7th Annual Lilly Conference on College & University Teaching
South
16-17 February 2001, Athens, Georgia

Program

Friday, February 16, 2001

8:30am- 4:30 pm  Registration Open

9:00am  Welcome & Keynote

Welcome:  Laurie Richlin, President & Conference Director, International Alliance of Teacher Scholars
Milton D. Cox, University Director for Teaching Effectiveness Programs, Founder & Director, Original Lilly Conference, Miami University
Peter Shedd, Assistant Vice President for Instruction, The University of Georgia

Keynote: Involving Community in Learning: Making Connections for Your Classroom and Campus, Your Students and Colleagues
Milton D. Cox, University Director for Teaching Effectiveness Programs, Miami University

What is community and how may it help you achieve some of your course learning objectives?  Beyond the classroom, what are ways that learning communities help achieve department and institutional learning objectives?  This session will provide opportunities to reflect on these questions and to consider ways to initiate communities that might benefit your students and colleagues.

10:30am-11:15am  Concurrent Sessions

Online vs. Face-to-Face: Best Practices in Teaching
Roberta S. Lacefield, Mathematics, Business, & Physical Education, Waycross College
This presentation wil discuss best practices for on-line teaching and learning.  It will compare them to best practices in face-to-face learning.  Participants will be given the opportunity to consider their own practice and to engage in discussion.

Teacher's Grab Bag: 20 Best Teaching Practices
Cheryl Mairead McCormick, Institute of Ecology & Jennifer R. Walker, Microbiology, University of Georgia
This session offers the expertise of over 30 award-winning teachers of higher education in one setting.  Take home with you a list of 20 best teaching techniques compiled from interviews of the University of Georgia’s Teaching Fellows and teaching assistants.  Included are handouts with descriptions and references listed to carry out each technique in your own classroom.  The session will be packed with examples and detailed explanations along with group discussion and evaluation.

Teaching in Intensive Course Formats
Jessica Jameson, Communication, Virginia S. Lee, Faculty Center for Teaching & Learning, & Anna Wilson, Curriculum & Instruction, North Carolina State University
This session will describe how faculty designed courses that addressed the challenges and opportunities in teaching in the intensive summer sessions format.  Using aspects of these courses as mini-case studies, participants will have an opportunity to consider various approaches to adapting instruction to intensive course formats such as summer and modular sessions and weekend colleges. 

Promoting Diversity in Learning Styles
Joseph J. Mantos, Russell Institute of Religion & Ministry, Spalding University

What would happen if college students were allowed to learn what they want – provided it is on the topic?  That’s the way I designed an introductory course titled The Christian Tradition.  The key concept is that nothing is required except learning.  Students are free to learn whatever they want – and however they want – and get credit for it.  Does it work?  You bet.  And I’ve been doing it for years.  Let me show you how.

Son of Frankenstein: Plagiarism and Technology
David Whitford, Religion, Barbara McIver, English & Foreign Languages, & Edythe Boyer Jones, Biology, Claflin University
The presenters (who represent the humanities and science) will discuss strategies for discovering, documenting, and preventing plagiarism.  Activities will include sample Internet searches for plagiarized papers, exploration of available Web-sites, and sample assignments that make plagiarism difficult.

11:30am-12:15pm  Concurrent Sessions

Student Web Pages and WebCT™
Clinton C. Ready, Biology, Middle Georgia College
I will demonstrate how I use student-created web pages with WebCT™ in my biology and science classes.  I will give detailed instructions on how to do so yourself.  I will include in these instructions how to copy pictures off the Internet, how to create web pages, how to add pictures to web pages, how to make links to other web pages, and how to load web pages onto WebCT™.

Enabling (the Good Kind): Critical Thinking With the Web
Joyce Swofford & Susan Copeland Henry, Humanities, Clayton College & State University

Join us to rethink the teaching of critical thinking across the disciplines.  Students have difficulty grasping the concepts of critical thinking and recognizing their own practice of these concepts.  The solution is to provide both a more concrete terminology and different electronic contexts in which students are given the opportunity to recognize the process of critical thinking as they apply its principles.  We will provide both that terminology and various Internet resourcse for innovative perspectives.

The Intersection of Communication Technology and Collaboration: Electronic Course Listservs
John Zubizarreta, English, Columbia College

In this session, participants will hear about the use of electronic course listservs to enhance students’ critical thinking and writing skills.  Specific assignments, criteria, and representative faculty and student entries will be shared.  Participants also will contribute their own experiences and issues with the value of such technology, setting the stage for productive discussion about the role of asynchronous communication technologies in improving student learning.

Teaching Business to First Generation College Students
Harpal S. Grewal, Louis C. Mancuso, Tarun Prabhakar, & Marion Robinson, Business Administration, Claflin University
In this session, participants will be exposed to the Claflin University Model of teaching first generation college students from rural areas business administration courses.  Participants will hear a discussion of team learning experiences, experiential learning exercises, incorporation of executive speakers into the Business curriculum, the professional development seminar, and BEEP/SIFE programs.  Participants will be shown videotape excerpts of the Career Day Seminar.  After exposure to the Claflin University Model, participants will join a round table discussion.

12:15pm  Lunch T Tables by Discipline
Sit at the table of your choice.  Choose from among:

  • Accounting, Business, Management, Marketing
  • Lab Sciences: Biology, Chemstry, Physics, Geology
  • Computer Science/Computer Information Systems
  • Economics
  • Education
  • Engineering
  • English/Writing, Journalism, Communication
  • Fine & Performing Arts
  • Humanities/Languages/Philosophy/Interdisciplinary Studies
  • Mathematics/Statistics
  • Medical, Nursing, Health-Related
  • Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, Social Work
  • Teaching & Learning Centers, Faculty/Instruction Development

1:30pm-3:00pm  Concurrent Workshops

Technology: A Tool – Not a Solution
Jerry W. Samples, Engineering Technology, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown
Technology, used correctly, is a powerful aid to learning.  The pedagogy of technology use is being developed on the fly while claims abound that without technology todays students cannot learn.  Critical elements when using technological classrooms are competence, development time, practice, and the performance.  Years of study provide evidence that these elements are citical to successful teaching with or without technology.  Let’s tackle the problem and map solutions that we can utilize.

Inquiry-Based Teaching and Learning
Sara Davis Powell, Elementary & Early Childhood Education, College of Charleston

In this workshop, participants will explore how professors can shift from being dispensers of information to sparkers of ideas.  This transition may be accomplished by focusing on asking instead of telling, questioning instead of lecturing.  Inquiry-based teaching engages students in the process of investigation that leads to greater understanding.  We will examine and experience ways to orchestrate the learning context, motivate students, provide resources, and pose questions to stimulate student thought processes.

Assessing Empathy
Donald A. Misch, Psychiatry & Health Behavior, Medical College of Georgia

Empathy – the ability to recognize and understand another person’s feelings and motives – is a key component of many professions including, but certainly not limited to, health care, counseling, teaching, business or sales, literature, art, history, and anthropology.  Nevertheless, there is little consensus as to the crucial elements of empathy, much less how it can be validly and reliably measured.  This workshop explores some of the issues, opportunities, and perils of attempting to concretely define and assess empathy in students.

Integrating Learning-How-to-Learn Strategies into Your Teaching
Terrence J. Doyle, Center for Teaching, Learning & Faculty Development, Ferris State University

The presentation will focus on six major areas of learning and study strategies.  They include the abilities to organize, comprehend, study, recall, find and think about information.  Participants will learn specific strategies in each of these areas that are needed for students’ success and ways to easily integrate these strategies into their teaching.

3:15pm-4:00pm Concurrent Sessions

Visuo-Audial: PowerPoint™ as a Tool for Visualising Music
Mark K. Stevens, Humanities & Technical Communication, Southern Polytechnic State University
Like music?  Sure!  Understand it?  I think so.  Even when there aren’t any words?  Uhh…maybe.  Well perhaps you’re a visual learner.  Problem is,  music is an aural medium.  However, using PowerPoint™, I’ll help you SEE several musical concepts.

International Students’ Perceptions of Online Courses
Chet Trahan, School of Humanities & Muhammad A. Obeidat, Shool of Management, Southern Polytechnic State University
This empirical study compares student perception of taking online courses in the United States and the United Arab Emirates.  This study consists of designing, distributing a sixteen-question survey, and collecting information.  The sample was taken from a university in the Southeastern region of the United States and a university in the United Arab Emirates.  Collected data will be statistically compared, analyzed and reported.

Problem-Based Learning: A New Approach to Introductory Science
Lee Lines, Environmental Studies, Rollins College

Presenter and participants will discuss problem-based learning, a learning strategy designed to clarify important conceptual relationships through collaborative student work on clearly stated, contextualized problems.  Using an introductory physical geography course as a case study, participants will actively enage in a demonstration of the method.  This will be followed by a discussion of the benefits and challenges associated with making the transition from traditional lecture format to inquiry-centered learning.

How Do You Do That Thing That You Do?
Robert Rhodes Crout, History, Katherine Gehr, English, & Stacy Shaw, Arts Management, The College of Charleston
The liberal arts college assumes as part of its framework the introduction to students of a variety of ideas and subjects the educated person should know.  One topic that usually appears in a survey course is a general “introduction” to the nature of that specific academic discipline.  An introduction might include terminology and definitions, techniques of investigation, learning strategies, and perhaps the “value” of the discipline to the person and/or the society.  Some courses have eliminated these introductions to provide more class time for conveying subject matter.  Do introductions to academic disciplines serve a useful purpose that justifies the time expended?  What do faculty/students find useful in them?  How can such introductions enhance the “meat and potatoes” of a course?  Brief remarks and handouts will be followed with general discussion by panel and audience.

4:15pm-5:00pm Concurrent Sessions

Development and Assessment of an Interdisciplinary Learning Community
Irene Kokkala, Biology & Donnna A. Gessell, Language & Literature, North Georgia College & State University

This session will encourage participants to examine relevant methodology and assessment to create and maintain successful student learning communities. To begin, we will present a brief overview of the issues.  Then participants will explore how technology can be used to enhance the experience.  They will then develop tools to assess each side of the learning community.  We will conclude the session by presenting the outcomes of our five semesters of establishing learning communities consisting of biology and English classes.

Interweaving With the Internet: Interdisciplinary Resource and Research
Susan Copeland Henry, Humanities, Clayton College & State University
Join us in exploring how the Internet facilitates a return to more interdisciplinary teaching and learning in the humanities.  See how instructors can interweave Internet sites with art, architecture, poetry, handwritten and illuminated texts, etc., to illustrate the “zeitgeist” of almost any given culture more clearly.  In addition, view how technology-savvy students are conducting web research and designing sites with audio and/or video clips and links, all of which illuminate aspects of their hypertext essays.

Documentary Photography, Visual Anthropology, and the Negotiation of Meaning
Hank Margeson, Fine Arts, North Georgia College & State University
Documentary photography as a medium that effectively interprets the human condition must adhere to the requirements of the anthropological fieldworker to gain acceptance and validity as a textual document.  This session will examine the limitations of using visual fieldnotes (still photography) in cultural studies and will propose a model for interpretation/meaning using collaborative negotiations.

Web Enhanced Class or How to Save a Tree
Judy Davis Butler, Curriculum & Instruction, State University of West Georgia
Participants will experience one professor’s journey from structuring a class around a textbook and class package to using a web site as the only source and guide for the course.  Participants will have opportunities to see examples of the web page and supportive materials in different stages of development.

5:30pm Reception
Join your colleagues for libation and snacks.

6:00pm Dinner

7:30pm Postprandial Gathering: 2001:A Space Odyssey
Join your colleagues at a showing of this historic film.  Popcorn provided!
The1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey begins by tracing the dawn of civilization, evolves into a top-secret scientific discovery, and eventually follows the journey through the solar system of a crew of astronauts aboard a Jupiter-bound spaceship.  Far from earth, the astronauts slowly realize that all is not right, as it becomes apparent that the supercomputer HAL 9000 tries to take over the mission. The resulting contest between humanity and machine in one of the most gripping film episodes of all time.  The overall theme of the Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick movie is “the toolmaker has been re-made by his own tools.”  Throughout the film, from the dawn of humanity as our prehistoric ancestors “learn” to use bones as weapons, through the film’s ultimate contact with “others” from far-away planets, the question remains: are people slaves to the tools on which they depend? 

Saturday, February 17, 2001

8:00am Breakfast

8:30am-2:30 pm Registration Open

9:00am Plenary Address

10:15am Civility and Academic Freedom in Higher Education
Anne Proffitt Dupre, Law, The University of Georgia
As participants in the academic enterprise, we are all dealing with issues of civility and collegiality, and we all understand the importance of academic freedom.  To what extent are these important concepts consistent or inconsistent with the realities of our academic lives?  Anne Dupre received her B.A. from the University of Rhode Island and her J.D. from The University of Georgia.  She teaches the courses Contracts, Education Law, and Children in the Legal System.  Anne was First Honor Graduate, UGA Law Class of 1988; editor-in-chief, Georgia Law Review; law clerk for Justice Harry A. Blackmun, U.S. Supreme Court, and Judge J. L. Edmondson, Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and she is a former associate, Shaw, Pittman, Potts and Trowbridge in Washington, D.C.  She received the Faculty Book Award for teaching excellence and the John C. O'Byrne Award for significant contributions furthering student/faculty relations.

10:30am-11:15am Concurrent Sessions

Decision-Making and Pedagogical Issues in Computer-Mediated Higher Education
Nini Yang, Management & Marketing, Clayton College & State University of Georgia
While computer-mediated virtual education such as on-line programs opens an exciting opportunity in the new paradigm of higher education, a number of trade-offs and pedagogical issues should be analyzed before any decision on whether to embrace this opportunity is made.  Based on recent empirical studies and the presenter’s firsthand experience, this session will highlight information technology-related opportunities and challenges, counterpoints over computer-mediated virtual education, and alternative web-enhanced pedagogical models for effective teaching and learning.

Putting a Course On Line: Experiences by an On-Line Teaching Neophyte
Allan A. Gahr, Mathematics & Natural Sciences, Gordan College
In this session, participants will be introduced to pre-made WebCT™ courseware.  Placing a course on line, from scratch, is a formidable task.  It is easy for on-line teaching paralysis to set in while attempting to conform to teaching pedagogy, course construction, and so on.  This presentation reports the utilization of pre-built courseware and may help prevent on-line teaching paralysis.

Learning Threads and Active Learning for Higher Order Learning
David E. R. Gay, Teaching and Faculty Support, University of Arkansas
This session introduces participants to the active learning process of discovering, articulating, and sharing what they perceive as the important course topics and their underlying themes, also known as “learning threads.”  Participants, like students, work through a series of questions which have them identify course topics, to will their underlying common threads or themes, and to attach to literature, music, movies, and so forth.  This procedure is generalized so that almost any course could use the process for higher order learning of connections and synthesis.

Using Graphic Organizers Across Academic Disciplines
Barbara G. Bowman, Teacher Education,  Theresa Davis, Science and Mathematics, & Frances York, Teacher Education, Claflin University
Widely accepted schema theory suggests that teaching metacognition is necessary for meaningful learning.  Explores are demanding workers who are able to process information and solve problems.  This necessitates a shift away from teacher-centered instruction to methods that emphasize higher-order thinking skills.  In this session participants will learn how to utilize graphic organizers across disciplines as an instructional tool to organize and present information to facilitate students’ comprehension, retention and transference of knowledge and skills.

11:30am-12:15pm Concurrent Sessions

Pro-Choice? Technology Competency, Faculty Roles and Rewards
Jane Zahner, Curriculum & Instruction Technology, & Jack T. Hasling, Jr., Sociology, Anthropology, & Criminal Justice, Valdosta State University
Whether called computer literacy, technology literacy or information literacy, increasing emphasis is placed on the technology competency of college faculty.  Faculty are asked to use technology to do tasks previously categorized as clerical to, shift communications from face-to-face interaction and exchange of print to electronic means, and to change teaching methods to integrate the use of technology in both delivery and student assignments.  Do these expectations impact faculty performance and evaluation? Should they?

Hills and Valleys of Online Course Development by Committee
Sally Padgett Wheeler, English , Georgia Perimeter College & Anna R. Holloway, English & Foreign Languages, Fort Valley State University
Would you like to teach an on-line course written by a committee?  It can be done!  In this session we will share the positive and negative aspects of developing an on-line course by committee.  We were two of the six faculty members who designed a freshman composition course for state-wide use.  How we got organized, how we made decisions, how we wrote and edited the lessons will be informative and interesting to anyone planning to develop an online course.  We also will discuss what it was like to teach a course designed by a committee and containing students from several different colleges.

Introducing Inquiry-Guided Instruction into Undergraduate Courses
Virginia S. Lee, Faculty Center for Teaching & Learning, Rebecca Leonard, Communication, & Maria Oliver-Hoyo, Chemistry, North Carolina State University
The recent Boyer Commission Report supports the use of inquiry-guided instruction (IGI) in undergraduate education particularly at research institutions.  A group of 40 faculty, graduate students, and staff are participating in a three-semester program that involves retreats, outside speakers, working groups, and embedded assessment to integrate IGI into undergraduate courses.  Presenters will share their experiences using IGI and assist participants in designing an instructional innovation consistent with IGI.

No Mere Requirement: Synthesizing Liberal and Professional Education Through General Education
Kathleen A. Nesbitt, Humanities & Janis Renninger, Occupational Therapy, Spalding University
In this session presenters will give preliminary results of Spalding University’s efforts to break down the liberal/professional dualism existing in undergraduate education.  Three years ago the general education philosophy was revised to create outcomes relevant to all areas of study, faculty from across the university are encouraged to participate in the freshman orientation to college class; and sections of the capstone course are being team taught by the faculty member from the College of Professional Studies and a faculty member from the College of Art and Sciences.  Results from assessment of the core curriculum include those gathered from an essay that requires all students to reflect on the relationships between liberal and professional education.

12:15pm Lunch T Tables by Topic
Sit at the table of your choice. Choose from among:

  • Classroom Assessment/Research
  • Collaborative/Cooperative Learning
  • Creating Learning Communities
  • Evaluating Teaching
  • Ethics in the Classroom
  • Grading
  • Teaching in the Diverse Classroom
  • Teaching in Research-Intensive Universities
  • Technology Across the Curriculum
  • Writing Across the Curriculum
  • Problem-Based Learning

1:30pm-3:00pm Concurrent Workshops

Concept Map Construction: Meaningful Learning Activity and Assessment Tool
Gregory G. Passmore, Radiologic Sciences, Medical College of Georgia
In this workshop the participants will develop the skills to apply the concept map as a meaningful learning intervention and as an assessement device.  Following a discussion of the theorectical foundations for mapping, participants wil learn how to develop their own maps.  Next, we will conduct a practicum on map assessment.  The workshop will conclude with a brief representation of the presenter’s research using concept maps, and a discussion of future collaborative activities.

Collaborative and Integrative Classroom
Patricia Adumanu-Ahanotu, Science, Georgia Perimeter College
In this session, participants will be actively involved in discussions and exchange of ideas about learning and teaching.  Participants will discuss questions and answers concerning learning, teaching, and assessment; compare and contrast linear and jigsaw collaborations learning styes.  The presenter will discuss the overview of the active classroom through discussions about learning, effective learning theories, teaching and effective teaching theories, role of lectures, and technology in teaching.

Using Technology in Teaching and Learning
Alison Morrison-Shetlar, Center for Excellence in Teaching, Georgia Southern University
As the use of technology increases in the classroom it is essential to consider the impact (or not) that it is having on student learning, and the time required to develop materials for use in the classroom.  In this workshop, participants will be involved in determining their own learning and teaching styles discussing the effectiveness of technology from overhead projectors to web based learning, and developing methods for assessing and documenting teaching effectiveness.

How Teaching Portfolios Create a Climate of Institutional Collaboration
John Zubizarreta, English, Columbia College
This session focuses on how teaching portfolios help shift the perception and practice of evaluation from a documentary, isolated venture to a collaborative process.  Such a shift promotes evaluation not as a summative act but as faculty development, as continual, shared effort to improve performance.  Participants will actively explore how collaboration on portfolios helps faculty define teaching excellence, articulate a teaching/learning philosophy, and examine the role of faculty and administration in improvement, assessment, and evaluation.

3:00pm-4:00pm Closing Session

Laurie Richlin, President & Conference Director, International Alliance of Teacher Scholars
Join your colleagues for the conference “wrap up” and raffle of Alliance Publishers’ books and the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching.  Bring your nametag -- you must be present to win.