Coming up at DCAL:

First-year Portfolios: Insights into Student Learning and Experiences, 12:00pm - 1:30pm, Thursday, February 5, 2015 

First-year students in the Institute’s pilot portfolio project collect their work from Writing 2-3, Writing 5, First-year Seminar, and Humanities 1-2, identify what they consider to be their best work, complete end-of-term self-reflections, and meet with their FYS instructor early in the FYS to share their best work sample. Three faculty members have studied the 2014 portfolios, looking at: 1) the effect of student perceptions of similarity/dissimilarity between the first and second courses on their adaptation of knowledge across these courses; 2) student writing quality in relation to students' self assessments; and 3) student self-efficacy beliefs in relation to academic writing performance. In this Institute-sponsored session, we will informally discuss what they have learned, look at examples of the work and reflections, and consider how it might inform our teaching. 

What Is a Good Question?, 12:30pm - 2:00pm, Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Questions are used ubiquitously in social life, and they are also common teaching and learning tools, but how often do we consider the nature of what makes a good question? How do we recognize good questions, ask them, and teach our students to do the same? What are good question-centered assignment designs for the writing and speaking classrooms? Drawing from a recent book by David A. Westbrook, "Navigators of the Contemporary: Why Ethnography Matters," which tackles the nature of "conversation as method" by focusing on dialogue as a vital way of knowing across the disciplines, this session will explore classical and contemporary uses of questions in teaching, research, and daily life. Sponsored by the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric. 

And later in February:

'Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning' book discussion, 12:00pm - 1:30pm, Thursday, February 26, 2015

From the preface: “ Empirical research into how we learn and remember shows that much of what we take for gospel about how to learn turns out to be largely wasted effort.  Even college and medical students—whose main job is learning—rely on study techniques that are far from optimal.” 

Enjoy your weekend!

Elaine