In his keynote address, Dr. Lee Shulman asked the audience, "What happens when design meets chance?"
He explained this statement by recalling the story of Louis Pasteur's discovery of a chicken cholera vaccine. One of Pasteur's assistants had given a group of chickens a small dose of the cholera bacteria instead of the prescribed lethal dose. Long after the lethal dose should have killed the chickens, the chickens were still alive. Upon discovering his assistant's mistake, Pasteur took the opportunity to ask, "Now why might this be so? How is it that they could have survived with just a small dose of cholera?" Thus, a vaccine for chicken cholera was discovered.
Dr. Shulman challenged the audience to teach our students to be prepared for a world, which on the whole is routine and designed, where chance allows the opportunity for serendipity to occur. How can we do this? By attending to three key pillars of a higher education:
Habits of mind - Cultivating deep learning of content knowledge.
Habits of practice - Cultivating a routine that can act fluidly in the world.
Habits of heart - Cultivating an understanding of the importance of a discipline and how to be a socially responsible human being.
Dr. Shulman's full keynote will be available on iTunes U within the next couple of weeks. Be sure to check back on this Blog or the Teaching Commons for availability.
The Committee on Learning and Teaching luncheon panel featured Mindy Kalchman, School of Educationn; Joshua Jones, College of Computing and Digital Media; Zaya Khananu, School for New Learning; and Michaela Winchatz, College of Communication. Key themes that emerged from the panel:
Create learning environments that speak to your students' personal experiences. By helping relate course content to what they already know and experience, students are better able to construct new knowledge.
Giving feedback is important. Make feedback timely and informative and set expectations for yourself and your students.
Strive to challenge yourself to improve your teaching and your skill set. DePaul is a great place to do that with many opportunities available.
Be explicit in communicating strategies that you employ to succeed in a discipline. This goes for note taking, reading, or communication strategies. Students don't always know how to succeed within a discipline and need to be taught these learning strategies as much as the content.
For more, take a look at the conference presentation materials that many of the presenters have generously made available.
What did you think of this year's Faculty Teaching and Learning Conference? Feel free to send us your reactions in the comments below.
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