Excerpts from Newsletters

What:
Transforming your online class with situation-based learning is an audio online seminar presentation by Dr. Will Thalheimer, an internationally noted learning-and-performance authority., which offers insights on how to make more effective learning-design decisions that positively impact the experiences of students.

When:
Thursday, 1/22/09 12:00-1:30 PM

Using Concept Maps to Assess Online and Traditional Classes

What:
Professor Donna Saulsberry will deliver a close look at concept mapping and its place in both face-to-face and online teaching. In this online audio seminar

When:
Thursday, 1/22/09 12:00-1:30 PM

Engaging Faculty in Departmental Strategic Planning

What:
Dr. Anne Massaro of Ohio State University will explain how to make strategic planning meaningful to faculty, integral to their work, and effective in achieving departmental goals in a live and interactive seminar presentation.

When:
Wednesday, 2/04/09 12:00-1:30 PM

Faculty Scholarship Exchange-Funding and Speaker

January 15, 2009 FSE Seminar:
Mary J. Allen, Ph.D.—Assessment in Health Sciences Education

Dr. Mary J. Allen will be the featured speaker for the January 15 Faculty Scholarship Exchange Seminar. The seminar will be held from 12:00-12:50 in R354 (upper amphitheatre).

Dr. Allen will lead two additional workshops, scheduled for the morning and afternoon in which she will work with faculty interested in improving their effectiveness in assessment of student learning outcomes. Reservations for those workshops can be made by contacting Ms. Jessica Green in the Office of Academic Affairs (4-2810).

Dr. Allen is a consultant in higher education specializing in assessment and accreditation. In the last decade she has offered invited assessment workshops for the AAHE, AAC&U, American Psychological Society, FIPSE, Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, and over 100 colleges, universities, and college districts in the U.S., Hong Kong, Kenya, Mexico, and Micronesia. In addition, she has co-facilitated a series of WASC-sponsored assessment retreats and is involved in planning the first WASC Assessment Academy. She has published two books on assessment: Assessing Academic Programs in Higher Education (Anker, 2004) and Assessing General Education Programs (Anker, 2006). She is the former Director of the California State University Institute for Teaching and Learning, where she supported assessment and faculty development for the CSU system; and she is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology from California State University, Bakersfield, where she served as professor, department chair, and founding director of the faculty development center and the assessment center. She is a fellow in the American Psychological and Western Psychological Associations, and she holds Ph.D. and B.A. degrees in Psychology and an M.A. in Statistics from U.C., Berkeley.

Course Objectives Workshop—June 28, Noon—1:00 p.m.

A faculty development workshop on the topic of medical course objectives will be presented on Thursday, June 28, from noon to 1:00 p.m. in the new classroom building, CW 106.

The workshop will be in lieu of the regular School of Medicine Curriculum Committee meeting and all School of Medicine Course/Clerkship Directors are encouraged to attend. The workshop will be open to other interested parties.

The purpose of providing a focus on course-level learning objectives is to enhance coordination within the School of Medicine curriculum, to create realistic expectations among both faculty and students concerning learning outcomes, and to continue a campus initiative for improvement of the academic reputation of this campus.

The presentation will concentrate on the concepts and practice of learning objectives, development from other academic health sciences campuses and on the American Physiological Society Medical Physiology Objectives Project, the web link to which is copied above.

Course objectives, and their extension as lecture objectives, are widely acknowledged in United States medical schools as a proven and productive means of maximizing student performance, while providing a significant increase in efficiency to medical lecturers .

The most significant exponent of formal learning objectives was Robert Mager, who initially published a classic text of the subject in 1962. The current edition of which is: Mager, R. (1975). Preparing Instructional Objectives (2nd Edition). Belmont, CA: Lake Publishing Co.

Objectives should be stated in terms of student behavior and the level of specificity that is expected.
Objectives should use an action verb that indicates the depth of understanding expected.
Objectives should be stated precisely using terms that have uniform meaning and are consistent with their reading resources.
Objectives should be realistic.

One advantage of learning objectives is that you can use them to direct students to material not covered in class!

http://www.the-aps.org/education/MedPhysObj/template.htm

Faculty Scholarship Exchange

The Faculty Scholarship Exchange (FSE), located near the current journal space on the first floor of the Rowland Medical Library, has been established to provide support for faculty collaborative activities.

The FSE will allow faculty to engage one another in a pleasant, dedicated environment, surrounded by the library's scholarly scientific literature, with easy access to the Internet and electronic information and convenient to library research staff for additional expertise in information technology applications.

This space is specifically for development of interactive research and instructional activities and is not intended as additional space for meetings
or for use as a general conference room. The space may be reserved for one or more hours by groups/teams of two or more persons, one of whom must be a permanent UMMC
faculty member. These groups/teams must be involved in collaborating on a grant idea, grant proposal, manuscript preparation, course development, etc.

Reservations are accepted at the circulation desk from 8:00 a.m. — 5:00 p.m., Monday — Friday. Online reservations may be accomplished following access from the main page of the library secured-Web site for UMMC users by selecting the Faculty Scholarship Exchange button on the left menu bar.

Online requests must be confirmed by the library before a reservation is officially established.