Re: [tips] Curious about department heads
Thank you all for your responses. My intuition agreed with Nancy's thoughts. All of the courses are of course cleared through the various committees so there should be no real reason for such a request except for some form of assessment. I think the request comes from a department head without much experience and probably just figures that department heads should have access to everything at any time. --Mike On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 11:23 AM, drnanjo wrote: > > > Though I am a department head currenly, I can only speculate. > > I'd never ask to look at a faculty member's online course shell unless there > were some compelling cause. > > And even with a compelling cause the union and contract tend to exert a lot > of restrictions on such activity. For example, nothing of an evaluative > nature can take place in a physical or online classroom unless 1) it's the > scheduled time for that evaluation or 2) there's some major complaint about > the instructional quality. Something super serious, not just "this teacher > is soo unfair..." > > Could this have to do with Student Learning Outcomes? At LBCC we are under > quite a bit of duress from administration to place SLOs on our syllabi, even > if we don't agree with the philosophy behind their construction and > assessment. Maybe this instructor has yet to show evidence of placing them > in a location at the sites where students will be made aware of them? > > I'll keep thinking about it. > > Nancy Melucci > Long Beach City College > Long Beach CA > > > > -Original Message----- > From: Michael Smith > To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) > > Sent: Mon, Jan 17, 2011 9:13 am > Subject: [tips] Curious about department heads > > I'm curious about what TIPsters think. > > A friend of mine received an email from his department head requesting > that the department head have access (viewing only I presume) to his > online courses (I think 'classes you teach' was the actual words). > > The reason being because the department head thinks that it "makes sense". > > I was wondering what TIPster's thought of the 'makes sense' part. > > Does it really 'make sense'? > In what way? > > Or is the 'sense' a mild form of administrative paranoia that they > have to know everything that goes on? > Or is the 'sense' just because they want to know? > > -- > -- Mike > > For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn. > (Hemingway) > > --- > You are currently subscribed to tips as: drna...@aol.com. > To unsubscribe click here: > http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=12993.aba36cc3760e0b1c6a655f019a68b878&n=T&l=tips&o=7957 > or send a blank email to > leave-7957-12993.aba36cc3760e0b1c6a655f019a68b...@fsulist.frostburg.edu > > --- > > You are currently subscribed to tips as: tipsl...@gmail.com. > > To unsubscribe click here: > http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13541.42a7e8017ab9578358f118300f4720fb&n=T&l=tips&o=7959 > > (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) > > or send a blank email to > leave-7959-13541.42a7e8017ab9578358f118300f472...@fsulist.frostburg.edu -- -- Mike For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn. (Hemingway) --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=7976 or send a blank email to leave-7976-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
Re: [tips] Curious about department heads
You don't have to wear the flame resistant suit on my account. I don't hate SLOs, I don't worship at their shrine either. I do them because I gotta. With all the other things that go on in my professional life, related to being department head, and otherwise, this one just isn't worth getting upset about. It doesn't take that long to write them, edit them and devise ways to assess them. So I just get it over with. Maybe they help and maybe they don't. I just get them done - push my staff to also - and let the chips fall... Nancy M LBCC -Original Message- From: Annette Taylor To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Sent: Mon, Jan 17, 2011 11:39 am Subject: RE: [tips] Curious about department heads Nancy and others: Why would you not agree with the philosophy behind your SLOs. Isn't it your purview to develop them as a department? I find that many departments take such a negative attitude that they fail to take advantage of their opportunities to redevelop these. That is the beauty of the process: you have right to control of development of your SLOs, as long as you can show alignment (and let's face it, I'm sure you can) to the college's SLOs. We in psychology are particular at an advantage because the APA has already developed these for us, if you choose to use them as is, or to reasonably modify them. Then call on the APA as your evidence for their appropriateness. I have found them to be quite useful. I have used them for YEARS. I have had SLOs since I started teaching over 25 years ago. I wonder why this seems like such a new and foreign concept to so many people. I just always "assumed" that everyone did this because it occurred in all the psych classes I was in over my many years of education. My path was quite unusual as I attended 3 different graduate programs, making lateral and radical changes along the way and 5 different undergraduate programs (OK, that was youthful wanderlust). There were always SLOs--maybe called learning objectives rather than outcomes but similar in character and intent. I'm always extremely surprised when I hear folks tell me that they've never listed their learning objectives/outcomes on a syllabus. Wouldn't you want to have some kind of goal to reach? Some purpose, some baseline level of knowledge you'd like to have students attain? Clearly there are catalogue descriptions of courses--wouldn't we want to have some integrated course goals? In our department, several years ago, before the big SLO craze began, we developed common learning outcomes simply because we found that adjuncts were teaching all over the place, and we could not depend on students to have a common knowledge/skill set when taking a next course. Now, we know that at least a fair effort is made for all students to have had some specific knowledge acquisition made available to them so that when we see them in another course we have confidence in what they should be coming to us with. (Example: in lower division research methods ALL students must write up at least one complete APA style research report, so that when they get to the upper division capstone lab we know they have had the opportunity to practice this skill at least once before and we don't need to teach it completely from scratch for hit and miss previous teaching. This makes teaching the capstone more reasonable, successful and less frustrating.) Of course there is no guarantee any single student learns any specific bit of stuff, but we find that this is certainly working for us. So I'm not sure why people would disagree about construction of SLO's even if there is some minor disagreement about assessment. OK, I'm ready, flame-retardant suit just zipped up. Thick skin in place. Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D. Professor, Psychological Sciences University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 tay...@sandiego.edu From: drnanjo [drna...@aol.com] Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 9:23 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Curious about department heads Though I am a department head currenly, I can only speculate. I'd never ask to look at a faculty member's online course shell unless there were some compelling cause. And even with a compelling cause the union and contract tend to exert a lot of restrictions on such activity. For example, nothing of an evaluative nature can take place in a physical or online classroom unless 1) it's the scheduled time for that evaluation or 2) there's some major complaint about the instructional quality. Something super serious, not just "this teacher is soo unfair..." Could this have to do with Student Learning Outcomes? At LBCC we are under quite a bit of duress from administration to place SLOs on ou
RE: [tips] Curious about department heads
Nancy and others: Why would you not agree with the philosophy behind your SLOs. Isn't it your purview to develop them as a department? I find that many departments take such a negative attitude that they fail to take advantage of their opportunities to redevelop these. That is the beauty of the process: you have right to control of development of your SLOs, as long as you can show alignment (and let's face it, I'm sure you can) to the college's SLOs. We in psychology are particular at an advantage because the APA has already developed these for us, if you choose to use them as is, or to reasonably modify them. Then call on the APA as your evidence for their appropriateness. I have found them to be quite useful. I have used them for YEARS. I have had SLOs since I started teaching over 25 years ago. I wonder why this seems like such a new and foreign concept to so many people. I just always "assumed" that everyone did this because it occurred in all the psych classes I was in over my many years of education. My path was quite unusual as I attended 3 different graduate programs, making lateral and radical changes along the way and 5 different undergraduate programs (OK, that was youthful wanderlust). There were always SLOs--maybe called learning objectives rather than outcomes but similar in character and intent. I'm always extremely surprised when I hear folks tell me that they've never listed their learning objectives/outcomes on a syllabus. Wouldn't you want to have some kind of goal to reach? Some purpose, some baseline level of knowledge you'd like to have students attain? Clearly there are catalogue descriptions of courses--wouldn't we want to have some integrated course goals? In our department, several years ago, before the big SLO craze began, we developed common learning outcomes simply because we found that adjuncts were teaching all over the place, and we could not depend on students to have a common knowledge/skill set when taking a next course. Now, we know that at least a fair effort is made for all students to have had some specific knowledge acquisition made available to them so that when we see them in another course we have confidence in what they should be coming to us with. (Example: in lower division research methods ALL students must write up at least one complete APA style research report, so that when they get to the upper division capstone lab we know they have had the opportunity to practice this skill at least once before and we don't need to teach it completely from scratch for hit and miss previous teaching. This makes teaching the capstone more reasonable, successful and less frustrating.) Of course there is no guarantee any single student learns any specific bit of stuff, but we find that this is certainly working for us. So I'm not sure why people would disagree about construction of SLO's even if there is some minor disagreement about assessment. OK, I'm ready, flame-retardant suit just zipped up. Thick skin in place. Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D. Professor, Psychological Sciences University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 tay...@sandiego.edu<mailto:tay...@sandiego.edu> From: drnanjo [drna...@aol.com] Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 9:23 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Curious about department heads Though I am a department head currenly, I can only speculate. I'd never ask to look at a faculty member's online course shell unless there were some compelling cause. And even with a compelling cause the union and contract tend to exert a lot of restrictions on such activity. For example, nothing of an evaluative nature can take place in a physical or online classroom unless 1) it's the scheduled time for that evaluation or 2) there's some major complaint about the instructional quality. Something super serious, not just "this teacher is soo unfair..." Could this have to do with Student Learning Outcomes? At LBCC we are under quite a bit of duress from administration to place SLOs on our syllabi, even if we don't agree with the philosophy behind their construction and assessment. Maybe this instructor has yet to show evidence of placing them in a location at the sites where students will be made aware of them? I'll keep thinking about it. Nancy Melucci Long Beach City College Long Beach CA -Original Message----- From: Michael Smith To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Sent: Mon, Jan 17, 2011 9:13 am Subject: [tips] Curious about department heads I'm curious about what TIPsters think. A friend of mine received an email from his department head requesting that the department head have access (viewing only I presume) to his online courses (I think 'classes
RE: [tips] Curious about department heads
I think that if you added this to our department chair's plate he would just collapse, quite literally. I assume that the duties of chairs at most universities are similar to ours, who is about to retire and NO ONE wants the job! For a single course RT the workload is OVERWHELMING. We have 13 full time tenure/track faculty with two 5/8ths and about 12 adjuncts teaching one or two courses in any given semester. ALL administrative paperwork, financial record keeping, etc.; all student administrative work, I mean EVERYTHING is expected to be done in that 1 course RT. Are you kidding me? I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole! When younger I had such aspirations. Since then I have wised up. To add one more thing would just be ridiculous. It is hard enough to get the adjuncts and nontenured folks evaluated. In a perfect world...it would be a great idea. As it is, those of us who care, do what we can to improve. Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D. Professor, Psychological Sciences University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 tay...@sandiego.edu<mailto:tay...@sandiego.edu> From: Claudia Stanny [csta...@uwf.edu] Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 10:04 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Curious about department heads I'm not a department chair, but I've had this discussion with a number of department chairs around campus. UWF is also a unionized campus. The collective bargaining agreement does provide for chair observation of classroom teaching with appropriate advance notice. This applies to online classes as well as face-to-face classes. The mechanism for an online class visit would be to have the chair visit the class, which is accomplished through the guest instructor role (appropriate notification would come when the chair requested guest instructor status before the term began and the course opened). UWF has been participating in the Quality Matters work for online courses, which entails having a trained reviewer visit the online course and evaluate the quality of pedagogy using the QM rubric. If you haven't seen this rubric, it is worth a look. With a few exceptions that deal specifically with the technology of delivery, the QM rubric would be equally useful for evaluating the pedagogy used in face-to-face classes. I run a peer mentoring group for teaching in which faculty visit one another's classes to make observations and offer formative feedback. Peer mentors are always from a slightly different discipline to keep the focus on teaching. Faculty participants in this program who teach online courses use the guest instructor role to visit one another's online courses. They uniformly report that this is a mutually beneficial activity. We meet twice a year for general discussion of teaching. These meetings are always a delight, filled with great insights and comments about teaching strategies. Some of these partnerships have persisted for nearly 3 years now, with mutual classroom observation and feedback occurring every year. I think it is unfortunate that more chairs do not make appropriately-structured classroom observations (appropriately structured is a key qualifier here - there are better and worse ways of doing these). These observations would provide much more useful and compelling evidence about the quality of teaching when chairs write annual evaluations and comment on the quality of a candidate's teaching in a tenure and promotion letter than simply relying on the numerical ratings from the typical course evaluation. In an institution that has a culture in which chairs never enter another faculty member's classroom for observation unless there is serious concern about a problem, faculty would be understandably paranoid about a request for a visit. But in a culture that values teaching and recognizes classroom observation and formative feedback as a mechanism for nurturing high-quality teaching, people are much more welcoming of classroom observations by peers and even chairs. For those interested in the observation process, check out the Teaching Partners pages on the CUTLA web site (uwf.edu/cutla<http://uwf.edu/cutla>). Claudia Stanny --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: tay...@sandiego.edu<mailto:tay...@sandiego.edu>. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13534.4204dc3a11678c6b1d0be57cfe0a21b0&n=T&l=tips&o=7961 (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) or send a blank email to leave-7961-13534.4204dc3a11678c6b1d0be57cfe0a2...@fsulist.frostburg.edu<mailto:leave-7961-13534.4204dc3a11678c6b1d0be57cfe0a2...@fsulist.frostburg.edu> --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e
Re: [tips] Curious about department heads
I'm not a department chair, but I've had this discussion with a number of department chairs around campus. UWF is also a unionized campus. The collective bargaining agreement does provide for chair observation of classroom teaching with appropriate advance notice. This applies to online classes as well as face-to-face classes. The mechanism for an online class visit would be to have the chair visit the class, which is accomplished through the guest instructor role (appropriate notification would come when the chair requested guest instructor status before the term began and the course opened). UWF has been participating in the Quality Matters work for online courses, which entails having a trained reviewer visit the online course and evaluate the quality of pedagogy using the QM rubric. If you haven't seen this rubric, it is worth a look. With a few exceptions that deal specifically with the technology of delivery, the QM rubric would be equally useful for evaluating the pedagogy used in face-to-face classes. I run a peer mentoring group for teaching in which faculty visit one another's classes to make observations and offer formative feedback. Peer mentors are always from a slightly different discipline to keep the focus on teaching. Faculty participants in this program who teach online courses use the guest instructor role to visit one another's online courses. They uniformly report that this is a mutually beneficial activity. We meet twice a year for general discussion of teaching. These meetings are always a delight, filled with great insights and comments about teaching strategies. Some of these partnerships have persisted for nearly 3 years now, with mutual classroom observation and feedback occurring every year. I think it is unfortunate that more chairs do not make appropriately-structured classroom observations (appropriately structured is a key qualifier here - there are better and worse ways of doing these). These observations would provide much more useful and compelling evidence about the quality of teaching when chairs write annual evaluations and comment on the quality of a candidate's teaching in a tenure and promotion letter than simply relying on the numerical ratings from the typical course evaluation. In an institution that has a culture in which chairs never enter another faculty member's classroom for observation unless there is serious concern about a problem, faculty would be understandably paranoid about a request for a visit. But in a culture that values teaching and recognizes classroom observation and formative feedback as a mechanism for nurturing high-quality teaching, people are much more welcoming of classroom observations by peers and even chairs. For those interested in the observation process, check out the Teaching Partners pages on the CUTLA web site (uwf.edu/cutla). Claudia Stanny --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=7961 or send a blank email to leave-7961-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
Re: [tips] Curious about department heads
I would only expect that if your friend was a junior member and up for review. Carol On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 11:13 AM, Michael Smith wrote: > I'm curious about what TIPsters think. > > A friend of mine received an email from his department head requesting > that the department head have access (viewing only I presume) to his > online courses (I think 'classes you teach' was the actual words). > > The reason being because the department head thinks that it "makes sense". > > I was wondering what TIPster's thought of the 'makes sense' part. > > Does it really 'make sense'? > In what way? > > Or is the 'sense' a mild form of administrative paranoia that they > have to know everything that goes on? > Or is the 'sense' just because they want to know? > > -- > -- Mike > > For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn. > (Hemingway) > > --- > You are currently subscribed to tips as: devoldercar...@gmail.com. > To unsubscribe click here: > http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=177920.a45340211ac7929163a021623341&n=T&l=tips&o=7957 > or send a blank email to > leave-7957-177920.a45340211ac7929163a021623...@fsulist.frostburg.edu > -- Carol DeVolder, Ph.D. Professor and Chair, Department of Psychology St. Ambrose University 518 West Locust Street Davenport, Iowa 52803 563-333-6482 This e-mail might be confidential, so please don't share it. --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=7960 or send a blank email to leave-7960-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
Re: [tips] Curious about department heads
Though I am a department head currenly, I can only speculate. I'd never ask to look at a faculty member's online course shell unless there were some compelling cause. And even with a compelling cause the union and contract tend to exert a lot of restrictions on such activity. For example, nothing of an evaluative nature can take place in a physical or online classroom unless 1) it's the scheduled time for that evaluation or 2) there's some major complaint about the instructional quality. Something super serious, not just "this teacher is soo unfair..." Could this have to do with Student Learning Outcomes? At LBCC we are under quite a bit of duress from administration to place SLOs on our syllabi, even if we don't agree with the philosophy behind their construction and assessment. Maybe this instructor has yet to show evidence of placing them in a location at the sites where students will be made aware of them? I'll keep thinking about it. Nancy Melucci Long Beach City College Long Beach CA -Original Message- From: Michael Smith To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Sent: Mon, Jan 17, 2011 9:13 am Subject: [tips] Curious about department heads I'm curious about what TIPsters think. A friend of mine received an email from his department head requesting hat the department head have access (viewing only I presume) to his nline courses (I think 'classes you teach' was the actual words). The reason being because the department head thinks that it "makes sense". I was wondering what TIPster's thought of the 'makes sense' part. Does it really 'make sense'? n what way? Or is the 'sense' a mild form of administrative paranoia that they ave to know everything that goes on? r is the 'sense' just because they want to know? -- - Mike For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn. Hemingway) --- ou are currently subscribed to tips as: drna...@aol.com. o unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=12993.aba36cc3760e0b1c6a655f019a68b878&n=T&l=tips&o=7957 r send a blank email to leave-7957-12993.aba36cc3760e0b1c6a655f019a68b...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=7959 or send a blank email to leave-7959-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
[tips] Curious about department heads
I'm curious about what TIPsters think. A friend of mine received an email from his department head requesting that the department head have access (viewing only I presume) to his online courses (I think 'classes you teach' was the actual words). The reason being because the department head thinks that it "makes sense". I was wondering what TIPster's thought of the 'makes sense' part. Does it really 'make sense'? In what way? Or is the 'sense' a mild form of administrative paranoia that they have to know everything that goes on? Or is the 'sense' just because they want to know? -- -- Mike For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn. (Hemingway) --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=7957 or send a blank email to leave-7957-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
