Faculty and Professional Learning Community Program: 2008-9
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Connecting and Engaging Faculty and Staff to Enhance Teaching and Learning: The MCC Faculty and Professional Learning Communities (FPLC) Program Jonelle Moore, FPLC Director and English Faculty, 461-7000
Summary
The FPLC Program goals are connecting and engaging faculty and staff to improve teaching and learning. Interdisciplinary groups engage in seminars, retreats, and communication about a selected topic. This program for 2008-9 has enrolled xx members in eight different FPLCs: Sustainability, Global Learning, Developmental Education/Retention, Information Literacy, New Technologies, and Online Learning. Goals for the year include planning for sustainability of the program and integration of human subjects protection via our College Research Review Committee.
Program Description
Our Faculty and Professional Learning Communities (FPLC) Program is integral to helping MCC strive for and reflect its values of learning, excellence, inclusiveness, and community. Our FPLC Program is an institutional process promoting collaboration, communication and scholarship to achieve our strategic goals: excellence, access, student support, inclusiveness, organizational effectiveness, professional development, community engagement, and effective technology use.
FPLC goals and objectives include:
- Promote connections among faculty, staff and students at MCC.
- Build college wide community
- Increase interdisciplinary collaboration
- Encourage coherence of learning across disciplines
- Investigate and incorporate diversity
- Promote reflection and engagement in making MCC a learning-centered institution.
- Support teaching and learning initiatives
- Broaden assessment of learning
- Promote scholarly teaching by all faculty
- Nourish the scholarship of teaching and learning
You can read the FPLC Program Strategic Plan here.
For background information see the FPLC Program home page, the program evaluation pages, and all of the articles under the FPLC category within CTLpedia.
FPLC Member Expectations
- FPLC members are expected to be active, reliable, supportive, and contributing members of the FPLC. We expect members to be flexible in scheduling and attending community meetings and events outside normal work hours if necessary. They must commit to attending seminars comprising 4-6 hours per month, to help build a safe support group for all participants, and to explore and discuss the literature related to their discipline and the FPLC topic.
- FPLC members are encouraged and supported to conduct an evaluation project related to the FPLC topic. We expect all members to focus on an idea emerging from the literature of the FPLC topic and encourage all members to select a focus course or other college project for implementation. We also encourage and support the assessment of the implementation of their idea by providing classroom research consultation.
- FPLC members are expected to communicate findings of the FPLC and their reflection on teaching and learning. We expect members to share literature reviews related to the FPLC. They must document their reflection on teaching and learning that led them to their idea. We support them in documenting their implementation and assessment of their idea. We are making FPLC documentation public to the local community by publishing it on the CTL website via the CTLpedia and by hosting a campus-wide teaching and learning conference scheduled for August 17, 2007. Support is available for those who wish to present their work at a regional or national conference or those who wish to publish their work in a multidisciplinary or disciplinary journal. We hope that some will consider continuing their work with a campus or district grant or a sabbatical.
Prospective members must apply to participate in an FPLC during the spring of each year. Before applying, applicants should discuss their participation with their Chair or Supervisor. See the FPLC homepage for details.
FPLC Common Events Schedule 2007-8
FPLC events comprise a number of meetings and activities for individual FPLCs and a schedule of common events. Common events and dates planned for 2007-8 include the following.
FPLCs for 2007-8
As a tool for creating community and engaging members in pursuing our objectives, our FPLC program will support several existing programs at MCC and and a number of new initiatives.
New FPLCs for 2007-8:
Online Learning FPLC facilitated by Kathie May-Updike
The members of the MCC Online Learning FPLC is devoted to research and review of techniques and pedagogies associated with distance education delivered via the Internet. This community will research, examine, discuss and support research related to online learning, support teaching and learning initiatives related to online learning and guide projects related to online learning to assist instruction and student learning.
Keeping up with the Jetsons: Incorporating “New” Technologies FPLC facilitated by Shelley Rodrigo & Biray Alsac
Ever consider incorporating blogging into one of your classes? Have you ever wanted to save students end-of-semester projects so that future classes can benefit from, or even add to, them? Wikis may be something worth considering. Tired of students paying more attention to their computers or cell phones in the classroom? Have you ever heard of ever heard of Google Jocking or Collaborative Editing software? In the Keeping up with the Jetsons FPLC you will have the opportunity to select a specific technology that you want to incorporate into your teaching. The focus of the FPLC will not be on a specific type of technology; instead, the focus will be on the process of incorporation learning about and incorporating a specific technology into a specific course. Keeping up with the Jetsons FPLC discussions and activities will combine the excitement of playing with new technologies with the dedication and focus of critically self-examine how and why we select and incorporate any given pedagogical tool into our classes.
Information Literacy FPLC facilitated by Janell Pierce and Marlene Forney
Information literacy skills are skills that one needs not simply to complete an assignment, pass a course, or earn a degree. They are necessary skills for lifelong learning, for responsible decision-making, and for active and informed participation in society and in the workplace. They are essential survival skills for the electronic era. The members of this group will review the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, and the Objectives for Information Literacy Instruction. We will investigate what other institutions are doing with information literacy, and explore Best Practices to discover what styles of teaching and types of activities are most effective in helping students to develop these skills. The group will then collaborate on developing information literacy activities and projects for specific disciplines. We could also look into test instruments for information literacy such as SAILS (Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills) and ICT Literacy Assessment (offered through ETS). I would also like to include some discussion and implementation of closely related topics such as visual literacy, an increasingly important aspect of overall information literacy.
Developmental Education/Improving Student Retention FPLC facilitated Amelia Wilson
As stated in our mission, “The college is a community resource for transfer education, career education, developmental education, economic development, and continuous learning.” Mesa Community College has been providing for developmental education students by providing the needed resources and courses. Student services and individual instructional departments have all been working to meet the needs of developmental education students through a decentralized organizational structure. Research indicates that developmental education in higher education institutions does not work well when it is a random, nonsystematic effort carried out by uncoordinated units spread across an the institutional flow chart (Boylan, 2002). The creation of a Faculty and Professional Learning Community, made up of members who work to meet the needs of developmental education students would provide the opportunity for scholarly articulation of common goals and objectives for developmental courses and services. A study conducted by CQIN/APQC (2000) found that a majority of higher education institutions who provided developmental education in a decentralized format but featured a high level of integration and communication among courses and services had exemplary student outcomes and higher retention rates (Boylan, 2002). The Developmental Education FPLC will provide a supportive condition for shared values where the community can collectively take action on behalf of increased student outcomes and higher retention rates. There is compelling evidence that working in isolation as we have been doing is not supported by research. As Noel Levitz, and Saluri (1985) point out, retention is an institutional, not a program responsibility.
Continuing FPLCs:
Global Learning FPLC facilitated by Shereen Lerner
The Global Learning FLC will allow us a chance to consider how we may be able to enhance awareness and promote a sense of inquiry about our complex world and intercultural issues through curriculum. We will explore and consider a number of questions and issues that examine how we can encourage our students and ourselves to participate as citizens in an interconnected world through engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration. Some of the questions we may consider include how we raise the level of the understanding and commitment to global learning that allows and propels our students to be more competitive in a dynamic workforce while furthering their higher education, how we foster global learning spaces that can raise the level of understanding of diverse societies and cultures, and how we gain knowledge so that we can develop a sustainable world view.
Sustainability FPLC facilitated by Michelle Pulich Stewart and Ken Costello
Our world is being altered at a rapid rate. Environmentally, socially, and economically how we conduct ourselves will determine earth’s fate. The sustainability faculty learning community will engage in entertaining vibrant conversations challenging us to exam our role as educators. “Sustainability involves the simultaneous pursuit of economic prosperity, environmental quality and social equity famously known as three bottom lines [triple bottom line]” (http://allfreeessays.com/student/Definition_of_Sustainability.html). This dynamic elite group will grow professionally, share all that we learn, and provide leadership on one of the world’s most significant issues.
Humanities FPLC facilitated by Jonelle Moore and Richard Felnagle
Our college requires graduating students to complete six semester credits in the Humanities and Fine Arts Core Area, which "enables students to broaden and deepen their consideration of basic human values and the interpretation of the experiences of human beings." But how well are we achieving those goals? The Humanities Faculty Learning Community will be an interdisciplinary group seeking to answer that question by examining the outcomes and assessment methods we have devised for courses that fulfill the Humanities and Fine Arts Core Area requirement throughout the college.
Undergraduate Research FPLC facilitated by Puvana Ganesan and Niccole Cerveny
As the role and scope of the community college evolves, faculty are more frequently engaging in research and seeking grants to support research centered projects with participation of undergraduate students. This Undergraduate Research FPLC will examine how we can pursue undergraduate research at the community college from both academic and logistical perspectives. It should appeal to anyone interested in pursuing research independent of his or her discipline or department. Through this FPLC we will review current and previous research by MCC faculty, examine the directions faculty are interested in heading, how other institutions (both 2 and 4 year) have instigated and supported undergraduate research programs, how this benefits students, faculty and the institution, and ultimately develop a model of how we can pursue undergraduate research.
Categories: CTL Projects | FPLC | 2008-9 | FPLC Program
