2010-11 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 2010-2011. The following is a brief summary of CRLT’s activities this past year. Page numbers refer to the location in the CRLT Annual Report for 2010-2011 (pdf).

Index:

Overview

  • CRLT staff members provided 18,575 services to U-M and external clients, including 3,984 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 120 colleges, universities, and organizations (pp. 8-9).
  • CRLT offered a wide range of services to the U-M community, including interactive theatre, Provost’s Seminars on Teaching, research and evaluation services, instructor 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. 10-20). 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 in Engineering staffed by engineering PhDs.
  • CRLT distributed more than $320,000 in grant and award money to 107 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 2010-2011, CRLT staff collaborated with about 25 U-M offices (p. 21) and served on more than 40 U-M committees, especially those involving multicultural initiatives and instructional technology (pp. 21-22).
  • CRLT organized a weeklong Faculty Development Seminar for 31 representatives of Chinese research universities to learn about establishing and running teaching centers on their campuses (p. 23).
  • CRLT wrote a book that documents its approach to faculty development. Advancing the Culture of Teaching on Campus: How a Teaching Center Can Make a Difference (Stylus Publishing) will appear in the fall of 2011 (pp. 52-53).

Assessment and Research

  • CRLT staff consulted on assessment of student learning with 17 U-M schools and colleges and 15 LSA departments, programs, and offices (pp. 29-34). Consultations ranged from brief discussions of survey design to large-scale projects involving data collection and analysis, as well as facilitation of faculty exchanges focused on results and their implications for curriculum revision.
  • CRLT provided 454 MSF sessions to U-M faculty and graduate student instructors (GSIs), thereby enabling more than 10,000 U-M students to offer constructive feedback (p. 43).
  • To make information available broadly on campus, CRLT maintains an Assessment of Student Learning website with links to national and U-M resources. http://crlt.umich.edu/assessment
  • In consultation with the Provost’s Office, CRLT focused the Whitaker Fund for the Improvement of Teaching on faculty-designed projects that involved assessment of student learning (p. 45).
  • 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).
  • Following a 2009-2010 evaluation of LSA’s quantitative reasoning (QR) requirement, CRLT shared results with the broader campus community by creating a webpage with information about the QR assessment project. http://www.crlt.umich.edu/assessment/lsaqrassessment
  • 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 (p. 35).
  • CRLT staff led five major research projects, gave multiple conference presentations, did review and editorial work, and published numerous journal articles (pp. 52-56).

Instructional Technology

  • CRLT participated on the Teaching and Learning Advisory Group, a University-wide committee that provides guidance, oversight, and strategic thinking on IT investments to support teaching and learning.
  • To keep pace with pedagogical opportunities afforded by IT and the increasing numbers of faculty and academic units incorporating technology into their courses and curricula, CRLT hired two instructional consultants with extensive backgrounds in using technology effectively in teaching.
  • CRLT developed a large-course reinvention project in collaboration with LSA and the College of Engineering. CRLT consultants are assisting faculty from these units as they redesign their large courses to increase student engagement, with special emphasis on the use of IT.
  • CRLT played a leadership role supporting the instructional technology needs of faculty and GSIs, including providing funding for IT projects in all of its grants competitions, supporting dissemination and assessment of the impact of LectureTools, 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. 26).
  • CRLT, in collaboration with LSA, provided funding to 10 faculty to integrate IT projects into their courses as part of the Teaching with Technology Institute (TTI). The program includes individual consultations with CRLT, as well as a group meeting of all awardees (p. 48).
  • 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.
  • The CRLT website was heavily utilized by local, national, and international users, receiving over 278,000 unique visits from 200 countries (p. 26).

Multicultural Teaching

  • Multiculturalism is an integral element of CRLT’s core programming, such as orientations for academic administrators and instructors, as well as retreats and workshops for academic units (p. 27).
  • In collaboration with The Program on Intergroup Relations (IGR), CRLT offered an intensive institute on Building Dialogue and Dialogue Skills for faculty teaching multicultural content in their courses (p. 23).
  • CRLT associate director Crisca Bierwert won the Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award in recognition of her work as CRLT’s coordinator of multicultural teaching and learning and her leadership of the University’s Diversity Council.
  • The CRLT Players presented 41 performances of sketches on diversity and inclusion in teaching and faculty worklife for audiences of more than 2,700 people (pp. 27-29).

Initiatives for Faculty

  • CRLT collaborated with the deans of seven schools and colleges to develop a new Health Sciences Teaching Academy for assistant and clinical assistant professors; it will include a two-day orientation in August 2011, as well as programs in the fall and winter terms (p. 24).
  • In collaboration with the LSA Dean’s Office, CRLT offered a Teaching Academy for new assistant professors that included a two-day orientation, as well as programs during the fall and winter terms.
  • CRLT worked with the Senior Vice Provost to organize the third annual gathering of Thurnau Professors on campus and developed two videos for the CRLT website of Thurnau Professors using active engagement strategies in their classrooms.
  • In collaboration with the Provost’s Office and the University Library, CRLT ran the third annual competition for the Provost’s Teaching Innovation Prize. Five winning faculty projects each received $5,000 (pp. 44-45).
  • For the fourth year, CRLT coordinated the Provost’s Campus Leadership Program, which included an orientation for new chairs and associate deans and periodic professional development sessions for both new and experienced academic leaders (p. 38).

GSI Training and Preparing Future Faculty

  • The CRLT-Rackham program “What’s It Like…?”, a series of seminars for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars to learn about faculty worklife at different types of institutions, was recognized as a POD Innovation Award Finalist at the national professional conference for faculty developers.
  • CRLT provided orientation programs for new GSIs in fall and winter terms, including specialized orientations for GSIs in the College of Engineering and, in collaboration with the English Language Institute, for GSIs educated abroad in languages other than English (pp. 36).
  • CRLT hired and trained experienced GSIs to serve as graduate teaching consultants and engineering teaching consultants. Both groups conducted consultations and MSF sessions for fellow GSIs (pp. 41-42).
  • CRLT, in collaboration with Rackham Graduate School, continued its Graduate Teacher Certificate Program. Since the program’s inception in 2007, 474 graduate students from 51 graduate programs in 14 schools and colleges have enrolled in the program, and 151 have received certificates (p. 39).
  • CRLT and Rackham continued to provide U-M graduate students and postdocs with four Preparing Future Faculty programs: a short-course for postdoctoral scholars, mentoring experiences on other campuses, a month-long seminar, and a one-day conference (p. 39-40).

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