Faculty Teaching Retreat

We had a great time at the recent Annual Faculty Teaching Retreat. Peter Doolittle was excellent. One of the underlying themes that he repeatedly addressed was the need for students to be put into situations where they can not only receive information, concepts, etc, but also for them to be able to process what they are learning, observing, experiencing. As we have come to understand the inquiry cycle better, it seems that explicitly using that as a strategy for student activity and learning allows for that processing to occur, especially through the discussion and reflection components of the cycle.

In addition, Prasanta and I were extremely pleased with the turn out at our concurrent session. We gave an overview of the inquiry cycle and summarized some of the things that we feel we learned from the our learning community discussions of the fall semester. We thank all who attended that session. That gave us confidence that we are providing a learning community in which many find value.

One activity that we used was called the Seven-Fingered Hand exercise. This was an extremely successful activity in engaging the audience. We only scratched the surface of discovering what we can do with that type of activity. If you are interested in what that exercise is, see the Creative Think website.

We will be discussing these and other concepts more during the Spring semester. Come and join us.

Thursdays at 3:15-4:45, 428 Armory.

We also have started a wiki that contains some of the materials and discussion summaries from last semester of the Undergraduates Engaging in Inquiry community. This wiki, called Learning Through Reflection, Inquiry and Innovation, is a compilation of work by Walt Hurley and Judy Sunderman. More to come on that website.