2002 Proceedings North East Regional Conference on  Excellence in Learning and Teaching  ======================

Beyond Chalk & Talk: "Enhancing Student Learning in Higher Education"

Special thanks to:
The New York State/United University Professions Joint Labor-Management Committees,
SUNY Oswego's Auxiliary Services, and the local chapter of UUP for their generous grants
to help fund this conference.

This conference is a forum for faculty in higher education to share effective strategies to improve and assess student learning. The long-term goal of the conference is to create networks of individuals and institutions that promote ongoing collaboration to improve student learning. The conference included paper presentations, round tables, panels and sessions on a range of topics including:

• Active learning across the curriculum
• Practical and innovative ways to assess student learning
• Effective use of computer and distance-learning technologies to improve student learning

The proposals have been peer-reviewed and submitted papers are in this conference's e-proceedings.

Dr. Roger Shank and Dr. Vincent Tinto were the keynote speakers. Widely acknowledged as a dynamic presenter, Shank is an internationally renowned scholar in cognitive science and artificial intelligence. He is the author of more than twenty books on learning, language, artificial intelligence, education, memory, reading, e-learning, and story telling. Dr. Vincent Tinto is a Distinguished University Professor at Syracuse University. He is a world famous authority on a variety of issues affecting higher education including student retention and success, learning communities, and transitions from college to the world of work.

---

Proceedings:
You can view the abstract, full text, or the full PDF version

---

    Virginia MacEntee, Pam Youngs-Maher

Promoting Active Learning in Online Courses

---

    Karen Schuhle-Williams, Richard Lumb, Kathleen J. Hunter, Ann Altmeyer, Susan Stites-Doe, Reddy Anugu

Evaluation and Assessment of SUNY Brockport Online Courses
     

---

 

    Dr. Audrey C. Rule, Linda Lord

Active Student Learning of Phonological Awareness Skills by Making Teaching Materials
1-31-2002      

---

    Dr. Carol Freeman, Dr. Erica Johnson

 Enhancing Student Learning in Higher Education
 

---

    Faith Maina, Harrison Yang, Barbara Shaffer

 The Shifting Landscape in Distance Learning: Perspectives of an Online Discourse
 

---

    Paula E. Borowski, Pamela L. Cox

 Gateway to Business: An Innovative Approach to Enhancing the First-Year Experience for Business Students
 

---

    Brent A. Olde

 Latent Semantic Analysis: What is it and how can it Improve and Assess Student Learning?
 

---

    Michael Jabot

 The Impact on Teacher Self-Efficacy of a Misconceptions-Based Approach to Teaching Science Methods
 

---

    Carla Meskill, Ed Alston, Anthony Ho, Goulnara Sadykova, Edwige Simon, Phyliann Tseng, Jieun You

 Collaborative Design of an Online Instructional Support Site
 

---

    Richard Skolnik

 Enhancing Technological Skills through Case Studies
 

Active Student Learning of Phonological Awareness Skills by Making Teaching Materials

Learning is enhanced when students are dynamically involved in the teaching/ learning process. An innovative program of phonological awareness skill-preparation for pre-service elementary teachers, a component of language arts methods and elementary practicum classes for five years, highlights active participation. Students learn phonological awareness skills by teaching peers using hands-on materials in cooperative groups; by producing subsequent sets of teaching materials from environmental print; by peer-evaluation of materials created by classmates; and by practicing skills while tutoring elementary students. Presenters explain how this process can be implemented in the classroom and involve the audience in hands-on activities.















   

---

Enhancing Student Learning in Higher Education
With a content base including the analysis of the behavior of functions, algebraic transformations, and modeling change, faculty at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, NY enable active student engagement by setting up a learning environment using Calculator Based Laboratories, in which undergraduate students gather their own, unique data from which they construct concepts for deeper understanding. In this paper, we will discuss part of a two-course sequence for pre-service elementary teachers that is consistent with NCTM Standards and where students are immersed in a learner-center, inquiry-based environment that models the environment they will subsequently create in their own classrooms.  Students explore mathematical functions in scientific, problem-solving contexts, and are assessed using both individual and group examinations.  

---

The Shifting Landscape in Distance Learning: Perspectives of an Online Discourse

This paper describes the shifting landscape of distance learning as viewed through the asynchronous environment of online teaching. While it is well documented about the separation of students from professors in both distance and time, little is known about closing that gap by re-examining the professor’s role in course delivery, provisions made to access learning materials and the interaction there-in. This paper documents the experiences of two professors and an education librarian. The data include content analysis from students’ work and interactions during discussions, responses to specific questionnaires and the course evaluation information.

---

Gateway to Business: An Innovative Approach to Enhancing the
First-Year Experience for Business Students 
  The “Gateway to Business” course for first-year business students was designed to help students acquire the skills necessary to succeed in business school, and, ultimately as professionals by integrating the learning of business concepts with the development of business skills. Additional objectives include easing students’ transition from high school to college, providing first-year students with a sense of community, and offering mentoring support from both faculty and peers. This paper will provide a description of the course and how it was implemented using a team-teaching approach. Data assessing the course’s efficacy in meeting its objectives will also be provided.

 

 

---

Latent Semantic Analysis: What is it and how can it improve and assess student learning?

AutoTutor is a computer tutor that simulates natural discourse while executing pedagogically appropriate conversational turns. Currently there are two versions of AutoTutor, one designed for tutoring college students in an introductory computer course, the other designed for introductory physics. This paper describes a key component of AutoTutor’s ability to “comprehend” student responses, latent semantic analysis (LSA). This natural language understanding technique has many practical applications for technologically sophisticated strategies of enhancing learning and aiding teaching. Our goal is to present an overview of LSA, briefly explore uses of LSA, and then discuss how it is implemented in our tutoring system.  

---

Collaborative Design of an Online Instructional Support Site

In the past ten years, higher education faculty have found multiple and powerful purposes for telecommunications in their teaching. Applications range from simply posting a course syllabus on the web to carrying on semester-long constructive telecollaboration projects. This paper discusses the design and formative evaluation of a collaboratively constructed instructional website. The goals of the project’s design research activities were to 1) undertake a collaborative design research project; 2) design telecollaborative spaces and routines for doing so; and 3) construct the site for a specific audience (language in education graduate students). These processes and their outcomes are here discussed by the design research participants.

---

Abstract for Self-Efficacy Proceeding To be Announced

---

Enhancing Technological Skills through Case Studies

This presentation describes the use of a case study that integrates technology with fundamental investment concepts. The case study requires students to utilize several different technological tools.  The primary subject of the case concerns calculating portfolio returns and the  standard deviation of returns for a portfolio constructed of two funds. The case introduces students to data extraction and analysis techniques. Students must download investment fund values from the Internet, import data into a spreadsheet, and use spreadsheet functions to manipulate and analyze data.

This paper describes the use of technology in the classroom to enhance student understanding of financial concepts and to increase student expertise with spreadsheet and Internet applications.  The paper begins with a justification of the pedagogy, describes the classroom setting, presents the case material, discusses student assessment of the format  and concludes by summarizing the strengths and weaknesses of the approach.

Created By: Matthew J. LaMacchia
12-05-02