NLC Community Conversation with Prof. Mary Deane Sorcinelli, Creating a Culture of Teaching and Learning

NLC Community Conversation with Prof. Mary Deane Sorcinelli, Creating a Culture of Teaching and Learning: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

NLC Community Conversation with Prof. Mary Deane Sorcinelli, Creating a Culture of Teaching and Learning: this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Bret Eynon:
Welcome, everybody. It's great to see folks from across the country joining us. We're really glad that you're here. I'm excited to welcome you to this community conversation with Mary Deane Sorcinelli. So fantastic. You could make it. So I want to just quickly say a word about our Community Conversation series and then introduce Mary Deane and we'll get started.

Bret Eynon:
So, as you know, this Community Conversation series builds on the seminars that you all have taken part in, the work that we've been doing with campuses and seminars and coaching and planning and talking and thinking about how do we strengthen professional learning as a way of advancing, learning, teaching and equity in across higher education. So this is our second conversation. We had a great conversation with Adrianna Kezar and we have two more coming up on April 16th, José Moreno, we'll talk about "Professional Learning as the Multivitamin for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion." And two weeks after that, Peter Felton, who I see is here joining us. Welcome, Peter. I will talk about the role of students in professional learning. And I think those are both going to be really interesting and valuable. So I encourage you to put those on your calendar in this process. We're trying out this flip classroom approach where our guests who worked with us on the new Learning Compact have dug into a specific issue related to professional learning and shared some thoughts and some resources.

Speaker1:
And then we're inviting you to check that out and then to come here to have some give and take, engagement with some really special smart folks. So in this process, as we did with Adrianna, we want to encourage you to be bringing your questions. That's really what this is about, is a chance for you to think about what you saw in those resources, the challenges you're grappling with, and to ask questions of the speaker. So Laura will be monitoring the chat. We'll ask you to put your questions in the chat. And Laura will be monitoring the chat surfacing. Some of those for Mary Deane and Mary Deane and I will do our best to watch the chat as well. But we appreciate Laura being the point person on that. So as we get going, please, do think about your questions and, you know, put them in the chat and we'll get to as many as we can. So. I'm really excited and honored to be hosting this conversation with Mary Deane Sorcinelli is really one of my heroes and she's somebody that I've admired for years and years and years. And it's just such a treat to work with her. And it's a privilege to host this conversation and to have you have a chance to engage with. So if you read my note, Mary Deane is a faculty member emeritus from UMass Amherst, where she also is associate provost and the founder, the director of their Center for Teaching and Learning, an award-winning center.

Bret Eynon:
And she built on that to really become a key leader in the field of professional development or professional learning, and has helped shape that field in profound ways. She continues to work as the Co-PI on a project with AAC&U around STEM education, and she continues to write and think and lead and speak. She's written more than one hundred articles and books which is kind of like how do you even do something like that? And has won numerous awards. So she's somebody who is constantly thinking about how can we make things better and how can we work together in that effort. So I'm really delighted to welcome Mary Deane and to facilitate this conversation with her. So if we were starting all alive, I would ask everybody to give Mary Dean a big round of applause and welcome her so you can do that in whatever way works for you here. So I'm going to ask a question or two just to get us started so that you have time to get your questions in the chat. And I have a long list of questions which I'll threaten to ask unless you get your questions in the chat. So but I hope that

Laura Gambino:
Please get your questions in the chat. OK? I am monitoring so that we don't have to go through a list of questions. So PLEASE put them in the chat.

Bret Eynon:
So I'm going to start just very you know, let's lay some groundwork here. So first of all, welcome, Mary Deane. Can I just ask you to talk a little bit. This is a presentation. Your recorded presentation is about creating a culture of teaching and learning. Help us understand what you mean by a culture of teaching and learning and why that's so important to the work that we're trying to do, bringing change in Higher Ed.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
Yes, and hello, everybody, I'm delighted to be here, Brett and I have a mutual admiration society, as I have for many of the folks involved in the new learning compact. So it's just great to be here and work with such a talented group of individuals. And I've also met some of you and your campuses through the team crits and appreciate that opportunity as well. And so it's great to see all these faces, even that cute little puppy dog who showed up on my screen. Looking forward to the next hour. So, Bret, your question, I think is a good one around building a culture of teaching and learning and what is the culture of teaching and learning? You know, when I started thinking about the topic, I sort of looked at anthropology and I was relieved to find out that even they are still trying to think about and move towards the theory of culture. So I think that notion of culture has been around for a long time, not so much in education. I think it's a newer term for us. It's certainly been in places like anthropology. But it was actually nice to see that it's not fully finished or fully defined, that it's something that's constantly in process, something that we build together. And I actually love the word that the new learning compact has picked up on that notion of "eco-system," because I think culture does seem to me to be ongoing. It's collective, it's collaborative, and it's kind of an integrated process. And that's what I think we're trying to think about when we say campus culture.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
And so a culture of teaching and learning, I think, is one that's working in a coordinated way to try to think about what are the structures, what are the practices, what are the policies, what are the habits that will create an environment or an ecosystem where we can be our best selves as teachers, as advisors, as folks in student services, as academic leaders, and do the very best for our students. So to me, culture just encompasses, as I said, in that sort of beautiful diagram of Ann Austins. And I think it's very similar to the work that you've done in the New Learning Compact. It's our learners, it's our teachers, it's our departments, it's our institutions. And it's also this broader group of stakeholders outside of our institutions that are all pushing us to think collectively about improving teaching and learning. It's no one person's job. And the other interesting thing is a lot of those places and groups have been traditionally siloed and sort of gone on their own and isolated from each other. And so the more we can think about them as an ecosystem, as an environment that supports a culture of teaching and learning, I think that's the direction we're all trying to go in. And it's not easy. It's not enough of any of you have tried to align any of these units and services and groups together... It's a challenging process, but I think a really important one for us to be engaged in. So that's where I'd start.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
Excellent. Thank you. I think that really lays a great foundation and as we go where I'm hoping is that we will be able to now unpack that a bit and think about, well, how do we actually create. Steps and strategies. First, I want to ask you,

Laura Gambino:
Can I just can I jump in here? We just we just said it was just a quick little question that came to me about the graphic. Mary Deane, would you be willing to share that graphic from your PowerPoint? Could we send it out to the group? Because I think people would like to use it in their work on campuses, you know, the one with the circles and the levers. So if you'd be willing to do that, that would be great.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
Your muted, Mary Deane.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
Absolutely, and I can do a PDF if it's helpful to people of the presentation and send that to you, Laura, and you can send it out to everybody. I'm happy to share that as well.

Laura Gambino:
That would be lovely. I'm seeing lots of nods from folks. I think that would be great. And so the questions are started pouring in. I have one, but I'll let you ask one more question, Bret, and then we'll go to war more any minute.

Bret Eynon:
Thank you. So in the in the video, you talked about how much we've learned about evidence based pedagogies and the ways in which they're really pointing the way towards learning and teaching improvement in advanced equity, but that there has been difficulty in scaling those practices and you pointed to the importance of scaffolding and the lack of scaffolding as something that's impeding or inhibiting that broad impact of what we're learning about, about pedagogy. I wondered if you could talk about what you mean by scaffolding and what would be what kind of scaffolding would actually make a difference.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
I think when I was talking about scaffolding, it wasn't necessarily so much the scaling up I was thinking about, but really, if we're going to build a culture of teaching and learning, what are the scaffolds on which we put that culture or build that culture on? And so I was really thinking about the provision of faculty professional development, really the levers that I talk about, those four levers. What kind of provision for faculty development do we have? What kind of resources do we have available? Do we have the right leadership in place? And do we have the appropriate recognition and reward structures for faculty? So I don't know if you want me to talk a little bit about each of those. I mean, I do in the video, but I could just spend a few minutes talking about that.

Bret Eynon:
That would be great. And then then we'll go to some additional questions.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
Yeah, I think in terms of professional learning, I also love that term, so I think the the new learning compact has really reframed old terms and wonderful new ways. And I've begun myself to use that phrase of faculty, professional learning as well as development. I think it's really a great slight tweaking on an old phrase that that seems to make it more significant and solid and responsive to the way faculty think, too. I think when I think of professional development, I immediately think opportunities. And I remember when I first went to UMass Amherst, I kind of looked around and said, what is it that faculty gravitate to? You know, what where are their points of of interest? What are they gravitating to? And it seemed to me that it was research institutes and what it was, was bringing people together, smart people, to talk about a scholarly topic, frame the problem, look for solutions and carry that back out into the community. And my thought was at that moment, as I talk to different faculty, why don't we think that way about teaching and learning? At that time when I was building a center for teaching, they were often seen as, you know, the woodshed or the Betty Ford model of I am a sick teacher and I go into this center and and I get cured. And my thought was, why don't we think much more opportunity based about teaching and learning? How do we get smarter at what we do? How do we contribute to our collective intelligence and our practice as educators? And why do we think remedial? Let's think professional opportunity, professional learning, professional development.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
So that's the frame that I've tried to use in building my own center for teaching around opportunity to to a degree of status, prestige, you know, try to make it parallel to the ways we support and enhance scholarship on our campuses. Why don't we think that way about teaching and learning? So that's that's my take on professional development and resources. I think those are time teaching tools, learning spaces. It used to be travel. Now we're traveling by Zoom to broaden our landscape and look beyond our own campuses to to talk with others and like institutions and be kind of quietness of teaching and learning. Peter Felten, Randy Bass, I think a lot of you have also brought in the resource of students and that's something we didn't have in the early days. We saw students as the objects of our inquiry rather than our partners are co-inquires into teaching and learning. And so I think that's been a big transition in terms of how we think of students as resources. They've been added to the older list. Leadership. I think a culture of teaching has visible leaders and they can be faculty leaders all the way up and down the scaffolding of levels in the institution.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
And it's through telling stories and rituals and symbols and evidence. And I think that notion of we all lead from where we are. We can all be leaders around teaching and learning, particularly if we have a shared vision around it. And I've just found this goes back to a person who's now retired, Peter Fredriks from Wabash College, the power of story in teaching and learning and the kinds of things I remember I think I mentioned in the tape around working with a professor as a mentor who had just been an incredible teacher and researcher. And he talked about how often he had been asked to talk about his research. But the first time he sat in a learning community, it was his opportunity to talk about teaching. And boy, every bell rang for me in that meeting. And I thought, this is the crux of it, getting that classroom door opened, having peer learning, bringing faculty together to share their knowledge, their expertise, their worries, their successes, their disappointments. That's kind of the crux of it all, I think. And as we go forward, we've got to figure out how not to lose that in this digital environment we're all living in. It's going to be really important.

Laura Gambino:
So, Mary Jane, can I can I interject there? Because Peter was asking a question specifically about that. And you cited here can and add on to this if you want or correct me. But he was asking about that conversation you had was referring. With that professor who said he had been asked to talk about his research but never about his teaching and he was wondering if you could please ask very nicely, please share some news, just some concrete ideas for folks who are thinking about how you help support that productive faculty talk about teaching. Like are that what are some concrete strategies that you have?

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
And I hope people jump in here. I mean, the things that come to mind for me is the research we now have on learning communities, bringing people together. It's typically been cross-disciplinary, but now I'm beginning to see small departmental action teams or learning teams beginning to talk together. So I think some of the approaches tend to be things like learning communities, book clubs, people reading an article, coming together to talk about evidence or to talk about something they've read. I think those come to the other one is institutes, you're beginning to see these course design institutes, which are very popular, where people come together for two or three days and do a very intensive dive into their courses and share with their colleagues what you're doing here and what the the the learning compact, the new learning compact and the work you're doing with different teams. You're setting them up to work with each other and then come back into these communities to talk with one another. So off the top of my head, those those I think we're beginning to see that one on one consultation with just one other person is powerful, but also these larger learning communities where we come together and talk in a variety of ways, our powerful ways to get faculty to talk about teaching and students as learners. And I should also mention that that table should be broad. We used to just have our new faculty together, our mid career faculty together. Now we're saying should there be students in this community? Should there be advisers? Should there be tutors? What about somebody from student affairs? What about somebody from academic computing? Maybe the library should be involved in this group. So trying to think as broadly as we can about these communities. And I think that's a newer frame than we've had before. Is that help, Peter and other you may have other ideas, the folks here to what you're doing on your own campuses.

Bret Eynon:
I might add just, you know, piggyback on that a bit and think about. That. Those large structures are all all housed the conversation, and then there's a piece of what's important, which is how we actually design those structures to float to center on the conversation in recursive, productive, iterative, reflective ways that build. So it's the combination of the structure and then that interior practice that has something to do with how we set things up, how we listen. We ask questions of each other that I think everybody here is thinking about some of those kinds of processes as well and trying to think about how can I do that?

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
Well, you know, people should look to the University of Arizona has a great little guide for faculty led learning communities, and they actually, from the ground up, have about 90 faculty. It's kind of amazing to me. Semester, I believe it is, or a year. Who co-lead? I mean, they lead these communities. They put up a theme, there might be a campus theme, and then they put up what they would like to talk about and have people sign up. And there's a little guide of of here's how you here's the steps you go through to set up your learning community. And so it's very ground up kind of community. And I think that's kind of a new frame around learning communities to where it's not run by a center for teaching. It's coordinated from a provost office in this case. But it's it's really run by the faculty. I should I'll write that down and send it to.

Laura Gambino:
I posted it. I found it while you were chatting. Thanks for the link there.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
I think that's a really interesting approach of of building it from the ground up faculty engagement.

Laura Gambino:
If I could maybe we could continue on this theme, if you don't mind, Brett, because there's some questions in here from Christine where at her institution, not surprising. They're experiencing a lack of interest in training options at this time, perhaps attributed to covid fatigue. And she was asking the group, and I know at least one of them has chimed in, she's asking if others are experiencing this kind of thing, but she's wondering how how can we refresh faculty and bring them back to the professional learning table? Like, how can we use this also as an opportunity? How can we hit the refresh for folks who are tired and kind of done with this whole remote teaching thing with their students? How do we how do we get them back after this? Do you have any thoughts about that? Some ideas.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
Aw, that's a great question, because we've you know, and when I was running the teaching center, I relied so much on face to face connection and helping faculty build their little communities. Yeah, one, I don't know if anybody else wants to jump in.

Laura Gambino:
Maybe I can I can maybe dove in for a minute. Will you come up with something better than what I could say, Mary Deane. But, you know, when I read this, it occurred to me and I'm sure some of you are already doing this, but how are we taking the lessons we've learned from this transition to remote education and leveraging them and thinking about what they mean in terms of professional learning? Right. So can we take some of this messaging you were thinking about and rattling off the list of all the folks that should be part of the faculty learning community? And I wonder nowadays if we should have our instructional designers at the table thinking with us. Right. And thinking with us not just about how we're designing our courses, but how we're designing our professional learning opportunities and how can we how can we leverage technology to build engagement instead of create this fatigue with technology? I think leveraging these lessons of how we've changed our teaching and learning with our students can also help us think about ways to engage our adjunct faculty and our contingent faculty and faculty who might not be on our campus Monday through Friday, even when we return in the fall. Because even if we are fortunate enough to be able to return in the fall, I think we're still going to be in this kind of weird hybrid place. But I think this is an opportunity to maybe leverage some of what we've learned and apply it to our professional learning. So they're not coming back to the same thing, but they're coming back to something that's been reinvented to take advantage of this moment.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
The thing that I think is... Thank you, Laura. I think that's really helpful, and I think to this we have to figure out if we go forward with these kinds of technologies, how to make them more in how to make these kinds of meetings as engaging, as conversation oriented as we can. I do think at some point there's just going to be this huge desire to go back, at least some of the time, to be face to face and to be in communities. This won't last forever. And I do think I hope I hope I'm accurate on that. The CDC is telling us that. But I do think we're going to have that will be part of the solution is getting away from the sort of virtual fatigue that we're all feeling. I was talking to a colleague who's working with a company who's really trying to look at that issue. How do you take these Zoome sessions or virtual sessions and figure out how to make them as conversational, as engaging as possible? I don't think anybody's quite done it yet, but I do know there are people thinking about that and trying to recreate the way we even use these digital tools. And that may be part of the solution to. It's a great question, though, and I don't I don't know if any of you have tried anything that's worked better during the Covid pandemic.

Bret Eynon:
So, you know, the one thing I would add to this is it's interesting, when you and I were in the conversation earlier, I guess was at the end of last week. And we were helping somebody think about a team, think about their upcoming Institut. And you made what sounded like a very simple but was actually really profound suggestion. Which was OK, let's start by talking about what's going on. Let's acknowledge that the this has been a challenging. Experience that has pushed us all and that experience is something worth paying attention to. And working with. And I thought that was such such a great. Suggestion there that speaks right to. Both address acknowledging the fatigue, but also making something of it, working with and providing opportunity for people to to work with it so that it's not just a gripe session, but rather that the framing is OK. What are we learning from this process? How did we find? What did we find? What kinds of ways did we find to be resilient? What does this tell us about what our students are dealing with? And how can how can we take this experience and make it as valuable as possible?

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
Yeah, and Brett's referring yes to a team that's putting together an institute in May and Bret and I were just reflecting on how much of it is lead with speakers. And we were saying give people a moment, because every meeting I'm in that comes up, people want to talk about have they had their vaccines and what's happened on their campuses. Give people a moment to think about what's it mean to be a teacher in this moment in time? What has it meant to be a learn or what have you learned about your manners? How do we move forward from here and allow those conversations perhaps on a carousel or in breakout rooms to happen before the speaking begins or interspersed with the speaking? I think that's great. Thank you for reminding me, Brett, because we just talked about that earlier in the week. So I think, again, the more it's conversation Problem-Solving coming to the solutions versus being talked to is at least one strategy going forward.

Laura Gambino:
And related to that, I'm seeing that in camps has posted in the chat that her institution and and I'm going to I'm going to give you a second while I read this to unmute. I'm going to ask you to talk about this. They've used some topical roundtable events around a topic to bring faculty together. And so I'm curious if you want to just say a word about that and kind of what's what's worked and what's been your experience with that?

Anne Kamps:
Absolutely. Thanks, Laura. So I would say what what Mary said and what Bret said, and we've been working with Bret as our coach from from our work. But to the point of we just wanted faculty to have a space to be as good as they could, as they wanted. And what we learned in our football roundtables was they did want to unload to each other with each other because it was a community of temperance, tolerance. I don't know whatever your word is, but what came out of it for us was this interest in what we are calling pedagogy of care. And so now we have roundtables and, you know, I mean, we'd say trauma informed practice, that seems pretty heavy.

Anne Kamps:
But we bring the faculty together. They, again, have a little sharing time and then we start debriefing in our teaching and learning center is a new space. And we are not we aren't the magic eight ball. We don't have all the answers, but we certainly can listen and bring to the next round table something to to bring others into the space. So it's been working. And I think why it has been working is we've been leveraging the technology. Not sure what would happen if I had to say on Friday afternoon at one o'clock when you come to our teaching and learning center, maybe, maybe not. But, you know, coming in virtually from my house with my coffee, OK, I'm in. So we're building that relationship in those very soft ways. But on the back side for the teaching and learning center in big ways, for us to then try to figure out who would we bring in next to keep the conversation going. So, again, we're we're one pandemic deep into this work. So I don't want to use it as the way, but it's a way that we found helpful in this current time.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
Yes, and thank you and I would say you're not just leveraging the technology, you're leveraging the peers, the peer learning, the individuals coming into those roundtables, I remember probably it was two two decades ago, at least 10 years ago, Mary Ellen Wimer did a survey of how do faculty learn about teaching. And it was the list of do they read the journals? Do they look at the articles? The best practices, the way faculty learn about teaching is talking to each other. At that time, it was going down the corridor sharing ideas. And so I think through your using your center to create these round table events, you're actually leveraging in a real way, not just the use, the technology, but peer learning, peer sharing, peer problem-solving. That's it sounds like that's what you're doing. And that's it's a great idea. I think that's what people are looking for.

Bret Eynon:
I see we've got a question from Michelle Compagna, Michelle, maybe if you want to speak this, you know, I think would just go ahead and say, see that you're you're there and it's in the front of your mind. Why don't you just go ahead and speak it.

Michele Campagna:
Thanks Bret. I might have shared this previously that on our campus we began a holistic student support workshop series, professional learning series for faculty, explaining what holistic student supports are, how to integrate that into your classroom. We had a few different topics related to that, connecting them to the departments on campus that they call the alphabet soup, the trio, the EOP. What are all these things? And then even the enrollment services areas like when you connect the students to financial aid, when you connect to students, to registrar's office.

Michele Campagna:
And so our last session is going to be on teaching during the pandemic. What did you do? And just kind of a time for them to reflect to a load to share and again, reinforcing the whole idea of exactly what was just said, integrating that that culture of care approach into the classroom and how important that was and talking about how that's the need for that is not going to be over when the semester's over. We're going to see that in the spring. We're going to see in our summer classes. We're going to see it in the fall. It's going to be around for a while. And so that the need to have that on the forefront of our minds when we're in the classroom.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
Thank you, Michelle. That's terrific and you know, I add to that something that I really reflected on the past week. I was working with a group of faculty and a review session. They were reviewing a particular program on campus. I think we also need to talk about the culture of care for each other. We had one woman who was particularly for women who are taking care of children. There were children running around in the background and she had to excuse herself to kind of settle everybody down. There was another person who the Internet went out in her home and she had to teach. So she was leaving the meeting to take her phone in her car and she was going to find a hot spot at the stadium on campus. I mean, the group was actually telling her where the best hotspots were and she was going to teach from her car. And I was really wow. You know, we need to also we need to talk about the culture of care for our students, but keep in the background in mind, we need to be taking care of each other, too, as teachers. And academic leaders. So just to add on to your wonderful idea.

Bret Eynon:
Gail, would you like to pick up on this thread and, you know, push it forward a bit?

Gail Fernandez:
Thank you. I totally agree with everyone on the culture of care, but I also think sometimes we're getting a little so thinking of ourselves and we need to be thinking more of our students and not just about that, you know, the Internet or the baby at home. I know that happens. We all have these issues, but we owe it to them to teach them so that they're prepared so that they can transfer, that they have the knowledge we have to do it in a way of care, but we have to really make sure that they're learning.

Gail Fernandez:
And I think, you know, with some of the professional development and, you know, what we're talking about today is also just to really think about how we can do that better, you know, because we're not that things will change. We're not going to go back to the way everything was. We'll go back part time, will go back online, whatever. But we need to keep our students learning. We need to adapt to how they're learning and their environments and make sure that they're learning. So I guess that's like my point, I guess. And just like the question of how are we going to keep doing that? And I think we also need to re-envision curriculum, but I don't know if that's part of the conversation today.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
Well, I think that point is very well taken, and I also think maybe this is going to be a new moment for the scholarship of teaching or inquiry into how our students learning not to publish it, but just to figure it out in our own classes. How are we going to do mid-term assessments? How are we going to look at student assignments? This whole notion of inquiry into how our students are learning hopefully is going to even be more on the front burner. And I think that's a great point. Thank you, Gail.

Bret Eynon:
I think, you know, it's not a question of. Only doing a culture of care. Thinking about the challenges people face, but rather acknowledging that and building that into... How, OK, in this context, we understand the context and understand context of teaching and learning. Now, how do we use that to advance teaching and learning so on that on that line, I'm going to take in an opportunity to ask a question to one of the things that you mentioned in the video was the importance of sustained conversation. That was one of the qualities that you talked about, sustained engagement, sustained conversation, as opposed to one off. And I wonder if you could talk about that. Why what why is that important? What difference does it make to have those kind of sustained engagement?

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
Thanks, Bret, I'm going to jump in to that, but I was just thinking, Peter Felten is here and he has to leave for a vaccine very soon. You've worked so much with the notion of relationship rich education and connecting with students. I just wondered if you wanted to say something to Gail's Point and others around, making sure we're paying attention to how our students are learning in and out of the classroom.

Peter Felten:
Yeah, thanks, Mary Jane, and and I'm really sorry to have to leave the conversation, but I got my second dose in 20 minutes, so I'm pretty excited about that, too, I guess. Three things really quickly to Gail's point, to Gail's original point in the chat that I think is a really important one. One of the things we've tried to do with professional development where I am, is figure out by talking to faculty, mostly what they really need, and then put professional development in the space between where they are and what they need. That's one of the things I think, of course design institutes are so clever about, you know, going into the summer, it's like I'm going to be teaching a new class in the fall. When do I do that work? How do I do that work? Well, here's a way in community and with guidance I can do it or I can do it four days before the semester begins, in a flurry in my office. So thinking about that at a time right now where people are so tired, so what do they actually need? They might be community. They might need something else. So that's that's one. A second thing, just to reiterate a point that Mary Dean said, but I think it's so, so important is the research is so clear that the most significant change in teaching comes from trusted conversation with peers. So and that might not happen in our professional development settings, so I've started to think of some of the professional development I do sort of like I think about some of the teaching I do where the real work of the session is actually going to happen outside of the session, you know, after class when students are reading this thing or talking to their peers or something.

Peter Felten:
So how can the professional development activity set up future conversations or give faculty practice talking about something or prompts to talk about something that they'll just bring in to their their work and their conversations? So that's part two and then part three. I think we spend a lot of time trying to figure out what students want and what students are experiencing without talking to students. And so how do we find ways? Safely to just ask students especially about what's working for them right now. I'm not trying to minimize the difficulty, but I hear stories about single parents who are students and all of us, and it's like, dear God, are these people resilient? So I don't want to put more on them, but it's like, what what are they able to do in these times? And how can we lean into that? Because I think a lot of how we've talked to students in the past hasn't actually been very good for our students. And maybe this is an opportunity to talk to those single parents and then find out, like, the way I've been testing. Really, or the way I've been assigning essays is really about how much on interruptive time can you have? And as a single parent, you're not going to have any. So that's a lousy way for me to assess. So anyway, I'm sorry to have to step away. I'm going to thank you.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
Thank you. Peter and Peter reminded me of something that I think is important as you build your professional development plans as needs assessments. And it's not doesn't have to be a survey. Oftentimes I've pulled people together, put out an announcement. There's lunch. You don't have that right now or just one hour of your time to come together with me. And maybe it's by career stage or by department, oftentimes by career stage. People are interested in coming together with other new faculty, with other pre tenured faculty, with other mid career faculty, with other senior faculty.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
What are the challenges you're facing right now? Let's talk about that. What's what do you need? Going back to what Peter said, what is what you're interested in? What are the challenges are facing in the classroom? What kind of resources or services or programs would be helpful to you? And I find there a faculty development intervention in and of themselves. And you bring people together. They're in conversation. They're solving problems. They're sharing what's worked for them, what kind of resources they found. And you walk away with kind of a you know, the core of, OK, folks need one, two and three. How would I set that up through my center or with with a network of folks on my campus who could help me do that? So that's a great reminder of keep going, tap into the pulse of your faculty as often as you can because they change and you change the programs. They need change and and a different career stages. There are different needs and different disciplines. So thank you, Peter. And the other thing he mentioned, we're faculty, these intensive course design institutes, and there's a great one at the University of Virginia. And there's a terrific teaching staff there that you could chat with. But I know they've designed theirs where the morning there as a group kind of learning together and framing how they're going to change your course. And then in the afternoon, they have dedicated time to either working on their own or working with a peer or getting a consultant to sit down and work with them or working with a little team. And so that idea of out of session learning, whether it's structured or is thinking about how people can carry something away from a professional development opportunity, as Peter said, is is a really great notion as well. And there are ways to frame it in institutes or in other kinds of practices.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
So thank you. Any other questions, Laura, I should look over here.

Laura Gambino:
No, but we do have a comment from John, and before I do that, though, before I read it, I'm going to post the University of Virginia's Center for Teaching Excellence, a link to their website in the chat to everyone. And he's adding on is confirming your great point, Mary Dean and saying similarly, sometimes evaluations of faculty professional learning programs can represent an intervention as well because they point us to what other follow up supports our colleagues might need. John, do you want to add to that at all?

Jon Iuzzini:
Well, you articulated it beautifully, Laura, I guess what I'm thinking is sometimes we think of an evaluation as a box we need to check or we want to quickly see how satisfied people were with their experience. And we if that's all we do, then we miss the opportunity to understand how far we're able to go with what they drew from the experience and what more might we be able to design and offer to our colleagues based on what they still need. And that can be especially powerful if we check in with people a month or two after they've participated in something and see what what they how they've been able to apply their learning. And then we can really understand. Sometimes people will say, I tried everything I learned, but only half of the things worked the way I thought they were we're going to. And so that really points us to where people might need more support or they might say, I wasn't able to do anything because we've had this major issue in our department and that my point is something that some opportunity to support that department. So I like the way you're thinking about how a needs a needs assessment can be an intervention in and of itself. And I would say similarly, evaluations after the fact can can work the same way.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
Even bringing in a speaker, I was again just talking to a group of faculty and they had had a terrific speaker and someone said the only problem was we all wanted to talk about it afterwards and there was no venue to do that. And wouldn't it have been great if there was an opportunity after the speaker did sort of break everybody out into groups of four or five and allow us to to kind of chat with each other and then maybe bring back questions to the larger group. And it was sort of a lost opportunity. And so I think there are a lot of these opportunities, needs, assessments, evaluations, even bringing in an external speaker where we could build conversation around those those opportunities. A spring institute, as Bret and I were talking to with one team there, just always be thinking, what are the ways we can get faculty reflecting the reflective practitioner, reflecting on their practice and learning from each other.

Bret Eynon:
I think that that does speak to the question I asked about extended and sustained, you know, work. But I want to ask a different question now, if I can, which we haven't talked about the rewards. Lever that you pointed to and the importance of rewards in in your in your remarks, you talked, I thought, really helpfully about low hanging fruit. And high hanging fruit. And I wonder if you could talk about that a bit and the relationship between is there one that's more important? Is there a way of thinking about the relationship between those two? So if you could maybe help us think about that, because that's something I think we all acknowledge is important, but sometimes it's hard to think about, well, how do I go about doing it seems like such a big hill to climb. Mm hmm.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
I think that's a great question, but when I was thinking of the low hanging fruit, again, it goes back to that idea of what is it the faculty resonate to what kind of supports do we have in place in institutions that they they see as valuable? And oftentimes for faculty, it's grants, it's release time. All the things that we give faculty to do their scholarship and research, could those be retooled in some way and and be the low hanging fruit that we use for teaching release time. A service free semester time seems to be the the thing of most value, a small grant, which it's amazing to me how hard faculty will work for a small incentive for teaching because there just don't typically there are not as many as there are for other venues. So we've often tried to have flex grants, small grants for teaching or mutual mentoring. Build your own mentoring network and we will give your group support to do that. And it's the same ideas of peer community. We just framed it around mutual mentoring and teaching and giving people actual support to have luncheons or travel or meet up or bring somebody in or connect with someone. So those are kind of and the other piece. So it's either incentives. And I think the other thing that resonates for faculty is recognition of their efforts. One of the most successful things we had was a celebration of teaching dinner for some twenty five years at UMass Amherst. And the first year it was about one hundred people. It ended up being three to four hundred faculty would come to this celebration of teaching because the core of the celebration of teaching was bringing together the learning communities to speak about their experience.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
So we had a group of eight or 10 young faculty talking about how marvelous that year had been for them to reflect back on their teaching to become better teachers. And then we'd have a group of mid-career senior faculty or a group working with technology. But it was little vignettes on a stage and with a dinner going on where people actually heard from their peers how valuable it was to be in conversation with each other. So it can be that kind of a recognition campus-wide. I think I mentioned in the tape that I started writing a personal note to everybody who want a teaching award on our campus. And I cannot tell you how many times somebody would email me back or stop me and say, I was so impressed that you wrote that note to me. Nobody else recognized my award. And I thought how small a gesture that is to send somebody an email, to connect with somebody, to write them a personal note. And so I tried to keep that up over time. But I think, again, that's not monetary, but it shows you how little recognition sometimes we do give individuals who are wonderful teaching and put a lot of effort into their teaching the other side of the equation. And the whole country is looking at this, particularly in the STEM disciplines. There's the National Academy of Science Roundtable on the evaluation of teaching. There are campuses looking at rubrics. How do we sort of incorporate all the pieces of teaching not just in the classroom but out of the classroom to course design, mentoring of students laboratory and all these pieces that that make up teaching in and out of the classroom? And how do we recognize it? It's a huge national initiative right now to try to think about how have we done this in the past? How can we do something more than student ratings to get at peer review to get it self reflective practice as teachers.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
So I'm hoping it goes somewhere. I think it's a big challenge because oftentimes these initiatives ask faculty to take time and and effort to the portfolio ideas and the evidence of good teaching ideas all takes some effort in time. But we I think everyone now recognizes that student ratings are a wonderful perspective on your teaching or student responses to your instruction are important, but they can't sit alone. How do we build in peer review of teaching peer conversation about teaching be it formative as a starting point? Perhaps we'll get to. A personnel piece at some time campuses that are trying to do that, but I think a lot of it is still formative and how do we get people to reflect on their practice, self reflection, self analysis of one's quality as a teacher and productivity as a teacher? So I think we've still got a ways to go on the reward system. I think it's slow, but it's slowly coming into larger venues beyond us. So when you have the National Academy of Sciences putting a roundtable together and you have the Association of American Universities and APLA, and there's a whole cast of characters looking at this issue and saying, we've got to figure this out, we've got to do better on evaluating and recognizing and rewarding quality teaching.

Bret Eynon:
I think that that, you know. Those of us engaged in the professional learning. We have a special opportunity and obligation. Really think about how to make the most productive. Not just another way of raiding people. But how can that actually help people focus on their teaching? Focus on improvement and how can our senators support people? In that effort, because if it's just another obligation, then I think it's one more thing for an overwhelmed faculty, but if we frame our work. As we're helping you in that effort, here's a way that you can address that. I think that that creates a whole different conversation. So that's something I think that we have the opportunity to get in there, dig at our institutions and across our institutions.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
Laura, if you can look at The University of Kansas. KU; They have a rubric for teaching evaluation. That's really interesting. And I think people here would really appreciate taking a look at that, because it looks at kind of the broad, you know, the contributions to teaching that occur both in the classroom but outside of the classroom. And they have kind of a neat graphic. It's a little detailed and I think there'll be a lot of variations on it, but it's worth taking a look at.

Bret Eynon:
I really...go ahead, Laura.

Laura Gambino:
Say, if I put a link to the overall teaching effectiveness project page, which will get you to the rubric, so it gives a little bit of context, which is great because we had a question from Christine. First of all, I'd say she shared a great little small idea that her library does at its Lorain County Community College, I believe. Is that right, Christine? That where you are? Yes. Thank you, yay me for knowing that. But the library honors each promotion to manager by asking faculty to suggest a favorite book for their collection, which I just think that's a lovely idea and something so small, which is wonderful. Yeah, the unfortunate pieces sometimes is that the only acknowledgement that faculty receive at their institution. But I think in terms of if we're thinking about small things is just another great example. So thank you for sharing. And we'll see if we can get some more info from Mary Deane and some more links on the National Academy of Sciences effort as well. And we'll share that out with all of you.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
Yes, great. You know, I was thinking that's a wonderful idea. They should have a book plate and put the name of the faculty member on it. That would add even more to their recognition.

Christine Sheetz:
Mary, we do that. Reading a book play, we have a reception for them where they each have a chance to talk about their book, know just why did they pick it. And it's so interesting to see faculty actually struggle with selecting the book. You know, they just it's it's we're actually introducing a little bit of anxiety to them because they really struggle with what is selecting this, an important book for them. And we've had everything from parent authors, children's books, the whole gamut. It's so much fun.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
The wonderful idea, particularly adding in the reception, you know, to allow them to talk a little bit about why they chose the book they did, it's very kind of humanistic way to think about promotion and tenure. It'd be great if their department chairs were there to someone beyond the library. Not that the library is an important, but maybe inviting somebody from their department or their chair to be there as well, because I think the approbation of their peers is a lot of what this is about. I'm respected by my peers. This was important to my peers as well as to me.

Bret Eynon:
There are so many, so much more. I wish we had time today to ask you, Mary Jane, I think that combination of low hanging fruit and. Picture is really important. I had my question cued up about departmental chairs and their role will have to save that for another time when we've hit our time limit. So I want to thank you so much for all that you've given to the field and to this project and for your generous in being part of this conversation. And it's really a privilege. So thank you so much and thank you for that privilege

Mary Deane Sorcinelli:
On this end to work with all of you and the new learning compact, it's been great. And all of you as well. So thank you all. Have a nice evening. And I will follow up with Laura with some more resources that we talked about. Thanks for staying with us on a late afternoon. We appreciate it.

Bret Eynon:
Yeah, great. All right. Good bye, everyone. Take care.

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