same positive experiences for faculty, who are even more
separated in our departmental silos and research commitments than our
students. FLCs enable us to realize and appreciate the wonderful
expansiveness of the university in the company of colleagues for whom
the process of learning itself offers an engaging area of research.
The detachment of academic life is even more pervasive now, and the need
for a holistic and collective understanding of how we can assist
learning is that more urgent. The time seems auspicious for a program of
FLCs at UGA.
An FLC consists of six to twelve faculty from different disciplines who
agree to meet about every three weeks to consider their topic of mutual
interest and to learn from each other. At the end of the academic year,
the FLC will have the opportunity to offer the larger University
community conclusions regarding its topic at a general forum.
According to Miami University’s mathematics professor and FLC guru,
Milton Cox, FLCs contribute measurably to
faculty retention and satisfaction, intellectual development, and
greater civic and academic contribution; they heighten focus on student
learning, assessment, and learning objectives; and they serve to
introduce and strengthen scholarly teaching and the scholarship of
teaching and learning.
The FLCs for next year will begin at a luncheon meeting Tuesday, April 29
(Reading Day), with Vice-President for
Instruction Jere Morehead and FLC participants for this and the coming year.
FLCs at UGA are organized and sponsored by the Center for Teaching and
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Proposed FLCs for 2008/2009
Click here to register *Deadline for registration is April 18* |
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Non-Western Ways of Knowing and Thinking
Michelle Commeyras, Karim Traore
This faculty learning community will explore non-western ways of thinking and knowing with an eye toward our roles as teachers, advisors and scholars. We seeks a diverse group of thinkers.
More information...
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Globalizing the Curriculum: Trends, Driving Forces, Cross-Cultural Exchanges
Deborah Gonzalez
The numbers of international students and faculty at UGA are also on the rise, increasing the chances of cultural exchange throughout the university, Athens and surrounding communities. Are UGA students prepared to interact and thrive in this new community of diversity?
The goal of this FLC is to offer an opportunity for faculty to share their best practices, techniques and resources about how they make their curricula “global” in terms of preparing UGA students for the world within and beyond U.S. borders
More information...
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Beyond Reading: strategies to aid student engagement, comprehension, and retention of core texts
Bruce Leroy
This FLC will explore strategies to help students improve their ability to effectively extract, comprehend, and retain the key information in college textbooks or other assigned readings. By using shared experiences, outside readings, and guest speakers, participates will work together to improve their ability to help students in these areas.
More information...
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Digital Storytelling
David Noah
"The world is made of stories, not atoms."
The digital revolution is creating new ways to tell stories through the use of graphics, sound, music, animation, and interactivity. This FLC will explore the uses of digital storytelling in the classroom.
More information...
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Emerging Technologies and Higher Education
David Noah
The digital revolution is not over. Blogs, Facebook, Second Life, YouTube, iTunesU—these new technologies and their uses are changing our culture and changing how we think about teaching and learning. The web, which has become so essential that we can scarcely imagine professional life without it, is changing from a place to get content to a platform for creating it.
More information...
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Tapping into Our Interdisciplinary Qualitative Research Traditions
Judith Preissle
Learning about the world by listening, watching, asking questions, and collecting things seems simple and easy. Most of us who use and teach these qualitative research methods find them anything but ordinary. Join a group of us who want to share how these extraordinary approaches vary from field to field.
More information...
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Integrated Course Design
Paul Quick
You can consider this FLC the course-design equivalent of “This Old House,” “Extreme Makeover,” or “Field of Dreams.” If you build it right, will they learn more?
More information...
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Facilitating Critical Thinking in Large Lecture Classes
Kathrin Stanger-Hall
Many of our students enter the University with excellent memorization skills, but struggle with critical thinking and problem solving. Let's get our students' minds working in the lecture hall and aid them in making the transition to critical thinking.
More information...
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Creating a Culture of Sustainable Water Use
Courtney Tobin, Leigh Askew
This Faculty Learning Community will discuss topics such as: the creation of a culture of students and faculty who think critically and holistically about long-term sustainable water use; the implications of changes in water resource management to various economic sectors of Georgia and beyond; and UGA’s potential role and responsibilities in response to the current water situation.
More information...
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| Current FLCs 2006/2007 |
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Academic Upcycling: Improving Student Scholarship through Assignment Design
Caroline Barratt, Nadine Cohen, Deb Raftus
Today's undergraduates think of themselves as savvy researchers who can find anything they need using Google or Wikipedia, whether they're writing a paper or looking for a movie listing. Prying them away from the unmediated Internet and into the realm of serious academic research is one of the important challenges facing pedagogy today.
This Faculty Learning Community will explore ways to infuse active-learning research activities into the classroom without necessarily requiring the traditional research paper.
More information...
Collaborative Learning: Class Environments that Value Cooperation over Competition
Dr. Mark Huber and Dr. Rob Shewfelt
UGA undergraduate culture is based on individual performance and competition, but much of life beyond the classroom requires an ability to collaborate. Although Teams are used in many courses, many students get “teamed” out and fail to appreciate the value of working in teams. Constructive or simulated learning environments attempt to create “Real Life” situations that motivate students to go beyond memorization and recitation to application, but assessment of learning is problematical. To this end Mark Huber (Management Information Systems) and Rob Shewfelt (Food Science) have teamed up to organize an interdisciplinary Faculty Learning Community to
- develop techniques that more effectively use collaborative exercises in courses,
- apply these techniques in classroom settings of the members of the Learning Community, and
- assess the effectiveness of these applications in improving student learning.
More information...
Digital Storytelling
Dr. David Noah
"The world is made of stories, not atoms."
The digital revolution is creating new ways to tell stories through the use of graphics, sound, music, animation, and interactivity. This FLC will explore the uses of digital storytelling in the classroom.
More information...
Feminist and Anti-Racist Teaching as Praxis
Dr. Chris Cuomo
This faculty learning community will provide a place to explore the meaning and significance of feminist and anti-racist pedagogies, the relationships between them, and the real possibilities for integration of such teaching and learning methods into courses at UGA. A guiding theme will be the connections between work in the classroom and work in wider communities.
More information...
Integrating Qualitative Data Analysis Tools into Qualitative Research and Teaching
Dr. Linda Gilbert
Are you a qualitative researcher?
Are you aware of qualitative data analysis software programs – NVivo. Nud*Ist, Atlas-ti, etc. – but haven’t had time to “really get into them”?
Are you concerned about supervising graduate students who are learning software on their own?
Would you like to find ways to introduce these kinds of software programs into your classes?
More information...
Service-Learning: Supporting Student Engagement and Faculty Research
Dr. Gayle Andrews and Dr. Kathy Thompson
Over the past few years, the university has strengthened its commitment to its mission as a land grant institution by providing support for the integration of service-learning into university curricula (e.g., establishing the Office of Service-Learning, providing professional development for faculty, and funding service-learning grants). As a result, more UGA faculty are providing students with opportunities to address community needs, issues, and problems through the application of academic knowledge and skills they gain in their coursework. Yet, even as faculty experience the successful integration of service-learning into their teaching, they may also experience the challenges associated with researching service-learning endeavors. This Faculty Learning Community will explore opportunities for conducting research related to service-learning at UGA. Our work will take place in a collaborative setting that supports shared leadership, focused and productive conversations, and collegial relationships.
More information...
Visual Thinking: New Strategies for Using Visual Material in the Digital Era
Emy Decker
Teaching with visual materials has become a very different and much improved endeavor over the past decade. This is attributed to the exponential growth of the Web and the development of common imaging technologies. The “digital age” invites us to improve our methods of teaching by incorporating such modes of visual thinking into disciplines not traditionally thought of as being image based.
More information...
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This page last updated on March 23, 2007.
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