Connections : teaching, learning, and research [2010 : spring]

Western Trarolma UNIVERSITY Connections SPRING 2010 NEWS FROM THE COULTER FACULTY CENTER | TEACHING, LEARNING, AND RESEARCH FROM THE DIRECTOR'S DESK After a period of budget freezes, the CFC is now fully staffed and able to better serve faculty at WCU. With the loss of a position last year, we reorganized and combined our associate director with a vacant instructional developer position. Dr. Laura Cruz, associate professor of history at WCU, was hired after a national search. Laura brings to the position an outstanding reputation as a teacher and former winner of the Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award. Also, as editor of Mountainrise and a SoTL scholar, she brings much to the Boyer and QEP campus conversations. In addition to working with faculty on course design and teaching improvement, Laura acts in the absence of the director. On the IT side, we welcome our new Learning Management System Team Leader, Susan Knight. Susan comes to us from Horry Georgetown Technical College in South Carolina where she taught instructional technology and was president of the Faculty Senate. She also brings a strong business leadership background to help us with vendor relations and management as we migrate to Blackboard 9 for our new Learning Management System. CONTINUED PAGE 4 INSIDE THIS ISSUE What’s New with WebCat . 2 Digital Media on the Move . 3 Wimba MEETING . 4 A Celebration of Faculty . 5 Summer Institute for Teaching and Learning . 6 SoTL Scholar to Work with Faculty . 6 Supporting Communities of Scholarship . 7 Bill Papin's students measure heart rates, mood, calories burned, and impact on stress on a hike to Schoolhouse Fails in Panthertown. These activities are a result of Bill’s work with the CFC to align his course to the QEP. Instructional Development Support for the QEP By Robert Crow, Instructional Developer As a part of its strategic direction, the Coulter Faculty Center has incorporated an explicit directive to do its part to support the successful implementation and fulfillment of WCU’s Quality Enhancement Plan. So what does this mean for faculty? It means that the CFC stands ready to support the needs of faculty in the design and development of student activities that embody the tenets of the QEP. Starting with the five QEP student learning outcomes, CFC instructional developers are available to collaborate with teaching faculty and graduate teaching assistants to match the learning outcomes with effective instructional strategies. In fact, some activities that faculty are already engaged in with their students align nicely to QEP learning outcomes. One faculty member who recently completed development work of this type with Faculty Center instructional developers is Bill Papin from the department of Health, Physical Education & Recreation. “Oftentimes, as faculty, we might set limits on ourselves unnecessarily by underestimating what is actually possible,” reflects Papin. The first step in aligning learning opportunities and events with the QEP is forethought in what you wish to achieve instructional^. The next step is to locate people on campus that can help you meet that need. Papin considers working with the Faculty Center staff as an opportunity and notices that the staff often become every bit as excited to develop a new teaching technique or craft an innovative learning activity as the faculty member. At first Papin found the QEP daunting. His initial impression was "Implement the QEP? I don’t know how to do it!” He remembers feeling that implementing the QEP on an individual basis was a sort of lone undertaking, but soon realized that there are people here on campus to assist you through the uncertainty. "We as instructors sometimes forget that we are connected,” he said. Papin used the metaphor of the human body to describe the working relationship academic units have with the CFC - with each academic unit representing the extremities connected to the body. Papin also realized that he doesn’t have to invent all the tools. "Resources available at the CFC have made my life easier, and I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel,” he said. Papin’s suggestion to fellow faculty: “Let the CFC make your life easier, too.” SPRING 2010 | page 1