Supported by the reconfigured Rappaport Fellows Program, the CTL is organizing a teaching – learning seminar for the 2009-2010 academic year. Led by Al Rudnitsky (Education & Child Study) and Glenn Ellis (Engineering), the seminar will build on the work of last year’s Kahn projects that explored the science of learning and its relevance to our work as teachers. The planned structure for this year’s seminar includes shared reading and discussion followed by “design experiments” in which faculty will try out new ideas in their own teaching.
Assessment of student learning emerged from the Kahn projects as a topic that held universal interest among faculty participants. All agreed that better teaching and learning were inextricably related to the quality of our assessments and that our assessments ought to measure the learning outcomes we most value.
An article entitled Efficiency and Innovation in Transfer [i] piqued faculty interest in developing better ways to assess student learning. The authors suggest that our current assessments tend to privilege narrow forms of transfer that feature replication rather than the interpretation and understanding that we want our students to develop. The authors go on to describe new forms of assessment that can shift the balance to more innovative uses of knowledge. Our teaching – learning seminar this year will begin with this reading and take on the challenge of designing assessments that are consistent with our goals for student learning.
Brown Bag Information Session: Friday, October 23, 2009 at 12:15 pm in Seelye 207 (dessert and beverages will be provided).
Due to the structure of the seminar, a limited number of participants can be accommodated. However, we aim to have a diverse range of disciplinary perspectives and experiences represented in the group. All interested faculty are encouraged to attend the October 23 session. If you are interested in participating in the seminar, but are unable to attend the brown bag lunch, please email Borjana Mikic at bmikic@smith.edu.
[i] Schwartz, D.L., Bransford, J.D., & Sears, D. (2005) Efficiency and Innovation in Transfer. In Mestre, J. (ed.) Transfer of learning: Research and Perspectives. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
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