USING EFFECTIVE ASSESSMENT TO PROMOTE LEARNING

“Good luck on your first day as an assistant professor, Dr. Tanner! Have a great class!” On the wall above my desk, these words scream out from an otherwise encouraging note that is adorned with many exclamation points. This note has hung on my wall since my very first day as an Assistant Professor of Biology. As I was charging off to teach my first class, a senior faculty member who had been on my hiring committee slipped this note under my office door. In moments of pause years later, I still stare up at that note and breathe a sigh of relief that I had much more than luck to guide me on my first day as a college-level teacher. Although I continue to have much to learn—as all of us do no matter the number of years of teaching experience—I did arrive at the university with both formal and informal training in science education. I had had plenty of exposure to innovative pedagogical approaches, questioning strategies, and techniques for engaging diverse audiences in learning science. As a scientist educator, I had had the privilege of many years of collaboration with outstanding K–12 educators as well as a postdoctoral fellowship in science education. However, my training has been, to say the least, unconventional compared with that of my fellow junior faculty and unique in its preparation in regard to the teaching and learning of my discipline. It will not be news to anyone reading this article that university and college teaching is to a large extent a profession with no formal training. It’s startling but true that the majority of faculty members—and lecturers who often teach large numbers of students—have no formal training in the teaching and learning of their discipline. In fact, the hiring process in university science departments is structured primarily to evaluate a faculty candidate’s ability to be a productive researcher, with success measured in number of publications and magnitude of grant funds raised. Depending on the type of institution, for example, research university, state-level university, or liberal arts college, there may be a component of the faculty interview process that probes a candidate’s teaching ability, for example, requesting a statement of teaching philosophy and requiring the candidate to teach a sample lecture class. However, this sample lecture often screens for gross inadequacies, rather than looking for stellar innovations or pedagogical skills. This lack of formal, accredited training for university and college instructors stands in stark contrast to the requirements for a high school teacher who is charged with the education of students only a year junior to college freshmen. High school teachers in the United States must be credentialed as a secondary science teacher, demonstrate subject matter competency in every subject that they will be teaching, and must continually engage in professional development in the teaching and learning of their discipline throughout their career as a science teacher. With the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind legislation, the onus is upon each precollege science teacher to become “highly qualified” in terms of formal university-level training in science education. However, no such required professional training or measurable standards for teaching are required in institutions of higher education. Many policy documents have suggested standards of teaching practice in postsecondary science education (National Research Council, 1996, 1997; Siebert and McIntosh, 2001), but the extent of implementation of these ideals is unclear and has gone relatively unstudied, although national and regional accreditation boards do look at outcomes, asking colleges and universities to assess what their students have gained from four years of study at their institutions. Nonetheless, there is a striking reversal of accountability that happens when one crosses the precollege teaching to college-level teaching boundary (Table 1). During the K–12 school years, society expects K–12 teachers to be responsible for student learning. Salaries of teachers in many states are tied to student test scores, and poor student performance can potentially invoke penalties. At a college or university, several variables in the educational universe shift. Students are the ones responsible for learning. The evaluation and compensation of college-level teachers is not DOI: 10.1187/cbe.05–12–0132 Address correspondence to: Kimberly Tanner (kdtanner@sfsu.edu). CBE—Life Sciences Education Vol. 5, 1–6, Spring 2006

Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) is an experiential learning approach that merges theoretical academic knowledge with meaningful reflective workplace experiences. WIL is more than just work experience, it enhances graduate competencies and attributes and provides a point of difference that sport management employers’ value. This chapter focuses on WIL in New Zealand and the pedagogies used to enable sport students to develop their preparedness for employment in a supported environment. The reflective WIL process aims to enhance aspects of students’ personal growth and professional development. WIL involves focusing on developing aspects of students’ self, and also enhances their boundary spanning competencies (soft skills) and a depth of discipline understanding (hard skills). It is recommended that WIL is part of the whole course of study, involving partner organisations rather than as a stand-alone component, thus embedding workplace and WIL opportunities within purpose-designed curricula and co-curricular activities. The WIL experience can also provide graduates’ life-long learning as potential ‘super-mentors’ of future WIL students.

In essence, the English teaching process in colleges and universities is a learning process of foreign language culture. Teachers in colleges and universities just use this learning process to penetrate humanistic education into English teaching and to integrate with it, so as to help students to improve their humanistic quality. Given this, this paper first gives a statement onto internal relations between English teaching in colleges and universities and humanistic & spiritual education. Based on the special historical background of China at present, this paper discusses new requirements of new times for humanistic & spiritual education in English teaching in Chinese colleges and universities. Moreover, an analysis is made onto relevant causes for deficiency of humanistic education in English teaching in Chinese colleges and universities. Based on current conditions and existing deficiencies of English teaching in Chinese colleges and universities, effective countermeasures and recommendations are proposed in this paper for the implementation of humanistic education in English teaching in Chinese colleges and universities, with certain positive reference to the promotion of teaching practices.

The ICT disciplines in Australian universities have a strong tradition of industry engagement in curriculum design and implementation particularly through work integrated learning programs. Work integrated learning (WIL) includes industry placements, internships, industry projects and other methods and approaches that aim to enhance the professional practice capabilities of students. There are various stakeholders involved in WIL programs including universities, students, government and industry, each with their own motivations and expectations. Whilst all stakeholders agree on the benefits to students, there are conflicting interests that jeopardise further development and innovation in WIL. This paper reports on surveys of industry and university stakeholders in order to understand representative views and current practices. The findings confirm a lack of a shared understanding between stakeholders regarding roles, responsibilities, models and benefits. The paper concludes with several recommendations regarding the adoption of an outcomes-based approach to the design and implementation of work integrated learning programs that will encourage innovation and quality in WIL.

Promulgation of the Higher Education Qualifications Framework (HEQF) tasks the Council for Higher Education (CHE), South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) and Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) and standards generating bodies (Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA)) with guiding institutions through the implementation of the new framework. Implementation is through a phased approach spanning a five-year period beginning in January 2011 and with anticipated culmination in December 2014. As the Higher Education Framework Handbook (CHE 2011:2) states: ‘all existing institutions, public and private, offering existing and previously accredited higher education programmes will be impacted upon by this process in some manner or form, whether it be through a minor name change or a complete renewal of the programme content.’ Consequently, universities of technology (UoT’s) have embarked on a curriculum renewal process and the Civil Engineering Department of Durban University of Technology (DUT) is no different. It is within this context of participation and multiple contributory environments of different role-players that this study was founded. This research explored the Civil Engineering industry’s involvement in the curriculum renewal at DUT with the intention of understanding its contribution and influence in the renewal process and particularly in terms of curriculum design. The scope of the study was restricted to DUT Civil Engineering Department and their graduates, with subjects selected from a convenience sample of DUT Civil Engineering Department’s database of employers that have in the past and presently employ DUT graduates and/ or Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) students. The sample constituted organisations from the contracting, consulting and para-statal fields of employment. A questionnaire was designed containing both open-ended questions and rating scales that explored and probed the Civil Engineering industry level of involvement in the curriculum and curriculum renewal activities at DUT. In addition, interviews were conducted with seasoned Civil Engineering staff that have interacted with industry at various levels to gain their view of industry’s involvement with design of the Civil Engineering curriculum. Data from both questionnaires and interviewees overwhelmingly suggested that industry is not directly involved with the curriculum renewal currently underway at DUT, some respondents only gathered that such an activity was taking place through the medium of the questionnaire. This suggests that the resultant curriculum will be void of much industry engagement and influence. The nature of engagement that does occur is largely through the utilisation of DUT graduates or WIL students. Engagement occurs most commonly when curriculum issues are raised by staff at interviews of employers during WIL, suggesting that the nature of association with DUT is limited to employment of students or graduates. It is inferred that industry has very little direct input into the curriculum. DUT Advisory Board is considerably under-utilised for its intended purpose of engaging industry on curriculum issues, and its existence is unfamiliar to industry at large. As much as the Advisory Board is the most appropriate avenue to discuss curriculum issues, it has limitations in that its function is not entirely realised. The data generated also resoundingly suggests that industry is fully supportive of an inclusive participation process. Data further suggest that industry genuinely wants to be involved in curriculum discussions, and decisions for reasons ranging from participating to create more relevant course content, to contributing to creation of graduates with more appropriate employability attributes. Participants from industry further intimated that their role remains for on-site experiential learning: they provide the working knowledge to complement the academic knowledge provided by DUT. They also consider themselves to be providers of other facets that contribute to a holistic graduate, and assume further roles such as those of mentors and supervisors. The likely outcomes of their influence would be rapid engagement of graduates within the Civil Engineering field. A symbiotic relationship therefore becomes apparent between DUT and industry, where with more input into the curriculum by industry; a more work- orientated graduate is produced to better serve the needs of industry. The following recommendations emerge from the findings of this study: Since most of industry’s engagement occurs during WIL interviews, it would be prudent if a generic curriculum- based questionnaire is devised. This should be filled in by employers during student WIL visitations by staff in addition to the existing questionnaire. In doing so DUT would be proactive in literally ‘taking curriculum issues to them’. The DUT Civil Engineering Department should target those companies that have an interest in making a concerted effort by enlisting them onto the Advisory Board. From an institutional perspective DUT should be more proactive and advertise the existence of such an entity, created solely for curriculum discussions with the public, and particularly with industry. Assessments, course content and the project component of the programme generated considerable comments from industry that the Civil Engineering Department could take into consideration during the curriculum renewal process.

Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California.

The growing focus on teaching research in higher education due to rapid socio-economic development has diminished the importance of teaching. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) addresses this by promoting systematic research on teaching practices. However, integrating SoTL into organizational performance management remains challenging, especially in China. This study examines how leader-member exchange (LMX) affects university teachers' SoTL performance, considering psychological capital as a mediator and LMX differentiation and traditionality as moderators. Based on social exchange theory, resource conservation theory, and social comparison theory, this study developed a cross-level three-order regulatory moderated mediation model. Data were collected from 351 university teachers across 68 grassroots teaching organizations in three universities in central China. Measures included LMX, psychological capital, traditionality, and SoTL performance. The analysis involved descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and PROCESS macro for mediation and moderation effects. The results showed a strong positive correlation between LMX and SoTL performance (r = 0.742) and between psychological capital and SoTL performance (r = 0.677). Psychological capital partially mediated the relationship between LMX and SoTL performance, accounting for 26.866% of the total effect. The study also found a significant three-order interaction effect of LMX differentiation and traditionality on the relationship between LMX and psychological capital. Specifically, the positive impact of LMX on psychological capital was most pronounced when LMX differentiation was high and teacher traditionality was low. This study highlights the critical role of LMX in enhancing university teachers' SoTL performance through psychological capital. It underscores the importance of psychological capital as a mediator and the complex moderating effects of LMX differentiation and traditionality. The findings suggest that optimizing LMX relationships, developing psychological capital, and leveraging traditionality can significantly improve SoTL performance. The study provides new insights into the application of LMX theory in higher education and offers practical strategies for enhancing teaching quality in Chinese universities.

Training future programming teachers requires an innovative approach. Not only students need to handle the most current trends in technologies and teaching-learning methodologies, but also they must develop the capacity and criteria to search and select the most adequate to their context. This work analyzes the application of a collaborative Research-Based Learning methodology in the Programming subject of a master's degree in teacher training. The objective was to create a digital learning ecosystem and analyze the impact on the development of programming teaching skills. The results show that students perceive positive effects on the development of teaching skills, generating useful resources. However, teamwork has conditioned the quality of such resources. The digital ecosystem has allowed students to share knowledge with their peers and forthcoming students. Students who already had the generated ecosystem available valued it very positively. Future programming teachers require lifelong learning which can be supported by this living ecosystem.

In this paper we present a model which describes the scholarship of teaching. We first explore what scholarship of teaching means, both in terms of the way it is represented in the literature and also the way it is understood by academic staff themselves. From this information, we derive a multi-dimensional model of scholarship of teaching which captures the variation found in the literature and empirical studies. In the final section, we illustrate how the model is used in informing the design of programs for development of the scholarship of teaching in universities.

ABSTRACTProblem: Training the next generation of health professionals requires leaders, innovators, and scholars in education. Although many medical schools and residencies offer education electives or tracks focused on developing teaching skills, these programs often omit educational innovation, scholarship, and leadership and are narrowly targeted to one level of learner. Intervention: The University of California San Francisco created the Health Professions Education Pathway for medical students, residents, and fellows as well as learners from other health professional schools. The Pathway applies the theoretical framework of communities of practice in its curricular design to promote learner identity formation as future health professions educators. It employs the strategies of engagement, imagination, and alignment for identity formation. Context: Through course requirements, learners engage and work with members of the educator community of practice to develop the knowledge and skills required to participate in the community. Pathway instructors are faculty members who model a breadth of educator careers to help learners imagine personal trajectories. Last, learners complete mentored education projects, adopting scholarly methods and ethics to align with the broader educator community of practice. Outcome: From 2009 to 2014, 117 learners participated in the Pathway. Program evaluations, graduate surveys, and web-based searches revealed positive impacts on learner career development. Learners gained knowledge and skills for continued engagement with the educator community of practice, confirmed their career aspirations (imagination), joined an educator-in-training community (engagement/imagination), and disseminated via scholarly meetings and peer-reviewed publications (alignment). Lessons Learned: Learners identified engagement with the learner community as the most powerful aspect of the Pathway; it provided peer support for imagining and navigating the development of their dual identities in the clinician and educator communities of practice. Also important for learner success was alignment of their projects with the goals of the local educator community of practice. Our community of practice approach to educator career development has shown promising early outcomes by nurturing learners' passion for teaching; expanding their interest in educational leadership, innovation, and scholarship; and focusing on their identity formation as future educators.

It is increasingly understood that work-integrated learning (WIL) opportunities are critical in providing graduating students with employability skills which allow them to gain employment and effectively operate in work environments. This is particularly relevant within degrees such as public health that cut across very diverse fields of practice. Little research has previously investigated student perceptions post-graduation of skill development within public health degrees. This investigation aimed to identify the range of skills gained within a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree which graduates felt assisted them to obtain employment, and to determine the teaching and learning approaches that contributed to the development of these skills. Graduates responding to a questionnaire self-reported that they had good levels of both technical and employability skills especially in the domains: Informed Decision Making, Professional Practice and Standards, Lifelong Learning and Collaboration. Students agreed that there were frequent opportunities for applied learning and enablers to employment within their degree. However, graduates indicated that the employability domain: Commencement Readiness and confidence at point of graduation, could be strengthened. The implications of this research for the development of non-placement WIL experiences, capstone subjects, the overall curriculum and broader university student experience are discussed.

We are now experiencing a period of retrench ment wherein it has once again become legitimate to talk about quality instead of quantity in education. With the supply-demand function for college teachers almost completely reversed from what it was in the 1960s, col1ege and university administrators are now re quiring various kinds of evidence representing teaching of prospective candidates for academic po sitions. This has implications for graduate students who are seeking their first position as college or university teachers. LTntil very recentV, most graduate students have neither been encouraged to pursue know1edge about college teaching, nor had an adequate amount of supervi sion and training for their career development as college teachers. These deficiencies have been cited by several investigators: for examp^, Hanzeli,1 Costin,2 Morrow,3 Berelson,4 Heiss,5 and Eble.6'7 Concern about the improvement of co1lege teaching and the career development of college level teachers has been recognized also by some professional societies and private foundations. During the spring of 1971 a con ference was held in Sante Fe, New Mexico in conjunc tion with the National Project to Improve College Teaching.8 This meeting, arranged by Dr. Kenneth E. Eble, director of the project, was the final general ses sion associated with a two-year project sponsored by the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Colleges and funded by the Carnegie Corporation. The conference participants rep resented a diverse group of educators concerned about improving the quality of col'ege teaching. As one might expect from a group of this nature, there were many divergent opinions among the participants regarding so lutions for improving teaching. One topic, however, in which there was almost unanimity of opinion was the need for a set of teaching and learning experiences for all graduate students planning careers as college or uni versity teachers. During the conference a task committee headed by Dr. Michael Scriven was formed to draw up an outline for such an experience, or course, which would speak to some of the dimensions of teaching and learning thought to be crucial to a good beginning or first step on the road to success as a college teacher. Inspired by the conference and fo'lowing guidelines offered by Eble9 and Williams,10 then adding some ideas of our own, we designed and offered an seminar on college teaching. Having developed and con ducted the seminar for the past six years, we feel that what we have learned is worth sharing with colleagues who are also interested in providing some vehicle whereby beginning teachers may gain valuable knowl edge and experience which can contribute to their effec tiveness as future college teachers. For the most part, past efforts in teaching seminars have been focused within a single discipline.11,12'13 The distinguishing feature of the approach cited in the pres ent report is the nature of the seminar. The word interdisciplinary here refers to the composi tion of the student participants, not necessarily the teach ers or resource people. We assumed that such topics as establishing instructional objectives. writing examin ation questions, evaluating teaching effectiveness and the use of media, to mention only a few, are not the private domain if any one discipline. On the contrary, most of the critical dimensions of effective teaching are common to all disciplines. In addition, having students from a variety of areas results in the distinct advantage of being able to view teaching through individual disci plinary prisms. The potential give and take among stu dents from different areas could also emphasize that general principles of teaching apply across many subject matter fields. Finally, it was believed that through an exchange the students would gain an appreciation and respect for other discip1ines and view points, a characteristic so often absent in the curricular and supervision structure of most graduate training. Graduate students in a given discipline usually have little or no professional or academic contact with graduate students from other departments during their training, and their supervision is nearly always under their own department. It shou\l be pointed out that this seminar was not designed to replace teaching supervision received in the student's own department. The Seminar

The scholarship of teaching emerged in the last decades as a fundamental concept to the development of good teaching practices in Higher Education and, consequently, to the enhancement of the quality of student learning. Considering that scholarship comprehends a process as well as an outcome, research on teaching and learning should be viewed as one important aspect of the scholarship of teaching. The goal of this essay is to illustrate how the scholarship of teaching and learning can be enhanced through the development of classroom research rooted on students’ questioning, conceived and implemented by both university teachers and educational researchers. Valuing and stimulating students’ questions offers an innovative dimension to science education as it puts students at a central role in the learning process. This way, encouraging students’ questioning also strengthens teaching-research links by bringing teachers and learners together in a community of inquiry.Keywordsscholarship of teaching and learningscholarly teachinglinking teaching and researchinquiry-based learningquestioninghigher educationscience education

Cultivating students’ intercultural communication competence (ICC) has become an important goal of English Teaching in colleges and universities in China. At present, there are a few problems existing in the cultivation of ICC in the English teaching process at universities, and there is a need to make some reforms in terms of teaching ideologies, curriculum design as well as teaching contents. Cultivating students’ intercultural communication competence should start with the cultivation of their intercultural communication competence awareness, while taking into account the synchronous improvement of knowledge, attitude, and skills. In addition, it is important to pay attention to the impact of ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) on the cultivation of intercultural communication competence. What’s more, modern information and digital technology should be utilized to improve methods of English teaching in colleges and universities to enhance students’ intercultural communication competence effectively.

Research Article| October 01 2000 Learning in San Jose Maura C. Flannery Maura C. Flannery Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar The American Biology Teacher (2000) 62 (8): 609–612. https://doi.org/10.2307/4450987 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Maura C. Flannery; Learning in San Jose. The American Biology Teacher 1 October 2000; 62 (8): 609–612. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/4450987 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe American Biology Teacher Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright National Association of Biology Teachers Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.