Practice What We Teach
In his book, “What the Best Colleges Instructors Do,” Ken Bain writes, “Fundamentally, they [the best instructors] were learners, constantly trying to improve their own efforts to foster students’ development, and never completely satisfied with what they had already achieved.” In their quest for student success, they might experiment with multiple approaches to teaching a concept to find the most significant impact on student learning. Similar to this, educators can experiment to determine the most effective methods for fostering cooperative learning, peer review, or authentic assessments for students. This Faculty Development Day is an opportunity for you to share your best ideas. Explore and share practical, evidence-based best practices on pedagogical themes in a collaborative setting and acquire new understanding as you are equipped and inspired to attempt new things in your courses.
Event Date: August 18, 2022
Time: 8:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Reminders:
Make sure you update your Zoom client software to the latest version.
Sign in to Zoom with your Saint Leo username and password. Only users with authenticated Saint Leo accounts will be granted entrance into today’s presentations.
For assistance with technical issues (Zoom, computer audio, camera, etc.), call DoIT at (352) 588-8888.
The Survey — Faculty Development Day – Fall 2022 (open and available through Monday, August 22nd at 7:00 p.m.)
Session 1
| Presentation Title | Presenter(s) | Description | Track | |
| Sense of Place, Sense of Self; Using Travel to Enhance Student Belonging and Build Community | Elisabeth Aiken, Karen Hannel & Randall Woodard | Through a discussion of different travel-based lessons or courses, participants will reflect on different ways travel will benefit students both in and out of the classroom, with a focus on student belonging, student community, and experiencing SLU mission. | Student Sense of Belonging | |
| Effective supports for the doctoral candidate | Jodi Lamb, Lin Carver & Dale Mancini | This presentation will present the culmination of survey results from recent EDD graduates and share what practices the students are finding most helpful. | Student Sense of Belonging | |
| Assessment Planning – Key Elements & Best Practices | Raymond Gonzalez | Will be covering best assessment practices and the key elements for a successful assessment plan. | Teaching Best Practices | |
| Problem Based Learning: Teaching Students to Think Critically and Become Problem Solvers | Cheryl Berry | This presentation on interdisciplinary problem-based learning (PBL) will define PBL, explain the benefits of PBL for student learning, and provide several PBL instructional resources and how to implement these resources with students including methods for assessment. The PBL resources highlighted will include case studies, simulations, citizen science projects, and traditional PBL projects. The difference between place- base learning and challenge- based learning will be explored in local and global context. | Teaching Best Practices | |
| Promote Your Program with Library Support | Christine Woods & Eileen O’Brien | Team up with a librarian to create a guide for your degree program. Our new Explore Sociology guide serves as an example of a new way to bring attention to your degree program. The guide provides students with information about major and minor requirements, but also brings attention to specific popular classes, connects students to professional organizations, and serves as a location for videos and future content. It is linked to all Sociology courses. | Interdisciplinary Experiences | |
| Tech No!: Returning to Nature to Invigorate A Sense of Belonging | Audrey Koke & Renee Gould | We would like to discuss nature pedagogy. We will showcase how natural enrichment in various forms can not only improve the overall well-being for our college students, but also create favorable connections between professors and students. We will pose 4 questions to investigate with the audience. We believe something as simple as a stroll in nature can lead to improvement in classroom endeavors and outcomes. | Student Sense of Belonging | |
| PACE Circles: Using student writing groups to foster a space for productivity, accountability community, and empowerment in online courses | Khalilah Caines | This workshop describes the impact of virtual writing groups on promoting to facilitate student support and engagement in an online program. | Student Sense of Belonging | |
| Top Teaching Tips | Gianna Russo, Tammy Zacchilli, Anne Barngrover, Natalyia Glover & Lara Ault | Panel presentation of 5 minute tips by CAS Faculty | Teaching Best Practices | |
| Saint Leo in Context: Exploring Trends in Higher Education | Daniel Duerr | This presentation will inform participants about Institutional Research data at Saint Leo, while also providing some context to understand our trends. It seeks to answer the question of how Saint Leo compares to the broader education context. | Tech Tools to Enhance Teaching and Learning |
Session 2
| Presentation Title | Presenter(s) | Description | Track | |
| Methods of Assessment & Rubrics: Creating a valuable learning experience | Raymond Gonzalez | We will be discussing best assessment practices covering rubric design, best methods of assessment and implementation of new key assignments to improve assessment plan. | Teaching Best Practices | |
| Increasing Student Belonging and Success: Two Strategies | Daniel Lloyd & Thomas Humphries | The panel will present two strategies to enhance students’ sense of belonging and contribute to their success in the on-ground, hybrid, and online modalities currently in use at Saint Leo. The first strategy uses a “tracking” feature in D2L discussion boards, requiring students to read and watch every post in each module. The second strategy employs an optional series of study videos and planning resources of which students may make use each week. | Student Sense of Belonging | |
| Faculty Sense of Intercultural Competence: Perspectives from an SLU Survey Study | Keya Mukherjee, Victoria Anyikwa & Iona Sarieva | This workshop reports on a survey study of SLU faculty’s sense of intercultural competence. Faculty will explore strategies to improve students’ sense of belonging. | Student Sense of Belonging | |
| Fostering Sense of Belonging to Increase Retention for Online Adult Learners | Courtney Wiest & Khalilah Louis Caines | Multiple stressors have impacted our students, faculty, and field agencies in the two years. These stressors have directly impacted all students’ health, mental health, and school performance, specifically adult learners attempting to navigate multiple priorities. This workshop will demonstrate how technology, innovative teaching tools, administrative oversight, and coordinated field efforts can enhance the sense of belonging to support retention needs for adult learning online. | Student Sense of Belonging | |
| Time to Dust off your Syllabus: Setting the Tone for Equitable Classrooms | Ebony Perez | In this session, we will discuss reflective questions/ practices to consider when developing syllabi as a beginning to a critical lens of creating a more just and equitable classroom. | Teaching Best Practices | |
| Teaching quantitative data analysis and getting them to do quantitative analysis: How do we bridge the disconnect? | Frank Orlando, Sergiy Borysov, & Zachary Smith | Join us to learn strategies for helping students apply their learning to conduct quantitative analysis, interpret the results, and write about the analyses and results. | Teaching Best Practices | |
| Generating Student Connection | Rhondda Waddell & Nancy Wood | Many universities that have a high percentage of students coming unprepared academically, with lower incomes that have been hit hard by Covid, or have work or family responsibilities may be experiencing the cumulative toll of the pandemic demonstrated through emotional and physical overloads. Many factors come to play in response: enter the lack of basic needs, economic problems, lack of childcare, mental-health issues, cost of health care, and increase caring for sick family members. Let’s come together and hit the reset button, and envision what education needs to look like in response. | Student Sense of Belonging | |
| Navigating Nearpod | Christine Woods | Learn how quick quizzes, collaboration boards and other interactivity tools in Nearpod can help engage students during classroom or virtual instructional classes. Come and find out more from Christine Woods, a Nearpod Certified Educator and Nearpod Mini-Grant winner! You will leave this session with the tools you need to be successful using Nearpod! | Tech Tools to Enhance Teaching and Learning | |
| Using Peer Review with ESL Students | Nataliya Glover | This session aims to present the findings of the research conducted in ESL academic writing classroom regarding the role peer review plays in assisting ESL students to develop academic writing skills. While ESL students are still working on the development of their efficient writing skills, they might be underachieving in academic writing courses or any other content-based courses. Many scholars indicated that ESL academic writers are faced with a plethora of issues while developing academic writing skills; subsequently, these issues result in underachievement of ESL academic writers who are enrolled in conventional college-level academic courses. | Teaching Best Practices |
Session 3
| Presentation Title | Presenter(s) | Description | Track | |
| Finding Your Place: Lessons from our Team-Taught Honors First-Year Seminar | Timothy Jussaume, Frank Orlando, Stephen Okey & Elisabeth Aiken | In this presentation, several faculty will share their experiences team-teaching in the Honors Program First-Year Seminar. | Interdisciplinary Experiences | |
| Teaching qualitative data analysis and getting them to do qualitative analysis: How do we bridge the disconnect? | Holly Atkins & Lisa Rapp-McCall | Join us to learn strategies for helping students apply their learning to analyze non-numeral data, interpret the findings, and write about the analyses and findings. | Teaching Best Practices | |
| Supporting Students with D2L Data | Kate Colello & Christine Picot | Learn how to act on your D2L data to help students succeed efficiently and effectively. Find out where students spend their time and identify misconceptions quickly. | Teaching Best Practices | |
| Facilitating Student Connection and Success in Online Masters and Doctoral Programs | Fern Aefsky, Jodi Lamb, Dale Mancini & Phillip Neely | This workshop will present successful strategies to engage adult learners in an online program by building a learning community for students and faculty. Faculty can build sustainable relationships through their courses via effective and frequent communication. Course assignments and discussion can facilitate student collaboration, and instructor responses enhances collaborative efforts to engage all participants. Samples of engaging videos and activities will be shared that can be customized for various graduate and post-graduate program participants. | Student Sense of Belonging | |
| Exploring Online Students’ Sense of Belonging | William Hamilton, Daniel Duerr & Cheryl Hemphill | This presentation will review and analyze data that the Saint Leo Institutional Research team has collected on online students’ Sense of Belonging, with a focus on Community of Inquiry measures and their association with Sense of Belonging. Both qualitative and quantitative data will be reviewed. | Student Sense of Belonging | |
| Using Google Docs in the Classroom | Anne Barngrover | I will review the technical aspects of using Google Docs and present ideas for how to use it in the classroom. Google Docs is a tool that caters to both visual and hands-on styles of learning. Students get to critically engage with a text and practice their annotation skills, which pivots passive absorption to active involvement. | Tech Tools to Enhance Teaching and Learning | |
| Engage, Represent, Act and Express: Friends of Fritz Unite! Part 2 | Renee Sedlack & Georgina Rivera-Singletary | The presenters will review the framework for UDL and emphasize the need to employ a variety of strategies and methods for teaching content. Participants will be engaged and motivated to gather facts to formulate a plan. While the goal for the task will be clear, how participants reach that goal will be different. In the end, each group will unite and solve a problem for Fritz! | Teaching Best Practices | |
| Socializing in the Classroom: Have We Been Wrong? | Helen MacLennan & Tonya Mazur | Why socializing in class can increase student motivation, belonging, and retention | Student Sense of Belonging |
