Teaching and Learning Center

A place for faculty and staff at BCC.

 
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Faculty Inquiry

Fall 2010 Programs

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This fall, Title III and the Basic Skills Initiative are running four different types of activities in the Teaching and Learning Center.

The Inclusive Classroom
This workshop series taught by Dr. Kimberly Mayfield from Holy Names College focuses on helping teachers develop curriculum and teaching practices that reach students with a wide-range of life experiences, learning styles, and cultural backgrounds. Monthly workshops will be held during Fall 2010 and participants will continue in Spring 2010 as mentors to additional participants. Compensation (subject to change): $1000 stipend for full participation. Contacts: Joan Berezin (jberezin@peralta.edu) & Terry Tricomi (ttricomi@peralta.edu).

Student Learning Outcomes Workshop
Dr. Mary J. Allen will present a workshop on how create simple and sustainable assessments connected to your department’s Student Learning Outcomes. The training will consist of one initial workshop with follow-up meetings to complete SLOs by department. Faculty appointed by department to conduct SLO assessment and follow-up should sign-up and attend the first workshop. Compensation: TBA. Contacts: Joan Berezin (jberezin@peralta.edu) & Terry Tricomi (ttricomi@peralta.edu).

Faculty/Staff Inquiry Groups [FIGs]
Teams of faculty and staff work together to research a thorny issues the encounter when working with students. The research questions should require the team to gather data from students to better understand the issue. Orientation in September; final presentation in late November/early December; meetings with team during semester.Priority will be given to inter-disciplinary teams, projects designed to close the assessment loop, and projects that focus on basic skills students. Compensation: $400 for team lead/$300 for participants (maximum 5). Contact: Scott Hoshida (shoshida@peralta.edu; 510-981-2897).

Faculty Peer Mentoring Program
This fall, the TLC will test two different peer-based assessment models to give participating faculty mid-term feedback on their teaching. The first model will include video-taping classroom teaching and conducting self-assessments, and the second model includes student feedback facilitated and recorded by another faculty member. In both cases, the Program Leaders will help set up the assessments, gather data about the effectiveness of each, and create recommendations for future professional development to support teaching and learning. Contact: Laura Ruberto (lruberto@peralta.edu) or Linda McAllister (lmcallister@peralta.edu).

TLC Workshop Development Grant (application to be released in October)
This pilot mini-grant program will fund a few teachers to develop workshops in Spring 2010. No compensation in F2010. Contact: Scott Hoshida (shoshida@peralta.edu; 510-981-2897).

Other Workshops, Programs, Presentations, etc.
If you are interested in using the Teaching and Learning Center for any event for faculty and staff at BCC, then please do not hesitate to contact the coordinator, Scott Hoshida, to schedule a time to use the space and to help publicize your event.

Spring 2010 Faculty Inquiry Groups (FIG) – Final Report Summary

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In Spring 2010, 7 groups participated in a pilot Faculty Inquiry Group project sponsored by the Teaching and Learning Center and funded by the Basic Skills Initiative. Here are the original questions that they posed: Spring 2010 FIGs.

Here is a chart that summarizes each of their projects: Spring 2010 FIG Summaries.

What is Inquiry

Posted on by teaching-and-learning

Inquiry is a method of professional development that gives faculty and staff the flexibility to research issues that they’ve seen or experienced in their work. Rather than prescribe particular best practices or research what other people are doing first, inquiry puts students, the subjects of our study, first.

Funding by the Basic Skills Initiative and the Title III grant, the Teaching and Learning Center is using an inquiry process to:

  • Create a culture of collaboration;
  • Strengthen teaching through inquiry and research;
  • Improve staff and faculty understanding of student learning;
  • Document the findings to plan future workshops, projects, and plans.

Spring 2010 Faculty/Staff Inquiry Groups at BCC:

In Spring 2010, seven teams of staff and faculty worked together on the Teaching and Learning Center’s pilot of inquiry. This is the first video made of the ESL team, which focused on what students thought they needed in ESL classes to be successful in transfer-level composition class. Follow these links:  ESL Spring 2010 Inquiry Group and the Physical Science Inquiry Group.

Faculty Inquiry Network: BCC Grant

In January 2009, BCC English teachers, Scott Hoshida, Chris Lebo-Planas, and Cleavon Smith received a small grant from Chabot College’s Faculty Inquiry Network to conduct a two-year inquiry on a thorny issue in basic skills classes. After witnessing students succeed in their own classes and then fail in subsequent English classes, they wanted to know what it would take for students to move from one level to the next. They wanted to know what they could teach in one class that would stick with students as they moved through the rest of their community college experiences. The Academy for College Excellence (then called the Digital Bridge Academy) had developed a curriculum around Joseph Campbell’s idea of the hero’s journey that appears in a number of myths and tales from around the world. Starting with those ideas, each teacher developed his own personal narrative assignment to help students look critically at their own struggles, develop a narrative to make sense of it, and to start articulating goals and aspirations for their lives. In this student-edited video, students from Cleavon Smith’s basic skills English class discuss how the books this process helped their learning and contributed to their experience in his class:  Personal Narrative Writing in a Basic Skills English Class.

Other Resources: