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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

TCC:  2016 HIPs Summer Institute Follow-up Interview Part I


Meghan Glaser (ESOL/TRS) participated in the Learning Communities strand of 2016 High Impact Practices Summer Institute for Faculty: Growing a High Impact Culture through Course Redesign.  In this interview with the TCC, she discussed her experience and the impact of the Institute on her teaching.

How did your focus on Learning Communities prepare you for the Fall?

During the Institute, it was fabulous to see the diversity of participants within the learning community cohort.  There were many disciplines represented—and we were all there to build bridges for our students.  I realized that if my students liked the learning community experience, there would be other options for them as they continued on their academic journey.

I found Dee Fink’s work on Creating Significant Learning Experiences powerful.  Although I already knew about backwards design, his process for developing curriculum through the use of a Decision Guide was incredibly helpful in terms of visualizing how our LC courses could overlap. Catherine Ganze-Smith and I sincerely appreciated the dedicated time to plan our ENG 101 and REA 100 learning community together over the summer. The “heavy lifting” was done at the end of the Institute and our meetings during the semester could then focus on implementation and revision.

What were some highlights from your class last fall?

Our learning community took on a family-sort of atmosphere.  We often opened class with an informal affective check in—a general “how’s it going?”  I wasn’t responsible for the ENG 101 content, I was responsible for helping them navigate how things were going and directing them to how they could get the support that they might need.  My approach was really based in metacognition:  what’s going well, what are the challenges, and how do you plan to work through them?  They shared work with each other; actually, we did a ton of group work. Students provided each other with models of effective approaches to ENG and REA work and offered constructive feedback to one other.

At the end of the semester, students had to do a research project for ENG 101.  Synthesis is, by nature, a challenging cognitive skill for students.  So, I attempted to be very purposeful about laying the groundwork so they could effectively research and pull information from a variety of sources.  I tried to make analysis and synthesis more concrete and observable.  I brought in multiple viewpoints about the Dakota Access Pipeline, which was in the news during the fall semester.  Each student had to read a source from a specific viewpoint, then collaborate with a classmate to look for similarities between the two sources.  These similarities were recorded in green pen.  Next, students marked where the articles were different and recorded those in red pen.  Students then “mapped” the information using a graphic organizer to better visualize how the information was interconnected. The concrete scaffolding helped them approach their research for ENG 101 more confidently, competently and resulted in improved ability to synthesize from multiple sources.

What are your next steps?

Unfortunately, I am not teaching a learning community again this semester, but I am going to continue to use what I learned and implemented from the Institute in the other classes that I teach.  Because I was following and supporting the ENG 101 curriculum, I had to change my approach in terms of progression of reading skills.  In the past, I’d have students work on reading strategies that take place in a linear fashion: before, during and after reading.  But, to complement Catherine’s class, I had to teach a beginning, during and after strategy for each assignment as a sort of “package”.  This assisted my students in viewing these strategies as flexible and purposefully based on the task, which is a transferrable skill.

I also decided that I am going to have students choose portfolio pieces several times throughout the semester, rather than just at the end (as I have done in the past).  That approach proved to be far too overwhelming to wait until the end of the semester, as students’ levels of academic endurance are significantly lower. Instead, I’m going to have students reflect on their progress as they go throughout the semester by identifying their own significant milestones to reflect on and celebrate their own learning and accomplishments.

Gena Merliss
Teaching and Creativity Center
02/01/2017