Blog
Change Topics (Working Groups)
Target Audience Show all
College/University Staff
30 matchesProgram Components Show all
Target AudienceJoin an ASCN working group!
Posted: Feb 19 2020 by
Target Audience: Pre-Service K12 Teachers, In-Service K12 Teachers, College/University Staff, Non-tenure Track Faculty, Tenured/Tenure-track Faculty, Institution Administration, Teaching/Learning Assistants, Post-doctoral Fellows
Program Components: Professional Development:Diversity/Inclusion, Leadership, Institutional Systems:Incentive/Reward Systems, Evaluating Promotion and Tenure, Physical Infrastructure
Have you been considering joining one of our working groups, but aren't sure where to start? Here you'll find updates on what each of our groups is working on and more information on how to get involved in 2020. You can join any of our working groups by filling out this short form. Keep reading to learn more about how we're exploring theories of change; the costs, benefits, and impact of change; change leadership; equity and inclusion in systemic change; aligning faculty work with change; and learning spaces. More
Understanding how instructional change works
Posted: Jan 22 2020 by
Program Components: Professional Development:Pedagogical Training
Recommended article: "It's Personal: Biology Instructors Prioritize Personal Evidence over Empirical Evidence in Teaching Decisions," by Tessa Andrews and Paula Lemons, CBE-Life Sciences Education, 14 (2015).
I am involved in several projects which aim to help faculty learn about and implement effective teaching practices. To design or evaluate such programs, it's useful to have a model of how faculty take up new teaching practices. I want to highlight an article by Andrews and Lemons which recently influenced my thinking. (Note that Tessa Andrews co-leads ASCN Change Theories working group). One model that is often used in faculty change projects is the Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations model, which suggests that in order to adopt a new idea a person must become aware of it, be persuaded that it is useful, decide to use it, implement it, and then decide to continue to use it More
Building on the BOSE Report of Indicators for STEM Education
Posted: Mar 23 2018 by
Target Audience: College/University Staff, Non-tenure Track Faculty, Tenured/Tenure-track Faculty, Institution Administration
Program Components: Professional Development:Diversity/Inclusion, Supporting Students:Academic Support, Professional Preparation
As everyone probably knows by now, the National Academies have released their Indicators for Monitoring Undergraduate STEM Education.
There clearly is much overlap with the charge to the Working Group on Demonstrating Change. We would appreciate informal discussion around two questions:- Is there anything left for us to do?
- Assuming the answer to #1 is "yes," how can we shape our work so as to build on this report? More
Academic Advising: Leverage Point for Systemic Change Initiatives?
Posted: Nov 29 2017 by
Target Audience: College/University Staff, Non-tenure Track Faculty, Tenured/Tenure-track Faculty, Institution Administration
Program Components: Professional Development:Advising and Mentoring, Supporting Students:Academic Support, Professional Preparation
I am beginning my sixteenth year as an academic adviser; I have worked at large research universities, a small state college, and a small private college. My experiences and scholarly work have taught me that the day-to-day decisions academic advisers make can have a significant impact on how the university functions. Academic advising is structurally designed to include one on one conversations with students regarding the direction of their education, what their current challenges are, what they have learned, and what they want to learn in the future. As a result of this structure, advisers are uniquely positioned to have in-depth conversations about the university's mission, and why the curriculum is structured the way it is; this unique position can also allow advisers to function as a leverage point for change initiatives. More
Communicating and Collaborating Across Disciplines
Posted: Nov 27 2017 by
Program Components: Professional Development:Curriculum Development
Those of us who are working on ways to attract students to the study of STEM fields must design a curriculum that prepares our students to understand and manage complex problems where scientific knowledge interacts with other ways of looking at the world. This means finding ways to work across disciplinary boundaries so that these problems can be studied in their broader social, political and environmental context. Boyd (2016, p. B4) argues that "if we really want to matter, we need to think critically about the questions we ask---and the questions we don't ask---and what influences that distinction." The questions we ask have powerful effects on how we design the curriculum, what we expect of ourselves and our students and how we work together with colleagues in our own department as well as other fields to prepare our graduates to live and work in a changing and uncertain world. More
RSS