I am a member of the Kualiʻi Council, a recognized council to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa's Chancellor. Kualiʻi Council is the Native Hawaiian Advisory Council representing Native Hawaiian faculty, staff and students regarding relevant Hawaiian issues, problems and concerns. One of the missions of Kualiʻi Council is to increase Native Hawaiian administrators, faculty, staff and students, parity to the general Hawaiian population in our islands. That being said, as a representative of this council, I am a member of the UH Mānoa's Strategic Working Group on Engaged Learning.
Engaged Learning was one of the priorities from our campus's strategic plan. There were other priorities and such groups established - PhD funding, Engaged Scholarship (Native Hawaiian scholarship focused), Sustainability, and Instructional Innovation. Our focus was on retention and graduation for undergraduate students. The charge was to develop a comprehensive plan by December 2012 for strengthening and assessing different forms of engaged learning that can, and should, take different forms in different disciplines including undergraduate research (paid and unpaid), service learning, internships (paid and unpaid), clinical practica, capstone courses, study abroad, international exchange, etc.
Well......It's the end of Spring 2013. These working groups were formed in August or September 2012 and were expected to suggest a few recommendations to the Strategic Planning Committee, that then will be recommended to the chancellor. The make up of the membership comprised of faculty and specialists already in some program that further engages students academic learning experiences of reading the textbook and trying to attentively listen to the teacher's lecture. Now that our charge was over extended and towards the end of the school year, a few recommendations has been drafted and will be approved at our last meeting towards the end of this month.
It was pretty interesting to hear from faculty and specialists about their particular programs and services that are already offered through their own departments. Some truth, these meetings with these faculty and staff are really boring. Seriously, it is a tiresome environment, that once in a while, seems, very rarely, exciting. It is now the end of the school year and we need to submit something, or else there wonʻt be any funding attached to our proposed recommendations. Definitely an interesting point, which makes me wander, is/will funding be the major driving force to get these recommendations in?
The recommendations pretty much focuses on capstone projects and eportfolios. Capstone projects are already a required component of some academic programs, and will require buy-in from the faculty and etc. Whereas, eportfolios will take more resources to develop and maintain. For more information of my working group and the others, here is the link to our notes: UHM Strategic Working Groups
One of the questions was: How do we engage our faculty to do engaged learning?
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Monday, April 8, 2013
662.4 Reflections of Tonights Class
Tonights class focused on the presentation of 2 groups - the first group focused on assessment and developing change, and our group technology and online/long distance education. Both of our presentations took up the whole class tonight, which at first, I thought was going to be pretty short. Hence finish class early. However, that didn't happened. It was more than just a presentation. It included various hands-on experiences and small group discussions, that made the class more actively engaged.
I really appreciated the first group's reading on assessment - The Learning Organization: Assessment as an Agent of Change by Patricia M. Dwyer (2006). The main focus was on Kotter's (1996) 8-step process for creating change. It is a basic framework towards developing change within an organization structure. The 8-steps are:
As Bonnie mentioned, not all steps are applicable. The question for the first activity was about the barriers to change, the question being, "What curricular change is needed in the context you work in?" So, where I work at is in a non-academic unit, student services. Our primary focus is undergraduate education, the recruitment, retention, and advising of the teacher education programs. One barrier or a gap in our unit as student services is serving graduate students. There are a few times that prospective students are interested in our graduate programs and inquires about it, as we are somewhat the first line of defense. The current policy is to refer them to that academic department. We are a student services unit and we should service all interested and current COE students.
To enable change and using Kotter's (1996) 8-step process, I thought it was necessary to at least start off with 4 steps - 4 easy steps.
Step 1: Identify opportunities to service COE
The current sense is serving undergraduate students, the teacher education programs and the kinesiology program. Further identifying the opportunities for graduate education will potentially increase the visibility of COE. The potential opportunities could include recruitment, retention and initial advising for graduate students in COE.
Step 2: Identify Liaisons
Developing a coalition of 1 faculty from each department/program will enhance the capabilities of student services.
Step 3: Develop a vision and strategy
As a collective group, developing a vision and a strategy will set a foundation to that sense of urgency.
Step 4: Communication
Communication is vital with the dean, the student services unit and with the liaisons.
I hope these steps could start the change that I would like to see.
Technology and online/distance education is a rapidly increasing field within education. The study and use of it is highly valued in teaching and learning. I felt our group did a great job, briefly introducing to the class to several educational technology tools. There are a vast array of educational tools, although the ones we briefly introduced are very commonly used in educational settings. I also really liked the article that we chose for everyone to read, Social Learning Theory and Web-Based Learning Environments: A Review of Research and Discussion of Implications by Janette Hill, Liyan Song and Richard West (2009).
The article highlighted "social learning" as the main point of learning online. It is definitely a tool that can enhance student's learning capabilities, at the same time, decrease their interest or attention span in learning. Although it is quite a different environment, online learning/distance education requires active engagement. Morever, depending on how the curricular is structured for the online class, it can also provide learning experiences that the teacher is unable to provide.
I really appreciated the first group's reading on assessment - The Learning Organization: Assessment as an Agent of Change by Patricia M. Dwyer (2006). The main focus was on Kotter's (1996) 8-step process for creating change. It is a basic framework towards developing change within an organization structure. The 8-steps are:
- Establishing a Sense of Urgency
- Creating a Guiding Coalition
- Develop a Vision and Strategy
- Communicating the Change
- Empowering Broad-Based Action
- Generating Short-term Wins
- Consolidating Gains and Producing More Changes
- Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture
As Bonnie mentioned, not all steps are applicable. The question for the first activity was about the barriers to change, the question being, "What curricular change is needed in the context you work in?" So, where I work at is in a non-academic unit, student services. Our primary focus is undergraduate education, the recruitment, retention, and advising of the teacher education programs. One barrier or a gap in our unit as student services is serving graduate students. There are a few times that prospective students are interested in our graduate programs and inquires about it, as we are somewhat the first line of defense. The current policy is to refer them to that academic department. We are a student services unit and we should service all interested and current COE students.
To enable change and using Kotter's (1996) 8-step process, I thought it was necessary to at least start off with 4 steps - 4 easy steps.
Step 1: Identify opportunities to service COE
The current sense is serving undergraduate students, the teacher education programs and the kinesiology program. Further identifying the opportunities for graduate education will potentially increase the visibility of COE. The potential opportunities could include recruitment, retention and initial advising for graduate students in COE.
Step 2: Identify Liaisons
Developing a coalition of 1 faculty from each department/program will enhance the capabilities of student services.
Step 3: Develop a vision and strategy
As a collective group, developing a vision and a strategy will set a foundation to that sense of urgency.
Step 4: Communication
Communication is vital with the dean, the student services unit and with the liaisons.
I hope these steps could start the change that I would like to see.
Technology and online/distance education is a rapidly increasing field within education. The study and use of it is highly valued in teaching and learning. I felt our group did a great job, briefly introducing to the class to several educational technology tools. There are a vast array of educational tools, although the ones we briefly introduced are very commonly used in educational settings. I also really liked the article that we chose for everyone to read, Social Learning Theory and Web-Based Learning Environments: A Review of Research and Discussion of Implications by Janette Hill, Liyan Song and Richard West (2009).
The article highlighted "social learning" as the main point of learning online. It is definitely a tool that can enhance student's learning capabilities, at the same time, decrease their interest or attention span in learning. Although it is quite a different environment, online learning/distance education requires active engagement. Morever, depending on how the curricular is structured for the online class, it can also provide learning experiences that the teacher is unable to provide.
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