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Summary of CRLT Services for 2009-2010

Executive Summary

This Annual Report from the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) describes the ways that CRLT promoted excellence and innovation in teaching and learning at the University of Michigan in 2009-2010. The following is a brief summary of CRLT’s activities this past year.

Index:

Overview

  • CRLT staff members provided 18,885 services to U-M and external clients, including 4,229 unique individuals from U-M’s schools, colleges, and central administration (pp. 6-7). As a prominent university teaching center, CRLT also received visitors or requests for information from more than 175 colleges, universities, and organizations (pp. 8-10).
  • CRLT offered a wide range of services to the U-M community, including interactive theatre, Provost’s Seminars on Teaching, research and evaluation services, orientations, fall and winter seminar series, Midterm Student Feedback (MSF) sessions, individual consultations, programs and workshops, publications, and discipline-specific services.
  • Approximately half of CRLT’s work involves discipline-specific programs for U-M’s nineteen schools and colleges (pp. 11-22). As part of these efforts, CRLT worked especially closely with the two largest undergraduate colleges: the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA), and the College of Engineering (CoE), where CRLT has a special office called CRLT North staffed by engineering Ph.Ds.
  • CRLT distributed more than $300,000 in grant and award money to 99 U-M faculty through nine competitions, four of which were funded directly by CRLT (pp. 44-51). Grantees for the large competitions were chosen by the CRLT Faculty Advisory Board (p. 5).
  • CRLT provides services to other U-M offices and teaching-related advice to committees. In 2009-2010, CRLT staff collaborated with about 30 U-M offices (p. 23) and served on more than 40 U-M committees, especially those involving multicultural initiatives and instructional technology (pp. 23-24).

Assessment and Research

  • The Higher Learning Commission’s site visit for U-M’s reaccreditation took place in March, and CRLT chaired the session on Teaching and Learning and participated in the session on Assessment of Student Learning. CRLT’s support for faculty development and assessment was featured prominently in the 2010 Higher Learning Commission’s Accreditation Review Report (http://www.accreditation.umich.edu/portrait/HLCreport.php).
  • CRLT organized a Provost’s Seminar on Teaching titled What Are They Learning? Approaches to Assessing Student Learning, which brought together almost 120 faculty to learn about and exchange approaches to assessment at the course and curricular levels (p. 38).
  • To make information about assessment available broadly on campus, CRLT created an Assessment of Student Learning Website which contains links to national and U-M resources on the assessment of student learning (http://crlt.umich.edu/assessment).
  • In consultation with the Provost’s Office, CRLT focused the Whitaker Fund for the Improvement of Teaching on projects that involved assessment of student learning. Of the 9 funded, 8 involved assessment (pp. 45-46).
  • CRLT collaborated on an evaluation of LSA’s quantitative reasoning requirement. CRLT researched methods used to assess the impact of similar requirements at peer institutions and then developed a survey which was pilot tested in Spring/Summer 2009 and distributed in Fall 2009 to all first- and second-year LSA students taking a QR1 course for the first time. The College plans to have a broader discussion about the implications of the findings and next steps for the requirement (p. 32).
  • CRLT staff consulted on assessment of student learning with 14 U-M schools and colleges and did assessment research for 7 courses that are part of the President’s Multidisciplinary and Team Teaching Initiative (pp. 31).
  • CRLT, with the Provost’s co-sponsorship, ran the Investigating Student Learning grants competition for faculty interested in assessing student learning in their courses and departments (p. 47).
  • CRLT carried out a project funded by the Teagle and Spencer Foundations concerned with assessing the effectiveness of pedagogies for improving student disciplinary writing and thinking skills (pp. 34-35).
  • CRLT provided 388 Midterm Student Feedback (MSF) sessions to U-M faculty and Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs), thereby helping more than 15,000 U-M students offer constructive feedback to their instructors (p. 43).
  • CRLT staff led 7 major research projects, gave multiple conference presentations, did review and editorial work, and published numerous journal articles (pp. 52-55).

Instructional Technology

  • CRLT played a leadership role supporting the instructional technology needs of faculty and GSIs, including providing grant funding for 27 IT projects, supporting dissemination and assessment of the impact of lecture capture systems, collaborating on organizing the Enriching Scholarship event, consulting with faculty and GSIs, and providing examples of faculty uses of technology on the CRLT website (pp. 27-28).
  • CRLT offered seminars on IT topics as part of its campus-wide seminar series for faculty, graduate students, and postdocs, and as part of the University’s Enriching Scholarship program.
  • CRLT conducted an evaluation of the LectureTools System for using laptops to encourage active and engaged learning in large courses. CRLT developed and conducted a survey to compare the impact of laptops on learning and attention span in courses using LectureTools and those not using this technology (p. 31).
  • A new Occasional Paper, Lecture Capture: A Guide to Effective Use, was distributed to all faculty on campus.
  • The CRLT website was heavily utilized by local, national, and international users, receiving over 180,000 visits from December 2009 through May 2010 from close to 150,000 unique visitors from 198 countries/territories (p. 27).

Multicultural Teaching

  • Seminars, to the training for first-time GSIs. CRLT also collaborates on multicultural programs hosted by academic units.
  • A CRLT staff member currently chairs the University’s Diversity Council, and CRLT contributes to three other university-wide multicultural committees (pp. 23-24).
  • CRLT organized a Colloquium funded by the Teagle Foundation applying the literature on student learning to courses focused on multicultural topics and to student retention in STEM disciplines (p. 34).
  • The CRLT Players presented 53 performances of sketches on teaching (with particular emphasis on the experiences of students from underrepresented groups) and faculty worklife (with a focus on the influence of gender), for audiences of more than 2,750 people, including those on 5 other campuses or at national conferences (pp. 29-30).
  • In collaboration with Rackham Graduate School and the Program on Intergroup Relations, CRLT offers a six-session program that trains GSIs to be effective facilitators in multicultural classroom settings.

New Initiatives for Faculty

  • In collaboration with the LSA Dean’s Office, CRLT offered a Teaching Academy for new assistant professors in the College. The program was well received and included a two-day orientation, as well as programs during the fall and winter terms (p. 25).
  • To increase the visibility and impact of the Thurnau Professors, CRLT worked with the Senior Vice Provost to organize the second annual gathering of Thurnau Professors on campus and is developing 2 more videotapes of Thurnau professors using active engagement strategies in their classrooms.
  • In collaboration with the Provost’s Office and the University Library, CRLT ran the second annual competition for the Teaching Innovation Prize, which recognized five faculty members or teams who have developed innovative approaches to teaching that incorporate creative pedagogies. The five winning projects each received $5,000 prizes (p. 44-45).
  • For the third year, CRLT coordinated the Provost’s Campus Leadership Program, which included an orientation for new chairs and associate deans and monthly professional development sessions for both new and experienced academic leaders (p. 38).

GSI Training and Preparing Future Faculty

  • CRLT, in collaboration with Rackham Graduate School, continued its new Graduate Teacher Certificate program to encourage GSIs to document their preparation for teaching and help them find and succeed in faculty positions. Since the program’s inception, 386 graduate students from 51 programs in 12 schools and colleges have enrolled in the program (p. 39).
  • CRLT and Rackham continued to provide U-M graduate students and postdocs with three other Preparing Future Faculty programs: a one-day conference, a month-long seminar, and mentoring experiences on other campuses (p. 39-40).
  • With support from Rackham Graduate School, CRLT offered a short-course in Fall 2009 to prepare a select group of thirty-five advanced postdoctoral scholars from a variety of disciplines in the sciences and engineering to teach effectively as future faculty members. The course was so popular and highly rated that it was offered again in Winter 2010 (p. 25).

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