PROJECT PROFILES

Highlights of the Visible Knowledge Project: 2002-2003

By Lorraine Graham

During the past year, the Visible Knowledge Project has increasingly focused on creating and nurturing “local dialogues.” VKP faculty on both the East and West Coasts have worked to enhance collaboration and research by meeting at regional institutes to share and discuss their work on the scholarship of teaching and learning. VKP participants are creating and working with different models of “local dialogues”—such as the Teaching Cooperative at CSUMB and the Digital Stories Affinity Group—designed to expand and enrich regional and campus-wide collaboration. Following another model, VKP faculty at Georgetown University and CUNY worked in tandem with a campus-wide event to share their research, extending the work of the Project outwards beyond VKP participants and into the larger university community.

LOCAL DIALOGUE ON THE WEST COAST

The West Coast Institute

To nurture this trend of “local dialogues” activity, VKP faculty at California State University-Monterey Bay (CSUMB) hosted a regional institute. The West Coast Institute was the first of many successful local events during the past year. From January 24-26, 2003, participants from CSUMB, Cerritos College, California State University-Sacramento (CSUS), University of Southern California, Reed College, and Arizona State converged at CSUMB for collaboration, workshops, great food, and sun.

Participants expressed how helpful it was to have an event locally. Lois Leveen (Independent) pointed out that “while the Summer Institutes have been wonderful, it was great to have a smaller, midyear event. The West Coast Institute was a great opportunity to learn more about the work of a smaller group of colleagues.” Fostering local dialogues on the West Coast, where faculty on different campuses are often geographically far away from each other, can be difficult. Jan Connal (Cerritos) asserted that VKP faculty at Cerritos College and on the West Coast in general “need to work really hard at getting our VKP group together to create the type of camaraderie and interest needed to sustain local dialogues.” The West Coast Institute provided many opportunities for faculty to share research experiences and to get to know each other better.

The West Coast Institute attendees reviewed the Visible Knowledge Project scholarship of teaching and learning process—beginning with an overview of the Project, moving to constructing and narrowing researchable questions, working with evidence, and concluding with a discussion of possibilities for VKP campuses and individual scholars.
CSUMB campus coordinator, Cecilia O'Leary, welcomed the group and placed their work in a political context of social change. In particular, she linked the inquiry into teaching and learning to encouraging students to be imaginative, to ask difficult questions, and to act to improve the world.

On Saturday, the Institute focused on defining a research question and working with evidence of student learning. Aaron Cohen (CSUS), Patricia O'Connor (Georgetown), and Gilbert Neri (CSUMB) walked the group through their own process of inquiry in their projects, illustrating the balance between narrowing and refining the researchable questions while keeping broader goals in mind. For Lois Leveen and other independent faculty who are not affiliated with a core campus, learning about other VKP faculty projects and processes of inquiry was particularly invigorating. Leveen felt that the Institute helped her “feel more connected to the work other people were doing midway through the school year.” Kimberly Duff (Cerritos) found the meeting “very stimulating in terms of actually getting to know the faculty who were implementing the projects,” and especially “appreciated hearing how faculty had to revise their initial ideas to fit their student population.”

In the Saturday afternoon session on coding data, scholars explored one way to work with qualitative data. During the session, faculty experimented with applying four pre-determined categories to a think aloud interview and a set of Blackboard postings. By the end of the day, participants began to see ways to use this kind of data to explain something significant about student learning and impacts of faculty teaching. For Jan Connal, “the best part of participating in the West Coast VKP was the realization that we were not only collecting evidence of student learning but interpreting it.” As an Educational Psychologist, Connal is trained in quantitative research methods and is “fascinated by the VKP’s qualitative approach to capturing evidence of student learning.”

All participants marveled at the collaborative and profoundly interdisciplinary environment of the West Coast Institute. “Although it is rare that faculty from so many different disciplines and institutions come together,” said Kimberly Duff, “I believe that the diversity of our backgrounds enhanced the discussions.” Such an environment is encouraged and nurtured by the Visible Knowledge Project. One of the ways in which the Project seeks to emphasize and develop collaborative work and conversation across the disciplines is through triad conversations. The Sunday morning session of the Institute focused on changing the research paradigm in scholarship of teaching and learning, and began with an explanation of these triad conversations. During these calls, three VKP scholars discuss methods of working with, and meanings of, evidence of student learning. Julie Yen (CSUS), Lois Leveen (Independent Investigator), Rina Benmayor (CSUMB), and Patricia O'Connor participated in one set of these talks and shared their experiences.

Participants reported that triad conversations and small local VKP Institutes emphasize collaboration and help push faculty towards an interdisciplinary learning experience which more closely matches that of their students. “Our students take classes from all different disciplines (e.g. math, sociology, history, etc),” Kimberly Duff noted, “yet it is rare for faculty to take an interdisciplinary approach.” Participants all reported the benefits of collaboration and suggested ways to maintain consistent exchange. For example, as a social psychologist, Duff was “pleased, but surprised” that she could enhance her course psychologically “through generation of ideas from people in non-psychologically related courses.”

Thus, in an arena where all could share and learn, the West Coast Institute introduced new members to the VKP and advanced the Project’s focus on the evidence of student learning.

The CSUMB Teaching Cooperative

VKP at CSUMB has sought to establish a diverse group of participants and encourage and build “local dialogues” activity. To that end they have fostered interaction and collaboration with colleagues—including junior faculty—from other colleges and departments at CSUMB who are working on projects involved with new media and innovative pedagogy. As part of this effort to encourage interdisciplinary scholarship, collaboration, and dialogue between VKP participants and non-VKP members, the Teaching Cooperative at CSUMB has sought to reach out in a sustained way to a group of colleagues.

With developmental support from the Project’s central staff, the CSUMB Teaching Cooperative hosts a series of seminars aimed at enhancing dialogue. These seminars began with learning about how to use new media in the classroom, and encourage thinking about what it means to make knowledge visible in teaching and learning. Seminar attendees learn about pedagogical approaches that can be used to engage students in high-level thinking, and design research projects for their classes using these approaches.

Other VKP participants are assisting their institution introduce and train faculty and staff in new technologies, pedagogical techniques, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Jan Connal reports that Cerritos College “is relying on [the VKP] faculty team, along with about four other projects, to provide the foundation for faculty development at Cerritos.” This is an example of how the model provided by the CSUMB seminars can be used in other situations and locations to help non-VKP faculty think about the scholarship of teaching and learning, the application of new technology in the classroom, and to learn to collect classroom-based evidence to provide insights on student learning.

LOCAL DIALOGUE IN NEW YORK

CUNY VKP Meeting

On February 7, the three CUNY campuses collaborated on a wonderful day of activity in NYC, including a three-hour public presentation, attended by 70-80 participants. Coordinated and conceived of by David Jaffee, Gail Green-Anderson, Joe Ugoretz, and Bret Enyon, this event was a compliment to the regional meetings begun in February 2002 to expand affinity group communications and for “local dialogues” activity.

The day started with a combined CUNY VKP session, during which Rafael Corbalan (BMCC), Larry Hanley (City College and the Graduate Center), and Gail Green-Anderson (LGCC) all presented their VKP projects to the group. Anderson was excited to touch base with colleagues about their research projects: “Having watched my colleagues in VKP develop their projects from the initial light bulb stage, to the in-class research stage, I am thrilled to learn about preliminary findings.” There was good general conversation about the next 2-3 years of the project, including plans for publication of project results, and managing possible growth of campus-based participants while continuing to deepen the projects underway. Randy Bass and Michael Coventry where both there to represent the Project’s central staff.

After these presentations, Paula Berrgren (Baruch College and the Graduate Center) gave some brief comments following her appearance in the video, and Randy Bass gave a wrap up presentation of some overarching issues in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Participants acknowledged the value of interacting with colleagues in a small and focused setting. Rachel Theillheimer appreciated the chance to present her work in a supportive environment: “An event like the one in February gives me a deadline to work toward, and the feedback I receive propels me forward.” The conversations sparked by the presentations continued into a lively reception, which brought the day to a close.

As with the West Coast Institute in late January, the CUNY VKP event demonstrated how effective “regional” events can be in moving the project forward. It also reinforced how much progress and scholarship is taking place inside the project—even since the Summer Institute—and how much interest there is in this kind of work and the project in general.

Digital Stories Affinity Group Conference at LaGuardia Community College

The Digital Storytelling Affinity Group gathered at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, for a three-day conference May 7-9, 2003. Tracy Weis (Millersville University) joined Rina Benmayor and Cecilia O'Leary (CSUMB) for an event hosted by Bret Eynon of LaGuardia. In addition to sharing their work with several groups of LaGuardia faculty and a group of LaGuardia students, Thursday afternoon's session with VKP participants from throughout the New York area focused on digital stories as evidence of student learning.

The Conference began on Wednesday afternoon with a public presentation. Rina Benmayor, Cecilia O'Leary, and Tracy Weis gave a talk open to LaGuardia Faculty on Digital Storytelling. They also presented an update on the electronic portfolios initiative.

On Thursday morning, Rina Benmayor used examples of student projects from her poster to present digital storytelling to a crowd of students and technical assistants. The students found the idea of the electronic portfolio especially relevant to their own professional needs and goals. There was a useful discussion about how to incorporate digital storytelling techniques and electronic portfolios into personal statements.

Later that afternoon there was a citywide VKP meeting to discuss the implications of linking digital storytelling to projects on the scholarship of teaching and learning. Rina Benmayor again effectively used her poster to present an assessment rubric describing ways of dealing with evidence of student learning. In addition, Cecilia O'Leary showed some examples of digital stories to the group. An exciting and deeply interdisciplinary conversation about how to interpret and define evidence of student learning followed.

The last event of the conference was a workshop with the faculty of the electronic portfolio pilot project. On Friday morning, the pilot faculty met for several hours to discuss and explore the ways and means by which digital storytelling could be integrated with electronic portfolios.

LOCAL DIALOGUE AT GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

VKP Participates in Campus-Wide Event at Georgetown University

VKP participants at Georgetown University are also helping create local dialogue. On November 21, Georgetown VKP faculty held a panel discussion in conjunction with “Innovations Day,” a campus-wide event designed to give faculty from all three campuses at Georgetown University (Main, Medical, and Law) an opportunity to share their unique ways of incorporating technology and new pedagogies into their teaching and academic projects.

Randy Bass addresses Georgetown faculty while VKP Project posters are on display

Participants in the VKP panel, held in the morning, included Patricia O'Connor (English), Eddie Maloney (CNDLS and English), Randy Bass (CNDLS and English), Frank Ambrosio (Philosophy), Leona Fisher (English), Betsi Stephen (School of Foreign Service), and Ed Ingebretsen (English). O'Connor, Associate Professor in the Department of English, delivered a presentation titled "Making Sense of Evidence: Signs of Student Learning," which asked the question, "Does using hypertext to illustrate associative thinking yield closer reading habits in students?" Her goal was to illustrate and deepen student understanding of literature by delving into the social, historical, and cultural contexts.

That afternoon, VKP faculty joined a dessert and poster session where they showcased their work on the scholarship of teaching and learning. This session was the culmination of a weeklong exhibition of the posters in the ICC Galleria. The posters were moved from ICC to Copley Formal Lounge for the Innovations Day event.

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