Opportunities

LACOL Collaboration Incubator

LACOL

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LACOL offers a framework to support collaboration, including kick-start funding opportunities for multi-campus projects. To browse opportunities, select or scroll through the posts below. We invite your questions, suggestions, and participation!

Active LACOL Projects

Ideas and Opportunities in the Pipeline


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Data Science for Undergraduates: Opportunities and Options … a liberal arts conversation

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Event: Discussion of the NAS Data Science for Undergraduates Report
Location: ZOOM web conference (rsvp to eevans@haverford.edu for a meeting invite)
Date: Thursday, July 12
Time: 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM Eastern
Discussion Leader: Professor Nicholas Horton, Amherst College

Following on from the lively Data Science meets Environmental Studies meet up at the 2018 LACOL summer workshop, LACOL members are invited to join an online conversation to discuss faculty perspectives on the newly released Data Science for Undergraduates: Opportunities and Options report from the National Academies of Science. (More about the NAS report is here: http://nap.edu/25104)

Discussion of the report through a liberal arts lens will be lead by Dr. Nick Horton, Professor of Statistics at Amherst College.  Nick served as contributor to the report on the Committee on Envisioning the Data Science Discipline: the Undergraduate Perspective.   As he and colleagues at the summer workshop note, there is considerable potential to engage with each other as liberal arts colleges around curriculum development (see ASA Guideline, developed with AALAC) and other ways to support students learning to work with data.

Faculty and academic support specialists interested in data science education across the curriculum are encouraged to join this conversation!

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Inclusive Pedagogies & Measuring Complex Domains of Learning for the Liberal Arts – 2 workshops

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Emerging pedagogies for inclusion are keen topics of interest across the liberal arts. Our Teaching & Learning Centers, and our academic support colleagues have a growing body of experience – what works and what doesn’t work – when it comes to supporting our diverse student body academically and as whole persons. Collaboration around these insights and measurements across LACOL has seemed like a useful idea to many. To advance these conversations, two interrelated workshops will be held in the Spring of 2018:

WORKSHOP 2: Measuring Complex Domains of Learning (Inclusive Pedagogies)

WORKSHOP 1: LACOL Dialogue on Inclusive Pedagogies

  • Date: Friday, March 9
  • Location: Haverford College
  • Speakers*:
    • Prof. Verna Case, Assoc. Dean of Faculty, Director of the Teaching and Learning Center, and Beverly F. Dolan Professor of Biology, Davidson College
    • Prof. Jyl Gentzler, John Cooper ’64 Presidential Teaching Professor of Philosophy and Faculty Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, Amherst College
    • Dr. Riley Caldwell O’Keefe, Director, Center for Teaching and Learning, Amherst College
    • Prof. Jonathon Kahn, Assoc. Professor of Religion, Vassar College
    • Dr. Andrea Nixon, Program Director, Division of Undergraduate Education, National Science Foundation and Director of Educational Research, Carleton College
  • Program: Agenda
  • Logistics: Workshop Info

Background and Purpose:

The goal of these paired workshops is to start a dialogue across our stakeholders around issue of access and inclusion, and to consider ways in which both qualitative and quantitative assessments might be used to jointly study this aspect (and others) of the liberal arts experience. (more…)

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CHIANTI – Shared Grammar Resource

LACOL

The Language Instruction Working Group is currently (Spring/Summer 2018) exploring an idea for a online resource built collaborative by/for LACOL faculty and instructors that will guide language learners on foundational grammar concepts.

There is an emerging plan for collaboration toward Shared Grammar Resources for Beginning Language Students. This concept has been discussed with enthusiasm in some earlier LACOL meetings, and Carleton Professor of Classics Chico Zimmerman has drafted a proposal to articulate more of the vision – see link above and below.

Four small teams are actively collaborating across several schools on the following module topics:

  • General Advice to Learners
    • General advice to incoming students about language-learning at college.
    • This includes some student voices on their learning experiences, but also could include some more general data/research findings on the benefits of L2 acquisition and the potential interferences of L1.
  • Map of Language Learning
    • An “overview” or map of the different domains that language takes in, including “grammar” broadly construed and its relevance
  • Glossary of Grammar Terms
    • A glossary of grammar terms with English examples; perhaps including sentence diagramming
  • Phonetics and Phonology
    • Phonetics/phonology module (perhaps with differing emphases depending on the target languages)

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Toward a LACOL course sharing framework (Spring/Summer ’18)

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Based on insights flowing from the Upper Level Math/Stats and Self-Instructional Language (SILP) course sharing pilots, a multi-campus, multidisciplinary Steering Committee and Course Design Task Force are working in concert to explore models and possibilities for course sharing across LACOL’s digital network.

JOINT REPORT April 2018: Executive Summary

(contact eevans@haverford.edu for a copy of the full report.

The Exploration

Sharing courses as a consortium can enhance curricular opportunities for students and faculty, lead to efficiency gains by combining expertise and curricular resources, and provide opportunities for our faculty and students to explore digitally-enhanced, collaborative modes for teaching and learning in the liberal arts.

As LACOL is considering a framework for course sharing, a learner-centered course design is recommended to emphasize interpersonal connections and engagement between faculty and students across a shared class. To the extent possible, a level playing field (via technology and pedagogy) should be maintained across local and remote learners. While there is not a one-size-fits all approach, there are plenty of proven models and techniques to draw on. Support for shared courses will depend on a thriving network of relationships across faculty, IT, library, accessibility offices, and other academic support units.

While the consortium expects to be in exploratory mode for the foreseeable future, success of any course sharing initiative critically depends on local champions at the leadership and grass roots levels.

2017 Course Sharing Pilots

Course Sharing for Portuguese (SILP)

In the Fall 2017/Spring 2018, Vassar College and Williams College shared a tutor and teaching resources for their students learning Portuguese via their Self-Instructional Language Programs.

Read more: http://lacol.net/project-summary-silp

Upper Level Math/Stats

In Spring and Fall of 2017, several LACOL colleges collaborated to pilot three shared course offerings for advanced mathematics and statistics:

  • Putnam Problem Solving, Spring ‘17 (Prof. S. Miller, WIlliams College)
  • Advanced Real Analysis, Fall ‘17 (Prof. S. Garcia, Pomona College)
  • Bayesian Statistics, Fall ‘17 (Prof. M. Hu, Vassar College)

Read more: http://lacol.net/category/collaborations/projects/upper-level-math

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Digital Competencies / Digital Fluency Community of Practice

LACOL

Kick-started by the Think Tank on Digital Competencies for the Liberal Arts at Davidson College, Oct 2017, an exploration is underway to develop a community of practice and forum for exchange across LACOL schools and partner institutions across the liberal arts.

Follow Up Events:
Webinar 1: Overview of Bryn Mawr’s Digital Competencies Framework
Tuesday, January 9 | 3pm – 4pm Eastern

Webinar 2: Hands-on Digital Competencies Program Design
Tuesday, January 16 | 2pm – 3pm Eastern

*Both webinars are open to all through EDU-PLACE.

Related Posts:

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Liberal Arts Gallery of Digital Pedagogies

LACOL
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The Concept:

Faculty, librarians, instructional technologists/designers and academic specialists across all the LACOL schools (and beyond) are engaged in creative exploration of digital pedagogies for the liberal arts. LACOL is collecting a series of short vignettes to share across our liberal arts network.

The Format:

  • 3-5 minute video (live action or screencast)
  • Audio narration preferred

*close captions will be added to all videos for accessibility
*copyright permissions for all included media must be cleared

Each video should include …

  • The Prompt: What pedagogical problem or challenge are you trying to solve?
  • Your Approach: What (digitally enhanced) teaching strategy are you taking?
  • Tips and Feedback: What has been your experience so far? Any feedback from students?

How to Contribute:

Proposal / Intake Form (coming soon)

The form asks for:

  • Your Contact Information
  • Title / Topic
  • Short description – what will your video cover (300 words or less)
  • Sample image (optional)
  • Related keywords or tags (optional)
  • Link to hosted video (or LACOL can host)

Short (1:17 min) example:

* this examples uses animation, but gallery videos may be live action and/or screencasts (more…)

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