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?
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ReplyDeleteSounds like you have to put the "Establish a sense of urgency" step to use!
ReplyDeleteWhy are the recommendations only coming in now, at the end of the semester? Were there not enough meetings during the semester to prompt progression on the proposal?
In high school, my class made ePortfolios, but in all honesty, I did not update it in college nor did I ever intend on using it for a job interview. It is a nice collection of work, but nothing beyond that. If ePortfolios are to be a graduation requirement in the future, resources must be allocated into making these ePortfolios relevant and usable (maybe convince employers to ask for them?).