General Education, Assessment and the Learning Students Need
Call for Proposals
The deadline for submission of proposals was May 15, 2009. Questions may be directed to Siah Annand at annand@aacu.org.
Conference Themes
Session Formats
Become a LEAP Featured Session
Writing a Strong Proposal
How to Submit a Proposal
Dates to Remember
The Network for Academic Renewal invites proposals that highlight fresh thinking and new approaches to help faculty, staff, and administrators maintain momentum in general education and assessment and reaffirm a commitment to educational quality amid mounting economic pressures and budget cuts.
Now more than ever, the nation needs college graduates who can tackle complex problems like the economic challenges facing the world today and build a more sustainable future. Graduates who earn degrees but lack essential capabilities—critical thinking and communication skills; global, civic, cultural, and ethical competencies; scientific literacy; and the ability to integrate knowledge across different disciplines—will be ill-prepared to accomplish these far-reaching tasks.
General education and assessment both have critical roles to play in helping students to develop these capabilities. Administrators, student affairs educators, and faculty, especially now, must work together to ensure that general education is more than an accumulated set of credits and that assessment practices both demonstrate accomplishment and deepen achievement. At a time when many campuses are scaling back to focus on “essentials,” the essential role of general education and assessment cannot be overlooked.
Conference Themes
The conference is organized around four themes that grew out of conversation with faculty, administrators, and student affairs educators from two-year and four-year AAC&U member institutions in a January 2009 planning meeting in Seattle.
Theme 1: Vision, Goals, and Designs
This theme relates to overall efforts to create a robust general education program that aligns with vision and goals for student learning.
- What are the goals for general education today? Is breadth still important? What role can general education play in helping to orient students to college-level work or in helping them to integrate their learning near the end of their time on campus?
- What processes have campuses undertaken to engage campus constituents in discussing and developing goals for general education?
- How do important learning goals related to social responsibility, diversity, civic engagement, global learning, and democratic aspirations play out in general education today? How is general education also cultivating critical thinking, personal responsibility, academic and personal integrity, intellectual curiosity, moral reasoning, and a strong work ethic?
- What are the special contributions of the physical and natural sciences and mathematics to general education? Of the humanities, arts, and social sciences? Of professional programs? What role does interdisciplinarity play in general education?
- How well do goals for general education match up with institutional mission and values? How have campuses strengthened these connections?
- What are the pitfalls and possibilities of different types of general education designs? How do goals for general education differ depending on type of institution? Is the “menu” the only choice to give students time and space to choose a major? Why do some institutions gravitate toward a common core?
- What are institutions doing to enhance the “middle” part of students’ learning—after first semester, but before graduation?
- How are campuses—and campuses and state higher education systems in partnership—working to create new designs for general education that address the needs of historically underserved students?
- How are campuses reframing general education in light of transfer, AP credit, and dual high school/college enrollments? What value is there in taking general education, for example, for students who have accumulated a semester’s (or more) worth of credits?
- How are community colleges, receiving institutions, and in some cases, state systems, working to ensure that “transfer” constitutes more than just alignment of course numbers? How might portfolios or other “portable repositories” of student work offering fresh ways to think about transfer?
Theme 2: Faculty Engagement and Collaboration
This theme relates to how campuses are engaging faculty in general education, opportunities for faculty development in and for general education, use of innovative pedagogies, and collaborations with student affairs educators, students, community partners, business, and others.
- How have campuses involved faculty from different disciplines in general education? What are ways in which institutions motivate faculty to participate in general education, and recognize and reward them for their contributions? How are faculty being credited for participating in general education reform efforts?
- What are examples of innovative faculty development programs that help prepare faculty to teach general education courses? How can institutions help equip faculty to teach to a range of learning outcomes, including critical thinking, communication, personal and social responsibility, and integration?
- What are some creative ways in which general education has fostered students’ engagement in their own learning? How can general education foster active involvement vs. disinterestedness? How important is faculty engagement to student engagement?
- What role are “high-impact” practices—such as undergraduate research, service learning, and inquiry-based learning—playing in general education, and how are faculty prepared to engage students in these practices?
- How are faculty utilizing general education to foster high levels of learning among historically underserved students (e.g., first-generation students, low-income students, and underrepresented students of color)? How can faculty use disaggregated data to ensure equitable participation in high-impact practices and to gauge their effectiveness? What polices, structures, and incentives can campuses—and state systems/coordinating boards—develop to support faculty, along with student affairs educators, in these efforts?
- Community colleges guide many students through lower-division general education. What classroom insights and innovations might community college faculty share about engaging students early in their college careers?
- How are new faculty socialized to general education? Is it something that is valued when it is discussed within departments, for example? Why or why not? How can early-career and late-career faculty experience renewal through teaching in general education?
- What important contributions do part-time and contingent faculty make to general education? How can they be better engaged in the broad shaping of general education and in faculty development for general education?
- What kinds of collaboration have strengthened general education? How have faculty-student affairs partnerships helped to connect in- and out-of-classroom experiences in general education? How are campuses working with community agencies, businesses, and other entities to expand the circle of individuals who are facilitating student learning in general education?
- What role can technology play in enhancing student learning in general education?
- How can institutions better cultivate faculty responsibility toward a whole general education program, beyond their individual course? How can institutions better encourage faculty to collaborate across departments and domains of knowledge when teaching in general education?
Theme 3: Assessment and Alignment
This theme relates to building systematic and meaningful assessment processes in general education and across the broader curriculum and co-curriculum.
- What are the ways in which student learning goals, curriculum design, pedagogy, and assessment can work together to strengthen student learning in general education?
- How can faculty and others on campus better assess what students are learning, and at what levels, through general education?
- How have campuses worked to ensure that learning is happening by design rather than by serendipity or chance, and making this true for more students?
- How are campuses ensuring that students who enter with transfer or AP credits have reached desired levels of learning before moving on to more specialized or more sophisticated courses and projects?
- What are some of the innovative ways in which faculty are assessing general education learning at the course level and at the broader program level? How have assessment findings in general education been used at the institutional level in terms of improving programs and practices?
- How has technology played a role in assessing general education?
- How are states working with schools, colleges and universities to align student learning goals so that more students are prepared for rigorous general education curricula?
- What assessment methods help students to connect the learning experienced in general education with the learning experienced in the majors, in electives, and in co-curricular experiences?
- When and how are portfolios useful for campuses in terms of assessment of student learning? How, in particular, can they be brought to scale at campuses with very large numbers of students? What alternative methods exist to meaningfully assess learning with large student populations?
Theme 4: Maintaining Momentum
This theme relates to instituting general education reform processes, navigating political and structural dynamics, and moving forward with plans in a time of restricted resources.
- What processes have institutions used to bring about successful general education revision? What kinds of challenges exist? How did institutions work through challenges that arose in order to continue making progress?
- In rethinking purely distributive models, how can institutions work through resistance and protectionism that exists because these models guarantee courses and students every semester? How can departments maintain viability and vitality while operating within other models of general education?
- How have campuses moved from the successful passage of new general education learning goals to the creation of new curricular designs to address these goals? How have campuses addressed “turf wars” that can arise when figuring out where and how cross-cutting and cross-disciplinary goals will be taught?
- How are institutions reaffirming their commitment to general education and assessment in a time of shrinking resources?
- What are some effective no-cost or low-cost ways to strengthen general education, and to keep momentum going in general education reform?
- What other types of resources might be substituted for direct funding and still add value and support to general education and assessment? How can partnerships help?
- What can institutions do to maintain morale and energy levels during tough times? What can senior administrators do? What can deans and department chairs do? What can general education committees do?
- How are campuses working to ensure that underserved students, particularly, have access to high-quality practices in general education during these economic challenges? In what ways can state higher education systems both catalyze and support campuses in making excellence inclusive, in general education and across different parts of the educational experience?
- How have budget cuts and restrictions been approached as opportunities to clarify goals and purposes of general education?
Session Formats
There are four session formats from which to choose: (1) Hands-On Workshop, (2) Research/Project Dissemination & Discussion, (3) Poster Demonstration, and (4) Facilitated Discussion. Please select the format that will advance participants’ understanding and potential use of your work. One way to effectively engage participants across the different formats is to have them explore ways to apply your information and resources to their own institutional and professional settings.
- In an effort to conserve resources, proposals are asked to minimize the use of audio visual equipment and extensive handouts. Electronic resources will be provided to participants both before and after the conference.
Format 1: Hands-On Workshop (90 min.; 2-3 facilitators; room set in round tables)
Workshops provide an opportunity for the facilitators to significantly engage participants in active learning about the session topic. Workshops should begin with a brief framing of the topic and an overview of intended activities and goals for the session. Facilitators should introduce one or more models or strategies employed in their own work and provide data/findings related to the topic, benchmarks for success, common challenges, and practical examples that enhance participants’ learning. Facilitators should specifically take participants through one or more relevant exercises or activities (including in small groups) that will help them to move their own efforts forward upon returning to campus.
All sessions should include discussion of how participants might translate and adapt models and strategies to their institutional and professional settings. If the workshop is better suited to a particular type of institution (e.g., community college, research university) or level of expertise (novice, intermediate, advanced), please make that clear.
Hands-On Workshop proposals should:
- state the conference theme you have selected
- state the problem or issue that your workshop addresses
- indicate how models or strategies that you plan to share have effectively addressed the problem or issue
- describe the intended activities and outcomes of your session, noting how the activities will help participants achieve the outcomes
- describe the aspects of your work that can be applied to one or more sectors of higher education (i.e., large universities, liberal arts colleges, comprehensive institutions, community colleges)
- describe the level to which your session is geared (novice, intermediate, advanced)
- include links to relevant Web sites or attachments of materials you will share, if available
- include time for participants to discuss how your models and strategies might translate to their own campus contexts and roles
Format 2: Research/Project Dissemination & Discussion (75 min.; 2-3 facilitators; room set in round tables)
This session should allow for (a) 15-20 minutes for facilitators to highlight their research findings or promising project, model, or other innovation; (b) 35-40 minutes to work through practical applications of this work (e.g., to other institutions or in scaling up to involve greater numbers of students); and (c) 15-20 minutes for general participant questions-and-answers. Research-focused proposals should state the research hypothesis, the methodology used, and the major findings, and offer concrete examples/steps related to using the findings to effect change. Data, findings, and applications should be presented in ways that are accessible to participants and allow them to engage in a discussion about implications. Project/model/innovation-focused proposals should briefly describe the project, the parties involved (e.g., humanities and science faculty, residence life staff, first-year students, etc.), the impetus for the project, components, challenges encountered, strategies for implementation and plans for assessing its effectiveness.
NOTE: All sessions should engage participants in thinking about how they might translate and adapt the research or project/model/innovation to their own institutional and professional settings. Facilitators are also welcome to solicit feedback that would inform their work. If the dissemination & discussion session is better suited to a particular type of institution (e.g., community college, research university) or level of expertise (novice, intermediate, advanced), please make that clear.
Research-Focused Dissemination & Discussion proposals should:
- state the conference theme you have selected
- state the hypothesis/problem your research has addressed
- describe briefly the methodology and the parameters of the study
- provide visual means of presenting findings and applications
- include links to relevant Web sites or attachments of materials you will share, if available
- include time throughout the session for participants to discuss the implications of the findings and practical applications
Project/Model/Innovation-Focused Dissemination & Discussion proposals should:
- state the conference theme you have selected
- describe the project, model, or innovation to be featured
- highlight the parties involved (e.g., humanities and science faculty, residence life staff, first-year students), the impetus for the project, components, challenges encountered, and strategies for implementation and assessment.
- include links to relevant Web sites or attachments of materials you will share, if available
- include time throughout the session for participants to discuss the implications of the findings and practical applications
Format 3: Poster Sessions (60 min.; 1-2 facilitators; 6’x3’ skirted table; no internet access; electrical outlet and other supports as available, upon request)
Poster sessions lend themselves well to combining visual displays of key information with written materials and small group interaction to create a more individualized learning experience. These sessions provide an opportunity for you to share your work with the full conference audience, and they are a valuable way to initiate conversations with colleagues with similar interests. These sessions can include 3’x 4’ boards to display charts, diagrams, pictures, and/or graphs that depict program components, findings, samples of student work, participant testimony, and so on. You may also wish to present information through technological means or other types of visual displays that can be set-up on the 6’x3’ table provided.
Poster Session proposals should:
- state the conference theme you have selected
- state the problem or issue that your display will address
- indicate how your work has effectively addressed the issue
- describe the visual data, display, etc. that you will provide
- indicate how the data or information will be useful to a particular or multiple sectors of higher education
- include links to relevant Web sites or attachments of materials you will share, if available
- include students or student perspectives where relevant
NOTE: Our ability to provide technical assistance is limited, but if you have a project for which you need such assistance, we are happy to explore options with you. Poster boards are provided upon request.
Format 4: Facilitated Discussions (60 min.; 1-2 facilitators; room set in round tables; no audio-visual)
Facilitated discussions provide time for colleagues to share expertise and experiences on a topic of similar interest. They provide a valuable opportunity to network and reflect upon ideas, challenges, and possible solutions in a slightly more informal setting. Facilitated discussions may take one of the following approaches:
- Topical discussion: The facilitator briefly presents information on a topic related to one of the conference themes and assists the group in examining issues of concern and new ways of thinking about the topic.
- Practice/strategy discussion: The facilitator prefaces the discussion with a brief overview of a particular practice or strategy she/he is using and provides a handout that includes a longer description as well as a bibliography or other resources. She/he can then pose or invite a question to stimulate and focus the conversation so that others can share their own experiences using the particular practice or strategy.
Facilitated Discussion proposals should:
- state the conference theme you have selected
- describe the topic or practice/strategy that you will present for discussion and why it is important to address this issue
- indicate your experience in the topic area or in using the practice/strategy (including relevant theory, goals or purpose of the topic or practice being discussed, benchmarks of success, challenges, and findings, where applicable)
- indicate the outcomes participants should expect from the discussion and examples of how you will prompt and sustain conversation to achieve those outcomes
- include links to relevant Web sites or electronic copies of the materials you will share (electronic copies of materials can be provided later)
- include students or student perspectives where relevant
Become a LEAP Featured Session in the Conference Program
LEAP Featured Sessions are those that reflect the LEAP vision of a 21st century liberal education. The designation is intended to (1) highlight the innovative work of colleges and universities that are members of the LEAP Campus Action Network (CAN) and (2) shine a spotlight on the LEAP essential learning outcomes, principles of excellence, and related high-impact practices described in the 2007 report, College Learning for the New Global Century.
CAN is the campus-focused strand of the LEAP initiative, bringing together colleges, universities, and organizations committed to liberal education; helping them to improve their efforts to ensure that all students achieve essential outcomes; and highlighting their effective practices.
Any type of session—hands-on workshop, poster, or facilitated discussion—can be designated as a LEAP Featured Session in the conference program. If you would like your session to be considered for this designation, please review the eligibility section and session example, below. You will be able to check this option in the online proposal submission form.
Eligibility
- Session presenters must be from CAN member institutions. (To find out if your campus is a member, or to find out about signing up for CAN, click here.)
- Session proposals should explicitly address: (1) one or more of the LEAP essential learning outcomes and (2) one or more of the LEAP principles of excellence or high-impact practices identified as mechanisms for achieving the essential learning outcomes.
- Session proposals should explicitly state how the facilitators will weave LEAP elements directly into a session’s framing, discussion, or activities.
- Preference will be given to sessions that address how the campus practice/strategy engages a significant number of students or can be scaled to engage a significant number of students, particularly those students historically underserved by higher education.
LEAP Featured Session Example:
Giving Students a Compass: Making Liberal Education Explicit to First-Year Students
Institutions need to be much more intentional and explicit about the kinds of learning they seek to develop in their students. This session will describe a new initiative to orient all students in first-year seminars to Anywhere University’s campus-wide learning goals, which were developed using the LEAP essential learning framework. Students in the seminars now discuss and debate the University’s outcomes and are introduced to our e-portfolio system, which is keyed to these outcomes. In the session, the facilitator will first describe the alignment between our University’s outcomes and the LEAP essential outcomes, and then take participants through several of the activities used with first-year students to explore these outcomes. Participants will also review examples of student essays on the meaning of liberal education, which is the first “artifact” deposited into the e-portfolios, and consider how they might implement this kind of orientation at their own institutions.
About LEAP
Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) is AAC&U’s primary vehicle for advancing and communicating about the importance of undergraduate liberal education for all students. LEAP seeks to engage the public with core questions about what really matters in college, to give students a compass to guide their learning, and to make a set of essential learning outcomes the preferred framework for educational excellence, assessment of learning, and new alignments between school and college. For more information, click here.
Writing a Strong Proposal
The proposal should consist of a session title, a brief abstract, and a longer session description accompanied by presenter names, titles, and institutional/organizational affiliations. Your proposal should be clear and concise and your session title should accurately reflect your session content. Experts in the field and AAC&U staff will review all proposals. Reviewers will look favorably upon proposals that (1) offer practical models and/or innovative strategies that reflect one of the conference themes, (2) reflect sound theory or research, (3) include findings from evaluation and assessment, (4) identify the intended audience and active learning goals for the session (including what attendees will gain from going to the session), and (5) reflect a diversity of innovations, institutions, disciplines, programmatic areas, and individuals. Joint submissions from across campuses and campus-community partners are also encouraged, and we particularly welcome student perspectives on the featured models and strategies.
Tips
- Consider how your work might be useful to individuals at different types of institutions and/or those serving different student populations.
- Indicate if your session will: (1) combine the work of more than one institution, (2) illustrate perspectives of different organizational roles (e.g., faculty, department chairs, student affairs personnel, academic advisors, librarians, students), or (3) focus on a specific audience.
- Include facilitators who bring diverse perspectives and life experiences to the topic or issue your proposal addresses. AAC&U is committed to presenting conferences where sessions and the communities of participants reflect the diversity of our campuses.
- Show how your session will be interactive. AAC&U Network conferences strive to engage participants in reflection, discussion and application activities during sessions. Please do not plan to read a paper.
- Provide a clear sense of how your session will unfold and be prepared to discuss what worked, what did not, and how you addressed challenges along the way.
- “Show and tell” submissions that have little or no applicability to other institutions will not be considered.
- Present work that has proven effective and is well beyond the planning stages.
Below is a sample session title and abstract that clearly states the issue to be explored, provides supporting evidence, and discusses what participants should expect from their attendance. Your longer session description should provide greater detail about these aspects of the session.
Searching for Faculty of Color and Sustaining their Presence on Campus
Recent studies have shown that institutional context affects not only searches for faculty of color but also the socialization processes through which these faculty members negotiate their own cultural backgrounds alongside newly forged identities within the academy. In this session, the facilitators will: (a) highlight emerging practices at institutions that successfully recruit and sustain faculty of color; (b) recommend strategies for institutions to increase the presence of faculty of color; and (c) share a set of socialization experiences of linguistic-minority women faculty. Participants will explore implications for creating a “multi-contextual” campus culture that validates the importance of different ways of thinking and learning, and they will share their own institutional experiences and promising strategies related to the recruitment and success of faculty of color.
How to Submit a Proposal
The deadline for proposal submission has passed. Please direct any questions to annand@aacu.org.
Notification
You should receive an automatic message indicating receipt of your proposal when submitted. If you do not receive this message, we may not have received your proposal. Please e-mail Siah Annand at Annand@aacu.org to confirm receipt of proposal.
Acceptance
You will receive notification about the status of your proposal by late June.
Registration Fees
All session facilitators at the conference are responsible for the appropriate conference registration fees, travel, and hotel expenses. Please be sure all individuals in your proposal have this information and can be available to present at any time throughout the event. Presentation times range from Thursday, February 18, 2010 beginning at 8:30 p.m. through Saturday, February 20 at 12:00 noon.
Resources for Attendees of Your Session
Conference participants like to have resource materials to help them implement and/or share new ideas when they return to campus. In an effort to conserve natural resources, and increase the potential for active participation in your session, we strongly encourage facilitators to provide us with online resources one month in advance of the conference.
If your proposal pertains to a project, program, course, or other feature for which there is (or will be) descriptive materials available on the Web or electronically, please provide the URL address or e-document with your proposal, (or when they become available before the conference). AAC&U’s Web site will include these links when we post the program. After the conference, all presenters will be asked to provide additional electronic resources to make available to conference participants.
Final Reminders
Please complete all fields including information pertaining to all additional facilitators.
- Please include links to supplemental materials, if available.
- Please remember that by submitting a proposal, you agree to:
- Register and pay conference fees if the proposal is accepted
- Inform your co-facilitators about the proposal’s status and the need for all facilitators to pay the conference registration fees and be available throughout the event to present your work as scheduled.
Dates to Remember
- May 15, 2009: Proposals due to AAC&U
- Late June: Proposal acceptance notification
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