Indiana University Bloomington
Indiana University Bloomington seeks to enhance sustained improvement to undergraduate learning within the STEM disciplines through the adoption of proven instructional approaches that rely on active learning within disciplinary frameworks. Over a three-year period the project will provide the opportunity for 12 faculty members from the Computer Science program to transform their courses by engaging two in cross-disciplinary Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs).
Each year of the initiative, a cohort of at least three Computer Science faculty members will be awarded individual grants to implement active learning and innovative instructional approaches in one of their courses. The faculty will also be involved in a study that investigates the influence of their work on the teaching and learning culture within their department, sharing results of their efforts and disseminating the work and collaborating with BVA faculty from other campuses.
Computer Science faculty will participate in two highly structured FLCs. Both programs, the Course Development Institute and the Transformative Learning Collegium, have a long history of success at IUB.
By participating in these two FLC’s faculty will:
- Articulate the relationships among bottlenecks to student learning, course goals, student learning outcomes, and assessments within their courses
- Conduct lessons that engages students in practicing the mental moves required to be successful within their discipline, often termed “expert thinking”
- Explore the results of their activities upon departmental culture, including the level of adoption of new instructional approaches, attitudes toward teaching, and acceptance of the STEM Course Transformation Project
Learn more about the participating Computer Science Faculty
Campus Facilitators
George Rehrey is the director of Indiana University’s new Center for Learning Analytics and Student Success (CLASS). For the ten years prior to that, he was the director of IUB’s award winning Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (S0TL) program, leading efforts to support instructors of all ranks as they transform their courses, conduct classroom research, collect evidence of student learning, form communities of inquiry, and disseminate their work locally, nationally, and internationally. In addition to understanding how learning analytics can inform SOTL work, his other current research is about the influence that social and economic reward systems may have upon faculty learning communities and academic development programs.
Email: grehrey@indiana.edu
Joan Middendorf is an instructional consultant at Indiana University’s Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. Joan’s specialty lies in leading faculty groups to make disciplinary ways of thinking available to students. Along with David Pace she developed the “Decoding the Disciplines” approach to define crucial bottlenecks to learning, dissect and model expert thinking, and assess student performance. Joan and the History Learning Project (Pace and Professors Arlene Diaz and Leah Shopkow) were awarded the Menges Research Award from the Professional Development Network in Higher Education and the Maryellen Weimer Scholarly Work on Teaching and Learning Award.
Email: middendo@indiana.edu