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Name
of Project: Faculty Development Institute
Description:
Three Communication faculty members attended the Faculty Development
Institute at William & Mary. Faculty members participated in
workshops with experts on a variety of educational topics, and had
the opportunity to gather additional information and experiences
to assist their faculty development.
Goals:
It was our hope
that they would then share the information, activities, issues,
and ideas with the entire Department upon their return to allow
the department to also benefit from the experience.
Outcomes:
The faculty had a good experience at the Institute, bringing back
some new information and ideas as well as receiving a refresher
of important information and educational concepts. To allow that
some of the ideas could be incorporated into the department's on-going
faculty development efforts, the faculty attendees shared what they
learned and experienced with a small group of faculty in mid-August
prior to our adjunct faculty orientation, and with the entire full-time
faculty prior to our department retreat.
Lessons
Learned:
Beyond the specific
information and ideas from the Institute, the most important lesson
learned is that we need more opportunities for faculty development.
The experience energized the faculty who attended and made other
faculty eager for the experience. We are so often fully immersed
in and stretched by our day-to-day work that we lack time and energy
for reflection on our vocation. We need more opportunities to pay
gracious attention to our continued development as teachers as well
as scholars.
Name
of Project: Communication Department Faculty Development Retreat
Description:
We designed and facilitated a weekend-long retreat for our full-time
faculty. Dr. Deb Yost of the Education Department joined us and
gave a presentation about the assessment cycle and its application
in the curriculum.
| Goals:
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We
sought to create time and space for Communication faculty to
undertake a significant project in the area of faculty and department
development. The project necessitated that faculty have extended
time to think through, debate and ultimately develop a plan
to act on pedagogical and curricular issues. |
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We
sought to learn more about the assessment cycle and then to
apply it to our departmental mission, goals, and learning objectives.
Specifically, we sought to re-visit and revise the Mission,
Goals, and Learning Objectives of the Communication Department
as a whole and learn how to incorporate appropriate student
assessment activities, assignments, and instruments in all of
our courses. |
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We
then sought to apply what we learned/discussed to individual
course templates to ensure that our courses worked well independently
and collectively to fulfill our mission and develop students
who would have the education to be successful professionally
and personally. |
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A
secondary goal was to provide another opportunity for the type
of collaborative and collegial faculty work that is a hallmark
of our department. |
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| Outcomes:
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It
was a thoroughly exhausting and incredibly productive weekend.
The information Deb Yost provided and the subsequent discussions
yielded excellent results. |
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We
reflected upon the mission of our department and collaborated
to produce a refined vision for our department. |
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The
discussion led to reflection on the content and format of our
curriculum as a whole as well as our individual courses. This
led to subsequent reflection on the decisions we make about
how to best present concepts and assess student learning of
those concepts. |
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After
working with Deb Yost, we undertook revision of our Departmental
Mission, Goals, and Learning Objectives, and began work to develop
syllabi templates for all of our Core Communication courses
anchored in Bloom's Taxonomy and other assessment guidelines.
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We
worked diligently to ensure that the individual courses were
substantive and complementary - and reinforced our mission. |
Lessons
Learned:
The work has been on-going and steady since the retreat; however,
it has been difficult to make as much progress as we did during
that one weekend, without the extended time and space apart from
the daily responsibilities of teaching. We need to find more opportunities
like this; it strengthened our courses and our commitment to our
department and each other. We are most fortunate to have a collegial
faculty who respect each other's work and are willing to continue
to work collaboratively, but we need to devise a plan to create
more time for such work than we can muster in our frequent department
meetings during the free periods.
| Name
of Project: Guest Speaker Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Former
Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University
of Pennsylvania. |
| Description: |
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We
allocated/deferred funds from 2002-03 toward the fee for bringing
Dr. Jamieson to La Salle in Fall 2004. She is an expert in Political
Communication and will be here prior to the Presidential Election
in 2004 to speak on the topic, "The Demise of Fact in Political
Debate." Our department allocation will be combined with
an allocation from the Political Science Department, as well
as some monies from the Concert & Lecture series. |
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We
have planned that all of our senior seminars for Fall 2002 will
dovetail with the guest speaker and will be based upon topics
related to politics. For example, the Mass Communication Seminar
will look at the influence of media on the political process;
the Public Relations Seminar might design a campaign to encourage
college students to vote; and the Human Communication Seminar
will focus specifically on political communication. |
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