August 2017
Faculty Collaboratives and related LEAP States activities are going to continue in fall 2017 across the participating states. Here's a lineup as the events are scheduled.
TEXAS: The West Texas Assessment Conference, October 10, in Lubbock.
Registration is open for the 2017 West Texas Assessment Conference! The Office of Planning and Assessment will be hosting the conference this year in Lubbock, Texas at the McKenzie-Merket Alumni Center on October 10th, 2017. The goal of this day-long conference is to bring together higher education professionals across Texas and the surrounding states to share ideas and information about accreditation and assessment.
This year’s keynote speaker will be Dr. Loraine Phillips, Associate Provost for Academic Effectiveness at Georgia Tech University and former chair of LEAP Texas. Dr. Phillips will discuss the assessment landscape especially as it relates to LEAP initiatives, authentic assessment and good practice, and the move towards more transparency.
Registration is available online at https://www.depts.ttu.edu/opa/wtac/ for Faculty, Administration and Graduate students.
For the Record
Activities from AY 2016-2017
Academic Year Activities in the LEAP States (including networked events related or connected to or aligned with the work of the Faculty Collaboratives). We will post events as we discover them. The goal is to create a record of aligned or convergent activities in the LEAP States that participate in Faculty Collaboratives.
May 2017
Ongoing Project Led by LEAP Virginia
Open Learning '17
A collective/collectivist MOOC open to any educator.
openlearninghub.net and #openlearning17
Open Calls for Proposals
West Texas Assessment Conference October 10: Call for Proposals (through June 1)
The West Texas Assessment Conference Committee will host its 6th annual conference in Lubbock, Texas at the McKenzie-Merket Alumni Center on October 10, 2017. The goal of this conference is to bring together higher education professionals across Texas and the surrounding states to share ideas and information about accreditation and assessment. Your co-hosts for this year’s event are Texas Tech University and Angelo State University. Conference tracks include: Student Learning Assessment, Accreditation, Planning, Assessment of Non-Instructional Areas, Institutional Effectiveness - as well as Special Interest Topics such as technology and core curriculum. To submit your proposal or to view more information about the conference, please visit the new conference website at: https://www.depts.ttu.edu/opa/wtac/.
Conference registration will open July 1st. We hope to see you there!
UP NEXT:
Here are the state hubs from the project:
Indiana: www.leapindiana.org
California: www.calfaccollab.org/
Texas: http://leaptx.org/development-hub/
Utah: http://ufc.ou.usu.edu/
Wisconsin: www.uwp.edu/facultyandstaff/innovationhub/index.cfm
AAC&U has posted these links on the LEAP States page
AAC&U has also created a new LEAP Networks resource page
January 10 and 17, 2017
California Faculty Collaboratives hosts two online meetups on transparent assignment design, citing work led by Mary-Anne Winkelmes. Register for our January 10 & 17 12-1 pm Digital Meetup on Transparency and Teaching and Learning!
January 26, AACU ANNUAL MEETING
September 16, 2016
Indianapolis, IN
LEAP INdiana: Inclusive Excellence
Information and Registration: http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=4631b665dcbae00c91cb9aed9&id=82afcc4a10&e=ddb8a900bd
April 5-7, 2017
University System of Georgia Teaching and Learning Conference
http://www.usg.edu/facultydevelopment/teaching_learning_conference/
April 20-21, 2017
La Crosse, Wisconsin. "At the Crossroads: The Future Landscape of Learning." University of Wisconsin System Spring Conference on Teaching and Learning. https://www.wisconsin.edu/spring-conference/ Randy Bass keynoting.
April 21, 2017
Massachusetts Department of Higher Education AMCOA Conference
Advancing the Work of Assessment: Best Practices, Tools, and Resources
Doubletree by Hilton, Westborough, MA
Information: Dr. Robert Awkward (rawkward@bhe.mass.edu)
April 24-28
April 24
Why Reading Apprenticeship? The Literacy-Equity Connection in College. Sponsored by California Faculty Collaborative. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/why-reading-apprenticeship-the-literacy-equity-connection-in-college-tickets-33803563368?ref=estw
May 3, 2017
California Faculty Collaborative
Faculty-Led Change: How to Start a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) or Faculty Interest Group (FIG)
https://www.calfaccollab.org/upcoming-event-2.html
May 19-20, 2017
2nd Statewide California Reading Apprenticeship Conference
College of San Mateo
http://teingle.wixsite.com/raannualconference
May 22-23, 2017
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and the Faculty Collaboratives team for Wisconsin offer part two of a two-part workshop on LEAP. See "Bigger LEAP" at https://www.uwp.edu/facultyandstaff/innovationhub/upload/LEAP_Wkshp_Invitation_Jan_2017.pdf. The follow-up meeting will be May 22-23, 2017 to share progress from the spring semester, dig deeper into LEAP, exchange ideas for best practices, and revise team action plans for academic year 2017-2018.
RECORD OF EVENTS 2016:
Writing Pathways to Disciplinary Learning: A Writing Across the Curriculum Conference. Sponsored by the Indiana University Faculty Academy on Excellence in Teaching. Save-the-date flyer.
September 23-24, 2016
Valencia, CA
Re-Imagining General Education: Threshold Profect. Community of Practice convening at the College of the Canyons, organized by the Faculty Collaboratves Project.
October 16-18, 2016
San Diego City College
Room MS 123
Join us for this FREE event to learn more about key Habits of Mind that students need to succeed. We'll explore the ways these Habits support a student’s sense of direction, focus, engagement and connection. Collaborate with others to develop practices that build these Habits and show students that they are valued, supported and cared about.
Workshop activities and discussions are designed for both faculty and staff.
We will engage your professional experience and generate new ideas for supporting student success!
The 3CSN Team hopes to see you there. Contact Jan Connal at jan@3csn.org for more information.
The Utah System of Higher Education's Round XIX of “What is an Educated Person?” The conference title this year: Integrated Pathways through General Education and into the Major. The conference takes place at the Zermatt Resort in Midway, Utah. Lynn Pasquerella, President of AAC&U, will keynote. Inquiries welcome to Teddi Safman psafman@ushe.edu
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NOVEMBER 16-18
The Virginia Assessment Group (VAG)
The 2016 Virginia Assessment Conference
The link to register is here: http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=odoyjfhab&oeidk=a07ecv7p0vj4d2d8e44
November 18-19
California: 3CSN Equity Community of Practice
http://www.calfaccollab.org/equity.html
December 5, 2016
If you are in the SACS region and plan to attend the SACSCOC Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Dec. 4-6, you might stop by the LEAP Texas Affiliate Group Meeting, Monday, Dec. 5, 5:30-7:00 in the Greenbriar Room, Atlanta Conference Center, Hyatt Regency. LEAP Texas always welcomes connections. http://leaptx.org/events/2016-sacscoc-affiliate-group-meeting/.
December 2016
News from Wisconsin:
Project leaders are running virtual salons as a way to reach out to faculty across the UW System. More information on the salons is available via the Salon icon on the Wisconsin hub page https://www.uwp.edu/facultyandstaff/innovationhub/index.cfm
News from Utah:
The project leaders are forming a partnership with the teaching and learning centers at institutions in the state. They are building a much larger network for innovation and reform, for communication with larger numbers of educators--all to advance liberal education, essential learning outcomes, student success. We are eager to see the growth of this important partnership.
News from Texas:
50 or so folks attended the LEAP Texas meeting at the SACSCOC Annual Meeting in Atlanta on December 5. We had a successful meeting, indeed, with excellent discussion related to transfer collaboratives (GEMS), the Excellence in Assessment Designation (from a national leader), and updates about the work of our faculty fellows and assessment fellows. Resources, handouts, and related Web sites can be found here: http://leaptx.org/events/2016-sacscoc-affiliate-group-meeting/. (Scroll to the bottom.)
We are also excited to introduce three new LEAP Texas Faculty Fellows for the 2016-2017 Academic Year!
· Dr. Jeanne Tunks, Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Director of the Core Curriculum at the University of North Texas, joins us to focus on Assignment Design and the Texas Core Objectives.
· Dr. Jonathan Lee, Professor of History at San Antonio College, served on the initial American Historical Association’s Tuning Project and joins us to focus on the Degree Qualifications Profile and the Texas Core Objectives.
· Dr. Nakia Pope, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Humanities and Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence at The University of Texas at Arlington, joins us to focus on the Degree Qualifications Profile and the Texas Core Objectives.
For more information about these three individuals, see here: http://leaptx.org/about/fellows/.
Summer 2016
We are pleased to see lots of statewide activity that's connected and intentionally centered on the quality of students' learning. The Faculty Collaboratives project is really an infrastructure project, intended to help networks of faculty do a better job of aligning student learning outcomes and assessment--and guiding that work with equity and equitable outcomes in mind (and heart).
Here are a few examples.
The California State University and California Community Colleges are collaborating via the Faculty Collaboratives. We're now seeing better reach for publicity for such events as the first Statewide Conference on Reading Apprenticeship, May 13-14, 2016. Reading Apprenticeship pedagogy and practice is totally harmonious with LEAP essential learning outcomes.
The Faculty Collaboratives project for LEAP Texas is now sponsoring social media events centered on the learning outcomes of the Texas core curriculum, itself aligned with LEAP. They are organizing an assignment sharing or swap on July 15, working on the core outcome of social responsibility. They've done similar work on the core outcomes of teamwork.
LEAP Texas took action in big creative ways in August 2016. They organized Social Responsibility Week, August 8-12, a week of free online events put together by the Faculty Fellows. Among other activities, there is a recipe contest--class activity/teaching recipe, that is--and lively online events streamed through Periscope, chats on Twitter, and web postings. Follow on Twitter at #LEAPTexas. Meanwhile, Faculty Fellow Jennifer Edwards posted 30 Ways to Integrate Social Responsibility in Your Fall Courses at periscope.tv and offered a glimpse of the Tarleton State Equity Innovation Lab. Find more on Twitter #TarletonTEIL.
Much upcoming activity to report, as the state teams plan events for the academic year. We see active networking, more noticeably than in the past. The Faculty Collaboratives teams are making intentional outreach to other groups and other projects, more than would have been the case without our work. More analysis of that claim will follow as we assess the project.
We will continue our reporting as more activities occur.
April 2016
Here's news from Georgia. The University System of Georgia is planning to join LEAP this spring. They've been organizing a grassroots effort on the campuses for a few years now. Their focus: faculty leadership! On April 12, they held a conference to explore Georgia's emergence as a LEAP State, with a daylong set of presentations and discussions by their most energetic LEAP Champions. The tweets reporting on the event are in Storify. Have a look!
Meanwhile, the LEAP Texas branch of the Faculty Collaboratives project has been innovating. They've organized a related project involving "assessment fellows," modeled on the faculty fellows' assignmentsl from our Faculty Collaboratives project. The assessment fellows are leading an inter-institutional assessment project. This work shares some of the features and activities of the Multi-State Collaborative. It also is designed for the context of higher education in Texas. You can see a PPT presentation by Larry J. King (Stephen F. Austin State University) and Chris Duke (San Jacinto College here. Larry and Chris presented this material at the LEAP Texas Forum held in Austin in February (see below).
Here is more on LEAP Texas:
They are hosting webinars this month and posting the recordings on the website. To navigate to them, go to http://leaptx.org/, then click on NEWS, and you will see the webinar archives in the news list. You can also go directly to the links below for the first two webinars.
Assignment Design for General Education, Webinar Archive | Texas Assessment Collaborative
Texas Assessment Collaborative Webinar Archive! Rolling up Our Sleeves: Call for Participation
March 2016
Happy news. LEAP IN has just posted the materials from their convening on February 26. See the materials and the lively photos on Flickr.
Massachusetts held a successful gathering on March 4, with participants from Massachusetts and other states in New England, as well as a representative from the VALUE Multi-State Collaborative project from Minnesota. Here is the conference program: MAconference.pdf
Earlier in the month:
Statewide gatherings have been taking place in several of the LEAP States, most of these connected to the Faculty Collaboratives project one way or another. AAC&U posted an announcement of the events here.
The AAC&U News Announcement of the Convenings (Wednesday, February 10, 2016):
AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider will keynote three LEAP State convenings in the next few weeks. Schneider spoke in Michigan, Texas, and Wisconsin on the LEAP Challenge and creating Guided Learning Pathways to increase student success. In Michigan, President Schneider and AAC&U Board Member Richard Guarasci presented on how community engagement can increase both persistence and success. In Texas, Schneider focused on using the LEAP Challenge to map guided learning pathways that result in deep learning and long-term student success. President Schneider presented at LEAP Wisconsin’s LEAP Day event on February 29. Schneider will join colleagues in Wisconsin to celebrate a decade of LEAP WI and reflect on how the LEAP initiative has become a movement to help students blend liberal and pre-professional learning. In addition—in other LEAP States news—on February 26, AAC&U’s Debra Humphreys and Susan Albertine were keynote speakers at the “Supporting Faculty Innovation in the 21st-Century” conference in Indiana and on March 4, LEAP State partners in Massachusetts will sponsor the “Advancing Student Success” conference. Schneiders talk is titled "'It Takes Much More Than a Major' to Succeed in This Economy."
February 2016
We held an energetic project meeting in New Orleans! February 17-18, just before the General Education & Assessment conference. Check #faccollab for Tweets.
Twitter Chat, February 11, 3:00-4:00 Eastern. Find what we discussed at #scalehips and on Twubs at http://twubs.com/scalehips The Storify version is here.
Here are the state hub URLs:
- The California hub is live at www.calfaccollab.org/
- Here's LEAP Texas: leaptx.org/hub/
- Wisconsin is here: www.uwp.edu/facultyandstaff/innovationhub/index.cfm
- Indiana can be found here: http://facultycollaboratives.uc.iupui.edu
- Utah is right here: http://ufc.ou.usu.edu/
Here's a brief blurb on the convening in Texas:
LEAP Texas is hosting its third annual LEAP Texas Forum, The LEAP Challenge: Signature Work and VALUE-able Assessment, February 22-23, 2016, in San Antonio, Texas. The forum’s impressive line-up of speakers includes Dr. Carol Geary Schneider, President of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U); Dr. Kate McConnell, Senior Director for Research and Assessment at AAC&U; and Dr. Rebecca Karoff, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at The University of Texas System. The forum will focus on assignment designs that align with the VALUE rubrics, produce robust and authentic assessments, and meaningfully inform the pedagogy of general education. The work of LEAP Texas’ faculty fellows and assessment fellows will be featured in breakout sessions. To learn more about the exciting work of LEAP Texas, visit leaptx.org Here are handouts and other resources.
December 2015
A Twitter chat on the VALUE project, December 14, 2:00-3:00 pm Eastern. Find it at #fcvalue and at https://storify.com/Salbertine/faculty-collaboratives and on Twub for #fcvalue
A webinar on Assignments and Signature Work, December 17, 2:00-3:00 pm Eastern. Materials for this and all other webinars in the series are posted in the LEAP Campus Toolkit section on the Faculty Collaboratives.
November 18, 2015
Best news of the month! We are seeing more blogs across the project. We had hoped for a community of bloggers, and now we appear to be creating one.
In California, Paul Wickline is blogging from the College of the Canyons.
In Texas, the blog is on the LEAP Texas page.
Anne Kelsch, University of North Dakota, is blogging on GEMs and faculty development.
Other blogs we have already announced:
Miguel Powers, faculty fellow from California, has launched his blog here: http://tinyurl.com/phdu5l2
Kathy Wolfe, from AAC&U, has started hers here: http://tinyurl.com/qx3v6rk
October 30, 2015
Utah Faculty Collaboratives Launched at the 18th Annual
What Is an Educated Person?
October 22 & 23, 2015
Homestead Resort, Midway, Utah
Conference Theme: Who are our students, What are they learning, How do we know, and How must we change?
Ken O'Donnell, California State University, leading discussion.
In 1997 the Utah General Education Task Force held its first ‘What is an Educated Person?’ conference in Salt Lake City. The content of the conference included issues of transfer articulation and how we prepare our students for work after they graduate. Speakers included the president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Carol Geary Schneider, John Huntsman, Jr., and two legislators. Following the first ‘What is an Educated Person?’ conference, the Faculty Discipline Majors’ Meetings were born to work within specific disciplines on transfer articulation issues, assessments and learning expectations leading to successful transfer from two-year programs to academic majors offered in the four-year institutions.
In early 2000, The General Education Task Force asked the Regents to sanction the GETF to become the Regents General Education Task Force. The Regents agreed and the new name was entered into policy.
Over the years, the ‘What is an Educated Person?’ conference has invited experts in teaching and learning, Tuning USA, the Degree Qualifications Profile, and issues of importance to general education faculty and administrators in academic affairs. Also included were and are Brigham Young University, Westminster College and Western Governors University, and some Idaho schools.
This year’s conference addressed issues of diversity of our new students and is titled: “Who are our students, What are they learning, How do we know, and How must we change?” Our keynote speaker, Ken O’Donnell, Vice Chancellor, California State University System, spoke on “Our Compelling Challenge: Preparing Diverse Students through Faculty Governance and Quality Preparation.”
Pam Perlich, well known demographer and economist offered "Projecting and Connecting: Demography as Possibility."
The work of the Regents General Education Task Force continues to improve general education across our system and to support the success of all of our students.
September 28, 2015
Just back from the first Wisconsin convening of the Faculty Collaboratives project. The UW System office put out a call for teams to attend a two-day meeting near Madison. Amazing success! Every university and the colleges sent teams. There were about 100 people, most of them brand-new to LEAP and AAC&U. I asked for a show of hands of newcomers and was astonished to see most hands go up.
Picture: Susan Albertine, Carleen VandeZande, Dan McInerney, and Rebecca Karoff.
We have seen such a flood of bad news about higher education in Wisconsin that I want to go on record as saying the participants at this meeting were energetic, genuinely engaged, and clearly ready for opportunity. Hats off to Wisconsin spirit!
Opening sessions included a welcome from Rebecca Karoff, a bit of background on AAC&U and LEAP from me, and a lively plenary offered by Dan McInerney, professor of history, Utah State University. The talk offered an entertaining and personal narrative, largely on Dan's own adventures in discovering the proficiency initiatives and his response to Tuning in particular. What I found most valuable was his account of the usefulness of Tuning in practice. He gave clear and cogently grounded examples of ways to bring history colleagues together to address students' cumulative learning, using Tuning.
Then a real break-through: The Wisconsin Faculty Fellows led excellent sessions on the proficiency initiative they've chosen. This is exactly why we are doing this Faculty Collaborative Project--to encourage and support new leadership by faculty.
We had faculty-led sessions on signature assignments, DQP, Tuning, VALUE rubrics, GEMs. The program also offered a session on equity--embedding equity into curricular initiatives, a session on curricular mapping, one on assessment. I offered discussions of threshold projects, using what I learned at the August 2015 California convening (described below).
And another break-through: There is now a Wisconsin Faculty Collaboratives Hub!
NILOA's Natasha Jankowski made a searching and entertaining journey through institutional websites using the guidance of the NILOA transparency framework.
We did a fair bit of tweeting, which you can see on the Twitter feed.
Tim Dale's session on using VALUE rubrics got people on their feet and having a good time. See the photo just below.
September 16, 2015
Miguel Powers, faculty fellow from California, has launched his blog here: http://tinyurl.com/phdu5l2 My colleague Kathy Wolfe, from AAC&U, has started hers here: http://tinyurl.com/qx3v6rk
We have launching all five communities of practice now. Here they are: the GEMs group, the HIPs (high-impact practices) group, the Assignments and Signature Work group, the VALUE MSC group, and DQP/Tuning.
I have begun to collect essential resources in sections for each community. So, for example, if you want to know about Tuning, please see the "Tuning Explained" document, indexed to the left, which is the best treasure trove on Tuning I have seen. We will use it to start the DQP Tuning group. A new section on the VALUE MSC project works the same way, over on the left.
September 4, 2015
LEAP Texas blogger Jennifer Edwards has launched her e-portfolio here http://bit.ly/1O2nkXm She will be working especially on high-impact practices and reporting on what the project is doing in Texas.
September 1, 2015
I made a Twitter joke by tweeting this: "#facultycollaboratives is too long! Uses too many characters." Someone actually retweeted it! We looked around and switched to #faccollab, as you will see in our Twitter feed.
The Threshold Project meeting was deeply satisfying. We enjoyed seeing people both intellectually and socially engaged in discussions of the modes, methods, and concepts of learning within the epistemologies of their disciplines. People met both within and across disciplines--and a good cross section of the latter it was. Threshold concepts are picking up attention in English and composition circles now, we learned. Easy to start conversations. And the connection between Tuning and threshold concepts is utterly transparent, once you realize it is there.
The state liaisons had a creative and productive meeting. A high point was a lesson in Twitter! We also organized some leadership and communications ideas for the project for this coming year.
August 22, 2015
The state liaisons from California, Indiana, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin are heading to Los Angeles for a planning meeting. We will also attend a conference that is part of the Faculty Collaboratives project. It's called the Threshold Project. You can see what that project is doing here: http://3csn.org/event/threshold-project-2015-2016-convening-1-fullerton-college-82815/ It's really wonderful in concept. Here is the opening line from the project website:
What if the first two years of college were problem based, integrative introductions to disciplinary habits of mind? What if they explicitly taught students how to problem solve from distinct disciplinary perspectives and made visible the need for multi-disciplinary approaches to complex “wicked problems”?
I will be using Twitter to report!
August 20, 2015
Let the blogging begin! You can see the five state team logos above. Each state team is identifying bloggers for the project. Each will have an e-portfolio that we will interconnect. I'm asking each blogger to introduce him or herself and talk about why each joined this project. I am also asking them to read my e-portfolio and leave comments and suggestions.
Links to the other bloggers' portfolios will be placed right here, for a start, just as soon as I have them.
What are the state teams doing? The first thing is to create a sustainable hub site online that will serve as a state center for faculty leadership and learning, or professional development, if you will. We are expecting to see different hub designs in each state.
Each state team is also organizing statewide convenings that are intended to open doors to more colleagues in the larger collaboration.
August 12, 2015
The Second LEAP Texas Forum last week in Nacogdoches, TX, was an inspiration. Many thanks to our friends at Stephen F. Austin State University for excellent hosting.
A plenary session by Pat Hutchings on assignment design launched the conference. Titled "Designing and Using Effective Assignments," the presentation introduced the NILOA Assignment Library--a free and open resource that any educator can use. The assignment library is at www.assignmentlibrary.org
Resources from the forum are here: http://leaptx.org/events/2nd-annual-forum/resources/
The Texas Faculty Collaboratives team met during the forum and made plans. We also had a chance to see Texas Faculy Fellow Jennifer Edwards at work, leading two conference sessions on social media for teaching and learning. If you check the Twitter feed on my welcome page here, you can see some of Jennifer's work.
July 28, 2015
Exciting! Today AAC&U released our press release on the faculty fellows in the first phase of the project, here: http://www.aacu.org/press/press-releases/facultyfellows
July 22, 2015
Faculty Collaboratives News
Right now the five state teams are organizing their work. Each state team has a liaison, a hub director, and a group of faculty fellows. These teams are working with materials from a set of national projects that together intend to improve college education for all students. That is, we are working to improve general education and the major, both.
Our model is the classic idea of liberal education, evolving into practice in the 21st century. What does that mean? One of the most popular pages on the AAC&U website defines liberal education: http://209.29.151.145/leap/what-is-a-liberal-education We are talking about college education that prepares a person to make a living, to find life purpose, and to participate in civic activity.
The Faculty Collaboratives are figuring out how to share frameworks and tools for teaching and learning in new ways so that we improve college education for all students. We want to use these frameworks and tools in a way that makes sense within the context of the different states, that responds to what faculty need to know and do in those states. At AAC&U we intend to network the activity among the states.
Simple, right?
The frameworks and tools have been invented and devised by educators, most of them associated with AAC&U. Next I will write about those.