Summer Workshop Interest Form

We invite faculty to share ideas for preparing first semester students to gain skill in critical thinking, effective writing, discussion participation, and academic honesty. In addition, we will discuss objectives and resources for advising first year students. This workshop is encouraged for faculty who have recently taught, or who are planning to teach Tutorial in the fall. Led by: Erik Simpson, Karla Erickson

This workshop is part of the Portfolio Pilot Project, in which the Writing Lab staff have recruited and worked with a sample of students to accumulate papers associated with courses across the curriculum, the assignments to which their papers responded, their reflections on those papers, and their assessment both of their progress as writers and of the writing instruction they have received from faculty at the College. The Project follows these students for all four of their college years; portfolios thus include papers from tutorials, 100, 200 and 300 level courses. By reading student writing from a variety of courses in all divisions, and considering the assignments, audiences, and purposes for which students are asked to write, workshop participants can improve their own pedagogy to help students write more persuasively and eloquently in all disciplines. Co-led by Tim Arner and Janet Carl

This 3-day workshop will explore the possibility of transferring some of the teaching currently done using a variety of statistical packages including SAS, SPSS, and Minitab to STATA, which is flexible and easy to learn, with extensive online tutorials and introductions available to students. The workshop will introduce participants to the basics of STATA while providing a forum to discuss its advantages and disadvantages as an instructional tool. We will also discuss assignment development using STATA.

Instruction will be provided so that attendees will be able to use STATA for their own analyses and will be able to teach using it in the future. At the end of the workshop, attendees will provide a brief written statement that summaries their own reactions to the possibility of switching to STATA as an instructional tool. Led by Caleb Stroup

Metacognition, a learner’s awareness of and capacity to consciously orchestrate her/his learning process, has been a focus of research for a couple of decades now. This is especially prominent work among science education researchers. A significant finding of expert-novice research studies in science is that experts significantly differ from novices in both the quantity and quality of their metacognition. Expert science learners more frequently think about their learning process and also thinking about their learning in different ways than novice learners. Findings like these have led some to argue that “Learning how to learn cannot be left to students. It must be taught.” (Gall et al., 1990) Participants in this workshop will consider how their instruction can better support students becoming more productively metacognitive in science learning environments. In addition to becoming more familiar with what is meant by metacognition and why we should value it as an outcome, participants will discuss what instructional techniques they have used to support student metacognition and read about techniques others have used. An expected product of the workshop is a revised portion of a plan for an existing course where the revision intends to make the course better support student metacognition. Led by Paul Hutchison

The Academic Resources Centers propose a 3-day summer workshop on strategies for designing effective assignments that integrate two or more core academic skills such as writing, quantitative literacy, visual analysis and presentation, information literacy, and library research. The workshop will be co-facilitated by Janet Carl, interim director of the Writing Lab, and Richard Fyffe, Librarian of the College, with staff from Faulconer Gallery, Curricular Technology, the Libraries, the Science Learning Center, and other ARC units.

This workshop will be held August 12, 13, and 16.

This workshop will focus on developing the upper level policy studies courses (PST 320 Applied Policy Analysis and PST 420 Advanced Policy Research) and on continuing to develop connections between the Policy Studies Concentration, faculty, and Grinnell’s curriculum across disciplines. We have five key purposes. We hope to: (i) introduce potentially interested faculty to the policy studies concentration; (ii) develop themes for the team-taught PST 320 class for the 2014-2015, 2015-2016, and 2016-2017 academic years; (iii) discuss pedagogy in both PST 320 and 420; (iv) attract potential instructors for PST 320 and 420, especially for the three listed academic years; (v) and discuss thematic relationships between policy studies and liberal arts education. To accomplish these goals, we will discuss the basic PST curriculum, prior experiences in classes, related assignments, and syllabi, along with basic data on enrollments and backgrounds of student concentrators. For conceptual background, we will read and discuss several important policy readings from various disciplines. Participants will brainstorm, discuss, and develop themes for future our team-taught PST 320, approaches to the 420 research seminar, and possible links to policymakers and policy resources. In so doing, we will discuss the opportunities as well as challenges of team teaching. We especially invite faculty to attend who have not yet connected to policy studies. Led by Bill Ferguson and Leslie Lyons

This workshop explores the possibilities of using alumni case studies in a variety of classes. In CREATIVE CAREERS: LEARNING FROM ALUMNI, 10 to 15 alumni are brought back to campus, either in person or through videoconferencing, to explain how they have used their Grinnell education in non-traditional careers. Speakers are generally early and mid-career alumni.

Second, alumni have been used in such courses as MANAGING ORGANIZATIONS. Most alumni will spend their working lives in one or more organizations as they shape their careers. Other alumni have been presenters in ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATION, a course that highlights case studies of Grinnell innovators in the government, business, and non-profit sectors, starting with films and reading featuring Silicon Valley innovator Robert Noyce who appearing in this course as early as 1984. Workshop participants will explore ways in which alumni could be used in their own courses to enrich the learning opportunities with news from beyond the bubble or strategies for employing a Grinnell education creatively.

As the first undergraduate program west of the Mississippi, American Studies has a storied history at Grinnell College. As we move into the fifth decade of American Studies at Grinnell, now is a fitting time to ask about the future role of American Studies thought and teaching at Grinnell. This workshop seeks to bring together faculty with interests connected to American Studies. The first two days of the seminar will focus on American Studies as a discipline nationally, the turn to post-national American studies, the distinctions of American studies theory and practice. The final three days will be a time to think creatively and constructively about how American Studies might continue to take shape in the coming decades at Grinnell. Please note that possible participants can have a preliminary or a more sustained interest in American Studies, we seek to make new connections that can grow in the coming years as part of a re-envisioning project. Leaders: Sarah Purcell, Karla Erickson