Early Career Learning Community
The Center for Integrated Professional Development’s Early Career Learning Community offers course instructors in their 1st through 3rd years of service at ISU a combination of professional development and peer support. Join us for lively conversations about teaching, learning, surviving, and thriving in the academy.
The topic for Spring 2024 will center on the book, Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning by James Lang, which will bridge the gap between the research on how people learn and our everyday teaching practices. Sometimes this can seem overwhelming, but Lang offers strategies for implementing deliberate, structured, and incremental steps to helping our students engage students in learning.
No reading is required for participation in these circles. We will provide summaries of chapters that provide enough information to allow you to participate in the discussions.
Spring 2024
Meetings:
All meetings are from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. on their respective days.
Location:
Williams 326 with the option to attend via Zoom
Facilitator:
Dana Karraker, Center for Integrated Professional Development
Session I:
Wednesday, January 31 or Thursday, February 1
In this session, we will introduce the concept of Small Teaching and how instructors help students develop deep body of knowledge specific to the disciplines we teach. We will discuss strategies for retrieving, predicting, and interleaving that help students develop knowledge required for high-level thinking.
Session 2:
Wednesday, February 28 or Thursday, February 29
In this session we will focus on understanding. We will discuss strategies that help students develop a deeper understanding of concepts, improve their ability to analyze their own learning and practice a range of cognitive skills.
Session 3:
Wednesday, March 27 or Thursday, March 28
As we wrap up the book we will discover that learners and teachers are more than collections of neural networks, or receptacles of information, or practitioners of cognitive skills. In this session, we will discuss how learners and teachers are fully realized human beings that need inspiration as much as, if not more than, they need knowledge and skills.
If you need a special accommodation to fully participate in a Center event or service, please contact the Center at ProDev@ilstu.edu.