Summary of the Faculty Learning Community

Project Director: Phyllis Blumberg

Co-collaborators: Catherine Bentzley, Leslie Ann Bowman, Barbara Hogan, Pamalyn Kearney, Peter Miller, Michelle Mulhall, Andrew Petersen, Glenn Rosenthal, Shanaz Tejani-Butt, Susan Wainwright

Abstract: Ten USP faculty members and the Director of the Teaching and Learning Center established a faculty learning community on learning-centered teaching. As departmental champions, these individuals implement learning-centered teaching in their own courses and support and educate other faculty in adopting student-centered learning approaches. This community developed and disseminated concrete, practical guidelines for implementation. The work of this learning community will advance a culture of learning-centered teaching at USP.

Since the identification of the strategic imperative to create a culture of student-centered learning and living, faculty have discussed this idea in a variety of venues. Themes of theses discussions have always been the confusion as to which is student-centered learning and whether we can do it here at USP given our current structure within the educational programs. Our faculty seem to accept the idea of students taking more responsibility for their own learning but are uncertain and in some cases unwilling to implement it in their own courses, especially given the emphasis of scientific content and large size of some of our sections. Our faculty are not unique in this reluctance to adapt learning-centered teaching (Weimer, 2002).

The student-centered learning and living tactical planning group identified the need for “expansion of faculty, staff, and administrator support and education of student-centered learning and living.” This proposed project addresses both the support and education of faculty as they implement student-centered learning. One of their proposed mechanisms for this support and education is to develop a group of faculty champions across the university who will be knowledgeable about student-centered learning and who will help others to implement learning-centered teaching.

While the director of the Teaching and Learning Center has been talking about student-centered learning for quite a while, she has been asking for faculty volunteers who want to be actively engaged in learning more about this topic. Ten faculty members, representing most of the departments at the university, have volunteered to be part of this learning community.

As the phrase is used in higher education literature, faculty learning communities usually are multi-disciplinary groups of 8-10 faculty who are engaged in collaborative learning on a topic to improve student learning. These communities meet frequently to promote learning, development, and a sense of community. Learning community participants on other campuses are expected to engage in a project such as revising courses (Cox, 2002). The work of the members of the USP faculty learning community on learning centered teaching will be to implement learning centered teaching in their own courses, to develop mechanisms to help others to do so, and to advance the culture of learner-centered teaching at USP.

The ultimate goal of this project is to educate and support the USP faculty at large in implementing learning-centered teaching. Specific objectives include:
1. To create a functional faculty learning community to develop a full understanding of learning-centered teaching.
2. For each participating faculty member to implement learning-centered teaching in at least one of their courses during the 2003-2004 school year.
3. To provide the knowledge and ability for these faculty to be learning-centered champions for all of the faculty.
4. To develop and disseminate concrete guidelines for implementation of learning-centered teaching at USP.

Some examples of learning-centered teaching within USP courses are:

1. Catherine Bentzley is in the process of changing her first-year chemistry courses to be more learning-centered.
2. Leslie Bowman changed how she teaches information searching in her teaching within other courses, especially PP448.
3. Barbara Hogan applied more learning centered principles into her service learning components in Death and Dying and Social Gerentology.
4. Pam Kearney revised her Rehab course to use Michaelson’s Team-based learning approach.
5. Peter Miller expanded his use of concept mapping to more of his teaching and is involved in scholarship of teaching research on its use.
6. Michelle Mulhall is in the process of revising the policies for clinical education for the PT program to make them more learning-centered.
7. Glenn Rosenthal used a simulation of a virtual company in his capstone course for Pharmaceutical Marketing and Management.
8. Shanaz Tejani-Butt expanded the use of concept mapping in her teaching and presented maps developed by her students at USP’s 2003 Scholarship Day.

References:

Cox, MD. Proven Faculty Development Tools that Foster the Scholarship of Teaching in Faculty Learning Communities. In Wehlburg, CM., and Chadwick-Blossey, S. (Eds.) To Improve the Academy. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Co, Inc. 2002.

Weimer, M. Learner-Centered Teaching. San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass, Spring, 2002

Last updated on:February 24, 2005