Resources
As we celebrate 25 years of the Wabash Center, Dr. Nancy Lynne Westfield hosts Dr. Raymond Williams, the founding Director of the Wabash Center. Dr. Williams discusses and reminisces about the Wabash Center’s growth, starting at the beginning.
Patricia Killen, Professor Emerita of Religion at Pacific Lutheran University and Wabash Center leader, joins Dr. Nancy Lynne Westfield as they discuss learning activities in the classroom. Dr. Killen has worked with the Wabash Center in a number of capacities since the foundation of the Wabash Center. This work has included: Advisory Committee Member, Workshop Leader, Consultant, and Editor of the Center’s Journal.
Dr. Nancy Lynne Westfield hosts scholars of the Asian Diaspora for a conversation in the third episode of Dialogue On Teaching. This episode’s guests include Dr. Susan Abraham (Pacific School of Religion), Dr. Boyung Lee (Iliff School of Theology), Dr. Roger Nam (Portland Seminary), Dr. Sharon Tan (Eden Theological Seminary), Dr. Mai-Anh Le Tran (Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary), and Dr. Tat-siong Benny Liew (College of the Holy Cross).
[su_heading]This information is for participants already invited to this program.[/su_heading] [row] [column lg="4" md="4" sm="12" xs="12" ] [su_button url="https://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/programs/workshops/travel-and-accommodations/" background="#86b53e" size="3" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="5" text_shadow="0px 0px 0px #FFF" desc=""]Info on Food and Accommodations[/su_button] [/column] [column lg="4" md="4" sm="12" xs="12" ] [/column] [column lg="4" md="4" sm="12" xs="12" ] [/column] [/row] [row] [column lg="7" md="7" sm="12" xs="12" ] [text_only_widget] Ground Transportation About a week prior to your travel you will receive an email from Beth Reffett (reffettb@wabash.edu) with airport shuttle information. This email includes the cell phone number of your driver, where to meet, and fellow participants with arrival times. Please print off these instructions and carry them with you. [/text_only_widget] [/column] [column lg="5" md="5" sm="12" xs="12" ] [text_only_widget] Contact Information on Day of Travel Wabash Center: 800-655-7117 After Hours: as directed in the travel email Venue Wabash Center [su_spacer size="20"] The Travel Authority (to change flights) 800-837-6568 Tami Brubaker tami.brubaker@altour.com Thommi Weliever thommi.weliever@altour.com [/text_only_widget] [/column] [/row]
There is no shortage of scholarly research that reflects the growing importance of open education, whether referring to issues surrounding access to education (formal, informal or postformal); different copyright licencing regimes (e.g. Creative Commons); alternative forms of educational delivery such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), or alternative pathways to learning, curriculum development and delivery and/or assessing and accrediting learning. So what can another publication add to our understanding of open education? It has become clear that thinking in terms of the binaries of ‘open’ versus ‘closed’ can no longer account and do justice to the wide range of possibilities and the varying factors that destabilise some definitions and practices. In Open(ing) Education: Theory and Practice, the authors therefore map ‘open’ as emerging from a dynamic network or ecology of often mutually constitutive factors resulting in a range of possibilities. The chapters in this book provide us with glimpses of open, opening, and opened, with none of these being permanent states of affairs, but rather contingent, serendipitous, often uncertain, and fluid. This book is unique not only with regard to its variety of approaches to mapping the various possibilities between open and closed but also with regard to the global spread of its many contributing authors. (From the Publisher)
Cognitive strategies are pedagogical ways that enable learners to manage their own learning. They mediate the transition from teaching to student learning. Instructors and students acquire cognitive strategies from their experience and schooling—for better or worse. Many instructors settle on those strategies that "work," or seem to. This is a pragmatic approach often uncritically unlinked to foundational theories of learning or research-based knowledge. The danger here is that it does not take long for these uncritically held strategies to become biased practices. An instructor will continue to use them even when they stop working. Lacking rigorous assessments of learning there is danger in continuing to use methods even when they don't work. Below are four theory- and research-based cognitive strategies. Most instructors use some form or another and likely refer to these as "methods" or "approaches." You can download a handout of these strategies here. Input Cognitive Strategies. An input cognitive strategy depends on those things to which learners pay attention. Most instructors overestimate the level of attention students give to the instructional intent of learning experience (the teacher's lecture, for example). Aside from short attention spans, learners pay attention to events external to them, by their own choice, or by distraction. An external stimulation might include anxiety about a job loss or family situation, which creates significant emotional distraction and is an un-motivator to learn. An internal stimulation might include remembering a career goal, which will motivate learners to give attention to those things in the lesson that will help meet that goal. Input cognitive strategies are applied to intentionally gain and maintain student attention. The rule is: students learn that to which they pay attention; and when they don't pay attention, they don't learn. Process Cognitive Strategies. A process cognitive strategy helps learners make sense of what they learn. Gagné and Medsker (1996) list several such as, Rehearsal: trying out something new; Elaboration: associating something new with something previously learned; Organization: imposing a structure on what is newly learned through such methods as outlining, categorizing, or diagramming. Instructors need to embed student learning activities throughout the lesson or course that facilitate these experiences. Output Cognitive Strategies. An output cognitive strategy helps ensure that learners acquire new knowledge or skills by applying what they have learned and making meaning of their experiences. For example, assigning learners to teach on something they would like to learn. The teaching (output) focuses the learners’ attention on organizing the new knowledge or skill to teach it to others. Through this approach, learners make sense of what they want to learn. Feedback Cognitive Strategies. Through feedback cognitive strategies learners to acquire new knowledge or skills by giving feedback to others. An example is to ask learners to hear a presentation or sermon and provide feedback to another student about that delivery. Giving feedback focuses the learners’ attention on organizing the new knowledge or skill to provide feedback to others. It is necessary to provide students a rubric of the concepts, principles, or criteria for assessment upon which to give feedback. For more information on cognitive strategies see Rothwell, William J., et al., Mastering the Instructional Design Process : A Systematic Approach, Center for Creative Leadership, 2015. See also Gagne and Medsker, The Conditions of Learning Wadsworth Publishing, 1996.
This post will focus on developing anti-racist and anti-ableist modes of assessment, and how things like contract grading can be a way for students to create their own forms of success in classrooms (instead of being held unfailingly to one standard model of “success” that doesn’t fit most students).
Recent student demands within the academy for “safe space” have aroused concern about the constraints they might impose on free speech and academic freedom. There are as many kinds of safety as there are threats to the things that human beings might care about. That is why we need to be very clear about the specific threats of which the intended beneficiaries of safe space are supposed to be relieved. Much of the controversy can be dissolved by distinguishing between “dignity safety,” to which everyone has a right, and “intellectual safety” of a kind that is repugnant to the education worth having. Psychological literature on stereotype threat and the interventions that alleviate its adverse effects shed light on how students’ equal dignity can be made safe in institutions without compromising liberty. But “intellectual safety” in education can only be conferred at the cost of indulging close-mindedness and allied vices. Tension between securing dignity safety and creating a fittingly unsafe intellectual environment can be eased when teaching and institutional ethos promote the virtue of civility. Race is used throughout the article as the example of a social category that can spur legitimate demands for “dignity safe space.”
The demographics of college campuses are changing and necessitate faculty provide a safe and inclusive environment for learning. The purpose of this study was to examine how faculty establish a sense of belonging in their classrooms, using focus group methodology to explore issues of power, privilege, and access at the postsecondary level. Faculty (N = 33) representing multiple identity groups discussed opportunities and challenges in effectively reaching diverse groups of students. Three thematic categories emerged illustrating how faculty prepare their courses for inclusive content, develop in-class instructional practices including methods regarding assessment, and believe in professional responsibility through persistent role modeling.
Video. Posted on EduCause website. To make higher education sustainable, we must understand the incoming generations. It's true that we're serving more and different generations than ever. And one sector that's often misunderstood is Generation Z. David Stillman, who spoke at the recent Educause Annual Conference, is the co-author of "Gen Z @ Work: "How The Next Generation Is Transforming The Workplace." He wrote the book with his Generation Z son, Jonah Stillman. A conversation with the Stillmans revealed four things we should know about Gen Z. Number one, students in Gen Z are the first digital natives.