CTL Teaching and Learning Forum  

The aim of the CTL Teaching and Learning Forum is to highlight the successful teaching strategies that St. John’s faculty have developed and now use in their classes (all these are in boxes with gray headings). There are also links to other valuable information for faculty.  Click on the tabs above to access a host of good ideas.

Here are links to useful resources from the St. John's Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL).

The University's Title III Program, Transforming Teaching with Technology, has a website with information on its activities in infusing more critical thinking, information literacy, and technology into the undergraduate curriculum.  There is also a Critical Thinking website with a number of case studies on how to incorporate more critical thinking activities into your teaching.

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) is an idea that developed after the publication of Ernst Boyer's Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (1990).  He described four types of research:  discovery, integration, application, and teaching.  SOTL came to be defined as the process in which faculty do research on their teaching, much as they do research in their discipline:  formulate a question, investigate it, and then publish their results.  The advantage of this approach is that it would mean that teaching could truly advance as a discipline.  It could get away from "reinventing the wheel" because faculty could build on the work their peers had reported.

Here's a good article that provides an introduction to SOTL:  The Scholarship of Teaching: New Elaborations, New Developments.

If you are looking for something to enliven your teaching this semester, there are two old-standbys that might help.  Though they've been around for some time, each of these Websites is updated regularly, so there's always new food for thought:

Tomorrow's Professor -- they have over 1,000 posts with information on a host of teaching issues.

ProfHacker -- despite the name, not all the posts on this wiki deal with technology, they've even had one on what to wear to class.

Last fall the Provost announced a new Global Initiative which includes two major objectives:  a) to integrate themes and perspectives from around the world into courses taught on our New York campuses, and b) to create more opportunities for St. John’s students to study abroad.  As part of this initiative, the Office of Global Programs and the Center for Teaching and Learning designed a Certificate Program in Global Education for faculty.  The certificate will be awarded to those who complete at least three of the four workshops being offered in the program this semester.

What Does It Mean to Globalize the Curriculum?
           Barrett Brenton, St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
           Rosalba DelVecchio, The School of Education        
           Linda Sama, The Peter J. Tobin College of Business
           Thursday, February 16, 1:50 to 3:15 p.m., Bent Hall 277B
 
What Does It Mean to Teach Abroad?
           Frank Cantelmo, St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
           Jeff Sherman, Office of Global Studies
           Heidi Sung, College of Professional Studies
           Monday, March 12, 1:50 to 3:15 p.m., D’Angelo Center 416A
 
How Can a Course Be Redesigned for Overseas Instruction?
           Mitch Casselman, The Peter J. Tobin College of Business
           Harry Denny, St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
           Tara Roeder, Institute for Writing Studies
           Monday, March 26, 1:50 to 3:15 p.m., D’Angelo Center 416C

How Can International Research Be Integrated into Your Career?
           Zhe-Sheng Chen, College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions
           Yvonne Pratt-Johnson, The School of Education
           Konrad Tuchscherer, St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
           Monday, April 23, 1:50 to 3:15 p.m., Bent Hall 277B

Lunch will be served at these events.

To register: Contact the CTL at CTL@stjohns.edu or call ext.1859.

As part of Research Month activities, the Office of the Provost and the Center for Teaching and Learning are sponsoring the annual Faculty Research Forum.  This event will provide an opportunity for all faculty, funded or not, to showcase their research through posters, interactive presentations, exhibits, and personal discussions with their colleagues.  In furthering the University’s goal of fostering a culture of academic excellence, we hope that you will consider participating by presenting your research.  If you have visual materials you want to share, there will be poster boards available (36x48 white tri-fold boards), or you can use your laptop to show slides, run a video, make a web presentation or use software you’ve developed.

Maybe your research is text-based and you feel leery about standing in front of a poster board with a 20-page paper set out page by page.  You can take a different approach.  Bring a few copies of your articles and share them with colleagues.  We will have tables devoted to a variety of areas from the social sciences to theology.  Still another alternative is for a group of colleagues to make a poster presentation together.  No matter how you decide to participate, the important thing is to share your work because you will be contributing to the vitality of the intellectual life at the University.

Concurrently with this event, the Office of Grants and Sponsored Research will hold the annual Research Reception. This honors faculty and administrators who have secured new grants or continued funding support from external sources during the past year to further the education, research and public service missions of St. John’s University.

The Forum will take place on Monday, April 2, 2012 from noon to 3 p.m. in the D’Angelo Center room 416.  Displays may be set up between 11 a.m. and noon that day.  The Research Reception will be held in the same location, with the annual presentation to take place during common hour. If you are willing to make a presentation at the Research Forum, please contact Lisa Getman at the Center for Teaching and Learning (getmanl@stjohns.edu) by Monday, March 5, indicating (a) the title of your presentation; (b) a paragraph-long abstract, 300 words or less, describing the research project which will be published in the brochure and on the CTL website; (c) include presenters’ names, College, Department (please note if a co-presenter is a student) and (d) whether you need a table or display board.  Due to limited space, multiple presentations by one faculty member will be given no more than 2 presentation stations, but all abstracts submitted will be printed in the Research Forum booklet.

We will have an area set aside to display reprints of faculty authors’ publications.  Please send at least two copies of a reprint to the Center for Teaching and Learning by March 26 to be included in this display. 

If you are updating your syllabus for the new semester, here are a couple of blog posts that provide some pointers:

Syllabus: Extreme Makeover

11 Fast Syllabus Hacks

Function of the Course Syllabus

In addition, there are more ideas on the CTL Forum's Planning the Course webpage.

The University has recently published a new planning document,  It extends the 2008-2013 Strategic Plan to 2014 and focuses on articulating, enhancing, measuring and marketing the value of a St. John's education. It can be accessed on the Strategic Plan page by clicking on "Repositioning the Strategic Plan 2011-2014."

Please go to our Workshops page to get full information on these upcoming events:

Wikis/Blogs 5/31

Personnel Action Form 6/5

Clickers 6/7

Facebook 6/14

ePortfolios 6/21

Mobile Devices 6/28

The latest CTL Newsletter is now available.

The CTL has a number of resources available.  Faculty may borrow these for a month.  Here is a list of these resources.

In the Wall Street Journal of all places, there was a wonderful article on America's Top College Professors.  Naomi does a wonderful job of describing the elements of excellent teaching. 

St. John’s University Libraries subscribe to CampusGuides, a hosted web publishing service that allows users to easily create attractive and functional web sites. CampusGuides is now available for all faculty members who are interested in creating their own web sites for purposes such as:

      -   sharing information within an academic department 
      -   creating course pages 
      -   promoting new services and programs

CampusGuides supports rich text, embedded videos, RSS Feeds, Podcast Feeds, Embedded Videos, and Documents and Files, allowing for the easy creation of dynamic and engaging web content. CampusGuides is also well-suited to collaborative purposes, since individual guides can be edited by more than one person. To view guides that have been created by St. John’s University Libraries’, go to http://stjohns.campusguides.com/index.php. [In fact, you are reading this message on a CampusGuides page; the CTL endorses CampusGuides as an easy way to create and manage content!]

If you are a faculty member at St. John's and would like to create a CampusGuides site, just send an email to campusguides@stjohns.edu to set up an account.  If you have questions, email Ben Turner of the University Libraries at turnerb@stjohns.edu.