Fall 2007 Conference Program

…Enhancing the professional development of faculty and administrators

Engaged Learning:
Fostering Student Success

Keynote Speaker: Dr. George Kuh

Friday, November 9, 2007
DCU Center, Worcester, Massachusetts

Overview of the Day

8:30 - 9:00 Conference Registration
9:00 - 9:15 Welcome, Introductions
9:15 - 10:30 Keynote Presentation
10:45 - 11:45 Concurrent Session 1
12:00 - 1:00 Lunch
1:15 - 2:15 Concurrent Session 2
2:30 - 3:30 Concurrent Session 3
3:30 – 4:30 Poster Session (wine & cheese)

Welcome and Introductions 9:00 – 9:15 AM

Ballroom North/Center
Dr. Judith Miller, President of NEFDC and Conference Co-Chair
Dr. Susan Wyckoff, Conference Co-Chair

Keynote Presentation 9:15 – 10:30 AM
 

Ballroom North/Center
Engaged Learning: The Foundation for Student Success (Presentation PDF)
Dr. George Kuh
Dr. Kuh directs the Center for Postsecondary Research, home to the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and related initiatives. A past president of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), Dr. Kuh has written extensively about student engagement, assessment, institutional improvement, and college and university cultures and has consulted with more than 185 educational institutions and agencies in the US and abroad.

Concurrent Session 1 10:45 – 11:45 AM

Ballroom South
Engaging Students through Interdisciplinary On-line Case-Based Teaching
Rob Schadt and Wayne LaMorte, Boston University
Public health problems are inherently interdisciplinary. However, students tend to learn from a one-dimensional, artificial perspective that fails to illustrate the complexities of real problems and the manner in which expertise from multiple disciplines is integrated to provide real solutions. In this session, we will describe an on-line case-based model that stimulates a paradigm shift for faculty regarding the value of interdisciplinary learning. We will discuss how this model fosters student engagement and encourages more effective curriculum development.

Meeting Room A
Assessing Student Engagement when Using Case Study Applications
Peg Christopher, California University of Pennsylvania
Case study application of knowledge is commonly used by faculty who teach graduate and undergraduate students enrolled in majors associated with a number of different disciplines and professions. Students who learn experientially are particularly responsive to the case study method of teaching. To be effective, however, student engagement has to go well beyond the problem-based learning strategies associated with case study application. This workshop describes strategies for both enhancing and measuring student engagement when using case study applications. Handouts and a number of case studies appropriate for use with students from a variety of majors will be distributed among attendees.

Meeting Room B
Going beyond the First Year Experience
Donna Keely and Donna Dalton, Lyndon State College
Ensuring student success through an engaging first year experience is something colleges throughout New England strive for as they welcome each new class of students onto their campuses. For many years, Lyndon State College had all of the components of a first year experience program; however, they existed in independent and separate initiatives and departments. How does a college take existing pieces, initiatives, and activities and form a seamless program? Follow the story and experiences of this campus community as they develop, implement, and now modify their first year experience program.

Meeting Room C
Learning through Engagement in the Community (Presentation PDF)
Kevin R. Kearney, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
Interested in introducing Service-Learning (SL) into a course or curriculum? Or in assessing learning outcomes from SL? In this workshop, I will describe the design and assessment of a course I have taught for seven years, and then engage the participants in an interactive exercise to plan the same for a course of their own. Topics to be addressed are: identification of learning objectives, assessment, course design, and community partnerships. By the end of the workshop, participants should have a good sense of the potential learning outcomes of SL, and ideas for designing or improving a course of their own.

Meeting Room E
Nine Activities in 60 Minutes: Engaging Students in the Classroom
Roben Torosyan, Larry Miners, Kathy Nantz, Fairfield University
In this team-lead workshop we present easily adaptable classroom strategies to engage students in understanding, remembering and applying difficult material. Participants learn about and gain experience with methods to help students gain voice and integrate learning visually, and to help faculty reflect on our teaching. By rotating through “jigsaw” groupings, participants learn methods for managing discussion and take ownership of ideas they are responsible for reporting out. Nine take-aways include: write, pair, share; pages on the wall; one minute paper; concept drawing; concept mapping; found objects; inspiring prompts on teaching; and high and low points of teaching practice.

Meeting Room D
A Web-Based Innovative Tool to Create Multimedia Course Content
Tim Lindgren and Elizabeth Clark, Boston College
Out of the need for faculty to easily create multimedia presentations for instruction, a web-based authoring tool called Memeo (My Educational Multimedia Explorer Online) was created. Memeo is a new way of putting together course content. It does not create a linear slide show or lecture, but rather interactive course content students can explore in a non-linear fashion. Memeo is a new way of looking at data and a new way for professors and students to share information. The presentation will demonstrate Memeo and how Boston College faculty members have used it to create their own interactive digital course content.

The Contribution of Diversity Awareness to Students’ Engagement
Moonsu Han and Althea Smith, North Shore Community College
Current college and university classrooms are diverse in academic ability, ethnicity, social background and age. At North Shore Community College, we find this diversity at different degrees. In an attempt to encourage students’ engagement and successful achievement of academic goals, we introduced the use of diversity awareness activities in our classrooms. In this session, we will review different diversity awareness activities, their aims and implications. Participants will be able to learn about possible ways to apply them in their classrooms or work settings.

Junior Ballroom
The Accidental Exam: Engaging Students Until the End (Related Word Document)
Kathleen M. Fisher, Assumption College
Because students’ energy is nearly spent at the end of the semester, final exams are often the least productive activity of a course. This session will describe the way a shortage of time in the semester led to an “engaging” final exam that was run like a small academic conference. This format required students to demonstrate what they learned over the semester by applying it, in writing and speech, to new information. Session participants will be asked to critique this pedagogy and to share other ideas for creating final exams that teach by engaging, integrating, and applying students’ intellectual abilities.

Assessing, Rewarding, and (Maybe Even) Grading Student Class Participation
Barbara E. Walvoord, University of Notre Dame
Drawing on workshops I have led and research I have conducted on college classrooms, this session will present real-life examples from faculty in a variety of disciplines, institutional types, and class sizes who grade or in other ways assess and reward students' class participation. We will explore the pros and cons of “grading” class participation; alternate ways to assess and reward participation; criteria for students’ participation; and how to avoid problems such as students who dominate, who are afraid to speak up, or who do not read the assignment.

Ballroom Lunch 12:00 – 1:00
North/Center

Ballroom South
Case Discussion on Video-based Faculty/TA Consultations: Handling the Challenges
Cassandra Volpe Horii and Adam G. Beaver, Harvard University
Whether you work with faculty, TAs, or both, this session gives you a chance to re-engage with your practice as a teaching consultant. Using the case method, we will examine and discuss nuanced stories of video-based consultations—especially the kind that leave us puzzled about our effectiveness or wondering how we could better communicate with clients who seem resistant, contradictory, or otherwise challenging. Come learn from your colleagues and yourself in this interactive discussion. Short printed cases will be provided at the session.

Meeting Room A
Measuring Student Engagement in a First-year Inquiry Course: An Instructor’s Assessment Toolkit
Joanne Curran-Celentano, Thomas Pistole and Michael Lee, University of New Hampshire
Engaged learning is the foundation of the University of New Hampshire’s revised general education curriculum. This session focuses on ways in which assessment not only measures the extent of student engagement in the learning process, but in fact increases that engagement. In developing an assessment plan for first year inquiry courses, UNH faculty have created an “assessment toolkit”--a set of instruments and practices from which other faculty can select as they seek to improve their courses through formative assessment. In this session, a panel will highlight items from the “toolkit” that participants might find useful in measuring learning outcomes associated with engaged learning.

Meeting Room B
Using Cooperative Learning Strategies to Engage Students in the Classroom
Alice Gardner, Monina R. Lahoz and Irena Bond, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
In this workshop, the authors will share educationally purposeful activities designed to engage students in the classroom in two diverse elective courses, one with 9-12 students and the other with more than 40 students. The activities include creating cooperative learning groups, and defining and structuring their collaborative activities. Participants in this session will experience cooperative learning structures developed by Dr. Barbara J. Millis called Jigsaw, Three-Step Interview, Structured Problem Solving, Stand Up and Share, and Think-Pair-Share. These techniques transform the students from individual, traditional passive learners to cooperative learners who are concerned about their own and their group members’ learning.

Meeting Room E
Effective Project-Based Strategies to Stimulate Student Engagement (Presentation PDF)
Mary Trottier and Kristen Harmon, Nichols College
Do your students fail to complete assignments? Do they procrastinate until the last minute and submit work that is of poor quality? This session will describe how a semester-long team-based project and frequent presentations before a critical audience was effective in increasing student engagement and enthusiasm. The project required research, interviews, and integration of knowledge acquired across the curriculum. It culminated in the submission of a 40-50 page project report that was presented and defended before a committee of faculty and administrators that was selected by the students. Participants will brainstorm similar strategies that may be effective in their classes.

Junior Ballroom
Continuing the Conversation with George Kuh George Kuh, Indiana University

Meeting Room C
Using eLearning Systems to Track Learner Outcomes across Disciplines (Presentation PDF)
Steven F. Tello, Luvai Motiwalla and Kathryn Carter, University of Massachusetts at Lowell
As technology becomes more deeply embedded in the teaching and learning process, new opportunities emerge for organizing and assessing student learning. At the University of Massachusetts at Lowell an increasing number of on-campus courses use an online course management system to assess student progress within courses. In an effort to automate the process of measuring student progress in achieving program-level objectives, the authors will demonstrate a method for tracking course-level assessment activities in WebCT and then categorizing these activities by program-level learning outcomes. This teaching tip session will demonstrate the application within a business school program and across the University’s General Education curriculum.

Students' Engagement in Virtual Communities: Teaching and Learning in Cyberspace
Arthur McGovern and Thomas Davis, Nichols College
In a collaborative teaching strategy, students accessed and explored virtual environments as part of a psychology course, and used structured observational research methods to study social processes in these virtual worlds. Students accessed an online virtual community, creating avatars and interacting with other participants in virtual space. Social behaviors were then recorded and investigated, focusing on how the principles of group dynamics operate in the virtual world. This collaborative strategy engaged students in academic learning outside the classroom in a provocative way, since “outside the classroom” was actually in a virtual, or simulated space with global dimensions.

Meeting Room D
Playing the Prisoners' Dilemma -- A First Day Activity
Peter Marton, Clark University
The first class of the semester offers a unique (and often missed) opportunity to set both the agenda and the tone for the course. I will introduce a first day activity, based on the Prisoners’ Dilemma, which I regularly use in my moral and social philosophy classes. This exercise requires the active participation of all students and it also introduces the two most essential concepts that determine our interactions with others: competition and cooperation. In the first half of the session, participants will reenact the exercise itself. In the second half, generalizations and students’ responses about the activity will be discussed.
 

Using Graded Peer-Evaluation to Encourage Critical Thinking and Writing
Vicki Todd, Quinnipiac University
This teaching tips session provides faculty with a four-component peer-evaluation assignment that encourages students to critically think about, synthesize, and write about course material rather than incorporate surface information into written assignments. Because peer reviewers can improve the grades on their final papers by offering concrete suggestions to original authors, the reviewers tend to report that they learn the information more thoroughly to successfully evaluate another’s paper. Students also learn the material more effectively by revising their final papers based on reviewers’ comments. The presenter will discuss the assignment components – draft assignment, grading rubric, peer-reviewer instructions, and final paper assignment.

Ballroom South
Liberal Learning and Living Learning: Faculty and Student Affairs Partnering
Catherine WoodBrooks, Nancy Adams and Conway Campbell, Assumption College
The presenters describe a new living learning program designed to meet the interests of today’s students. This residential program includes sixteen interest circles facilitated by faculty mentors who monitor the success of student learning outcomes established by both the faculty mentors and student affairs staff. This new model demonstrates a shared commitment between student affairs and faculty in both the quality of the program itself and its potential to affect lifelong learning. The presenters will describe the theoretical underpinnings of the model, role-play a mock interest circle, and facilitate a discussion on student centered learning versus a content driven model.

Meeting Room A
Engaged Tutors: Not Just a Marriage of Convenience (Presentation PDF)
Susan Lyons, Mark Newall and Mary Heckman, University of Connecticut, Avery Point
This panel focuses on increasing student engagement across campus by first engaging peer tutors. Session participants will be introduced to projects for engaging tutors that relate to the core intellectual values of the university: fellows projects that attach undergraduate tutors to specific classes, internships within the university, in-class workshop series in several disciplines, and tutor training that includes research and service-learning components. Participants will also learn how to assess the viability of such projects for their own institutions.

Meeting Room C
A Tool for Assessing Active Learning in Classroom Practice (Presentation PDF) (Related Word Doc)
Stephanie Ferriola, New England Institute of Technology
Almost everyone agrees that students learn best when they are actively engaged in learning, and most faculty think that they are doing a good job of engaging all of their students. But, how do you really know if what you are doing in the classroom is really “active learning”? Bring in an active learning assignment from your own classroom and see if it passes the test for active learning using a quick and easy self-scoring assessment guide.

Meeting Room E
AEM Learning: Active, Engaged and Measured (Related PDF)
Donna M. Qualters, Suffolk University
Can we do it all? Faculty are being challenged to use active pedagogy, engage students in and out of the classroom, and be accountable for learning. This session provides a five step model to design courses that are active and engaging and provide faculty and students with continuous learning feedback. The working session is most effective (but not necessary) if you bring a syllabus of a course you wish to redesign.

Junior Ballroom
Clickers and Podcasts and Blogs, Oh My! Emerging Technologies for Teaching and Learning
Cheryl Turner Elwell, Anthony Helm and Michael Krikonis, Clark University
Blogs, wikis, podcasts, virtual worlds, flickr, clickers...there are so many tools in the technology landscape these days. Are you wondering what they are, what people are using them for and what if anything you might be able to do with them? In this session the Academic Technology Services team from Clark University will give you an overview and demonstrations of emergent technology tools. Together we will imagine ways that they might be used for teaching and learning.

Meeting Room B
Engaging Students Through the Spirit of Competition
Donald Kieffer, New England Institute of Technology
Many college professors are in a never-ending search for the magic bullet that will be a sure-fire hit to engage students in the learning process. One teaching strategy full of potential for student engagement involves the use of competition between students to deliver lecture material and/or to illustrate teaching points. This session will use a variety of teaching demonstrations to model this teaching strategy and to allow participants to experience the power of a competition to generate interest in and focus on a set of lecture materials.

Engaging Writers with Dialog
Nicholas Hunt-Bull and Helen M. Packey, Southern New Hampshire University
Supporting thesis statements with evidence challenges our students in every discipline. The request “provide an example” can produce terror in some students! This session focuses on engaging students in dialogue about the topic to strengthen their thinking before they write. The session is a collaborative discussion/role-play of the student experience, modeling a writing strategy that participants could use themselves. Participants will see how to develop concrete evidence to support a thesis.

Meeting Room D
Molecule of the Week: Relating Organic Chemistry to Students' Lives
Robert Harris, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
Organic Chemistry is often considered the “bane” of many students’ undergraduate lives. Many students often wonder “why do I have to learn this?” By using a weekly “Molecule of the Week” activity, students are able to see how the “factual” subject matter in organic chemistry relates to the real world around them. These weekly molecules often relate back to the students own discipline of study, which makes them enjoy chemistry more. This session will discuss how using the “Molecule of the Week” activity creates a dynamic classroom environment and how it can be used in other courses and disciplines.

Tips for Designing Engaging Research Assignments
Pamela D. Sherer, Providence College
A major challenge for faculty is designing research assignments that meet course objectives and also engage and excite students. There are many alternatives to what can be thought of as the “traditional” term paper. This teaching tip session offers criteria for designing engaging research assignments and provides examples of research assignments that differ from the “traditional” term paper. Included in the presentation will be commentary on assignments that emphasize developing student information literacy skills, as well as improving knowledge of course content.

Poster Session (with wine & cheese) 3:30 – 4:30

Prefunction Area
Creating a Classroom Culture for Effective Learning - Immediate and Lasting
Keith Barker and Laura Donorfio, University of Connecticut
To make classroom learning effective, a number of attributes need to be in place. The most urgent of these is the creation of a classroom culture that could be inviting, comfortable, and non-threatening. This poster describes techniques to stimulate students’ engagement that the authors developed in their own courses. They range from pre-course contacts through engaging classroom activities to reduced anxiety for test taking.

Why Should I Care about Literature? Reaching Students through Readings
Amy Beaudry and Mark Bates, Quinsigamond Community College
This poster examines how to choose and use readings in Children's Literature classes to engage students with the material, have them collaborate with their peers and give them a sense of this field's rich history. We describe reading-based assignments used in traditional and online Children's Literature courses and provide guidelines on how to modify and use these assignments in a variety of other courses. Moreover, we discuss how other activities such as guest speakers and field trips—all connected to the course readings—contribute to further students’ engagement and foster students’ success.

Technology-Enabled Active Learning: Learning in More than One Dimension
John W. Belcher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Carolann Koleci, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Sahana Murthy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
For the past six years, MIT has been offering Introductory Physics in a technology-enabled classroom environment which promotes active learning. Technology-Enabled Active Learning TEAL merges lecture, recitations, and hands-on laboratory experience into a technologically and collaboratively rich experience for freshmen, with media-rich interactive software for simulation and visualization. Students gather in groups of nine, with twelve or so such groups in a common area, for five hours per week. This poster introduces faculty to the various components of the TEAL environment. Our goal is to facilitate the adoption of TEAL components into classrooms in other campuses.

Engaged Writing: Fostering Student Collaboration
Crystal Bickford, Nichols College
Writing-Across-the-Curriculum (WAC) concerns are becoming more prevalent. As such, traditionally non-writing instructors are faced to consider how writing may be integrated into their curricula without overshadowing important content and taking additional time out of the classroom. This poster examines classroom strategies that engage students with the writing process as well as with one another. All stages—including planning, implementation, and assessment—are discussed in addition to how outside sources may be of assistance (i.e., websites, blogs, rubrics, conferencing, tutors).

On-Computer Exams in Computer Science Courses
Mikhail S. Brikman, Salem State College
This poster describes the usage of on-computer exams as an essential part of teaching computer science and similar courses. I discuss the pros and cons of the on-computer exams, computer/lab setup recommendations, on-computer exam format suggestions, recommended on-computer exam questions, question formats to avoid, student preparation for the on-computer exams, comparative grade analysis, feasibility of on-computer exams for different types of courses, academic honesty and integrity. Goals, benefits, and recommendations resulting from my 6-semester experience with on-computer exams are also described.

Enhancing Laboratory Learning with Technology
Michael Buckholt, Jessica Caron and Kate Wrigley, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
The use of current communication and media technologies can improve students’ understanding of the scientific inquiry process. This poster introduces an initiative at Worcester Polytechnic Institute to integrate the use of a classroom response system, wikis and podcasts into the laboratory teaching environment. This initiative provided students with immediate input into a shared data system, and “just in time” access to procedures and concepts essential to solve experiments through wikis and podcasts. The outcomes and assessment for this initiative are discussed.

Creating Effective Course Websites for Student Engagement
Geoffrey Burgess and Eric Matte, Landmark College
What should an instructor consider when developing a course website that supports in-class instruction? How can an instructor determine the effectiveness of the course website? This poster presents a coherent set of guidelines for course websites with a discussion of specific, concrete procedures and examples. The emphasis will be upon pedagogical approach rather than technical aspects. In addition, we review data of students’ use of their course websites as a measure of student engagement and overall effectiveness of this medium for teaching.

Segunda Vida: Invention of Identity for Authentic Cultural Learning
Lois B. Cooper, Berkshire Community College
How can students actually come to own cultures they study? At Berkshire Community College, intermediate Spanish students created Hispanic identities for themselves that included their name, personality, passions, professional aspirations and family histories. Students researched their adopted countries, from the basics on geography and history to politics and current controversies, developing opinions and reacting to them in essays and oral presentations in the voice of their own characters. Their accounts evidenced the development of an authentic political sensitivity to events that came out of them imagining the consequences on people in their own (invented) circumstances.

How Students Spend Their Time and Enjoy (or Don't) Learning
Erin Driver-Linn, Harvard University
This poster describes the results of a study: 239 Harvard students reconstructed their daily activities in a manner that minimizes recall bias (Day Reconstruction Method, Kahneman et al., 2004). Course-related learning activities were not rated very positively, with ratings akin to “cleaning dorm room.” However, non-course-related learning activities such as discussing ideas and doing independent research were rated among the most positive of all activities, right up there with “eating.” These results may provide insight into factors that promote student engagement more generally.

Helping Students Situate their Research Projects
Shiko Gathuo
Students often have difficulty in conceptualizing how their small research projects fit in with the existing literature on their topics. The "wall of knowledge" presentation shall illustrate how individual research projects contribute to existing literature. The wall includes the concepts of seminal studies and paradigm shifts.

Digital Storytelling: A Strategy for Student Engagement and Faculty Development
Todd S. Gernes, New England Institute of Technology
Kimberly Hall, Emerson College
Digital storytelling, the application of basic filmmaking techniques to create short, personal-voice movies, is a highly effective and engaging strategy to introduce students to creative writing, storytelling, and basic media production, and to cultivate technological literacy among faculty and students. This poster introduces the concept of digital storytelling, the pedagogy behind it, and describes how it has been adapted for classroom use in a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. A brief history of digital storytelling is presented, as well as classroom applications, information about technological requirements and institutional support, and resources for further inquiry and training.

Web-Based Academic Roadmaps: Illustrating Educational Pathways and Fostering Student Success
Deborah Grossman-Garber, Cathy English, Thomas Husband, Daniel Murray, Katherine Peterrson and Anne Veeger, University of Rhode Island
The connections between institutional mission, educational outcomes, and the development of graduates prepared for the complexities of contemporary society are often unclear. We describe a web-based academic roadmap tool that illustrates educational pathways along the academic and early-career continuum. This tool is a vehicle for students to visualize expected learning outcomes for general education, the major, and co-curricular involvements, as well as to connect these outcomes to educational and career aspirations. We demonstrate how the tool serves as an introduction to the major, promotes curricular and co-curricular coherence, fosters high expectations and outcomes, and renders the educational enterprise transparent to students and the public.

Engaging Students in the Electronic Environment
Christine Holmes and Susan Eliason, Anna Maria College
Learner interaction and engagement are fundamental to learning. This poster discusses the concept of learner interaction and provides examples of how to increase interaction in courses that have an online or electronic component.

Utilizing Mid-Semester Evaluation to Improve Students' Performance
Abir O. Kanaan, Karyn M. Sullivan and Linda M. Spooner, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
According to published data, one of the top motivating and demotivating factors that has an impact on students’ attitudes towards learning is the course syllabus and design. This poster explores the validity of engaging students in a mid-semester course evaluation that allows for exam design changes to promote student success. Two practical exams were administered; however, only the second one incorporated students’ mid-semester feedback. When students were given the opportunity to assess the practical exam process, modifications were employed and more students achieved passing scores on the second practical exam. Mid-semester evaluations are important to foster student success and academic growth.

Applying Effective Decision Making Across the Curriculum
Kelly M. Kilcrease, Franklin Pierce University
Both Thomas Friedman and Peter Drucker have indicated the importance of decision making for the next generation of workers in a global economy. In essence, it is imperative that students become “knowledge workers” in order to make effective decisions within an organizational setting. Thus, educators need to determine when and where decision making techniques can be applied in their curriculum. In this poster, we provide examples of how in-class decision making can be applied in anthropology, sociology, political science, mass communication, statistics, arts, history, and economics courses.

Building Collaborations: Worcester State College and Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection
JoAnne Maynard and Nancy Brewer, Worcester State College
Our organizations bring together a variety of skills, and perspective. Linking our diverse natures makes us stronger and more capable of addressing health issues in communities. As innovative partners for change, we strive to move beyond our individual comfort and work together for an effective community based system. The partnership we have developed is unique. Our organizations are proud of our collaborative efforts to engage students.

Using a Student Response System to Foster Critical Thinking
Jill Rulfs and Kate Wrigley, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
A wireless student response system was used in an upper-level biology course to develop critical thinking skills. Students responded electronically to multiple choice questions for which more than one response had merit as an answer to the question. The distribution of answers was displayed and open discussion among students allowed. Finally each student selected an answer and wrote a brief justification for his/her choice. After grading was completed, the merits of and justifications for each response were discussed in class.

Academic Work Linkages – Impacting Student Success
Jacqueline H. Singh, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
How well our country produces graduates with desired skills competencies is a priority. However, many students do not make meaningful connections between their disciplinary work and career aspirations. How might higher education best address competencies students seek? A practical approach to assist students in making connections between academic programs and aspirational skills has been developed and demonstrated in diverse campus settings. This poster introduces an Academic-Work-Linkage Model and describes its application.

Writing Across the Curriculum and Changing Campus Cultures: A Thick Description Case Study
Robert Smart, Suzanne Hudd and Andrew Delohery, Quinnipiac University
How can a grassroots Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program model become the catalyst for campus cultural change? This poster examines Quinnipiac University’s WAC program through the experiences of administrators, trainers, faculty and students to reveal how program design becomes practice. We describe the process from the ground up and review specific WAC tools and techniques. Assessment results that measure with some assurance the impact of the program on the campus learning community are also discussed.

Quantitative Literacy – It’s Not Just Math Anymore (Related Word Document)
Karen Stanish and Sue Castriotta, Keene State College
What is quantitative literacy? How do we ensure that our students are quantitatively literate? In this poster, we discuss the concept of quantitative literacy and the practice of engaging students in quantitative literacy in context. We present special topics reviewed in quantitative literacy courses offered by faculty from a variety of disciplines at Keene State College. Moreover, we provide suggestions on how to design a quantitative literacy course on any field.

Reaching ESL Students Through Innovative Projects
Ival Stratford-Kovner, Bunker Hill Community College
Reaching the student who is having trouble accessing communication within any course as a result of limited language skills can be addressed through a simple and effective process. Greek narrative vases offer the answer. In this poster, I review how hands-on, simple graphic assignments can result in inclusion and additional mastery of English when completed by students. I illustrate this technique with examples of students’ from my own courses in Art History and discuss ways in which this technique can be implemented in other subjects.

Principles and Practices of Online Information Presentation
Donald Vescio, Worcester State College
Online information resources, such as web pages, databases, email, blogs, and wikis, provide instructors with significant opportunities to enhance the content of their courses. Too often, though, we forget how these technologies that make online information presentation possible shape our fundamental abilities to read and write digital content. This poster offers an examination of how the online presentation of information impacts student learning and written communication. I suggest specific strategies that can be used to increase the efficacy of online information presentation in achieving specific student learning outcomes.

Evidence, Reasoning and Engagement in Social Science
William Vogele and Robert Shea, Pine Manor College
How can an introductory course in social science be designed to promote quantitative reasoning and student engagement? We report on an ongoing redesign of an introductory course in which we seek to engage students in collaborative work to examine concrete data of social phenomenon as they probe and test theoretical ideas. Among the key learning outcomes that we seek are that students will be able to: understand key theoretical propositions of sociology and political science; translate these perspectives into testable propositions; and manipulate and interpret quantitative data through display and computational analysis.

Welcome to the Jungle! Today's Class Will Be Held in Ecuador
Marcy E Vozzella and Ken Thomas, Northern Essex Community College
This past May 16 students and two professors at Northern Essex Community College left the classroom and traveled up and over the active volcanoes of the Andes and into the rainforest. Lecturing was kept to a minimum but students returned with more information than could ever be shared in a typical didactic course. This poster describes a new field course and the guided inquiry methods used to promote student engagement. We also provide examples of coursework as well as ideas to create this kind of field experience.

What then Shall We Do? Fostering Moral Engagement
Elizabeth C. Vozzola, Saint Joseph College
Most colleges promote social justice by providing a range of experiences from community service to courses about social and ethical issues. Yet multiple surveys document a generation more comfortable with helping people in need than in changing the structures that cause human suffering. Moral development research offers numerous strategies for promoting levels of moral reasoning and moral motivation necessary to understand and address root causes of injustice. This poster presents recent research on effective strategies for promoting moral complexity and fostering moral motivation. It also presents and evaluates classroom exercises designed to engage students in linking moral reflection to moral action.