Programs

New Programs for 2012-2013
at the Center for Teaching Excellence

Teaching Consultation Program for teaching enhancement - open for consultations in Fall 2013

Starting in Fall 2013, the new Teaching Consultation Program will offer individual consultations to anyone teaching at The College of Saint Scholastica. Consultations will provide formative, non-evaluative feedback on teaching practices, based on observed data from a class observation or a review of documents such as a syllabus or an assignment. CSS faculty serving as Peer Consultants participate in a professional development program in Spring 2013. Starting in Fall 2013, the Center for Teaching Excellence Director will match requesting faculty with Peer Consultants or the CTE Director based on availability and topic of interest and will initiate the consultation process. All campus locations of The College will be served.

Learning Community on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning - Spring 2013

In Spring 2013, faculty and staff discussed the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning approach to classroom research on teaching and learning at a series of meetings. The Center for Teaching Excellence provided books to 25 faculty and staff participants. The selected resource books are also available in the library. They are: Enhancing Learning through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: The Challenges and Joys of Juggling by Kathleen McKinney, and Engaging in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: A Guide to the Process, and How to Develop a Project from Start to Finish by Cathy Bishop-Clark and Beth Dietz-Uhler.

The Learning Community has been extended due to faculty interest. If you'd like to join the monthly meetings to discuss a future or current SoTL research project, contact Lisa Larson at x6450 or llarson5@css.edu.

Flipped Classroom Pilot Program and Learning Community - Spring - Fall 2013

This program provides pedagogical and technical support for the conversion of selected lecture-based courses to a flipped course model. Flipped classrooms shift student viewing of lectures to out-of-class work, freeing class time for active, engaged learning. They offer instructor-recorded lectures or replace lectures with existing, often multimedia, materials, and they use class time for the application of new knowledge, skills practice, homework-with-help, collaborative learning, and/or individualized learning. 

After accepting applications in Fall 2012, three Flipped Classroom projects from a range of academic disciplines were funded for completion in 2013. Applicants were selected by a Work Group consisting of Lynne Hamre, Lynne Raschke, Nikki Schutte, Sarah Bryans-Bongey, and Lisa Larson. In Spring 2013, successful applicants will work in a Flipped Classroom Learning Community that provides feedback and technical and pedagogical support for the course redesign process.

The Flipped Classroom Pilot Program will increase The College's capacity to support a flipped classroom approach to course redesign in the future by developing new or existing resources and work flows and building institutional expertise. Members of the learning community will study challenges and benefits to a flipped classroom approach and disseminate best practices for implementing a flipped classroom to the campus community  

Thank-a-Professor Program - Spring 2013

   The Thank a Professor Program offers a new online form for student-to-faculty thank-you message in celebration of this year's focus Benedictine Value of the Love of Learning. Students are invited to express their love of learning by sending a thank-you messgae to an individual faculty member between February 11 and April 21, 2013. Students may elect to send messages annonymously. Each student message will be sent to the selected faculty member in a letter of recognition after the end of Spring Semester. The form is available at www.css.edu/thanks beginning about three weeks after the start of each semester until three weeks before semester end.

Scholarly Teaching Module of the 2012-2013 First Year Faculty Experience

The Scholarly Teaching Module is a component of the First Year Faculty Experience. The goals of the  Scholarly Teaching Module are to enhance teaching and learning by: fostering reflective teaching practices, encouraging and strengthening the use of a scholarly approach to teaching rooted in disciplinary expertise, facilitating discussion of instructional practices, and developing a supportive community of teaching scholars. For the Scholarly Teaching Module, faculty new to CSS develop  a course portfolio consisting of a set of four written reflections and other documents that describe and analyze a single course they're teaching in Fall semester. At meetings in September, October, November, and February participants share their reflections with other first year faculty as members of a scholarly community.

Book Discussion Groups

A group met in Spring 2013 to discuss When Race Breaks Out: Conversations about Race and Racism in College Classrooms by Helen Fox (2nd Ed.). A six-copy set of the books is available for checkout by faculty and staff groups from the Center for Teaching Excellence. An additional discussion group for this book will be organized in Fall 2013.