Helping Faculty be Better Teachers – with a website

Cathy Manduca Sean Fox

Design Goal

More faculty will make more informed choices about the methods they use in a specific situation

Understanding your Options

Confidence and Resources to Try

Understanding your Options

Why is something more needed?

Bridging literature and experience

Faculty speaking to faculty

Disciplinary perspectives

What do faculty need to know?

Beyond opinion – a scholarly basis for designing learning experiences

A rational for picking

I just heard about X – what is it?

This can be done in . . .

Confidence and Resources

to TrySupporting the First Use of a Method How to start

Complete, ready to use examples that come close to what you want to do

Seeing the PathReducing barriers related to materials preparation

Building Confidence Tips and How toExample Specific

Site UseAlthough the site content is largely duplicative across partner sites we see increased overall traffic to library content with each new partner (largely directly from Google rather than from existing partner content)

400,000 visits to library content August 07-08 (Pedagogy in Action went public November 07)

15% of traffic to pedagogic modules is through partner sites

30% of traffic to cooperative learning moduleis through the CAUSEweb clone

Why users come to site

Find something tangible to grab and use (teaching activity)

Find supportive context to guide teaching and support student learning

Look for interdisciplinary approaches to science

Look for assessment tied to teaching strategies

Help clarify teaching philosophy

Support changes in teaching approach to more student-centered and interactive

What value do they find on site

Teaching tips from others - “show how to pull it off”

Structure of teaching activity sheets to support “at a glance” decision-making

What, How, and Whys behind the pedagogic modules

Designed for Use: Top-Down/Bottom Up

Searching for help with class tomorrowGoogle on specific technical term related to tomorrow’s content

Growing searches for examples

Designing a courseDeveloping a pedagogic approach

Learning about a method

For example

How Visitors Move Across the Site

(Data from October and November 2004.)

Visitors with a topical interest come in from Google, land on an example activity and find their way ‘up’ to the pedagogic module and beyond.

Manduca, C.A., Iverson, E.R., Fox, S.P., McMartin, F. (2005). Influencing User Behavior through Digital Library Design: An Example from the Geosciences, D-Lib, vol 11(5)

How Visitors Move Across the Site

(Data from November 2004.)

Visitors interested in apedagogic topic come in from Google and make their way ‘down’ to the examples.

207 visitors entered the site via thetop page of Socratic Questioning:

23% visitedHow to UseSocratic Questioning:

Visited various otherpages onthe site.

/introgeo/socratic/index.html

fourth.html

45%

5% continued onto an example of Guiding Socratic Questioning:

guiding.html

11%

2% continued onto the list of all SocraticQuestioning Exercises:

Exitedthe site.

32%

7%

sixth.html

(29% of the original207 visitors visited 5or more pages.)

Pedagogy in Action: Promoting Sharing, Reuse,

and RedundancyPedagogic methods are similar across some disciplines

Save work

Cross Fertilize

If you hear the same thing from 2 very different sources you are more likely to pay attention

Making the Pedagogic Modules useable and customizable by different groups

The Pedagogic Service

A Library

Customized Collections for Disciplines, Schools and Projects

Repurposing for a variety of usesDisciplinary Collections- Econ, Geo, Physics, Stats,

Interdisciplinary Collections – PKAL signature pedagogies

Institutional Collections - Carleton

Thematic Collections – Quantitative Skills

Cloning and Activity Distribution

Clone and Reuse Activities across projects that are:

Disciplinary (like this one)

Institutional (Carleton)

Pedagogically focused (NNN, Quirk)

QSSDL/SSDAN

Creating a Pleasant Experience

Not FrustratingNavigation LabelingWorth reading

Browseable

Pleasing to the Eye

Learning about Teaching vs Dictating a Solution

Solved my problem and more

How does it impact them

Gives them:

Inspiration to develop teaching activities using new pedagogy

Confidence in adopting new teaching methods

Connection to broader community of faculty who care of science education

The Big PictureFor the introductory geoscience site since it’s inception in June 2003:

• 1.8 million visits(1 million visitors?)

•15% of visits include 3 or more pages

•80% come from search engines (67% Google)

•Steady growth

How does it impact their students

Students appear more engaged.

Teaching methods foster greater curiosity by students.

• Assessments provided help capture just-in-time reactions to whether activity is working.