Teaching Enhancement at Soka University

Soka University has a strong tradition of emphasis on effective teaching, and its extensive GE and Core curriculum helped to bring faculty together to discuss courses and pedagogy. This was a strength that I leveraged, along with the Faculty Enhancement Committee, in developing a strategy for enhancing and building teaching effectiveness at Soka University. One element in urgent need of updating was the teaching evaluation system, which relied on paper scantron forms from the IDEA organization. In the first year as Dean (AY 2017-18) I arranged for a new online course evaluation system, which was based on the IDEA Diagonostic test, but provided by the company CampusLabs, which included in the newer system the options for custom instructor questions and also included additional resources for helping faculty teach. In Fall of 2017 (my first semester as Dean) I set up a series of workshops with faculty to learn the new system and also to provide a chance for them to ask questions and discuss teaching evaluation. To reduce the challenge on faculty used to the older system we also provided an “opt-in” for the first year, as we transitioned the entire faculty to online teaching evaluations. This was a good idea since the old system was about to be retired.

To aid in the teaching enhancement effort, I convened a series of discussions with faculty teaching in the various GE courses, to help them engage in discussions about these courses, which had groups of faculty offering different sections of required courses. The goal in these discussions was to share insights into the curriculum and pedagogy, and to document these insights in a booklet. Each of the groups, which included faculty teaching American Experience, Pacific basin, Core I (subtitled “Enduring Questions of Humanity”), Core II (subtitled “Enduring Questions in a Social Context”), Modes of Inquiry, and Creativity Forum, got together, discussed the course, and were asked to write up the meaning of the course and to give samples of how each faulty member saw this course. My reasoning was that these discussions would leverage this existing “common intellectual property” and help faculty approach their teaching in these courses with a more collective approach that would highlight the social and collaborative approach of a learning community. This hypothesis was aligned with educational research into communities of practice, which require a community to have standards and a property that they share and these groups were hoped to form the basis of a set of communities on campus to share ideas on teaching. By documenting existing practice, it was also possible to improve it, a technique I learned from my SoTL course at Yale_NUS known as “Appreciative Inquiry.” The resulting booklet was a very useful document for recording insights into this curriculum, which had been offered for nearly 20 years, and was helpful for sharing with outside visitors to Soka University, and eventually became an invaluable resource for incoming faculty and for our new website, which was launched during 2019-20. Below is the cover from our 66-page SUA curriculum booklet, which can also be downloaded from this site at the link here: A Guide To General Education and the Core Curriculum.

Core_GE_booklet_cover

 

In parallel to the Core and GE discussions, I worked with my associate Dean, Michael Weiner, to set up a series of discussions about the Capstone process, which was an important part of each of our concentrations. All of the students would prepare a thesis based on original work in their senior year, which included courses in Fall and spring amounting to 12 credit hours. It was important to document how each concentration approached this process, and by discussing and documenting this, the hope was that adjacent concentrations could learn from each other and improve and streamline their procedures. The result from that effort was a Capstone Document, which was very helpful for improving the process within each concentration and did produce a number of innovations and improvements in our capstone process, such as an enhanced emphasis on deliverables in January of senior year to help students finish their project, and a poster fair from our Social and Behavioural Sciences (SBS) concentration to celebrate the accomplishments of our seniors. The latter was developed by Peter Burns and Esther Chang, the SBS concentration director. The resulting 35-page booklet and its cover are below. This document can be downloaded at this link: SUA.capstone.report.

capstone.booklet.cover

 

In my second year as Dean, I decided to adopt some new approaches, aided by the Faculty Enhancement Committee and its chair, Peter Burns, who was an excellent teacher and enthusiastic about sharing ideas about teaching and helping to mentor colleagues. With the committee, we set up a series of teaching lunches during AY 2018-19 that included faculty presentations and discussions about teaching, as well as outside experts to bring new ideas to our community.  The discussions sometimes centered on our curriculum, like an October event in 2018 that featured an article and a discussion about “Learning Clusters” which are Soka University’s immersive 3.5 week courses we offer each January:

Please join us at noon on October 3 for a brown bag discussion on student-directed teaching.As Learning Cluster approaches, we will read “Student-Directed Learning: An Exercise in Student Engagement,” and answer the following questions:

1) What is your assessment of the approach presented in this article?

2) Have you used similar approaches in the past, and if so, with which kinds of success?

3) To what extent can the approach presented in this article be used in Soka Learning Clusters?

The subsequent discussion was also centered around an article and was a discussion on the topic of mentoring:

The next faculty teaching brown bag will be at noon on November 14 and the faculty will read and discuss the “Guide to Best Practices in Faculty Mentoring: A Roadmap for Departments, Schools, Mentors and Mentees,” by the Office of the Provost at Columbia University.  We will discuss the importance of mentoring, formal and informal mentoring, and possible best practices in mentoring for Soka University.

The discussions about teaching continued in the concentrations and one innovation that arose was known as the Teaching Slam – which was invented by Esther Chang and supported by Peter Burns. The SBS faculty convened this teaching slam in December 2018 and shared short snippets (2-4 minutes) from their classes, along with handouts, and gave time for questions and discussion. This innovation was very successful, and Peter Burns implemented a campus-wide Teaching Slam for all faculty at the end of the semester. The Teaching Slam became an annual tradition, and included a nice catered lunch for helping build community and morale.

teaching.slam.flyer

Our first visitor to campus was Darryl Yong, an amazing teacher and scholar from Harvey Mudd College. He came and gave a pair of workshops in December 2018. Darryl also came out to Singapore when I was starting the Yale_NUS Teaching Center and did a great job with our group at Soka University. Below is the announcement for his talk.

On Wednesday, December 5 we will be visited by Darryl Yong, founding director of the Claremont Colleges Teaching and Learning Center and a professor at Harvey Mudd College. He will provide a lunch discussion and workshop during his visit. 
 
His lunch talk will be on Making Active Learning Intentionally Inclusive. He will include a review of some of the research on active learning, then discuss ways that students can experience it differently, then how we can improve the experience for all students.  The lunch talk is at noon, December 5, in SC401.
 
His afternoon talk will be on Transparency in Teaching and Learning, and he will share new research on how transparency from instructors helps learning, and give tips on how to be more transparent, and a hands-on workshop that will allow faculty to make changes to their own syllabi and assignments. The afternoon talk is at 4:40PM, December 5, in SC401. 

A second visitor to campus was Michael Denning, the UC Irvine Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning. Michael came to campus and helped us learn more about how UC Irvine has been promoting active learning among its faculty, and its new feature-intensive teaching space known as the Anteater Pavillion, which the faculty can use for their classes if they are able to get some training or document some of their new ideas in teaching.  The lunch was a great chance to connect with Michael and also enhanced our connections with UC Irvine.

Lunch with Michael Dennin, UC Irvine Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning, May 8 at noon, SC 401. Come to discuss new developments in undergraduate education and pedagogy with Michael Dennin. Thanks to the Faculty Enhancement Committee for helping organise the lunch series this year. RSVP to follow.
In parallel with the lunch discussions, I created a program known as the Teaching Innovation Grant, whereby faculty could propose to get some funding of $1000 for enhancing a course or $3000 for a group project. These funds could be used for implementing new technology in a course, for bringing in a visitor to campus or to get some training in a teaching technique at a conference. Below is the “official” description of the program sent to all faculty:
The grants will provide funding for implementing a new pedagogical approach or curriculum, which could support the acquisition of new technology,  for attending a seminar and  presenting  results  of  the  implementation  at  educational conferences, or for student stipends to help with the development of the innovation. The grants can be made to individual faculty or to groups of faculty within SUA to improve the pedagogy and curriculum within  an  individual  course  or  a  set  of  linked  courses.  A  focus  of  the  effort  will  be  to  capture  and disseminate the results of these innovations broadly within our SUA community, as well as at academic and professional development conferences. Eligible applicants include all full-time faculty.
Each semester I issued a call for proposals for these grants and it provided resources for an amazing group of faculty to do some exciting new projects. After implementing their innovation, faculty are asked to present some of their ideas at a teaching lunch.  Below is a listing of the nine teaching innovation grants that were awarded from the Dean’s office in two years (AY 2018-19 and AY 2019-20). It was especially rewarding to see that the grants were helping faculty across most of our concentrations, and were especially helpful in humanities, and fostered some use of digital technologies in humanities that included podcasting, scanned newspapers for studying Brazilian history, and podcasting as a tool for supplementing student writing. Adding innovative technology implementation into our curriculum proved to be very valuable when our campus was required to shift to online instruction in Spring 2020!
Professor (Concentration) Purpose of Teaching Innovation Grant 
Ian Read (INTS) Using digital media and scanned online newspapers for studying Brazilian history
Junyi Liu (SBS) Investment competition within economics course using software platform from Wharton School
Robert Allinson (HUM) Including video testimonies from Holocaust survivors within his course and also developing other online technologies
Shane Barter (INTS) Integrating preparation for a research conference to be attended by students within an international studies course
Kristi Wilson (Writing) Developing podcast technologies within writing courses as extended medium of communication
Tomas Crowder Toraborelli (GE) Developing podcast technologies within writing courses as extended medium of communication
Xiaoxing Liu (LCP) Attendance at the CLTA-SC Technology Workshop & Internation Conference on Chinese Pedagogy (Harvard)
Sandrine Simeon & Pablo Camus (LCP) Talk Abroad implementation in language classes to enable live conversations with native speakers in foreign languages
James Spady (HUM) Travel to UC campus archives for student training and research on Native American rights on behalf of the Acjachemen Nation
One additional element in teaching enhancement which we developed was the New Faculty Workshop. The new faculty would have a chance to get oriented to Soka University in the morning, and to have an overview of our curriculum, our student needs, and the unique approaches to teaching and curriculum at Soka University. This was also a chance to bring all the faculty together before classes started to build community and to share ideas for the coming academic year.  The workshop included a lunch where the new faculty would be formally introduced. The lunch was followed by sessions open to all faculty to discuss teaching, upcoming new features for the coming academic year, and a review of our procedures for advising, and teaching workshops on topics that were selected by the Teaching Enhancement committee.  Below is a program from our first faculty workshop, which are now an annual tradition – at least for two years so far!

Schedule for New Faculty Workshop and Full Faculty Discussions – September 5, 2018

Session 1: Overview of Soka Student Body and Mission – 10:00-10:45  [Audience: New full-time faculty]  

  • Dean and Faculty Enhancement Committee will introduce themselves, and the workshop and offer ideas about teaching and working at SUA (10 minutes).
  • Our student profile – based on Admissions (Andrew Woolsey, Dean of Enrolment Services – 10 minutes)
  • Overview of Soka student body (Hyon Moon, Dean of Students  – 10 minutes)
  • Discussion of Soka’s unique mission, values, and learning environment – and question and answers  (15 minutes)

Coffee Break (15 minutes)

Session 2: Advising Workshop — 11:00-12:00 [entire faculty] Maathai 207

  • Overview of Advising Process, Curriculum, Health and Wellness, and Life Science advising (10 minutes)
  • Advice for Advisors and insights from the Advising Committee [Sarah England, Chair, Advising Committee] (15 minutes)
  • Health and Wellness, Accommodations and Student Health Issues, and Review of Title IX policies [Brian Durick, Student Affairs and Anhthu Dang, Counselor] (20 minutes)
  • Discussion and Q&A (15 minutes)

Welcoming Lunch for All Faculty – 12:00-1:30 PM [entire faculty] Performing Arts Hall Lobby

Dean will introduce and welcome new faculty starting at SUA, followed by brief announcements from concentration directors and coordinators. We will also have a discussion of the SUA GE and Core curriculum document, the new Life Science concentration, and coordination of the GE courses.  Ideas for Faculty Enhancement activities for upcoming academic year will be discussed.

Session 3: Syllabus Workshop and Conclusion of New Faculty Workshop – 2:00-3:00PM [audience: new full-time faculty] Maathai 207

  • Faculty Enhancement Committee members discuss how they create their syllabi and approach teaching at SUA.
  • Principles of Course Design and Grading from the Faculty Enhancement Committee
  • Chance to review syllabi with experienced and new faculty for updates and improvements
  • Wrap up and questions and answers
During AY 2019-20, we continued the new faculty workshop, and as we were hiring a number of new faculty we were able to bring in a cohort of 6 faculty who were hired in the previous two years, along with an equal number of new adjunct faculty. This cohort of new faculty has been an exciting new element at Soka University, and should provide new energies and ideas for many years to come. In this year we began earlier in the summer and one of our sociology faculty hired in 2017-18, Danielle Denardo, led a workshop for new faculty on syllabus creation. Below is the program for the second new faculty workshop in Fall of 2019.
Schedule for New Faculty Workshop and Full Faculty Discussions – September 4, 2019
Coffee and Informal Welcoming Reception – 9:30-10:00AM, Maathai 207
Session 1: Overview of Soka Student Body and Mission – 10:00-10:45  [Audience: New faculty]  Maathai 207
  • Dean and Faculty Enhancement Committee will introduce themselves, and the workshop and offer ideas about teaching and working at SUA (10 minutes).
  • Overview of Soka student body (Hyon Moon, Dean of Students  – 10 minutes)
  • Our student profile – based on Admissions data (Andrew Woolsey, Dean of Enrolment Services – 10 minutes)
  • Discussion of Soka’s unique mission, values, and learning environment – and question and answers ) (15 minutes)

Coffee Break (15 minutes)

Session 2: Advising Workshop — 11:00-12:00 [entire faculty] Maathai 207

  • Overview of Advising Process, Curriculum, Health and Wellness, and Life Science advising (10 minutes)
  • Advice for Advisors and insights from the Advising Committee [Sarah England, Chair, Advising Committee] (15 minutes)
  • New ideas for student Health and Wellness, Support for Student Athletes, and helping students with Title IX issues [Brian Durick, Student Affairs, Mike Moore, and Anhthu Dang, Counselor] (20 minutes)
  • Discussion and Q&A (15 minutes)

Welcoming Lunch for All Faculty – 12:00-1:15 PM [entire faculty] Performing Arts Hall Lobby

Dean will introduce and welcome new faculty starting at SUA, followed by brief announcements from concentration directors and coordinators. We will also updates on our new Fulbright advising program, our new CGU accelerated degree program, the  new Life Science concentration, and will distribute our new Core/GE booklet.  Ideas for Faculty Enhancement activities for upcoming academic year will be discussed, along with other new programs.

Session 3: Discussions and Q&A for New Faculty – 1:30-2:15PM [audience: new faculty and interested continuing faculty] Maathai 207  

  • The Faculty Enhancement Committee will convene a discussion about a variety of topics of interest to new faculty teaching at SUA including the following topics:
    • Student Evaluations
    • The Portal
    • Syllabus Construction
    • Grading and Assessment Procedures
    • Tips for class discussions and active learning
    • Other topics of interest to faculty

Session 4: Learning Cluster and GE Info Session and Conclusion of New Faculty Workshop – 2:15-3PM [audience: new faculty and interested continuing faculty]  Maathai 207

  • Discussion of learning cluster course design process—what to expect and how to prepare
  • Discussion of GE/Core/Modes—what to expect and how to prepare
  • Wrap up and questions and answers
One exciting feature of this academic year was the opportunity to bring our faculty into a mini-course on effective teaching with Carl Wieman, 2001 Nobel laureate in Physics and director of many exciting teaching initiatives, which together are known as the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative. Carl has developed exciting new programs at University of Colorado, Boulder, University of British Columbia, and now at Stanford University. You can read more about the CWSEI in his recent book on the same topic. Carl’s mini-course was a development he has been working on for a while, and during 2019-20 our Soka University faculty, along with other science and medical faculty from Cornell University, University of Oregon, Stanford University, and a few other institutions, were able to take an intensive and interactive course “Principles and Practices of Effective University Teaching” with Carl Wieman over Zoom. It was a great experience and we all received certificates for the effort. I took the course along with five of our SUA faculty, Zahra Afrasiabi (Chemistry), Marie Nydam (Biology), Susan Walsh (Biology), Anna Varvak (Mathematics), Danielle Denardo (Sociology).  It was especially rewarding that I had helped hire four of these five faculty in the past two years!  Below is an image of my certificate from the course. A syllabus from the course and a set of course readings from this amazing course is also provided below.

Carl Wieman course materials for Principles and Practices of Effective University Teaching course, 2019:

Bryan Penprase certificate


In the rest of the AY 2019-20 our faculty development efforts were focused on a campus-wide effort to improve our diversity, inclusion and equity at Soka University. We had campus-wide implicit bias training, workshops on critical race theory and a conference on Ethnic Studies sponsored by the Dean’s office and Academic affairs. Then COVID-19 hit, and in mid-March my efforts were focused on pivoting our campus to online instruction with a series of discussions and training sessions with support from our campus IT group. The details for those very intensive efforts will be provided in subsequent posts.