GeographyConference - Las Vegas

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the 2009 American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Conference in Las Vegas, NV. The conference included more than 6,000 geographers from around the world and is a mix of presentations on cutting edge academic research and sessions on best practices for teaching and learning.

I was able to participate in both aspects of the conference by organizing a session/presenting some of my research on local government boundary change and attending several session dedicated to teaching and learning. My session on boundary change was well received and included an opportunity for questions and answers that generate a lot of interesting discussion. Additionally, I was approached by a representative from the Planners Press to discuss publishing my work. This unique opportunity would not have presented itself if I didn't attend the conference. The funding that I received though CETL made this possibility and reality.

The teaching and learning sessions that I attended focused on a variety of topics. The one session that I took the most away from was focused on making geography come alive for students. The session highlight many new technologies that are available for use in the classroom and also discussed the use of relevant DVD's. Today's students are so interactive we can not just lecture and expect them to learn all they need to know. Students want to see, hear and feel the topics. So incorporating DVD's, the internet, and assignments that take the student outside the classroom are all important. Geography is all around us and part of our everyday life (whether we realize it or not) so it is important to provide real-world examples that students can connect with.

TLC San Antonio

I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the Teaching and Learning conference in San Antonio, Texas. This conference is actually two events in one: One strand is for higher education and the other for business. Although these two disciplinary areas seem different, I found sessions in both areas that were beneficial to my academic practice. For example, use of the Socratic method in teaching the problem-solving and decision-making process was presented in the business strand, but I found it useful for one of the courses that I currently teach.

Essentially, that presentation proposed that students can be taught how to use the Socratic method to stimulate critical thinking and better decision-making in group situations. Students could use questions to:

• Ask an individual to provide instances or justifications for the position advocated
• Interject a counter-example in response to an individual’s position or point
• Ask whether anyone in the group agrees with the position advocated
• Suggest a parallel example
• Illuminate a specific concept or position using an analogy
• Play the role of devil’s advocate to an articulated position

In my own teaching experience, I have found that students sometimes feel frustrated when I (as the instructor) respond to their questions with more questions. I believe this is because students often want "just the answers" rather than having to think critically beyond the facts. Perhaps teaching them hows and whys of the Socratic method and actually having them implement it would motivate them to think more and be less resistant to questioning. I am looking forward to trying this out next semester.

Another session that I found useful was on Collaborative Learning. Specifically, it addressed the problems involved with group projects. The presenters offered the following suggestions for improving the group process:

• Give students specific group management role and responsibilities, such as manager, encourager, cheerleader, coach, question commander, checker, or taskmaster.
• Give each member of the team a different, interdependent research and problem-solving role. This can ensure that students work together rather than in parallel.
• The instructor needs to have input into how the groups are formed; sometimes best friends make poor group members.
• Low-ability students often benefit most when paired with medium-ability students rather than those of highest ability.
• Train students in interpersonal communication skills ahead of time so that they know what behavior is expected of the group and require discussion of group functioning, focusing on how students should talk and listen to each other.
• Consider assessment strategies carefully, looking for ways to reward the group while also emphasizing individual accountability. Avoid giving the entire group one grade.

Each semester, I teach a senior level research methods course that has a group project as a significant component. Effectiveness of the group process varies widely, as you can imagine. Some semesters, I have groups that function extremely well. Others can be experiences in great frustration. I have constantly looked for ways to improve the group process, and have resisted the temptation to eliminate the group aspect of the project. I sincerely believe that students should possess good groupwork skills by the time they graduate from a university. I have already implemented some of the techniques that were presented. For example, I have all group members submit a peer evaluation that helps me to find out who did what (and who did not do what). Part of a student's grade is based on her/his individual performance in the group. I found the concept of pairing low-ability students with medium-ability students (rather than high-ability) intriguing, and I now understand the rationale. Low-ability students often get lost when working with high-ability students, whereas medium-ability students motivate them to function at a higher level. Up to this point, I have let students choose their own groups, so I have had no control over how well the individuals are matched up. I will try to assign groups in the future based on the suggestions given and see what happens.

I attended several other sessions that provided useful information and tools for my teaching. Some, such as one on using PowerPoint games to develop vocabulary skills helped me to think of different ways to utilize familiar technology. Others, such as ones on leadership models and skills were useful for updating content in some of my courses.

I did make a presentation at the conference: "Knowledge about HIV/AIDS and resulting student behavior among students at an Historically Black College/University". It was well received, and fortunately, I was not asked any questions that I could not answer. The study looked at the level of of knowledge about HIV/AIDS among students, the differences in the accuracy of that knowledge by gener, and the relationship between knowledge and behavior. What we (myself and three other authors) found was that although students had a high level of knowledge (more accurate for women than for men), their behviors did not reflect that. Students practice high risk behaviors in spite of the fact that they know better. Our suggestions were to focus more on teaching about the consequences of high-risk behavior rather than just the factual information about the disease. We also felt that the role of the campus environment in encouraging high-risk behaviors needs to be investigated. We recommended that qualitative studies through focus goups be the preferred inquiry method for these investigations. I do not wish to delve further into the content of the study here, but if anyone is interested, you can contact me for more information.

Overall, this conference was a very worthwhile event, and I came back with much to think about and put into practice.

Himanshu

TL Conference

I attended the TL Conference in Greensboro, NC and had the opportunity to present. The conference was very worth my time. I have already implemented some of the teaching strategies presented in one of the presentations. It came off as a blast! This was a wonderful opportunity.

Wanda Lawrence
WSSU, Division of Nursing

Reflections on Lilly Conference Presentation

It was Friday afternoon at the Lilly Conference, which was held adjacent to a major mall. I thought that several of would-be conference attendees would take a long lunch or early dinner over in the mall. Each session time had about twelve or more presenters. So I was pretty blown away to see thirty-five faces staring back at me during my presentation in Greensboro last month. My subject dealt with preparing faculty to stay abreast with technology and how we "baby-boomers" are struggling to keep pace with our millennial college students, who use technology as easily as we used to use typewriters. Now theres a word you don't see often any more. As I looked out into the audience, I determined that most of the attendees in my session were boomers with a few youngsters (early thirties) sprinkled in. The sheer number of attendees was an indicator to me that a significant portion of our post-secondary faculty still struggle to keep pace with the technological developments that are now beginning to "wag the dog."

It has always been my contention that technology should be used to enhance our instructional delivery. Now-a-days, it appears that technology is driving the instruction. How do we prepare faculty to adequately navigate the latest technologies for instruction? The plethora of ancillary duties our faculty are strapped with beside their teaching load, committee work, advising and keeping up with the research in their content areas; finds the faculty member hard-pressed to do more.

There should be technology-on-demand sessions; where faculty sitting at their office desks can link to to teach themselves the latest technology and have guided and independent practice sessions. Help should be readily available from the technology staff, not just during normal business hours because most faculty work is done after hours on research and tinkering with the latest tech. tools. Adequate infrastructure is a necessity. Have all faculty been equipped with the soft and hardware to accomplish higher-level functioning with techno-platforms? What is the commitment of institutions of higher learning to prepare faculty; and also to monitor and then acknowledge in meaningful ways their progress and competency in learning new technologies? I had great interraction with the audience as I posed basic questions to them about how they are prepared to navigate technology waters at their institutions. It was good to know that many faculty are trying to get onboard with technology. Now the universities must do their part! Griff

Lilly Conference 2009 and the LERN Assessment Conference

I am very grateful to both Dr. Cynthia Bell and my colleagues Drs. Coco-Ripp, Bradford, and Lawrence for including me in their panel on Action Research, as well as to the CETL office for financing our participation in the 2009 Lilly Conference. Since my degree is not in education, I have been trying to take advantage of the opportunities I've had for professional development, and I feel I have benefitted a great deal from my experiences with LERN, GOAL, the Action Research project, the OK Fellows, and the new write-to-learn project. I am particularly grateful to my colleagues in this case, as I have had a pair of unusually hectic and demanding semesters, and I was not able to contribute a great deal to the panel's preparatory work, or even see much of the conference.

While my Action Research project was personally very enlightening, I was a little anxious to see how it would hold up at the conference, as the attendees were sure to have broader experience in the field and a more sophisticated understanding of the process I had studied than I did myself. Our panel was well-received, however, and my personal feedback was generally positive. I was especially happy for the opportunity to "talk shop" with my colleague in theory and aural skills at Appalachian State. She has been involved in a very interesting study using Tablet PC's for dictation tasks, and I look forward to her presentation at the end of the week at the College Music Society's Mid-Atlantic Chapter Meeting, which I'll be attending.

I had hoped also to participate in the LERN online conference on multiple assessments during the first week of March, particularly since that has been the focus of my work in the current semester. I was informed, however, the institutional membership had lapsed, and, while I tried to see about to renewing it in time for the conference, this did not turn out to be feasible. I have enjoyed the LERN conferences in the past, but I understand that financial restrictions are becoming very tight, and it would certainly not be reasonable to renew the institutional membership for just one faculty member. I hope that in better times we can not only renew the membership, but also get more faculty involved in the LERN activities. I am particularly attracted to them since they're online and asynchronous. This allows me to listen to the lectures and participate in the discussions according to my schedule, as well as to pause and replay lectures to make sure I have understood all the important points. While many of the topics are intended for distance learning programs, there is a weatlh of useful material for face-to-face classes as well.

Once again I am grateful to my colleagues and coaches for the opportunity to participate in the many professional development programs here at WSSU, and particularly for my involvement in the 2009 Lilly Conference. I was impressed by the conference, and having had a positive experience, I'll certainly be interested in attending next year.

Lilly Conference 2009

My presentation (Improving the Critical Thinking Skills of Psychology Students) was on Friday night at 5:45p. I think it was a decent crowd for a Friday night! The presentation went well, and there was some really good discussion afterwards about ways to help facilitate these skills with students in various disciplines. There were a number of faculty members present who indicated that critical thinking and writing skills are the two biggest barriers within their classrooms. I shared some of my techniques ("Dear Doc," Small group discussions, media integration) and those in attendance did the same.

On Satuday, two sessions that were particularly engaging were the "Hip-Hop as Critical Pedagogy" and "Service-Learning in the Social Sciences." The first session was interesting because it was very hands-on and exciting. Although I feel as if I already use hip-hop as a way to connect certain concepts together in psychology, it was good to discuss new ways to do that. The second session was very interesting because it was a step-by-step instructional session on how to develop, implement, and evaluate service learning projects. I am familiar with how to do them from the organizational standpoint, but wasn't as comfortable coming at it from the academic side.

Overall, I had a great time at Lilly (as usual). The food is always great!

Language and Culture for International Business Workshop

I participated in a three day workshop on Language and Culture for International Business. The goal of the workshop was to help participants to understand the relationship that exists between foreign languages and international business. This was a very informative workshop where foreign language teachers from different institutions in the United States gathered to learn on how to create business language curricula that are geared toward making business students interested in international business degrees succeed in their internships and later careers.

The importance of structuring our syllabi to accommodate business and for business departments to collaborate with foreign language departments was particularly made clear in the two key presentations by Dr. Keida of the University of Memphis and Dr. Doyle of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In his presentation titled “International Business and Developing a Global Mindset.” Dr. Keida underscored the importance of understanding how the world is changing and the need for the USA to find ways to make their economic presence felt in other parts of the world. He noted that there are emerging economies such as China and India that are already playing a major role in the current global economy. Because countries such as China and other Asian countries are able to produce quality products in large quantities, it is important for the USA to consider not only quality but how affordable such products will be for the consumer. In his presentation Michael Doyle observed that knowing the language of your potential consumer is an important asset.

Within language specific workshops, we were challenged to focus constructing syllabi and programs that can prepare business majors to know how to deal with investors by introducing cultural as well as the language of the clients which is not always English. In fact, it was very clear from this workshop, that it is erroneous to presume that English is spoken and used everywhere in the world. Knowledge of a foreign language allows individuals to communicate effectively.

Finally, I also enjoyed the financial opportunities for foreign language instructors that the workshop availed to me. Such funding opportunities can be realized if foreign language departments work in collaboration with business departments. One classic example of this collaboration is the Wang ciber center at the University of Memphis which collaborates with the foreign language department to prepare students to go for internship to countries such as Germany, France, Japan, and Mexico where the speaking of the local language is critical. The experiences that those who had gone through the program shared with the participants made it a really worthy endeavor.
Leonard

2009 Lilly Conference

I will share some of what we did in the PreConference.
Drs. Scott Simpkins and Karen Hornsby (NC A&T faculty) facilitated a session designed to introduce participants to the concept of SoTL. While most know that it is the process of inquiry into the teaching and learning that take place in the classroom (or virtual classroom), they may not know how to get started with that process. Essentially, we should think of it as conducting a study of our own teaching (or someone else's) without all the same scientific rigor of a more indepth quantitative investigation. There are a few requirements however. There is the research question, or we could refer to this as the ethic of inquiry, since this initial phase often is about more than the pragmatic--the question itself. it often entails asking "Why?", or "How useful...?", or "Who is being served?". There is actually a taxonomy of questions that helps the teacher to ask the right question (Carnegie Academy for SoTL). The right question is the first step toward change or improvement.
Following the question, the investigator (the professor) needs to consider methods. What procedures or processes will allow me to discover what I need to know? Mixed methods (methodological pluralism) are strongly recommended over a single approach, since teaching and learning are both extremely complex functions, requiring wide and multifaceted windows into the queries associated with them.
Participants worked in small groups to formulate a T/L question and to suggest appropriate methods. We also were asked to suggest what evidences would indicate a positive hypothesis vs a negative hypothesis. We then engaged in a Gallery Walk. In this activity, we were able to engage each other's groupwork that had been posted around the room. We used post it notes to add suggestions to any of the posted research plans. This kind of collaboration is encouraged in the SoTL process, and this particular learner engagement strategy worked quite well.

jc

Lilly Conference 2009

Recently I had the opportunity to attend the Lilly Conference in Greensboro. Given the locality of the conference it was a great opportunity to socialize with WSSU faculty and learn more about their learning styles and interest. Attendees were readily available to discuss the sessions that they attended and the impact of the knowledge at WSSU. This gave me the opportunity to assess interest and knowledge levels for future programming at CETL. Although this is not always the intent of a conference it was a tremendous learning experience. Often faculty would come out excited about what they had been seen and in the back of my mind I would think that we are doing that at WSSU or that is in the works! Often individuals are more open to new ideas when they come from peer sources and this was the opportunity at Lilly. It was also great to see how many of our faculty was participating in the delivery of the conference.
My most enjoyable moment was the Explosive Pedagogy! When you have tried everything else the Explosive Pedagogy would be the option. The student (George) keeps acting out in class and you have had enough so you take a pile of books and slam them on the desk. Then you say…”OK, everyone out except GEORGE”. Of course everyone will leave but George will stay because he finally has his time to get the final say. Once everyone has left you pull up a chair in front of George and calmly sit down facing him. You say the following (calmly, gently), “George, I just do not understand. You are the smartest guy in class and why are you giving me such a hard time? Have I done something to offend you or how can I change what I am doing to make this work for you?” This will give George the opportunity to express his concerns and give you the opportunity to “fix” the problem. Then George can walk out of the room and when student ask what happened he can say…”
I cannot say that I have ever had the opportunity to use the Explosive Pedagogy but I will 

Highlights of Lilly 2009

I presented a summary of my Action Research Project as part of a panel of faculty from WSSU at the recent Lilly Conference on College & University Teaching in Greensboro, NC. The title of the conference, Millennial Learning: Teaching in the 21^st Century, was truly reflected in the variety of sessions available to attend. After my presentation, I attended several sessions on Friday and Saturday.

Two sessions that I attended were presented by faculty in Criminal Justice programs at two different universities. Both also used role play as the main learning activity. One faculty used role play to help future police officers adhere to required legal procedures in responding to citizen complaints. The attendees at the session actually participated in the role plays as students might do. Discussion of the entire experience was extremely helpful to gain insight into the participants’ perspectives. Applying this type of role play for activities in some of the courses I teach will enhance the learning outcomes. The framework within which the role play was used in the law enforcement class can be adapted for such techniques as activity modifications or communication strategies in the WSSU Therapeutic Recreation classes.

The other session led by a faculty who teaches hostage negotiation used role play as a culminating activity for the semester. This eight hour role play activity involved outside participants as well as the students. It was carried out beyond the regular class meeting time and incorporated intense planning along with careful scripting and organization. The role play was presented through video and still photos with description by the presenter. Each attendee shared ways that this type of role play could be used in various classes such as nursing or sociology. Aspects of this activity that I found especially helpful are the intentional application of theory and knowledge. Another positive benefit to the activity presented is the reflective components. Students have several hours to debrief, process the entire experience, and receive feedback. Even though I may not be teaching hostage negotiation and have this much time for role play in one class, this session provided many ways for me to include experiential learning in classroom learning strategies.

There were other sessions I attended on use of blogs, flip video and peer feedback techniques. The final element that I want to share is the poster session. A new technique for the posters involved use of flip cameras. Volunteers were solicited to use the flip cameras available to record short interviews with designated poster presenters. This is an interesting strategy. It helps to share the session with persons who did not get to attend the poster session as the clips are to be posted on the Lilly conference site. This interviewing activity also focused the interaction with the poster presenter. As the chair of a poster session for my professional organization’s upcoming conference, I will consider using this technique. All in all, I think the Lilly Conference has the potential to be a very rich source of learning for instructor and the support team for college educators. I recommend participating if given the opportunity.