Office of Faculty Development
External Speaker – Fall 2009

Laurie Richlin, PhD
November 5, 2009

BIOGRAPHY

Laurie Richlin is Director of the Office of Faculty Development at the Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science.  She previously was the Director of the Claremont Graduate University Preparing Future Faculty & Learning Communities Program.  In addition, she is Director of the Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching - West, Executive Editor of the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching and the Learning Communities Journal, and President of the International Alliance of Teacher Scholars. She received her doctorate in higher education from the Claremont Graduate University and her dissertation research on alternative doctoral scholarship received the national Gratzke award from the American Association of University Administrators.
 
Her recent publications include Blueprint for Learning: Constructing Courses to Facilitate, Assess, and Document Learning (Stylus, 2006), Building Faculty Learning Communities (NDTL Number 97) with Milton Cox, "Scholarly Teaching & the Scholarship of Teaching" in The Scholarship of Teaching (New Directions in Teaching and Learning); Preparing Faculty for the New Conceptions of Scholarship (New Directions in Teaching and Learning); "Broadening the Concept of Scholarship in the Professions" (with Rice), in Educating Professionals (Curry & Wergin, eds.); "Preparing the Faculty of the Future to Teach," in Successful Faculty Development Strategies (Wright, ed.); "Using CATs to Shift the Focus From Teaching Survival to Student Learning" in Classroom Assessment and Research: An Update on Uses, Approaches, and Research Findings (New Directions in Teaching and Learning); "Using Portfolios to Document Teaching Excellence" in Honoring Exemplary Teaching (with Manning, New Directions in Teaching and Learning); and Improving a College/University Teaching Evaluation System (with Manning, Alliance Publishers).

She has taught The Academic Career, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, New Orleans: Legacy and Promise, Journalism, Career Development, capstone courses in Education, and writing and research methods courses in several disciplines. Richlin developed and implemented the Teaching Assistant Development Program at the University of California, Riverside, was "Educator in Residence" at four small colleges in Kentucky and Indiana under a FIPSE grant, and served as Director of the Office of Faculty Development at the University of Pittsburgh before returning to California.

Evidence-based Learning
Thursday, November 5, 2009
8:30 - 11:30am; Arcola-Tuscola Room

Practicing doctors and teachers are applied professionals, practical people making interventions in the lives of their clients in order to promote worthwhile ends – health or learning. Doctors and teachers are similar in that they make decisions involving complex judgments. Many doctors draw upon research about the effects of their practice to inform and improve their decisions; most teachers do not, and this is a difference (Hargreaves 1997, p. 200).

One reason to turn to evidence-based education is that doing so would make it less vulnerable to “political ideology, conventional wisdom, folklore, and wishful
thinking,” not to mention “trendy teaching methods based on activity-based, student-centered, self-directed learning and problem solving” (Davies, 1999, p. 109). But what constitutes evidence?  The dictionary (m-w.com) says that evidence is “something that furnishes proof.” To be able to provide proof that a teaching activity works it is necessary both to measure the outcome of the activity in question, and to describe how the measured outcomes relate to the activity. This presentation will discuss 1) how instructors do or do not use evidence; 2) how
instructors contribute to the knowledge base about effective teaching, and 3) the process of teaching and learning with evidence.

References
Davies, P. (1999). What is evidence-based education? British Journal of Educational Studies, 47, 2, 108-121.
Hargreaves, D. (1997). In defence of research for evidence-based teaching: A rejoinder to Martyn Hammersley. British Educational Research Journal, 23, 4, 405- 419.

Getting Credit for What You Do: Designing Courses to Facilitate, Assess, and Document Learning.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
1:00 - 3:30pm; Arcola-Tuscola Room

In order to get credit for what you do, it is very important that you be able to describe and explain your professional decisions to others in your program,
university, and disciplinary community. This session will facilitate your progress from ideas to products.  How can you turn your good teaching ideas into publishable
scholarship? How can you demonstrate that your ideas help your students learn? How do you get credit for your scholarly teaching? This session will include guidelines and support for designing teaching projects, creating course and teaching portfolios, and turning your work into publishable scholarship.  Participants are encouraged to bring a syllabus for a course they are considering redesigning.

Registration for this event is required. For those interrested, registration can be completed at http://cats.eiu.edu/FacultyDevelopmentRegistration/index.asp.