January OLN Learning Institute at Kent State 2005

 

Learning Communities as Catalysts for Educational Change:

Exploring Individual and Institutional Transformation

        

Context:

  • Provide innovative, rich and satisfying learning experiences for students and teachers
  • Promote growth and learning for all who teach
  • Align community growth with institutional mission statements and strategic plans

 

Tools:

  • Strategies for assessing prior knowledge and designing informed learning environments and experiences   
  • How to self-examine and chart a path of professional growth                                                                                             
  • Strategies for leveraging learning communities into institutional changes.
  • A bottom-up process for designing and implementing a vibrant strategic plan.

 

Night Jan.13:

6-6:30pm

Reception: Moulton Hall Ballroom

 

6:30-7:15

Dinner Buffet & Welcome

7:15 – 8:30

Kick-off Speaker: David McConnell, Director, Northeast Ohio Center of Excellence for Mathematics and Science Teacher Education, and, Co-Director, Institute for Teaching and Learning--University of Akron

Explorations into the main themes of the Learning Institute

8:30 –9

Mingling & Casual conversation

 

 

Day Jan. 14:

8:00–8:30am

Continental Breakfast

 

8:30-9:15

Welcome & Learning Communities Sharing: Who we are; our contexts; our aspirations

9:15-9:20

Introduction:  Professor Michael Lee

9:20 – 10:30

Featured Speaker: Chandralekha Singh, Senior Lecturer and recipient of the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award 2002, University of Pittsburgh. Scaffolding and Learning

Individual Conceptual Change: How do we assess prior knowledge and use that to design learning experiences? What do students come with and how do we know? Implications for the classroom.

10:30 – 10:45

Break (Refreshment refresher)

 

10:45- 12:00

 

Professor Albert Ingram will introduce small group discussion related to Scaffolding and Learning

 

12- 1pm

Lunch

1-2 

Portraits of Success – Learning Communities and Institutional Change

Kent State University, Hocking College, and your institution

Provost Paul Gaston and colleagues and Provost Judith Maxson and colleagues

2-2:30

Discussion

2:30-2:45

Break

2:45-4:15

Discussion in Learning Communities

How to translate individual change into institutional change: promulgating the success of learning communities.

What characteristics make LC’s effective vehicles for change?

  • Where is your learning community now in relation to your mission/ strategic plan? How does it connect with the core mission of the university. (If a new LC, how do you imagine the LC contributing to institutional change?)
  • Where could your LC be related to institutional change?
  • What institutional changes and opportunities exist at your university where your LC would be an appropriate vehicle for guiding the change? (Place LC’s in the future of your institution)
  • Discuss what types of change you are looking for and what are you doing to get there.

Learning Communities sharing plans.

4:15

Closing Remarks Mary Lou Holly and Sheryl Hansen