2010 PTLC Research Proposals Index of 2010 Research Proposals:

Professor Meredith Banasiak - University of Colorado Boulder Professor Kristen Brown - University of Colorado Denver

Professor Jeffrey Druck - University of Colorado Denver

Professor Peter Ellingson - University of Colorado Denver

Professor Jeffrey Gemmell - University of Colorado Boulder

Professor Storm Gloor - University of Colorado Denver

Professor Jacqueline Jones - University of Colorado Denver

Professor Anna MacBriar - University of Colorado Boulder

Professor Mary Nelson - University of Colorado Boulder

Professor Kathryn Pieplow - University of Colorado Boulder

Professor Melinda Piket-May - University of Colorado Boulder

Professor Peter Schneider - University of Colorado Denver

Professor Curtis Smith - University of Colorado Colorado Springs

Professor Laura Summers - University of Colorado Denver

Professor David Weiss - University of Colorado Colorado Springs

Meredith Banasiak Instructor University of Colorado, Boulder Faculty College of Architecture & Planning Environmental Design Program, Department of Architecture Professional Field: Architecture/Environmental Design Campus Box 314 Boulder, CO 80309 303.492.5677 banasiak@colorado.edu

a. Research question. In 2008, under a grant from the American Institute of Architects (AIA), I developed a model for incorporating research into architectural education in order to prepare students for the growing trend in evidence based design (Banasiak, 2009). Through the design of a “preceptorship program”, and a semester long pilot study, I addressed the question: “How can academic research performed by undergraduates benefit both the undergraduate student, and a preceptor/ practitioner?”. The ‘preceptorship program’ paired a student with 1) an academic mentor from the environmental design program, and 2) a practicing design professional, in order to structure a research partnership which is innovative, collaborative, publishable, and carries knowledge from “benchtop to bedside” (ibid). Where this model was weak, and what I would like to further address, is the issue of how to retain students’ interest in research by making the research more “fun”. Lack of a “fun factor”, i.e. that research was not as fun as design, was the major critique that the students who participated in the pilot study project reported, and why they failed to commit to a second semester in the preceptorship program. Thus, the proposed question is: “How can design research be made more fun 1) itself, and 2) by directly incorporating research with studio work?”.

b. Significance. While there exists a rising demand for research and ‘evidence based design’ in architectural practice, as the Boyer Report (Boyer, 1996) and many subsequent critiques of architectural education point out, research is generally not being addressed in design education. By developing a salient model for integrating research into the design studio, this project would present a strategy to better prepare students for the changing and future nature of the profession toward performance based design by 1) introducing research methods, and 2) applying research to design. Many undergraduate educators believe that there is not a place for research in the undergraduate curriculum on account of the time requirements and demands of the traditional design studio model. It is hypothesized that results from this study support the principle that research should integrate, not compete with, the design studio experience to maximize learning outcomes.

c. Methodology. The execution of this proposal involves a three part process: Part1: Case study research on existing evidence based design studios. There are a few existing architecture programs which offer a design studio that is largely research based, for example, the Integrated Design Lab (IDL) networks. These cases will be researched through published material, course syllabi, and interviews with the instructors. Part 2: A studio/seminar will be developed to be held during the summer session 2010. Part 3: Outcomes will be measured through: 1) quality of work produced compared with traditional studios, 2) knowledge gains measured through pre and post assessment tests, and 3) attitudinal studies assessing “fun” collected through surveys and interviews of the students.

d. Knowledge dissemination. Most immediately, I would aim to establish a collaborative relationship with others interviewed in the cases study research phase of this project. In the short term, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization who has asked that I report and publish on an annual basis updates and progress on work resulting from my initial “Research for Practice” grant where I developed the “preceptorship program”. I have multiple publications with the AIA, and have been an invited conference speaker at the AIA national convention (2009). In addition, I would seek publication and presentation opportunities with the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA), and Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC). In the long term, I would like to initiate a web based resource sharing site for instructors of human and social factors at various programs throughout the world. e. Literature Review & References. In a prior study, I have cross-analyzed positions on research from the following categorical topics: undergraduate research (education theory), architectural research (professional perspective), and research in architectural education (academic perspective, disciplinary specific) including a review of case study research programs in the United States and the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom specifically, has spearheaded elaborate initiatives in attempting to organize a paradigm in which to think about and test these issues. Following is a list of key publications reviewed: Ahrentzen, S. (2006). Actionable Knowledge: A Research Synthesis Project For Affordable Housing Design Practice. AIA RFP, pp. 80-94.

Banasiak, M. (2009). “From Benchtop to Bedside: Exchanging research lessons learned in an undergraduate program”. American Institute of Architects 2008 Research For Practice Report.

Boyer, E. & Mitgang, L. (1996). Building Community: A New Future for Architectural Education and Practice. Princeton, N.J.: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Griffiths, R. (2004). Knowledge Production and the research-teaching nexus: the case of the built environment disciplines, Studies in Higher Education, vol. 29, 6, pp. 709-726.

Heylighten, A., Martin, W. M. & Cavallin, H. (2007). Building Stories Revisited: Unlocking the Knowledge Capital of Architectural Practice. Architectural Engineering and Design Management, 3, pp. 65-74.

Jenkins et al. (2005). Research in UK architecture schools – an institutional perspective. Arq, Vol. 9, 1, pp. 33- 43.

Kenny, S.S. (2002). Reinventing Undergraduate Education: Three Years After the Boyer Report. State University of New York, Stony Brook: Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University.

Martin, W. M. et al. (2007). Design Research. AIA Board Knowledge Committee 2007 Research Summit. Retrieved August 21, 2008 from http://www.aia.org/ResearchSummit/emerging_agendas/6-design-01.html.

National Science Foundation. (2003). Enhancing research in the Chemical sciences at predominantly undergraduate institutions. A Report from the Undergraduate Research Summit. Lewiston, ME: Bates College.

Veal, A. (2005). RIBA symposium encourages new links between design and research, arq, vol. 9, 1, pp. 17-19.

Wenzel, T. J. (1997). What is Undergraduate Research?, Council on Undergraduate Research Quarterly, vol. 17, p. 163.

The next step would be to review the educational and psychology literature on attitudinal studies for assessing “fun” in a learning environment, as well as to look for additional case studies integrating research and design in design education. There are no publications which effectively address the multiple perspectives and cross-disciplinary categorical topics outlined in this proposal.

f. What is your record of innovation in teaching and/or the assessment of learning? During my time at University of Colorado, I have been actively involved in the curriculum development of the College’s undergraduate programs. In 2007, I was appointed to work with Dean

Gelernter to develop a feasibility study and strategic plan for a proposed new school of architecture in Denver which would link building design with an innovative pedagogy for educating architects of the 21st century. In 2008, I was able to transfer these lessons as a member of the ‘new ENVD curriculum committee’ which was charged with developing an integrated environmental design program that incorporates problem-based and situated learning mechanisms. This new curriculum launched this fall 2009. I am responsible for teaching ‘Social Factors in Environmental Design’, a core curriculum lecture course required for all undergraduate ENVD majors, and for coordinating this course material with introductory studios. Additionally, I have developed a graduate seminar, ‘Design with the Brain in Mind’ which examines the connections between cognitive science and our environment and has been published in the 2008 ACSA Annual Meeting Conference Proceedings. In fall 2008, I launched a pilot study ‘Preceptorship Program’, funded by an AIA RFP (Research for Practice) award, which structured research opportunities for undergraduate students by connecting each student with both a practicing design professional and an academic mentor, results from which was published in 2009 by the AIA.

g. Are you able to attend the required meetings as specified in Section 5? Yes.

h. Mentor: Professor Peter Schneider | (303) 492-2803 | peter.schneider@colorado.edu Peter Schneider is a professor and practitioner of architecture whose research interests focus on the history of the architect: the architect's mind, methods and manners as these have occurred in history, and in the way that the interactions between these three forces have shaped the discipline's traditions. Peter is a Contemplative Fellow with the Fetzer Institute with experience in contemplative education.

i. Can you suggest an appropriate coach for your project? Clayton Lewis as a fellow member of the Lifelong Learning and Design (L3D) group. j. If your project is selected, are you willing to serve as a coach in PTLC in a future year? Yes, I would be honored to serve in this role. Kristen A. Brown, Pharm.D. BCPS Assistant Professor, Department of Clinical Pharmacy Assistant Director of Experiential Programs University of Colorado Denver School of Pharmacy Mail Stop C238-L15, AO1 12631 E 17th Avenue, Room 1401 Aurora, Colorado 80045 Office: 303-724-

7426 Kristen.Brown@ucdenver.edu

What is the central question, issue or problem you plan to explore in your proposed work?

The central issue to be explored is the incorporation of a longitudinal hospital-based experience within the pharmacy education curriculum that would increase the number of hospital visits conducted by second-year pharmacy students. The proposed benefits to students’ learning in this model would be an enhanced awareness of hospital pharmacy practice and an improved balance within the current curriculum (which primarily focuses on community pharmacy practice), the potential for career-development through exposure to post-graduate residents, fellows or clinical specialists, an increased opportunity to participate in multidisciplinary patient-centered care, and the development of a mentor relationship that would be fostered for two years. Ongoing mentor development would occur with support from the School.

Why is this central question, issue or problem important to you and to others who might benefit from or build on your findings? Experiential education makes up approximately one-third of the pharmacy professional curriculum. Balancing amongst faculty and preceptor resources, didactic lectures, the academic calendar and accreditation requirements can prove challenging to giving this critical piece of the curriculum adequate attention and variety. Since updated standards were released by AACP in 2007, Schools of Pharmacy are now required to provide 300 hours of introductory pharmacy practice experiences (IPPE) throughout the junior years of the program. These experiences are to be drawn from a variety of pharmacy settings, both community and hospital/institutional, however, the distribution weight of each is not set forth. Currently our program focuses the majority of these hours in service learning activities (52 hrs), immunization clinics (12 hrs plus in-class prep time) and community pharmacy practice (84 hrs). Although noble experiences, there is a disparity between those collective hours and the amount of exposure to hospital/institutional practice (18 hrs). Currently the 18 hours of hospital exposure occurs as six, 3-hour visits over the course of 3 semesters, at different institutions, with varying preceptors. The proposed longitudinal model would provide approximately 17, 3 hour visits conducted with a single hospital-based mentor, spanning 4 semesters. With the future vision for pharmacists providing safe, efficacious and economical patient-centered pharmacotherapy, working within interprofessionals teams, utilizing informatics and distribution systems and creating a foundation for life-long, self-directed learning, the

impact of hospital/institutional care on that vision cannot be underscored. In addition, with the increasing number of post-graduate pharmacy residency programs, specialty fellowships and certification specialties becoming available, it would appear paramount that the school provides adequate exposure to allow informed decisions to be made regarding career options prior to advanced practice rotations and graduation. Focus groups of graduating students indicate a need to increase exposure in the hospital/institutional realm and other Schools of Pharmacy have been trying to find ways to incorporate these experiences throughout their curricula as well. Since no single program operates on the same schedule or pulls from the same preceptor pool, individual logistics play a role in the feasibility of providing these experiences at each institution. However, Schools of Pharmacy are looking to each other through professional meetings and in the pharmaceutical education literature, and specifically looking to experiential education offices, to provide new and novel ways of conducting quality rotations in the hospital practice setting. A few institutions offer block models where students get their hours in a condensed fashion by being immersed in that activity for a block of time, usually over a 1 week to 1 month timeframe. Some schools may choose to perform these activities over the summer months, or align them within the middle of a semester. However, the skills learned in that compressed time frame are not necessarily repeated with enough frequency to show retention of learning and may not be revisited or utilized for a year or more until P4 year advanced practice rotations. This type of scheduling also places a potential burden on preceptors who must set aside work time for several weeks to prep and precept students during that time block. Ideally we would be able to work within the current infrastructure of our curriculum and create a longitudinal experience that would allow students to gradually become familiar with hospital skills and patient responsibilities, building from one visit to the next with a consistent mentor-practitioner, incorporating new and previously used skills in an ongoing fashion to increase retention and appreciation for the institutional environment. Given that initial proposal, many preceptors feel this approach is amenable to their workplace schedules and they appreciate the humanistic aspect of the mentoring process. This model, once assessed and evaluated could certainly be attractive to other Schools of Pharmacy.

How do you plan to conduct your investigation? Approximately 160 students within the P2 class would need to be matched with mentors from hospital institutions within the Denver metro area. The students would be surveyed towards the end of the Spring semester after approximately 6-7 visits with their hospital mentors have been conducted. In addition, a parallel survey would be sent to the P3 class who would have followed the

previous traditional hospital visit schedule. Data to be collected would include comparisons of perceptions as to the value of the hospital experiences and the mentoring process then and now, reflecting on preparedness to enter P4 rotations, tracking of hospital-skills learned and the students’ competence and confidence to display them, e.g. This would need to be fleshed out further depending on the tool being utilized for assessment (survey, small group, etc.). This evaluative tool has not yet been developed. Future follow-up would include looking at P4 rotations selected by the P3 class who participated in the previous, traditional way versus the new model P2 class to see if there is an increase in hospital/specialty electives ranked and matched or if there is an increase in the number of students who go on to post-graduate training. Currently more than 50% of our students go on to community pharmacy practice careers and a fifth or less pursue more intensive, clinical options. In addition to student assessment of the mentor-model and hospital learning, a concurrent assessment from the mentors’ point-of-view as to the success, benefits and satisfaction they had with the model would be important to gather. If the mentors don’t value the experience or adopt the concept then the proposal could dissolve or proceed in a reduced capacity. Their feedback on the development process and educational impact would be valuable.

How might you make your work valuable to others in ways that facilitate scholarly critique and review, and that contribute to thought and practice beyond the local? Ideally this concept and project proposal would be instituted, evaluated and presented at the annual American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) meeting for pharmacy educators. The information would likely be targeted for paper submission to the American Journal of Pharmaceutical education (AJPE). Literature review of the theory and effective teaching practice of the subject:

There is no formalized theory on how best to effectively provide introductory pharmacy practice experiential education. Each institution must comply with the required hours allotted towards IPPE’s, however, there is no governance for how this is to be done (other than compliance with ACPE accreditation standards) and it is left to the discretion of the institution. Based on location and resources, this can be accomplished in a myriad of ways. There are several literature reviews regarding designs and outcomes of experiential education programs in general, but a PubMed search utilizing the terms “IPPE, introductory pharmacy practice experience, education, hospital and/or longitudinal” only yielded two results 1,2. These institutions incorporated some of the required hours into their curriculum and calendar utilizing either a single semester model or blocks

within the middle of a semester, but this proposed project would appear to be the first to trial a longitudinal mentor-based model within the hospital setting. Therefore, ideas generated would be novel and if deemed successful to student learning and valuable to preceptors could be adopted or adapted within other schools. 1. Crill CM, Matlock MA, Pinner NA, Self TH. Integration of first- and second-year introductory pharmacy practice experiences. Am J Pharm Educ. 2009 May 27;73(3):50. 2. Wuller WR, Luer MS. A sequence of introductory pharmacy practice experiences to address the new standards for experiential learning.Am J Pharm Educ. 2008 Aug 15;72(4):73.

What is your record of innovations in teaching and/or the assessment of learning?

I am a new faculty member at the University of Colorado Denver, School of Pharmacy and am in the process of developing my personal teaching philosophy and defining my role in academia. I have not conducted extensive research in the area of student learning or teaching methods, however, in my new role within the experiential education office I have begun collaborating with other faculty to review and evolve our current process of student assessment, rotation outcomes and preceptor development.

Are you able to attend the required meetings? What are the benefits? Yes I will be able to attend the required meetings. The benefits to doing so would be to gain constructive feedback from colleagues, discuss options for improvement, pose additional questions or concepts for consideration, incorporate the innovative methods, assessments or evaluative tools of others into my design and gain insight from coaches and mentors on ways to enhance my academic experience through scholarly contributions. Name and contact information for a mentor within the PTLC program: Dr. Wesley Nuffer, Pharm.D., CDE. Assistant Professor and Assistant Director of Experiential Programs, University of Colorado Denver, School of Pharmacy, Mail Stop C238-L15, 12631 East 17th Avenue, Room 1402, Aurora, Colorado 80045, Phone: 303-724-2654, Email:Wesley.Nuffer@ucdenver.edu

Can you suggest an appropriate coach for your project? Dr. Christopher Turner, BPharm, PhD, Professor and Director of Experiential Programs, University of Colorado Denver, School of Pharmacy, Mail Stop C238-L15, 12631 East 17th Avenue Room 1601, Aurora, Colorado 80045, Phone: 303-724-2659, Email: Christopher.Turner@ucdenver.edu

If your project is selected, are you willing to serve as a coach in PTLC in a future year? Yes Jeffrey Druck, M.D. Assistant Professor Division of Emergency Medicine, Department of Surgery University of Colorado Denver 7th Floor 12401 E. 17th Ave B-215 Aurora, CO 80045 720-848-6773 Jeffrey.Druck@UCDenver.edu

Effectiveness of an Emailed EKG Curriculum for Residency Training Multiple modalities are available for teaching within medical education, with the advent of simulation, web-based content and standardized patients supplementing the more standard methods of lecture, problem based learning, and group discussion. One avenue used in business for education and compliance is a weekly email. The modality of a weekly email has been shown to be effective for medical student education when supplemented with lecture on a narrow focus; it has not been studied in post-graduate medical residents or between residency types. We aim to study if a weekly email EKG curriculum is effective in educating a variety of residents among institutions via a standard pre and post test assessment. Peter Ellingson Senior Instructor of Music University of Colorado Denver College of Arts and Media Music and Entertainment Industry Studies Arts Building, room 274B Campus Box 162, P.O. Box 173364 Denver, CO 80217-3364 303-882-1770 peter.ellingson@ucdenver.edu

Project Question

Self-assessment is a regular topic in learner-centered teaching environments, but there are many specific applications of self-assessment that have not been thoroughly documented. One of these areas is the self-assessment of musicians while practicing. Accurate self-assessment requires the student to set the criteria for what he or she will assess and to accurately evaluate those areas. While this sounds simple, it is difficult to do well in any area, and even more difficult to do when the student takes the subject matter very personally, as is often the case in music. This question is significant because music performance is a skill which requires regular practice and improvement, and the most growth between class sessions happens as a result of regular self-assessment in practice. Advanced musicians have learned these skills naturally, but many

musicians progress slowly because they never learned these skills. Research in this area will allow these techniques to be documented so that teachers can assist students in this area, allowing a greater number to develop in their self-assessment skills.

Method of Investigation

This study will measure the effectiveness of three self-assessment techniques: using lists and rubrics to define assessment criteria, audio recording, and journaling. I will examine the actual rubrics, audio recordings, and journals as well as the student comments on the effectiveness of each technique. I will also compare their self-assessment ratings with my ratings to see if a particular technique causes the ratings to correspond more closely. The Journal of Research in Music Education and the Music Educators Journal are primary outlets for sharing my findings and receiving critique and review.

Literature Review

The literature in the area of self-assessment in music is dominated by research in primary and secondary education or in the research of self-assessment for music educators themselves. While many aspects of self-assessment in music may be similar for students in higher education, the context of the self-assessment and the need for more detailed assessment is different and there is a need for research in this area. The following list provides samples of the articles and dissertations available on this topic:

Baker-Jordan, Martha, Larry Scott Donald, and Willam H. Hughes Jr. “How to you teach students to listen to themselves as they practice? (three authors emphasize the value of models—teachers and recordings—and various self-assessment techniques).” Keyboard Companion, A Practical Magazine on Piano Teaching; Autumn 2004, Vol. 15, pp. 10-13.

Hewitt, Michael Peter. "The effects of self-evaluation, self-listening, and modeling on junior high instrumentalists' music performance and practice attitude". Ph.D. diss., The University of Arizona, 2000.

Yarbrough, Cornelia. “The Relationship of Behavioral Self-Assessment to the Achievement of Basic Conducting Skills.” Journal of Research in Music Education, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 183-189.

Zimmerman, John Robert. "The effects of periodic self-recording, self-listening and self-evaluation on the motivation and music self-concept of high school instrumentalists". Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 2005.

Record of Innovation in Teaching and Assessment of Learning

The aspects of my teaching and assessment that have been innovative are an online music theory placement test that I programmed using PHP and MySQL for incoming students, an annual Cuban music event that blends high-level performance and education, and a text book for a non-traditional ear training course in our curriculum that has been used by many different teachers in our department. Additional Considerations

I will be able to attend all meetings with my cohort group and my personal mentor and coach. I do not have a personal coach or mentor yet, but I am in correspondence with Ellen Stevens to get her recommendations. I am willing to serve as a coach in PTLC in a future year if selected for this program. Jeffrey Gemmell Associate Director of Choirs/Assistant Director College of Music University of Colorado at Boulder 285 UCB Boulder, Colorado 80309-0825 303-492-6403 jeffrey.gemmell@colorado.edu

1. The central issue I plan to explore in my proposed work:

Choral rehearsals are a process of exploration and discovery as singers are led to a greater awareness of the musical intricacies of choral works. Effective rehearsals lead to successful products of learning (performances). Ensemble experiences involve a feedback loop between the actions of a conductor -- conducting, singing, verbal directions, etc. – and the perceptions and responses of the students -- mostly the singing assigned parts. As students sing, the conductor listens, evaluates, and devises strategies to improve the choir’s performance. Student feedback (singing) provides valuable input heard in the quality of tone, sensitivity to inherent musical elements, and expression of a unified interpretation. One approach to challenge students to recognize and fulfill their artistic feedback responsibilities includes kinesthetic (movement) activities. Use of gestures, movement “in place,” and movement “in space” provide potential tools for in-depth learning via greater physiological connection to singing, more full-bodied engagement in awareness of musical elements, and natural commitment to spontaneous artistic expression. Benefits of kinesthetics are witnessed visually and aurally via ensemble performance, however, usefulness is impacted by the students’ confidence in their effectiveness. From the students’ point of view, do kinesthetic activities engage them more directly and fully in artistic exploration? Do these

techniques positively influence their performance and lead to better teaching and learning?

2. Why this issue is important, to me and to others who might benefit from or build on my findings:

Most time spent teaching choral music occurs in daily classes. Conductors at all levels are interested in rehearsal techniques to improve their teaching. While some have explored the value of kinesthetic intelligence and the nature of the mind-body connection to singing, little research has been done on the direct link between specific movement strategies and choral performance. Student self-perception regarding kinesthetic awareness activities and the relationship to teaching and learning has not been measured. Movement is critical to encourage students to access and explore their own artistic depths. An opportunity for them to report on such experiences provides insight into how best to structure teaching and learning. All choral directors would benefit from such a study. An investigation of useful rehearsal strategies, the influence of this teaching on artistry, and feedback of student perceptions on the process will inspire others to explore similar issues in their teaching and lead to enhanced learning (performance).

3. How I plan to conduct my investigation, including sources of evidence that I will examine, methods I might employ to gather and make sense of this evidence, and possible ways to make my work available to others:

Students of CU, Boulder’s University Choir, an ensemble under my direction, will learn and be able to identify rehearsal activities that are practiced while singing and categorized according to: (1) gesture only [hands and arms], (2) movement in-place [e.g., stepping to the pulse or melodic rhythm], (3) movement in-space [e.g., large-scale movement where entire body moves about in a large open space]. Students will discern how these kinesthetic activities influence three factors related to musical performance: (1) vocal production and the tone of the ensemble, (2) attention to and engagement with details in the score and overall musical awareness, and (3) freedom of artistic expression and collaboration with others. To evaluate the effectiveness of these techniques on choral performance, a survey will be distributed three times during the semester. Nine questions will be answered with a Likert scale that measures each movement technique and its influence on the specific area of musical performance. The final questions of the survey will be open-ended with optional sub-questions, including: • Reflect on the use of

kinesthetic awareness activities in the choral rehearsal. For you, why are the techniques effective (or not)?

• What in particular do you like or dislike about the use of such activities? • Do you hear or feel a difference in your own performance during movement activities? Explain. • Do you believe such rehearsal techniques benefit the sound, awareness and expressivity of the entire choral ensemble? Explain. • Are there other thoughts you would like to share concerning this project?

Student responses will be compiled and analyzed to discover if they believe these kinesthetic activities are effective (or not) and why (or why not)? Reflections will be compiled and analyzed to build a narrative of how students view these activities in relation to their music making. Student self-perceptions will provide valuable data as to their thoughts regarding the nature, usefulness and effectiveness of kinesthetic techniques. Assistance will be sought from music education research colleagues to clarify the details and procedure for this type of study. This will lead to improved teaching and learning of choral music at CU, Boulder, and will be valued in the greater field through published articles in national choral journals. 4. A literature review of the theory and practice of the subject of my inquiry:

The music-mind-body-feeling connection has been well documented in literature from many fields, including psychology and music education. Howard Gardner devised his Multiple Intelligence Theory in the 1980s and continues research to this day. He acknowledges that musical and kinesthetic intelligence are basic ways of knowing and interacting with the world. Bennett Reimer, an influential music education philosopher for over forty years, grounds his entire philosophy on aesthetic education, where opportunities are provided for students to increase their ability to perceive and respond to music. This is considered the primary route to teaching them how to feel deeply the expressive qualities of art. This education of feeling, he believes, results in more expressive performances. Late-19th-century Swiss music educator Emile Jaques-Dalcroze based his approach to teaching on Eurhythmics to achieve well-balanced musicianship: moving one’s body to music is key to understanding and feeling the rhythm and flow (the real substance) of music. Through this education from within, outward musical expression through performance becomes a natural extension of learning. The writings of Gardner, Reimer, and Jaques-Dalcroze are voluminous, but there has been little application to choral music education.

5. My record of innovation in teaching and pedagogy:

I have taught full-time on the college level since 1997 and have been recognized by faculties at Metropolitan State College of Denver, Ithaca College, Cornell University, California State University (Chico), and Millersville University of Pennsylvania for my innovative and effective choral rehearsal techniques. Choral performances under my direction were well received. I have delivered many workshops and presentations for the American Choral Directors Association, Music Educators National Conference, California Music Educators, Pennsylvania Music Educators, and others. I have written articles for publication in state journals that focus on choral conducting-vocal production issues and recorded a series of educational videos to demonstrate original teaching techniques. I have been invited to guest conduct district and regional honor choirs in California, Pennsylvania, Colorado and New York.

6. Are you able to attend the meetings? Yes.

7. Provide the name and contact information for someone who can serve as a mentor to you within the PTLC program.

Dr. Alejandro M Cremaschi (CU, Boulder College of Music-Piano) has offered to be my mentor for this project.

8. Can you suggest an appropriate coach for your project?

Dr. Susan Williamson – CU, Boulder College of Music-Music Education faculty – has agreed be my coach.

9. If your project is selected, are you willing to coach in PTLC in a future year? Yes. Storm Gloor Assistant Professor Music and Entertainment Industry Studies Department University of Colorado Denver Arts Bldg., Suite 288 Campus Box 162 | PO Box 173364 Denver, CO, 80217 417-499-3375 storm.gloor@ucdenver.edu

Abstract The key question I intend to address in my research is this: In terms of effectiveness in learning and teamwork, how does online collaboration contribute to learning and engagement in completing formal

learning group project reports versus traditional means? College students continue to spend more of their leisure and exploratory time online and are advanced in their uses of new technology. Utilizing cutting edge new media tools in a teaching environment might enhance their learning because of its familiarity and appeal. Or could it detriment the effectiveness of group interaction and teamwork in learning? With group projects, especially those based upon creating a master document and presentation, challenges including contribution equity, management of various working documents and materials, and group communication exist. Tools like Google Docs and wikis might not only address these challenges for the students but might allow the instructor to more adequately and objectively assess the individual’s work within the team for more effective evaluation. Finally, use of such new media in group projects might better prepare students for the business environments in which these tools are being utilized.

What is the central question, issue, or problem you plan to explore in your proposed work? In terms of effectiveness in learning and teamwork, how does online collaboration contribute to learning and engagement in completing formal learning group project reports versus traditional means? Why is your central question, issue, or problem important, to you and to others who might benefit from or build on your findings? College students continue to spend more of their leisure and exploratory time online and are advanced in their uses of new technology. Utilizing cutting edge new media tools in a teaching environment might enhance their learning because of its familiarity and appeal. With group projects, especially those based upon creating a master document and presentation, challenges including contribution equity, management of various working documents and materials, and group communication can be issues. Tools like Google Docs not only address these challenges for the students but might allow the instructor to more adequately and objectively assess the individual’s work within the team for more effective evaluation. Finally, use of such new media in group projects might better prepare students for the business environments in which these tools are being utilized. How do you plan to conduct your investigation? What sources of evidence do you plan to examine? What methods might you employ to gather and make sense of this evidence? I’ve developed a new course, Music and Entertainment Business in the Digital Age, which will be offered for the first time in Spring ’09. There is a group project assignment for the semester in which the students will jointly develop a new

entertainment business model or product for which they will jointly create a document outlining aspects of their creation and develop tools online to present their creation toward the end of the semester. My investigation will use these projects for analysis of my central questions. I plan to conduct surveys of the students prior to their beginning the project, as well as surveys after the conclusion, to ascertain their perspectives and opinions on the project for comparative analysis. I also will be assigning reflective writing assignments throughout the project from which I’ll gain feedback. Finally, the class will include four self-assessments throughout the semester. Some questions on the assessments will pertain to the group project and their learning progress or lack thereof. To make sense of the evidence I’ll analyze longitudinal comparisons of their assessments, a comparative analysis of their survey feedback and ratings, and corroborate the reflective writings with the aforementioned data. How might you make your work available to others in ways that facilitate scholarly critique and review, and that contribute to thought and practice beyond the local? (Keep in mind that coaching will be available to help you develop these aspects of your proposal, so you need not feel you must present a finished project design at this time.) I feel that the results of my work could benefit several disciplines. My plan would be to publish and present my findings as a research in education, and would pursue those avenues relative to that. But I will also other national conferences and publications outside of education as well. For instance, the American Society of Business and Behavioral Sciences has an annual publication and conference that includes an Educational Leadership track. Moreover, I could contribute to the thought and practice within music business programs (in which many students are very tech savvy and cutting edge) throughout the country. A literature review of the theory and effective teaching practice of the subject of your inquiry According to Barbara Gross Davis, in her book Tools For Teaching, researchers have found that students working together in small groups tend to learn and retain the information better. They’re also reportedly more satisfied with their classes. There is a bit of research into online group work in education, but much of it was published prior to 2004. Most of that research centers on how students communicate online through e-mail, chat groups, etc. More recently, books like Online Collaborative Learning: Theory and Practice (Editor: T.S. Roberts, Information Science Publishing), with contributions from several academics, have addressed the implications to the classroom. A reviewer of that book, Sharon Stoerger of Indiana University, even mentioned that “the literature about online cooperative and collaborative (learning) is lacking”, adding

that the book attempted to remedy that. So there may be an opportunity for more research and publishing in that area. However, there are plenty of reports issued since and recently highlighting the uses of collaborative online tools like Google Docs and Second Life for effectiveness in the workplace and academia. The 2008 Horizon Report, for instance, outlines such uses and refers to programs at schools like Arizona State University and Melbourne’s Victoria University that are formally utilizing these tools and others. What is your record of innovation in teaching and/or the assessment of learning? Though I’ve only been teaching two years, I believe I’ve demonstrated innovation and self-growth in teaching by utilizing new technologies (iClickers and online exams, for example). I was invited to present (on Google Docs, no less) at the annual CU Online Spring Symposium in May ’08 based on my use of online tools for improving teaching and learning opportunities. Are you able to attend the required meetings as specified in Section 2, Benefits and Expectations? Yes, I’ll be able to attend the meetings and meet the expectations. Provide the name and contact information for someone who can serve as a mentor to you within the PTLC program. Judy Coe (Judith.coe@ucdenver.edu, 303-556-6013) has agreed to be a mentor within the PTLC program. Can you suggest an appropriate coach for your project? I’m not sure of one person in particular, so I am wide open to whatever suggestions there may be. If your project is selected, are you willing to serve as a coach in PTLC in a future year? Yes, I would be willing to do so. Dr. Jacqueline Jones Associate Professor Nursing University of Colorado Denver Campus Box C-288-19 Bldg P28 13120 E. 19th Ave. Education 2 North, Room 4216 Aurora, Colorado 80045 USA 303-724-2929 Jacqueline.Jones@ucdenver.edu

Pedagogy of doctoral (PhD) coursework- How best to walk alongside and enlarge their thinking in the context of the ‘Formation of Scholars’

(Walker, Golde , Jones, Bueschel & Hutchings 2008). Using a qualitative case study approach I want to explore how my emerging framework for doctoral (PhD) course teaching drawing on the Carnegie Formation of Scholars 2008 text is experienced and how my use of this framework facilitates learning, and learning moments (Light 2001) for approximately 6-10 PhD nursing course students. If the process of becoming a ‘Doctor of Philosophy’ is engaging in the formation of becoming a scholar (Walker et al 2008), with blended – online courses undertaken as part of that preparation, how can these attributes be most effectively developed? What is the ‘goodness’ of taking this approach to facilitating learning? Does it have any impact on student learning? If so how, what, why and for what purpose? In the context of learning spaces online I would agree that research writing and the production of knowledge is ‘textual’ such that language ‘does not “reflect” social reality, but produces meaning and creates social reality’ (Richardson 1998: 936; Jones & Borbasi 2006). Individual students engage in a ‘community of scholars’ as part of their ‘learning relations’ (Haythornthwaite 2008). As a facilitator of that learning it requires a re-visioning of the ‘relationship between knowledge and assessment’ (Suellen 2008) and peer learning where peer learning is theorized and situated within a notion of communities of research practice (Boud & Lee 2005: 501).

Boud, D. & Lee, A. 2005 '"Peer learning" as pedagogic discourse for research education', Studies in Higher Education, Vol. 30, No. 5, pp. 501-16.

Haythornthwaite, C 2008 Learning relations and networks in web-based communities International Journal of Web Based Communities 4, 2, 26, 140-158 (19)

Jones J & Borbasi S 2003 Interpretive research: Weaving a phenomenological text in Clare J, & Hamilton H, (Eds) Writing Research: Transforming Data Into Text Elsevier Health Sciences, Melbourne Light RJ 2001 Making the most of college. Students speak their minds, Harvard University Press. Richardson, L. 1998 ‘Writing: A Method of Enquiry’, in Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y., Handbook of Qualitative Research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Suellen S 2008 Beyond social constructivist perspectives on assessment: the centring of knowledge Teaching in Higher Education, 13, 5, 595-608(11)

Walker GE, Golde CM, Jones L, Bueschel AC, Hutchings P 2008 The

Formation of Scholars. Rethinking doctoral education for the twenty first century, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Jossey-Bass. Anna MacBriar, Ph.D. Instructor, Program for Writing and Rhetoric 317 UCB University of Colorado at Boulder Boulder, Colorado 80309-0359 303-735-4512 macbriar@colorado.edu

What is the central question, issue, or problem you plan to explore in your proposed work?

Writing is most powerful when it pushes discourse in new directions, expanding into new terrains of signification. The potential for discursive innovation is as vital for business and technical writing as it is for more humanistic genres. In order to eventually construct new meaning in the workplace, pre-professional learners must see themselves as discursively agentive within their fields. Not only is discursive agency necessary in constructing new meaning, it is crucial for effectively addressing ethical problems in the working world. If we want the next generation of professionals to lead, not only intellectually but ethically as well, our professional writing courses must aid learners in constructing their own agentive identities within their respective fields and professions.

Unfortunately, as a large body of social and cultural research asserts, pre-existing discourses in all disciplines tend to perpetuate themselves, and professional discourses, at least at the educational and entry levels, are notoriously reproductive, by nature and design. According to theorists such as Mikhail Bakhtin and Pierre Bourdieu, social discourses profoundly constrain our development as subjects/selves, as well as our ability to act on our own behalf. To the extent that our identities are constructed through language, the constraints of language (which exist from the syntactic level all the up way to the level of socio-cultural narrative) limit not just who we are capable of being, but also what we are capable of doing.

However, in recent decades, educational researchers have examined a variety of strategies for helping students to construct agentive identities, both in and out of the classroom. Within the last few years, studies in digital storytelling have explored the potential for agency-development through the construction of multi-modal narratives. In particular, research at the Digital Underground Storytelling for Youth, located in West Oakland, California, has revealed new potential for the development of agentive

selves in a process of constructing digital narratives.

The “digital profile” (also known as the “video resume”) is a professionally situated genre of self-construction, similar to the digital story both in its use of narrative and its inherent multimodality. The question-at-issue for this research project is: Can the construction of multimodal compositions, such as the digital profile, aid professional writing students in constructing ethically agentive professional identities?

Why is your central question, issue, or problem important, to you and to others who might benefit from or build on your findings?

More and more, college educators are acknowledging the importance of ethics education across the curriculum. The emphasis on ethics is, of course, even more important for pre-professional learners, who will inevitably be working in situations that require deeply-considered ethical decision-making. Because of the depth of their engagement with issues pertaining to audience, ethos, and reasoning, professional writing courses must engage ethical issues within a variety of discursive contexts. However, because ethics education is becoming so widespread across the pre-professional curriculum, my hope is that not only professional writing teachers, but all pre-professional educators, will benefit from the findings of this project, in order to assist students in formulating their own ethical identities upon which sound ethical decision-making can be based. How do you plan to conduct your investigation? What sources of evidence do you plan to examine? What methods might you employ to gather and make sense of this evidence?

Change in levels of ethical agency will be assessed through analysis of the digital profiles themselves, as well as analysis of two sets of student reflections on their projected ethical positioning in future work environments.

Analysis of Digital Profiles The degree of agency in the profiles will be assessed using the following criteria, which are derived from research in composition studies, ethics education, narratology, learner agency, and the pedagogy of digital storytelling:

• Narrative content and type • Physical representation of self • Nature and use of source material • Degree of Multi-modality • Level of semiotic integration

Student Reflections At the start of the project, student’s will reflect in

writing on a series of questions about the ethical issues and obligations of their chosen professions, and how they positions themselves with respect to these issues obligations. Upon completing the project, students will be asked a similar set of questions. The results of the questions will be analyzed in terms of the students’ ethical self-perceptions, and any change that may occur in such perceptions. The levels of change will then be compared with the levels of agency found in the digital profiles and possible correlations will examined.

How might you make your work available to others in ways that facilitate scholarly critique and review, and that contribute to thought and practice beyond the local? (Keep in mind that coaching will be available to help you develop these aspects of your proposal, so you need not feel you must present a finished project design at this time.)

• I will write and distribute a white paper on the value and best practices in assigning multimodal composing across the curriculum.

• I will be available to present my findings, as well as strategies multimodal composing to the PWR, and the campus community at large, as requested.

• I hope to present on multimodal composing at the 2010 Writing Across the Curriculum conference in Bloomington, Indiana.

• I hope to publish my findings in a journal in the fields of Literacy and/or Rhetoric and Composition (e.g., Written Communication). Include a literature review of the theory and effective teaching practice of the subject of your inquiry in order to locate your research in the literature preceding it.

A growing body of research describes a variety of approaches to ethics education in professional writing courses. Research most pertinent to this project includes the work of Personal author, compiler, or editor name(s); click on any author to run a new search on that name.Kathryn C. Rentz and Mary Beth Debs (“Language and Corporate Values: Teaching Ethics in Business Writing Courses”), who assert the need for successful ethics education to address the value-laden and highly interpretive corporate influence on how employees use language. In “Corporate Roles, Personal Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach to Business Ethics”, Robert C. Solomon reframes business ethics in terms of the individual self contextualized within both a particular organization and a larger global community.

Several articles by Glynda Hull (“Locating the Semiotic Power of Multimodality”, “Crafting an Agentive Self: Case Studies in Digital Storytelling”, “Challenges of Multimedia Self-Presentation”) explore the

potential and pitfalls of digital storytelling as a means of constructing “agentive selves.” Hull found that digital composition allows learners to construct agentive identities for themselves, and she attributes this agency to the unique semiotic dynamics of multimodality in the multimedia texts. While Hull’s work shows learner construction of agentive identities outside of, and largely in opposition to, dominant social discourses, my question is: can a digital storytelling pedagogy, similar to Hull’s, be effective in helping pre-professional learners develop agentive identities within their professional discourses, enabling them to make significant changes to (un)ethical practices within their professional contexts.

What is your record of innovation in teaching and/or the assessment of learning?

• I have developed and taught several innovative course topics in upper division writing.

• In July, 2009, I presented on multimodal composing at the Conference of the Association for Expanded Perspectives on Learning.

• I am currently pursuing an MA in Education (Educational Foundations Policy and Practice), with a research interests in Literacy and Humanities education reform.

• I am currently leading the development of the Program for Writing and Rhetoric’s digital literacy mission.

• I’ve made multiple presentations on innovations in teaching with technology to CU faculty and graduate students.

Are you able to attend the required meetings as specified in Section 5?

Yes, I will be able to attend the required meetings. I’m confident that the meetings will shape and enhance my project through peer response and exposure to the innovative work of presenters.

Provide the name and contact information for someone who can serve as a mentor to you within the PTLC program. A mentor is a colleague in your discipline, broadly considered, who will help you develop your project.

Amber Dahlin, Ph.D., has agreed to serve as my mentor for this project. She is a colleague of mine in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric and conducts research in composition studies.

Can you suggest an appropriate coach for your project? A coach is a faculty member who has experience with educational research and can thus guide you in your research on teaching and learning. This is NOT a requirement but may increase your likelihood of acceptance.

Professor Anne Di Pardo, from the School of Education, has agreed to serve as my coach for this project. She is a highly accomplished scholar in the field of literacy education, and is familiar with the work of Glynda Hull and D.U.S.T.Y.

If your project is selected, are you willing to serve as a coach in PTLC in a future year?

I would be honored to serve as a PTLC coach for future participants. Mary Nelson Instructor, Applied Mathematics Department University of Colorado at Boulder UCB 265 Boulder, CO 80309 303-492-4152 mary.nelson@colorado.edu

The fall 2008 freshman Engineering students were offered an opportunity to participate in oral reviews before each of their unit tests in their fall Calculus I course and their spring Calculus II course. Participation resulted in significantly higher course grades for the participating students. Many of these same students are now studying Calculus III, and they report that the orals were very helpful in mastering the concepts of Calculus I and II and they have asked for oral reviews for Calculus III. We have neither the rooms nor the facilitators to make this possible, but we have found an alternative that we wish to test with this study.

Oral reviews are voluntary and not graded. For Calculus I and II, they are offered on the Monday and Tuesday prior to Wednesday written unit tests. Students attend orals to improve their understanding and to help themselves prepare for the written exam. Small groups of 5-6 students are quizzed by a facilitator who has been trained and provided appropriate conceptual questions. Orals allow facilitators to work with students to clear

up misunderstandings that are blocking their mastery of the material. In orals, students learn to defend their thinking, negotiate meaning with the facilitator and their fellow students, and to make mathematical connections. When students understand the reason for using procedures and are able to explain their graphical representations, they are then better able to extend their learning to novel situations. They no longer have to simply “pattern match.”

Because we were unable to facilitate orals for the Calculus III students this fall, we asked the students if they would consider an alternative to facilitated orals. About 90% of my class (142 students) claim that they would use our proposed alternative. Our plan is to create appropriate orals questions for Calculus III, and then have the students use them to carry out oral-like sessions among themselves. Since a large number of these students participated in orals last year, they understand how they are supposed to work.

Mathematics Education research supports mathematical discourse as a way to help students master difficult concepts. Teachers often report that they never “really” understood some concepts until they taught them. Perhaps what they are saying is that they really understood the concepts when they were able to explain them to someone else. We find that oral assessments provide students that opportunity to explain concepts.

Discourse provides a way for students to share their thinking with their instructors and fellow students, and helps students become proficient in defending their methods of solving problems and explaining the phenomena that they observe in their environment (National Research Council, 2001). Fruitful mathematical discourse assists students in making connections and understanding mathematics. “If as Brown has suggested, higher thought processes are in part ‘internalized dialogue’ (p.10), then how teachers and students talk to each other is of paramount concern” (Shepard, 2001, p.1078).

According to Knuth and Peressini, “The role of discourse, although always central in education and learning, is receiving increased attention in classrooms today as mathematics educators strive to better understand the factors that lead to increased learning” (p. 320). It is commonly believed that, if students discuss their understandings and conjectures with one another and their teachers, they will learn to defend their positions and to provide evidence to back their claims (Lampert, 2000). Such reasoning will help students solidify their understanding of the concepts being studied (Bransford, et al., eds., 2000).

Our results last year were striking. On each individual test, the students participating in orals averaged at least 5% higher grades than those not participating, and more striking is the fact that those who participated in three orals over the semester, had almost a letter grade higher course score than those who took part in none of the orals.

We also looked at the differences in course grades among ability groups and in every group the course average grade for orals participants was significantly higher than the average of the students who did not participate in oral reviews before the exam. We measure mathematical preparation with a thirty question placement test which has been shown to account for over 50% of the variance in students’ course grades. Students scoring 0-18 rarely pass the course. In each group (0-18, 19-21, 22-26 and 27-30) the pass rate for the course significantly increased.

We would like to create conceptual orals questions (along with appropriate explanations and answers) that the Calculus III students could use on their own. We would then have an undergraduate or graduate student video tape some of the student sessions. We would use Nvivo to analyze fidelity of treatment. We would tape at least two sessions of students who were experienced in participating in orals and then at least one of students who had not previously attended orals. We would compare the results to analyze whether students really understood the rationale behind orals. We would collect data to determine which students had participated in these sessions and then compare their performance on the written exams. We would also conduct interviews with at least four of the students.

If we could achieve similar results with students who facilitate their own orals as we do with faculty facilitated orals, then we could extend this opportunity to more of our courses. Currently, both Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering are offering orals in one course this fall. Orals are logistically challenging and require a significant commitment of human resources. If we could offer them to students for two semesters and then let them carry out orals on their own in subsequent courses, it would allow us to provide the benefits of orals to more students.

HRC: We have already applied for permission to work with our Calculus III students in the manner described above. The submission is currently under review. Mentor: I intend to ask Harvey Segur to be my mentor. Coach: I intend to ask Monica Geist (who is working on the CCLI2 grant) to be my coach. Future Mentor or Coach: I am willing to mentor or coach a future PTLC participant. Letter of support: Dr. Curry has agreed to write a letter of support for my participation in this project.

Kathryn W. Pieplow, J.D. Instructor, Program for Writing and Rhetoric University of Colorado at Boulder UCB 317 Boulder, CO 80309 303-735-4679 kathryn.pieplow@colorado.edu

CENTRAL QUESTION: I teach writing and rhetoric – a discipline which requires teaching both a body of knowledge and specific skills to apply that knowledge. When I came across Sullivan and Rosen’s study on the pedagogy of professional education, I was struck by the similarities between what is expected of writers and what is expected of professionals such as physicians, lawyers and clergy. As Sullivan and Rosen state, professional schools teach “reflective judgment in response to situations of complexity and uncertainty.” In part, this concept of how professional education differs from education in the liberal arts was intriguing because I am the product of a professional education in law. The ability to apply acquired knowledge in new situations and ways is the essence of transfer of that knowledge.

I approach rhetoric and composition from a decidedly practical rather than theoretical angle. That may explain why, in addition to designing syllabi that meet the goals and objectives articulated by my discipline and program, I try to equip my students with strategies they can use outside my classroom. The ability to transfer knowledge. I want my students to be able to respond effectively to writing opportunities and rhetorical situations regardless of the situations’ complexity or familiarity. To that end, for the last several years, I have been teaching students a strategy for analyzing the genres that they write in.

Let me briefly discuss the foundational concepts that inform my research.

Transfer. My study of transfer theory is young, and therefore incomplete, but the research so far is pretty depressing. It shows what I will call the “Vegas” effect – what happens in a classroom tends to stay in that classroom. However, Tuomi-Gröhn and Engeström report that some research does show that “the transferability of knowledge can be dramatically increased by manipulating contexts and contents of problems to be worked on.” As second concept comes from King and Kitchener who argue the need to actively teach the transfer skills of reflective thinking or practical reasoning. Students learn when slightly out of their comfort zones but also when they have “multiple examples in which higher-level reasoning skills are used….”

Genre. The traditional definition of genre is a literary form or a type of writing. However, genre theory now investigates the “linguistic, sociological, and psychological assumptions underlying and shaping these text-types.” Bawarshi defines genre as “rhetorical responses to recurrent situations.” We now understand that genres mediate both function – how one acts within a given community – and epistemology – how one comes to understand that community.

My strategy for genre analysis. I require students in my first year courses to analyze the genres they write for both high-stakes writing assignments, such as the literature review and deliberative essay, and low-stakes reading response assignments. Without going into great detail, early in the semester, students read briefly about genre theory, and then participate in a guided brainstorming session to identify criteria for analyzing genres based on the readings and rhetorical principles. Students then use those criteria to analyze any genre they write in for audience, purpose, discourse community, and expected and persuasive conventions such as form, tone and specialized vocabulary. I encourage students to experiment with as many different genres as possible as they respond to readings, and I track the genres they use.

Applying genre analysis to transfer. Throughout the semester, my students and I talk about how the criteria they use to analyze genres might be used in other classes or in the workplace. The criteria and active discussion of transfer are my attempt to meet King and Kitchener’s idea of actively teaching higher-level reasoning skills. The requirement that students use a variety of genres to write short responses to between eight and fifteen readings during a semester is how I implement Tuomi-Gröhn and Engeström’s idea of multiple contexts. These “genre writings” are popular with my students, produce some tremendously creative content, and I am convinced, deepen the interaction between student and text.

This research proposal is designed to measure how well I am meeting my goal of transfer when I teach my students a strategy / process for analyzing genres in order to effectively write in them whenever and wherever encountered. METHODOLOGY I anticipate a multi-part study, utilizing the President’s Teaching and Learning Collaborative [PTLC] funding to sort and analyze the data collected. 1. I will ground my study in further research into transfer, genre, reading response, and writing across the curriculum theory. 2. I will analyze the basic dataI have been keeping since the fall of 2006 on the genres students use to respond to readings. My goal will be to understand how well students are analyzing the genres they use in the

classroom. 3. I will design a coding system to analyze the selection of reading responses written in approximately 125 genres I have collected during the last seven semesters. My goal will be to determine whether my practice has are any implications for transfer theory which are evident inside the classroom. 4. I will survey former students about their current use of the genre analysis strategies. In the survey, it may be instructive to differentiate between students who are still attending classes at CU and those who have moved into the workplace. 5. I will create a control group against which to measure my findings. This might be accomplished by surveying my colleagues in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric [PWR] to determine their incorporation of genre theory or analysis into first year writing, and the specific strategies they use for teaching transfer, and to ask how their students handle writing in different genres.

I will reflect on and evaluate my methodology at critical points during the research to insure that I am eliciting usable information and creating effective measures. I will also check my data and analysis, and consult with my coach on a regular basis throughout the study (approximately every four to six weeks).

BENEFITS If my research shows that actively teaching a process for genre analysis improves writing performance outside of the writing classroom, there will be local benefits. Students in writing classes will better understand shifts in rhetorical situation. They will also carry the concept and/or ability to create analytical structures into other situations. Writing instructors will benefit from proven pedagogical practice. Those in other disciplines and the workplace will benefit from students and employees who have proven skills in analytical thinking and problem-solving.

It may be that this research will have larger implications for teaching what I will tentatively call “rhetorical literacy.” I first came across this term in Lettner-Rust et al.’s article on their university’s Writing Across the Curriculum program, but I find their definition of rhetorical literacy – and even literacy – too narrow. Current definitions of literacy in rhetoric and composition are being expanded primarily in two fronts: visual literacy and civic discourse. Both contexts go beyond the historical concept of “learning to read, write and calculate.” Visual literacy stresses the idea that information comes in a multitude of forms, and that words themselves are, in fact, images. Civic discourse (or service learning) advocates teaching scholarly rhetorical skills in the context of “contemporary and emerging issues like climate change, migration, knowledge-based society, renovation of ethnic identities and globalisation [sic].” Both visual literacy and civic discourse aim to transfer classroom skills and demonstrate

relevance in today’s society – but within the limited context of the visual or the civic discourse.

I would define “rhetorical literacy” more broadly as the ability to effectively act within any discourse community. The key here is “any.” My goal in creating the genre analysis structure is to allow my students access to every community they choose to enter because they have a basic framework or system for understanding the community and the ways in which it expresses itself. “Rhetorical literacy” could result in a “professionalization” of the writing classroom. Returning to Sullivan and Rosen’s definition of professional education, the genre analysis strategy facilitates reflective judgment in response to situations of complexity and uncertainty. PUBLICATION I am excited to publish my findings and to present them at conferences. There are a number of potential journals in the area of rhetoric and composition which publish this type of research: College Composition and Communication, Discourse Studies, College English, and Research in the Teaching of English. I am also interested in presenting my findings at conferences such as the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) or Writing Program Administrators (WPA).

This research also has application for the business community, and there are a number of business journals where this research might be published: Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, Business Communication Quarterly, IEEE Transactions in Professional Communication, and Journal of Communication. MISCELLANEOUS I have been teaching the Program for Writing and Rhetoric at CU-Boulder since 2001. I have taught most of the required courses: First Year Writing and Rhetoric, Business and Society, Technical Communication. I have developed a number of unique courses: Conversations on the Law, Multigenre Writing, and Document Design. I have been involved in all levels of the PWR, from serving on the executive and personnel committees, to peer observation. One of the projects that is especially important to me is “POPSICLE” – a multi-year effort to find ways to quantify the improvement in our teaching. As part of my work with POPSICLE, I have studied some of the readings on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and attended the FTEP seminar on the same.

I would be available to attend the required meetings for the PTLC.

Patricia A. Sullivan, Ph.D., has graciously agreed to serve as my mentor should I be selected f or the President’s Teaching Scholars Program. Dr.

Sullivan is a member of the PWR faculty. She is well respected in the field of Rhetoric and Composition, and is the author of numerous books and articles ranging from methodology in composition research to visual design and feminism.

Anne Bliss, Ph.D., has agreed to coach me in my educational research. Dr. Bliss is a member of the PWR faculty, and has worked with the PTLC in the past. She has an international reputation for her work training ESL teachers and designing and evaluating second language curricula. Dr. Bliss currently works with the Ministry of Education in Chile, and JiaoTong University in Xi’an, China. Melinda Piket-May Associate Professor University of Colorado @ Boulder College of Engineering and Applied Sciences Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering Electrodynamics and Engineering Education CB425 Boulder, CO, 80301-0425 303-492-7448 (school) 303-859-4624 (cell) Melinda.Piket-May@Colorado.edu

An NSF sponsored national initiative called the Engineering Education Research Colloquies (EERC) [1] called for sweeping changes in the engineering education enterprise. They addressed the question “how can the engineering education community embrace change and develop a more intuitive approach to engineering education?” In America there continues to be limited pursuit of careers in engineering and a high drop out rate of those who chose to attempt it.

The PI has conducted many informal interviews with students over the past 16 years and has become increasingly convinced that middle school experiences play a key role in the eventual selection of engineering as a possible career. This conclusion is consistent with other recent studies, yet the main focus of other studies has primarily been on the impact of academic curriculum on career choice. The PI is interested in studying factors beyond curriculum that may significantly influence students. For example, does a short conversation between a middle school teacher and student that includes the words “engineering careers” open up a new path for some young men or young women?

Project Description The purpose of this study is to determine factors in addition to academic curriculum, especially at the middle school level, that have a significant influence on selection of engineering as a possible

career. This research is proposed to gather information from one of the fundamental yet often untapped resources: the students themselves. Their unique experiences will provide insight into factors that influence engineering school/career decisions. If we can break this information down into qualitative and quantitative measures and share this information with middle school teachers we will create a very powerful tool for exposing and encouraging students to future careers and study in engineering.

Research content will include the five research cluster areas identified through the EERC process. The clusters include: 1. Engineering Thinking, Knowledge and Competencies This topic refers to understanding engineering as a community of practice. We will be querying to see if the students experience a sense of engineering community practices – in middle school – high school – and even in college. 2. Socially-relevant engineering Engaging middle school students in conversations about socially relevant engineering can potentially get them very excited about the possibility of becoming an engineer and having the ability to help people. They can get very interested in the opportunities that come with an engineering education. We will be querying them about what socially-relevant information they are picking up, and where is that information coming from. 3. Learning to engineer Each student brings preciously unique and diverse background experiences. It is important to mesh these experiences with the practical practices of engineering in ways that expand and broaden their knowledge base. We will query as to if and how this is happening.

4. Engineering education pedagogies We need feedback from college students on engineering education pedagogies. What factors-both positive and negative- were of greatest influence?

5. Engineering assessment methodologies The work proposed in this research is in itself assessment of aspects of engineering. Research Structure • A written survey will be developed by a four member group including a middle school teacher and student, and a CU engineering student and professor (PI). • The target groups to be surveyed include CU engineering students and middle-school students. • There will be two tiers to the survey: Tier one will be a written survey. Tier two will be a combination of written survey with a follow-up interview. • Qualitative and

quantitative compilation of the data will be done by the PI and research assistant. • The original survey development group will reconvene to review the data summary and identify implications. • Project evaluation will occur at various points throughout the program. • Results will be published at the Frontiers in Education conference and a follow-up journal paper will be submitted.

My record of innovations in teaching and assessment of learning are demonstrated by 13 peer reviewed conference papers and many other conference presentations related to learning and educational issues. I co-chaired Frontiers in Education (FIE) in 2003 and was the engineering program chair for FIE in 2006. In the past I have regularly attended American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) and National Center for Innovation and Invention in Academia (NCIIA) conferences. I have been conducting informal studies with undergraduate and graduate students surveying on methods of assessment that lead to increased learning and acquisition of life-long learning skills as well as a measurement of learning progress. The proposed work would involve undergraduates, graduates and middle school students. I will plan to attend all meeting related to the program and regularly meet with my mentor and coach. I would be honored to serve as a mentor or coach for PTLC in future years.

My Mentor is: Clayton Lewis 430 UCB 492-6657 Clayton.Lewis@colorado.edu

My Coach is : Jackie Sullivan 522 UCB 492-8303 Jacquelyn.Sullivan@colorado.edu Peter Schneider Professor of Architecture University of Colorado Denver, Downtown Campus College of Architecture and Planning UCB 314 Boulder, CO 80309-0314 303-492-2803 peter.schneider@colorado.edu

Project Proposal: In a way, human beings have never been part of the natural order; we're not biological in the normal sense. By contrast, human beings are what I think of as biomythic animals: we're controlled largely by the stories we tell. Sam Keen.

This project will explore the effectiveness of introducing students to the theory and practice of architecture and design through the use of Reflective Biographical Narratives. Its goal is to test the effectiveness of

what Peter Zumthor, winner of the 2006 Pritzer Prize for Architecture (it’s Nobel equivalent) , calls the ‘work of remembering.' He writes these words in his essay Teaching Architecture:

We all experience architecture before we have even heard the word. The roots of architectural understanding lie in our architectural experiences: our room, our house, our street, our village, our town, our landscape. We experience them all early on, unconsciously, and we subsequently compare them with the countryside, towns, and houses that we experience later on. The roots of our understanding of architecture lie in our childhood, in our youth; they lie in our biography. Students have to learn to work consciously with their personal biographical experiences of architecture. In order to design, to invent architecture, we must learn to handle them [our biographical experiences] with awareness. This is research; this is the work of remembering.

The Project’s Outcomes: Peter Zumthor’s approach to teaching architecture is at odds with the traditional orientation than informs much of architecture’s established pedagogy. That orientation assumes that students entering design programs are architecturally ignorant and environmentally illiterate. They exist as tabula rasa, a blank slate, onto which architecture’s secrets - exposed through the lens of the teacher’s own received understandings - can be effectively impressed. This project’s contrasting orientation assumes that the beginning student is architecturally literate and environmentally experienced. Its method will consequently challenge students to reflect on their own ‘architectural’ and ‘environmental’ biographies in a way that allows them to locate their own experiences valuably within the theories, methods and practices of the field.

By asking students – and also their faculty - to practice the work of remembering, the project will show that a pedagogy that connects their encounters with the familiar to their explorations of the unfamiliar greatly enhances their ability to rapidly consolidate and extend their personal architectural understandings. The project’s ultimate promise lies in the development of a pedagogical orientation that shifts the focus of learning from the assimilation of the teacher’s experiences of the field to one of building on those accumulated by individual students. It essentially allows the student’s personal experiences, values, orientations and intentions to emerge and guide their learning much earlier in their educational process than is the case in the established design pedagogies. The Project’s Method: The method I will use to test the dominant research question is one of using writing as a means to allow students to surface their personal environmental and architectural biographies. I have

used experiential journaling as a way of sharpening student’s perceptions and experiences of specific environments in the Introduction to Environmental Design class I have taught each semester over the past four years with a high degree of success. Those exercises have for the most part focused on writing about an actual experience rather than a remembered one. This project will shift the focus of the writings toward remembered experiences: recollections of places and settings that carry value and meaning for the students that can then be translated - through design – into a new and perhaps more significant realizations that will allow others to encounter those values and meanings for themselves.

I will use the practice of the reflective environmental biography in two design classes - one large class for beginning students, and one small class for advanced students – in the spring of 2010. I will design a number of exercises extending the ones I have given in the past that provoke students to connect what they remember with what they are able to do. These projects will produce two distinct ‘products’ in each of the exercises: a reflective narrative of the experience of a setting and a design project that embodies the values and meanings of that experience in a newly imagined setting. Because the individual projects will ask students to transform memories or recollections into form, the relationships existing between the written word and the constructed setting will be able to be studied, evaluated and assessed by others who are experienced designers and authors experienced in the use of the reflective narrative as a teaching and learning tool. Evidence of Innovation: In 1997 I was awarded an ACLS Contemplative Practice Fellowship. As one of the original group of fellows, I have remained committed to exploring the relationship between architecture and the contemplative practices, and have led participated or in a number of national workshops to share my experiences. (The terms meditation and contemplation both have roots in classical architectural practices.) As an outcome of my continued involvement in this area, I am one of eight teachers nationally who were invited to become mentors in an four-year national project funded by the Fetzer Institute - the Mentoring Community Project. The project pairs the eight mentors with twenty-four young teachers, each of whom has real potential for developing excellence in their particular field, to build a community where the acts of mentoring and being mentored can be observed, understood and best practices identified. The group meets twice each year, once in fall and once in spring, and will do so for the next four years. Critiquing the Project’: In the mentoring community, two of its mentors are teachers who initially pioneered and are now at the cutting edge of the use of biographical narrative in medical education. Dr. Rachel Naomi

Remen of the University of San Francisco Medical Center, Director of the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness uses reflective narrative as a primary teaching and research tool, and Dr. Rita Charon, founder of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University does the same. Louise Aronson at of the University of California San Francisco Medical Center and Ann Jurecic of the English Department Rutgers University are two young teachers who studied with Rachel Remen or Rita Charon. They are currently extending the lessons they learned as they explore how digital media and other contemporary writing practices are affecting the form and use of the biographical narrative in the academy. Rita Charon and I are two mentors in a group that includes not only Louise and Ann, but also Kat Vlahos, a colleague in the architecture at CU. I intend to use the Mentoring Community Project, and especially the considerable expertise represented in Rachel, Rita, Louise and Ann, as the community in which I can initially begin to share the project’s outcomes for critique, review, realignment and refinement.

Short Literature Review: Bruner, J. Making Stories. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2002. Butler, S., & Bentley, R. Lifewriting: Learning through Personal Narrative. Scarborough, Ontario: Pippin, 1996. Cohler, B. .Personal Narrative and the Life Course.. In Life-Span Development and Behavior, edited by P. B. Baltes & O. G. Brim, Jr. New York: Academic Press, 1982. Dominice, P. Learning from Our Lives: Using Educational Biographies, San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2000. Fitzclarence, L., & Hickey, C. Pedagogical Narrative Methods. 2001. http://www.deakin.edu.au/edu/crt_pe/activities/narrative_idea.htm Multiple Articles, Narrative in Teaching, Learning, and Research, edited by H.McEwan & K. Egan, New York: Teachers College Press,1995. Kenyon, G. M., & Randall, W. L. Restorying Our Lives: Personal Growth through Autobiographical Reflection. Westport: Praeger, 1997. Kerby, A. P. Narrative and the Self. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,1991. Leitch, T. M. What Stories Are: Narrative Theory and Interpretation. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986. MacLeod, D. M., & Cowieson, A. R. Discovering Credit Where Credit Is Due: Using Autobiographical Writing as a Tool for Voicing Growth. Teachers and Teaching 7, no. 3 (October 2001) Also works by Rachel Remen, Rita Charon, Czelaw Milosz, Phillip Collins, Sam Keene, Kathleen Norris, Wendell Berry, Parker Palmer, Annie Dillard and other storytellers who write biographically and autobiographically about environments

Mentors: I plan to work with Dr. Rachel Remen and Dr. Rita Charon as my mentor’s for this project. While they are not strictly colleagues in my field,

their success as storyteller’s and authors, coupled with their compelling expertise in the use of the biographical narrative as a tool for building awareness of the shared humanity of patient and physician, makes them ideal colleagues for this project. Coaches: I plan to use Dr. Willem van Vliet and Dr. Louise Chawla, both Professors of Urban and Regional Planning as coaches for the project. Both have extensive experience in educational research, and both have an orientation that values the benefits of experiential learning in the field of design. I would also like to work with Dr. Deborah Haynes of Art and Art History. She is a Contemplative Practice Fellow, too. Meeting attendance and Commitment to Future Coaching: I am able to attend all required meetings of the Collaborative, am more than willing to serve as a coach in a future year, and will present a paper describing the project’s outcomes at an ASCA meeting in 2010. Curtis F. Smith Senior Instructor Visual and Performing Arts, Music Program University of Colorado Colorado Springs PO box 7150 Colorado Springs, CO 80933 719-209-3595 csmith@uccs.edu

Central Question

My computer composition students are faced with complex software that has a long learning curve and their ears have not been trained to know what sounds they can create. My central question is: “Would a comprehensive interactive ear training program increase creative production in college level computer music courses”?

Importance of Question

I have a very strong interest in developing the computer composition offerings for the students in my department, Visual and Performing Arts, and for the students majoring in Game Design and Development. Historically my classes have presented public concerts of their work with varying levels of competence. Leading students to a higher level of creativity and ability is the strongest approach to build the programs.

Investigation Plan

In the middle 1980’s, I programmed a series of innovative ear training programs. I started that work on the Apple II, but moved to the Yamaha

CX5M, whose sound generators were the absolute best on the market. With that prior experience, I plan to create innovative ear training software that will be oriented toward electronic music with questions concerning waveform types, synthesis types, filter types and equalization settings among others.

My first step is to find and review music authorship routines that might function as a shell into which I can put my ear training examples and conduct tests. If an adequate authorship routine is not “out there” I can design one now that will work as well as my earlier work. Second, to make the software interactive, I plan to use the music software, MAX/MSP, for keyboard input and interactive manipulations of sounds and devices.

A student record disk is necessary to keep exam scores and chart aural progress. To keep records of aural progress, an entrance, midterm and exit exam will be included in the software. The central issue, “have the students grown creatively” is more difficult to test, and I will have to read articles on measuring affective domain. I would like to post the software on the course web site (which has not yet been developed) for the students.

An assessment of the outcome of ear training would fall in the area of instrument design and compositional competence. Having saved my student projects over the past two years, I have some basis for comparison. I expect instrument design to be more sophisticated and composition to rise above loop based cut-and-paste.

In terms of broader applications, I would hope that the ear training could “trickle” down to high school programs as well as college. The software shell will enable the development of other ear training topics.

Literature Review

There is a recording, “The Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music” that presents some of the content I plan to incorporate. The Nonesuch Guide is vinyl and not interactive, but is a good source of ideas.

There are several very technical books on computer music:

Computer Music Synthesis, Composition and Performance, Charles Dodge and Thomas Jerse. Schirmer 1997

The Computer Music Tutorial, Curtis Roads. MIT Press 1997

Elements of Computer Music, F. Richard Moore. Prentice-Hall Books 1990

I look forward to finding current writings on screen design and user interface.

Innovative Teaching

I have a long history of innovation in the classroom and private piano studio. While teaching at Colorado College, I designed my piano class method around ensemble music, which led to my first publication. I have always incorporated my piano skills into all of my classes, and student FCQ’s consistently commend my ability (I have some tricks that show the overtone series, selective resonance and tone color). In the private studio, I have kept myself current with piano literature and I teach modern music including twelve tone music, minimalism and music that requires inside the piano techniques, . My eighteen teaching pieces, published by Boston Music call for silent depression of keys, which are excited to resonate by other keyboard strokes. The software I programmed and discussed in this proposal was innovative in that I used “real” music for demonstrations and tests with examples form J.S. Bach’s Well Tempered, Beethoven quartets, symphonies and sonatas, Tchaikovsky symphonies etc. Most ear training software is quite abstract and does not include the literature. Laura L. Summers, Ph.D. Assidtant Professor University of Colorado Denver School of Education and Human Development Information and Learning Technologies Campus Box 106 Denver, CO 80204 303-315-4952 laura.summers@ucdenver.edu

Research Question The central question of my Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) proposal is: How does feedback from of an online faculty mentoring group and periodic student online course evaluations improve student perceptions of course satisfaction based on my online course design and teaching strategies? Importance of Question First, as the program coordinator of the online Information & Learning Technologies – School Library (ILT-SL) endorsement and master’s program, instructors from the ILT programs may benefit from my findings to increase students’ perception of professional growth and achievement within our two entirely online programs (eLearning and SL). Second, instructors from the School of Education and Human Development (SEHD) at UC Denver may find be able to build on my findings to promote the student-centered learning goals within the SEHD Digital Literacy Plan for AY 2009-2010 and Beyond (2009).Third, a priority of the University of Colorado Denver’s Strategic

Priority 2 is to deliver outstanding and innovative educational experiences. Fourth, instructors across all CU campuses may find value from the articulation of reflective online teaching practices. Fifth, online instructors at other universities may benefit from my findings as online course offerings increase and more attention needs to be paid to effective online teaching strategies since as of 2006, 3.5 million students were taking online courses; a numbers that increases at least 10 % annually (Tahmincioglu, 2008).

Investigation Plans & Sources of Evidence with Employed Methods I plan to investigate students’ perceptions of increased course satisfaction based on my own continuous reflection of online course design elements and employed teaching strategies within my spring semester 2010 action research course: SL 6720-OL1: Practitioner-based research in School Libraries. I will approach my question asking how does feedback from of an online faculty mentoring group and periodic student online course evaluations improve student perceptions of course satisfaction. My SoTL investigation of my online course design and teaching strategies will employ the qualitative research method portraiture; an ethnographic case-study research approach that focuses on the reflective journey of successful innovations within education. A portraitist’s mission is to inform and inspire a community of practitioners through convincing authentic narrative that provides subtle details of human experience. Portraiture “resists the traditional effort to document failure” and asking what is “replicable” to other environments in order to promote awareness or change among individuals (Lawrence Lightfoot, 1983; Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997). Evidence will be delivered through three venues: 1) Periodic feedback from colleagues within a SEHD online faculty mentoring group will occur three times during spring 2010 term in my online SL 6720 course; colleagues will evaluate each other’s online course design, facilitation, and student interaction at the beginning, mid-way, and at the end of the semester; 2) Periodic, voluntary course questionnaire feedback from students within the online SL 6720-OL1 will be requested during Week 1, 4, 8, 12, and 16. The students will be asked to record their initial impression of the course during Week 1and their continued impression of the course every 4 weeks for the duration of the semester; and 3) My investigator’s researcher journal which will document reflective practices and conscious course changes based on periodic feedback received.

Scholarly Critique & Review with Contributions to Thought & Practice Upon completion of my proposed research study, I will submit a paper for publication in a yet-to-be identified SoTL journal; and I will submit a paper

for presentation at an International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning conference and Association of Educational Communications and Technology conference. I will also seek an opportunity to present to University of Colorado faculty through a future CU Online Symposium and Colorado Learning and Teaching with Technology Conference. Meanwhile, my work-in-progress will be made available through a few different venues: 1) a Center for Faculty Development Writing Group where other assistant professors are meeting once a month to offer peer review of each other’s scholarly writing under the guidance of the center’s director, Dr. Ellen Stevens; 2) a voluntary SEHD Online Faculty Mentoring Group which meets periodically to review each other’s online courses and to discuss trends and issues within the online courses; and 3) a public blog at http:// http://lauraleesummers.blogspot.com/ that focuses on my reflective practice in my scholarship of teaching and learning work. I share the blog with my students and colleagues.

Literature Review The scope of this proposed SoTL study fits with Weston and McAlpine’s continuum of growth framework for scholarship of teaching research. Weston and McAlpine (2001) summarize the development of the scholarship of teaching in three phases. In the first phase, professors develop “personal knowledge about their own teaching and their students’ learning.” In the second phase, professors engage in conversations about their teaching; and in the third phase, professors “develop scholarly knowledge about teaching and learning that has significance and impact for the institution and field” (p. 91). This proposed study focuses on phase three where I will publish my learned knowledge about students’ perceptions with the intention of improving my own online instructional strategies and helping others who also teach online since Kim & Bonk’s research found that student perceptions of online courses are impacted by the instructor’s ability to facilitate learning and develop high quality courses online (2006). Ruhe and Zumbo’s unfolding evaluation model for distance education will be used to evaluate the components of this SoTL study. This model addresses learner satisfaction, course quality, relevance, cost-benefit, underlying values, and unintended consequences (2009). Learner satisfaction will be measured through brief questionnaires, document of student-faculty interactions, and in-course observations. The researcher’s journal used for this proposed study will serve as a reflective tool that supports this online course inquiry as writing reflectively helps one “make sense of pedagogical decisions and their impact on [class] practices, student behaviors, attitudes, perceptions, and overall student learning” (Savory, Brunett, & Goodburn, 2007, p. 5). Innovation in teaching and/or the assessment of learning Innovations in my online teaching most recently include the use of Web 2.0 tools when

teaching online to increase students’ understanding of new concepts and to enhance social presence in a text-based environment. In May 2007, I created the 21st Century Teacher-Librarians Ning at: http://21centurylibrarian.ning.com/ as a professional networking community among University of Colorado Denver School Library students and alumni. One goal for the online community has been to create connection among the working, online graduate program students and to foster more professional growth by learning from each other’s career experiences as K-12 educators. Another goal has been to provide a place for the SL program’s students to practice integration of technology skills within a course context (Summers, 2009). The Ning has grown from 30 to 230 members in two years. I share my use of an online professional networking community through presentations like at the “The Future of Teaching Learning Conference” sponsored by the Denver Transfer Initiative on the Auraria campus last May (2009), in the CU Online 2009 Yearbook, and an upcoming UC Denver Faculty Development workshop in November 2009. Since this past summer, I have been using Adobe Connect, an online meeting and presentation platform, to explain or demonstrate new concepts to my online students synchronously. The “live” session can also be recorded for students to review at their convenience when they would like to revisit a particular topic prior to their performance-based assessments. I have also explored the use of screen captures and the use of audio podcasts to reach learners in a variety of learning modes. I am continuously reflecting on my online instructional strategies and looking for new Web 2.0 applications that enhance the social presence and instructional understanding within the 3 - 5 online courses that I teach each year. Meeting Attendance & Benefits Yes, I am able to attend the required meetings. The benefits to attending the monthly meetings are that I would have the opportunity to: 1) Discuss my Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research study with other scholars at the University of Colorado; 2) Ask questions of the mentors, coaches and other investigators about their research questions, research designs, and methods used; 3) Participate in a collaborative, peer review process; 4) Promote the growth of a university-wide network of scholars; which in turn will foster the university’s return-on-investment in our research growth and scholarly publications.

Mentor Contact Joanna C. Dunlap, PhD Associate Professor & Faculty Fellow for Teaching University of Colorado Denver; School of Education and Human Development Campus Box 106, P.O. Box 173364, Denver,

CO 80217-3364 Phone: 303-315-4964; Email: joni.dunlap@UCDenver.edu

Educational Research Coach While I welcome coaching from a colleague, I am confident in my educational research ability since I currently teach four different research methods and evaluation courses within the REM (Research, Evaluation, and Methods) program within the School of Education and Human Development and earned a doctoral minor in Applied Statistics and Research Methods from the University of Northern Colorado in 2003. Future PTLC Coach Intentions Yes; I would enjoy serving as a future coach in PTLC and believe my role as an educational research instructor may prove beneficial to others in future years.

References Lawrence-Lightfoot, S. (1983). The good high school. United States: Basic Books.

Lawrence-Lightfoot, S. & Davis, J. H. (1997). The art and science of portraiture. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Ruhe, V. & Zumbo, B. D. (2009). Evaluation in distance education and e-learning. New York: Guilford. Savory, P., Burnett, A. N., & Goodburn, A. (2007). Inquiry into the college classroom: A journey toward scholarly teaching. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.

Summers, L. (2009). The advantages of a Ning social network within a higher education program. In P. R. Lowenthal, D. Thomas, A. Thai, & B. Yuhnke (Eds.), The CU Online handbook (pp. 31-34). Denver, CO: University of Colorado Denver.

Tahmincioglu, E. (2008, March 9). The faculty is remote, but not detached. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/jobs/09starts.html?_r=1&ref=jobs

Weston, C. B., & McAlpine, L. (2001). Making explicit the development toward the scholarship of teaching. New directions for teaching and learning, (86, pp. 89-97). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. David J. Weiss Associate Professor of Chemsitry University of Colorado at Colorado Springs Letters, Arts and Sciences 1420 Austin Bluffs Pkwy Colorado Springs, CO 80918 719-255-3565 dweiss@uccs.edu

Central Question Can cooperative group learning be conducted effectively in a large (up to 120 students) General Chemistry I course? Specifically, do students in a cooperative-learning-based, large lecture have a more positive and effective learning experience compared to those students who take a traditional lecture section of the course? Background and Importance of the Problem General Chemistry I at UCCS has lecture sizes up to 120 students. It enrolls a mix of students from many majors and satisfies a College of Letters, Arts and Sciences requirement of a laboratory science course. It has a prerequisite of a year of high-school chemistry. Not only does the course satisfy a wide audience of students, but it is also a fundamental course for chemistry majors to begin their studies. Our lectures have been very traditional with a professor giving a formal lecture to the class. Yet, chemistry is an experimental science involving problem-solving. Therefore, faculty often solve problems in class. For several years we have used an audience response system in many sections of the course, or “clickers,” whereby students can respond to a conceptual question.

We have found that clickers improve attendance somewhat since students accrue course points by using their clickers. However, we still have problems in some sections with students coming late, leaving early, and generally feeling disconnected from the lecture. Some students feel that the purpose of lecture is to merely record the professor’s notes. There has also been a great deal of discussion that women and minorities feel left out of these courses.1 It is as if lecture is a performance on the part of the professor, and the students are merely spectators. This passive learning is a major problem with the traditional lecture format.2 In addition, many of our lectures are 75 minutes of mostly uninterrupted talk by the professor, with loss of student focus after five minutes. Our students learn, but we feel there must be a more effective approach.

Cooperative learning is a method some chemistry faculty have recently been using around the country. It requires students to work in small groups and actively learn from each other to solve problems. Most studies focus on cooperative learning groups of two to five students in a recitation section led by a graduate student or undergraduate peer.3,4 These groups are often heterogeneous in terms of gender, race, skill level, etc. Much of the research in this area has been conducted at small liberal arts colleges such as Bates where class sizes are under 20.2,5 Students feel more involved in problem-solving in the recitation sections, or small lecture sections. In addition, they tend to do better on exams in lecture and seem to have a better understanding of the material.

Approach to the Problem While others have used cooperative learning mainly in recitations, we plan to investigate whether students will have a more positive experience and improved learning by using cooperative learning in General Chemistry lecture. Cooperative learning has been reported to improve course grades and learning, retention, problem-solving skills, attitudes towards the course, and absenteeism.5 It also introduces students to teamwork and may possibly help women and minorities feel more included in the learning process.1

To encourage active participation in class, the professor will deliver short lectures (5-10 minutes) introducing concepts, while longer sections of class will focus on students solving problems as groups. Student groups of 4-5 will be formed the first day of class by the instructor. The course will be taught in a classroom that allows students to turn around and work with the students behind them. To encourage students to participate, clicker questions will be worth 10% of the course grade. Students will be expected to read the textbook before attending and, instead of passively sitting through lecture, will be working on quantitative problems in groups during most of the course. All problems will be clicker questions, allowing the instructor to evaluate their learning. The instructor will spend a large amount of the class directly working with the student groups to solve the problems. Short breaks (2 min.) will be introduced into the class every 20 minutes to allow students to review the information from the class to better retain the material.2 An undergraduate assistant is requested to help during the larger section of General Chemistry I offered Spring 2010.

We will evaluate how students using cooperative learning perform on exams compared to students from previous traditionally taught General Chemistry I sections. In addition, we will investigate whether they actively read the textbook, feel more actively engaged and included in lecture, enjoy working in groups, and are more likely to attend class. We will also evaluate the attrition rate and effect on faculty FCQs. The necessity of having a peer-teaching assistant as well as the lecture professor present during group activities will be evaluated.

Our department has undertaken some preliminary efforts to incorporate cooperative learning into the curriculum starting this past summer with a 26-student class of General Chemistry I. In addition, we are using cooperative learning one day a week in one section of the course this fall. During the summer course, the majority of students polled (95%) believed that they learned better in groups than in a traditional lecture format, and these activities encouraged them to attend lecture. There was typically close to 100% attendance in this course.

Availability of Research Results Results will be presented at department meetings and the American Chemical Society national meeting in the fall 2010. We would like to request travel support for this meeting. A paper will be submitted to the Journal of Chemical Education at the end of the study. Literature Review: 1. Wenzel, T.J., Controlling the Climate in Your Classroom, Anal. Chem. 2003, 75, 311A-314A. 2. Wenzel, T.J., The Lecture as a Learning Device, Anal. Chem. 1999, 71(23), 817A-819A. 3. Kogut, L. S., Using cooperative learning to enhance performance in General Chemistry, J. Chem. Ed 1997, 74, 720-722. 4. Mahalingam, M., Scahefer, F., Morlino, E., Promoting student learning through group problem solving in general chemistry recitations, J. Chem. Ed. 2008, 85, 1577-1581. 5. Wenzel, T. J., Cooperative Student Activities as Learning Devices, Anal. Chem. 2000, 72(7), 293A-296A. Record of Innovation or Assessment of Learning Professor Weiss introduced cooperative learning to the Department of Chemistry during the summer of 2009. Along with Allen Schoffstall, he authored an NSF CCLI proposal entitled “Revitalizing and Reinvigorating the Analytical Chemistry Curriculum at a Public PUI Using Cooperative and Problem-Based Learning.” Meeting Attendance Professor Weiss will be happy to attend as long as meetings do not conflict with lecture. Mentor Contact Information Professor David Anderson, Department of Chemistry, UCCS, danderso@uccs.edu Coach Contact Information: Professor Allen Schoffstall, Department of Chemistry, UCCS, amschoff@uccs.edu Willing to coach in PTLC? Yes.