Blog
An Example of the Scholarship of Integration
The Promotion, Tenure, and Evaluation (PT&E) Advisory Group is continuing to develop a workshop about the Boyer Model of Scholarship. I wrote last month about our first two readings in preparation. In the meantime, the Advisory Group has had a couple of discussions and I have (re)read an additional book about the model. For our…
Scholarship Reconsidered and Assessed: The Boyer Model
I’m serving as Chair of the Promotion, Tenure, and Evaluation Advisory Group. One of the tasks we have been charged with is to investigate best practices for promotion, tenure, and evaluation. We decided that we would read the Carnegie Foundation report called Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate that Ernest Boyer wrote in 1990. The…
Making Meaning in Gen Ed via Thematic Pathways
We are continuing to work on The Four Tools of Clusters at Plymouth State University. Thematic pathways in the General Education program is the tool that is the most challenging to get going because a pathway involves some sort of coordination among multiple classes. I facilitated a session during January Jamboree this year to talk…
End of Year Report
The end of the calendar year marks the end of our first year (of three) of funding from the Davis Educational Foundation. Our project, called Implementing Cluster Pedagogy in the General Education Program, provides the basis for the Cluster Pedagogy Learning Community (CPLC), a group of nearly 70 faculty members who have met face-to-face regularly…
New OER for Creating Games
I just created a new OER called Creating Games. I have been teaching a course called Creating Games since 2008. It fulfills a Creative Thought requirement in our General Education program and so is focused on the creative process as it applies to game design and development. The course has evolved significantly since I first started teaching…
Adventures in Ungrading
I have been moving away from traditional grading schemes for a while. In teaching the INCAP course in Spring 2019 and Tackling a Wicked Problem in Fall 2019, I have moved fully into the ungrading camp. But my journey was a pretty gradual one. It started a few years ago when I began to recognize…
Evolution of the End of Semester Showcase of Student Engagement
One of the main goals of the Integrated Cluster Learning Model is to provide students with opportunity to practice talking about their work and their learning with authentic audiences. For example, in the Spring 2019 semester, students in my section of IS4220 presented their work to partners from PSU’s Admissions Office, Enrollment Management team, and…
November Movies
Fleabag ☆☆☆☆☆ Broadcast of a National Theater Live event (so a movie of a live play). I liked the television series that is based on this one woman show. But I sometimes found it difficult to watch because the main character made such terrible choices over and over again. The first season of the show…
Climate Change Class Web Site Debut
Students in my section of Tackling a Wicked Problem have been doing research about climate change claims. We have begun to publish their research on our class web site as they finish their articles. Eventually, there will be 10 claims thoroughly researched and explained but the site currently has the first two. It’s great work!…
Spring 2020 Cluster Experiences
Plymouth State University will continue to offer students the opportunity to participate in cluster experiences in the Spring 2020 semester. Recall that cluster learning is what happens when faculty members use cluster pedagogy in their classes. In particular, the experiences that we offer in the Spring 2020 semester will help students make connections between the…
Understanding the Habits of Mind
A major goal of our Tackling a Wicked Problem class is to introduce students to our General Education program’s Habits of Mind, which are the learning outcomes of the program. Understanding them at a high level is not really a problem for most students but being able to look at their own learning engagement and practices…
Climate Change Projects
My students in Tackling a Wicked Problem engaged in their first project on Friday of last week when they participated in the Climate Strike. They decided that instead of coming to class, they would pick up trash around the PSU campus. The featured photo on this post is from Kincaid, Cody, and Calvin who went…
