AAC&U Conference , April 2-4 2009
Round Table presentation
Nils S. Peterson, Assistant Director of The Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology—Washington State University
Abstract: Washington State University has explored SharePoint (MOSS) as a lightweight learning management system (LMS) and SharePoint Mysites as an ePortfolio platform, supplemented with social networking tools and strategies. Integration between course spaces and portfolios has been done in a “hub and spoke” model. New strategies for facilitating and assessing learning necessitate a substantial change in faculty roles. In this session, participants will (1) explore the critical and integrative thinking skills that students will need in 21st century Web 2.0 learning/work environments and (2) use this exploration to reflect on novel assignments and faculty roles needed to (3) facilitate this learning.
The following documents were part of this discussion:
- Introduction, activity, and readings
- Current description of WSU’s work (see also this blog post from AAC&U Jan. 2009)
- Updated Learning Spectrum self-assessment
- Four strategies (different points on the Learning Spectrum)
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April 1, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Graham Douglas
Very glad to see integrative thinking skills being included.
Please contact me if you would like to consider the tools I offer for teaching Integrative Thinking.
Another link you may find useful is http://www.valuenetworks.com .
April 7, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Nils Peterson
Reflection on the presentation and conference.
William Sullivan, senior scholar, Carngeie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching gave the Plenary April 3. He spoke about a number of timely themes, including a post-crash move toward greater accountability. Certainly we are seeing this in some financial and industrial sectors and from the Obama administration. Sullivan spoke about market failure that can result from pursuit of single goals with single modes of assessment. (It made me think of the successes and failures of mono-crop agriculture.) He suggested that going forward we need to learn to compromise and pursue multiple complex goals with multiple assessments (and I would add perspectives).
Sullivan also spoke about a need for new forms of social contract between universities and society. Specifically, he spoke about a the need for a more engaged academy with greater civic value and engagement. He characterized pre-crash Higher Ed as focused on developing skills and postulated a post-crash higher ed that taught: (re-)purposing of knowledge; development of character; and that practical judgement is more important now than technical judgment.
He describe a goal for higher ed being development of students’ “practical reasoning” skills, which he characterized as back and forth between domain knowledge and a specific complex context.
I think that this talk hit close to many of the ideas we have been exploring with the Harvesting Gradebook — the role of community, the abundance of knowledge, the need to purpose it to specific complex contexts.
I’m afraid that I did not find the other sessions as insightful. They demonstrated civic engagement via service learning and assessment of learning outcomes, but within pre-crash contexts.
My own session was attended by 10 people (the challenge of 7:45 Saturday morning?). We had a lively discussion of the readings and materials. My feeling was that for many, this was the first encounter they were having with the juxtaposition of these ideas (Web 2.0, collaborative communities, long tail). The audience seemed appreciative and took most of my 25 handouts.
April 30, 2009 at 4:08 am
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[...] problem for assigning grades after school resumes. WSUCTLT has been pointing to a solution — scalable community-based assessment (see the link:Updated Learning Spectrum self-assessment) Here WSUCTLT is examining the difference [...]
November 13, 2009 at 9:47 pm
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[...] The second challenge, proving that the work is “yours” is probably done by making a claim to a corpus of works rather than to a single piece, and by making an appeal to a community and context in which the work was done. (Unlike Catherine Howell’s thought (ca 2005) that “universities have a role in ‘authenticating’ individuals [and endowing]… them with certain attributes,” we think an ePortfolio world that enables community-based learning and community-based credentials breaks those assumptions about the university, see a recent piece for AAC&U.) [...]
March 21, 2010 at 11:40 pm
Reimagining both learning & learning institutions « One small step for man
[...] about institution-based vs community-based learning models. A strong sample of that work is in our AAC&U presentation from April 2009. There are two charts that are important to our thinking, Learning Spectrum and [...]