1. Understanding Faculty Work Habits as a Foundation for Professional Development Cathryn A Manduca, Ellen Iverson Sciece Education Resource Center Carleton College

2. Key Questions in Professional Development  How to reach faculty broadly?  How to teach about pedagogy?  How to motivate and support change in practice?

3.  Starting Point: Teaching Entry Level Geoscience — a website (Manduca, Savina, Merritts)  On the Cutting Edge: Professional Development for Geoscience Faculty —a national workshop program and related website (Macdonald, Manduca, Mogk, Tewksbury)  Research and Evaluation - (Iverson, McMartin, McLaughlin)  With funding from the National Science Foundation

4. Grounding in Theory I User Centered Design Neilsen, 1995  Design Questions  Who are the users?  What are they trying to do?  How can the product be best designed for them?  Process  Investigate your users, their goals, and their work habits  Involve users in design and formative evaluation from the outset

5. Starting Point Faculty Interviews How do geoscience faculty  think about teaching?  learn about teaching?  make decisions?  design their courses?  use the web? Eight geoscience faculty from a spectrum of Minnesota institutions 30 walkthroughs of site

6. Cutting Edge Faculty Survey  What methods are in use in geoscience classes?  How do faculty learn about methods?  How do faculty share with their colleagues what they learn about teaching? 2200 responses from faculty nationwide (39%) describing 1790 courses

7. Evaluation Interviews  How have workshops and/or websites impacted your teaching? 66 interviews of faculty nationwide Evaluation Survey Data and Web Metrics  How are people using the websites?  What are they trying to find/do? 330 survey returns

8. Thinking about Teaching  Faculty frequently think about teaching methods in the context of the specific topics they are teaching.  Impact on content vs methods cannot be disentangled (Cutting Edge evaluation interviews)  Strong interest in topical examples (Starting Point interviews)

9. Learning about Teaching Colleagues are an important source for information on teaching methods  Starting Point interviews:  7 of 8 faculty identified colleagues as a favorite source of information on pedagogy  6 of 8 indicated they would first ask a colleague if asked to create a lab on an unfamiliar topic

10. Sources of info for teaching Content Methods Majors Intro (Cutting Edge Survey)

11. Evidence of Sharing  89 of 95 had specific examples of how shared with colleagues (Cutting Edge 2004 Follow Up Survey)  15 of 54 described department wide results as a result of information sharing after a workshop (Cutting Edge Interview data)

12. Preparing for Teaching Faculty prepare on two timescales:  Designing a course in the weeks, months or year before it is taught  Preparing for class in the days, hours or minutes before it occurs Major changes in pedagogy require the longer timescale Information seeking behavior on the shorter timescale can be used to bring resources into faculty awareness (Starting Point Interviews, Cutting Edge Focus Groups)

13. Grounding in Theory III Information Seeking Behavior Case, 2002 Grounding in Theory III Information Seeking Behavior Case, 2002  Motivating factors for intentional seeking  Information is needed for a purpose  Anxiety about a current situation  Sense of having a gap in knowledge  Ways of finding information  Browsing – informal scanning motivated by broader uncertainty  Curiosity – making sense or finding additional connections  Serendipity – recognize information of value in other contexts than what is in mind originally  Congruency - drift toward information that supports our point of view

14. Using the Web to Prepare  Designing the course- NOT MUCH  Syllabi 10%  Ideas 50%  Info on teaching 10%  Preparing for class-LOTS  Materials for lecture 87%  Images 81%  Activities 24%  Search by geoscience topic (Cutting Edge Survey data)

15. Use of Websites Starting Point 39% Faculty Cutting Edge 50% Faculty Pop up survey-2005

16. Grounding in Theory II Decision Making (Galotti, Case, 2002)  Does not always reflect or seek full understanding  Overvalue personal experience  Established procedures altered only in the event of negative feedback

17. Decision Making  Observations:  Decision making based on personal experience (2), professional experience (3) or research (2) (Starting Point interviews)  6 of 8 related decision making to philosophy implicitly or explicitly (Starting Point interviews)  70% indicated significant shifts in attitude about practice of teaching and study of learning (Cutting Edge evaluation interviews)  Preliminary thoughts:  Shifting philosophy can impact decision making  Improved observation of learning may impact decision making

18. Implications for Design  How to reach faculty broadly?  How to teach about pedagogy?  How to motivate and support change in practice?

19. How to reach faculty broadly?  Disciplinary Approaches can Bring in New People- teaching X  Capitalize on Information Seeking Behavior  When a problem arises in specific class/course - topical approach  Demonstrated gap in knoweldge- methods  When anxiously seeking class materials can introduce information about methods that are available - Tsunami images  When designing course can effectively introduce information on methods - Cutting Edge workshop

20. How to teach about pedagogy?

21. Grounding in Theory IV Learning Theory (NRC, 2000)  Motivate learning  Build on what they know  Engage in constructing new understanding  Prompt metacognition

22. How to teach about pedagogy?  Motivate learning:  how is this information related to what they need to do?- teach class tomorrow or next terms--topical approach can help  Build on what they know:  experiences in specific courses--Examples, Examples, Examples  Engage in building new understanding:  Facilitate learning about teaching while exploring examples  Link examples to information on methods and vice versa  Activities design at workshops  Promote metacognition:  make design methodology explicit

23. How to motivate and support change in practice?  Capitalize on the colleague as a trusted source for pedagogic information  Importance of timing  Thinking about course  Fixing something that is broken  Creating an expert that meets a need  Illuminating both why and how  Bridging the gap between ideas and practice

24. An Example: Starting Point  Pedagogy in Context of What they Teach  Examples, Examples, Examples  Searchable by topic  Findable by Google  Written by Faculty for Faculty  Activities and Images Integrated with Information for Class Design

28.  What?  Think-pair- share  ConcepTests  Longer Activities

29. From Example to Method

30. From Method to Example

31. Site Use

32. Implications for Faculty Professional Development Programs  How to reach faculty broadly?  How to teach about pedagogy?  How to motivate and support change in practice?  Relationship between  national and local?  disciplinary and general?  workshops and websites?