July 11, 2002
Old hands get inspiration at institute
Tom Cruise wasn’t there, but from the rave reviews of those who were at the UW’s “Top Gun” program for teachers, he might as well have been.
“I had expected a positive experience, but this was so much more,” said Nursing Professor Patti Brandt. “It was motivating, invigorating and morale boosting.”
“After being part of this group of faculty,” added Mary Abrums, a nursing professor at UW Bothell, “I am convinced that we have the best and most dedicated educators in the world at the UW.”
What they were raving about was the Institute for Teaching Excellence, (ITE) an enrichment program for senior faculty held between spring and summer quarters.
“Our senior faculty used to complain that although there was the Faculty Fellows program for their junior colleagues, there was nothing for them,” said Dean of Undergraduate Education George Bridges. “Then one day four years ago I was watching the movie Top Gun with my son, and I got the idea for a special ‘school’ for senior faculty to advance their teaching skills — a little ‘best of the best’ program.”
Bridges, who was then associate dean, proposed the program to Dean Fred Campbell, who gave the go-ahead. It’s been an annual event ever since. Bridges planned the first three institutes himself; this year he passed the torch to Gerald Baldasty from Communications and Robin Wright from Zoology, both past winners of the Distinguished Teaching Award who were program facilitators last year.
The weeklong institute is held at the Olympic Natural Resources Center in Forks, and according to its official description is designed to “allow experienced faculty members an opportunity to work and reflect with colleagues about their teaching methods and goals.” Participants bring material from courses that they want to overhaul.
Brandt, for example, had a problem she needed help with. She was revising a four-credit class that needed to be reduced to two credits and had to figure out how to fulfill the learning objectives in less time.
“I used the opportunity to get feedback during my presentation of ways to create group activities instead of using an individual approach to a standardized clinical scenario,” Brandt said.
In the early part of the week participants are given the opportunity to attend mini-workshops on such topics as service learning and teaching in diverse classrooms. They’re also introduced to resources like the Center for Instructional Development and Research, Catalyst and UWOnCue. Later, there is more open time to allow participants to work on their own projects. On the final day, participants present their course materials to their colleagues for critique and feedback.
Participant Mark Haselkorn took full advantage of the presence of Catalyst staffers at the institute. He was working on an online case study that he hoped would help address a split in his technical communication classes: One portion was “getting” the material and the other wasn’t. He wanted a way to get everyone to the same place so that he could judge their communication skills apart from their background knowledge. So he began designing a case study that students would go through as individuals but would experience as a group. In other words, at each decision point in the case, the action would be decided by what the majority of students wanted to do and no one would be left behind.
Haselkorn is using Virtual Case, a Catalyst tool, and not only is he trying something new for his classes, he’s trying something new for Catalyst. “The folks at Catalyst are as excited as I am because I am pushing the limits of the current software tool and helping them refine it for others,” he said.
Wright says that although the faculty who attend are experienced teachers, they come needing help. “One of the things that happens when you’re teaching is you reach a kind of plateau,” she said. “In fact in some cases you start to go down because you’re not moving forward. The institute is meant to energize faculty at that stage and help them think more creatively about what they’re doing.”
Beyond the specific content, however, everyone seems to agree that the real value of ITE is in the ideas exchanged and the connections made. “There’s something about this kind of seminar, that if you have any interest in teaching at all, somewhere between the second and sixth hour, you get this charge of energy and excitement,” Baldasty said. “So there’s an awful lot of just talking. People really become, in a wonderful way, quite energized.”
The organizers try to encourage this kind of talk by building in time for “couch clinics,” sessions at which participants can simply bring up situations they’re facing and get ideas from the other participants.
And the end result of ITE, Baldasty and Wright say, is that the exchange of ideas doesn’t stop when the institute is over. Participants go back to campus knowing a group of people they can call on to discuss their teaching.
“The sharing across disciplines and across all three campuses is fantastic,” Wright said.
What’s more, once participants start talking to each other, networking inevitably takes over and they meet others with a particular interest in teaching. That’s why Baldasty and Wright say they get as much out of attending ITE as the participants. “Any time I go to one of these I come away with a larger cohort of people I can talk to who are very concerned about teaching on this campus,” Baldasty said.
